The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the unsuspecting Grôm, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching from her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg’s ears caught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With a scream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late. Before he could either strike or flee, 173 he was beaten down again, with a smash of that pile-driving beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its victim’s loins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly snapped his neck. Then it fell greedily to its hideous meal.
At Mawg’s scream of terror, Grôm had turned and rushed to the rescue, swinging his club. But before he had covered half the distance, he saw that the monster had done its work; and he hesitated. He was too late to help the victim. And he knew the mettle of this ferocious bird, almost as much to be dreaded, in single combat, as the saber-tooth itself. At his approach, the bird had lifted its dripping beak, half turned, and stood gripping the prey with one foot, swaying its grim head slowly and eyeing him with malevolent defiance. Still he hesitated, fingering his club; for the insolence of that challenging stare made his blood seethe. Then came A-ya’s voice from the tree-top, calling him. “Come away!” she cried. “It was Mawg.”
Whereupon he turned, with the content of one who sees all old scores cleanly wiped out together, and went back to gather his ripe plantains.
The peril of Mawg being thus removed from their path, they journeyed more swiftly; and when the next new moon was a thin white sickle in the sky, just above the line of saw-toothed hills, they came safely back to the comfortable caves and the clear-burning watch-fires of their tribe.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BENDING OF THE BOW
Before the Caves of the Pointed Hills the fires of the tribe burned brightly. Within the caves reigned plenty and an unheard-of security; for since the conquest of fire those monstrous beasts and gigantic carnivorous, running birds, which had been Man’s ceaseless menace ever since he swung down out of the tree-tops to walk the earth erect, had been held at a distance through awe of the licking flames. Though the great battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legs had cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves were swarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grôm, his Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure.
So sharp had been the lessons lately administered to the prowling beasts––the terrible saber-tooth, the giant red bear of the caves, the proud black lion, and the bone-crushing cave hyena––that even the stretch of bumpy plain outside the circle of the fires, to a distance of several hundred paces, was considered a safe playground for the children of the tribe. On the outermost skirts of this playground, to be sure, just where the reedy pools and the dense bamboo thickets began, there was a fire kept burning. But this was 175 more as a reminder than as an actual defense. When a bear or a saber-tooth had once had a blazing brand thrust in his face, he acquired a measure of discretion. Moreover, the activities of the tribe had driven all the game animals to some distance up the valley; and it was seldom that anything more formidable than a jackal or a civet-cat cared to come within a half-mile of the fires.