“Now is our time. Come!” commanded Grôm, leading the way out of the circle.
“Let’s stop and kill them all!” pleaded young Mô, his eyes red with rage.
But Grôm pointed to the cloud. “It will pass quickly,” said he. “We must be far from here before the sun shows his face again.”
He paused, however, to transfix upon his spear-head one of their wounded but still fluttering foes, that he might be able to show the tribe what manner of monsters they had had to deal with. Both A-ya and Mô followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searching for Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies on their spear-heads they went on. The monsters, clinging sullenly to their perches, rolled baleful eyes of emerald and rose and amethyst upon them as they went, but lifted 218 never a wing to follow them. Ten minutes later the sun came out again. Then the monsters all sprang hurtling into the air, and darted hither and thither above the glade in shoals of iridescent radiance, seeking their prey. But Grôm and A-ya, Mô and Loob triumphant in spite of their wounds, were by this time far away among the inland thickets, where those intolerable eyes could not search them out, nor the clashing wings pursue.
CHAPTER X
THE TERRORS OF THE DARK
I
From the topmost summit of that range of pointed hills which held the caves and the cave-mouth fires of his people, Grôm stared northward with keen curiosity. To east and south and west he had explored, ever seeking to enlarge the knowledge and strengthen the security of his tribe. But to northward of the pointed hills lay league on league of profound jungle––grotesque and enormous growths knitted together impenetrably by a tangle of gigantic, flame-flowered lianas. And in those rank, green glooms, as Grôm had reason to believe, there lurked such monsters as even he, with all his resources of fire and novel weapons, had so far shrunk from challenging.