“Oh, we don’t want to go ashore there!” protested A-ya fervently. As she spoke a hideous head, with immense, round, bulging eyes and long, beak-like mouth arose over the sedge tops on a long, swaying neck and stared at them fixedly.
“No, we don’t,” said Grôm, with decision, making haste to swing the head of the raft once more out into the channel. They were pursued by a dense crowd of mosquitoes, voracious and venomous, which followed them to mid-stream and kept tormenting them till an up-river gust blew them off.
Grôm made up his mind that the exploration of that unknown shore could wait a more convenient season. He was now deeply absorbed in the complex problem 276 of directing and managing his raft. As he pulled his spear through the water, and noted the additional effect of its flat head, the conception came to him of something that would get a more propulsive grip upon the water than was possible to a round pole. Furthermore, he was quick to realize that the immense, shapeless mass of débris on which they were traveling might be replaced by something light and manageable which he would make by lashing some trimmed trunks together with lengths of bamboo to give additional buoyancy. As he brooded this in silence, with that deep, inward look in his eyes which always kept A-ya from breaking in upon his vision, he came to the idea of a formal raft, and a formal paddle. And to this he added, with a full sense of its value, A-ya’s suggestion that this new structure might very well be pushed along, in shallow water, with a pole. Having thought this out, he drew a deep breath, looked up, and met A-ya’s eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was to get back home and put his new scheme into execution.
“Where are we going now?” asked A-ya.
Grôm looked about him wildly––at the sky, at the far-off hills on their right, at the course of the stream, which had changed within the past few miles. His sense of direction was unerring.
“This river,” he answered, “flows towards the rising sun, and must empty into the bitter waters not more than a day or a half day from the Caves. We are 277 going home. We will come again to look for arrows in a new raft which I will make.”
As he spoke, Loob’s spear darted down beside the raft, and came up with a big, silvery fish writhing upon it. He broke its neck with a blow and laid the prize at A-ya’s feet.
“I wish we had fire with us, to cook it with,” said she.
“On the new raft, as I will make it,” said Grôm, “that may very well be. Our journey will be safe and easy, and the good fire we will have always with us.”