“Some of us, perhaps many of us,” agreed Grôm. “But many of us will escape, to keep the tribe-fires burning, if the gods be kind upon that day and bind down the winds till we get over. If we stay here we shall all die.”
“It is well,” grunted Bawr, turning to hurry down the steep. “We will build rafts. Let us hasten.”
On the beach below the Caves the Men of the Tribe worked furiously, dragging the trunks of trees together at the water’s edge, lashing them with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously lopping some of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire and split stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk––with the old men, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of their hands for such a heavy task as raft-building––remained before the Caves under the command of A-ya, Grôm’s mate. 283 They had enough to do in feeding the chain of fires, keeping the children out of danger, and fighting back with spear and arrow the ever-encroaching mob of wild-eyed beasts. The beasts feared the fires, and feared the human beings who leaped and screamed and smote from among the fires. But still more they seemed to fear some unknown thing behind them. For a time, however, the crackling flames and the biting shafts proved a sufficient barrier, and the motley but terrifying invaders went sheering off irresolutely to westward over the downs.
Down by the edge of the tide the raft-builders worked under Grôm’s guidance. The broad water––some four or five miles across––was the tidal estuary of a great river which flowed out of the north-west. Its brimming current bore down from the interior jungles the trunks of many uprooted trees, which the tides of the estuary hurled back and strewed along the beach. The raft-builders, therefore, had plenty of material to work with. And the fear that lay chill upon their hearts urged them to a diligence that was far from their habit.
It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time would come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till the rabble went by, then fall to work again.
Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossing their wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled the whole space so that the 284 men had to plunge out into deep water to escape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish which infested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in shore, and paid for their irresolution by being gored savagely.
It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days, and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. By sunrise Bawr and Grôm estimated that there were rafts enough to carry the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided, however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less buoyant than they hoped.
But for this most wise provision Fate refused to grant the time.
A naked slip of a girl, her one scant garment of leopard skin caught upon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeing down the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air. Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old women carrying babies or bundles of dried meat.