That evening the beast-men made their camp at the verge of the woods, in full sight of the Umbaddu. Uncannily their fires blazed and flickered, while above the tree tops the skies glowed an angry red; uncannily the huge shadowy shapes flitted about the flames, surging back and forth vaguely, like a rout of festive demons; uncannily sounded their mutterings and cries, their babbling merriment, their hissing laughter, the crackling of bones and the crunching of the powerful jaws of unseen feasters....
When morning came, they had not gone. The fires still burned, although now smoldering low; hundreds of shaggy forms were sprawled at every angle upon the ground. Soon after dawn they were all astir, quenching their thirst at the river or chewing at the few scattered bones that still told of the night's repast. But they showed no intention of leaving; and though a violent storm came up, and the wind blew and blustered frenziedly and the rain came down in torrents, apparently it never occurred to them to seek quarters elsewhere. They strolled about in the rain as indifferently as if it had escaped their notice; when it was over, they shook the water nonchalantly off their hairy bodies and seated themselves in the gathering sunlight to dry—but still they had evidently no thought of going away. And the Umbaddu, watching through the slow hours from their safe perch on the cliff, felt an impatience that gradually expanded into dread; for now at last, though they could not have stated the peril in words, they realized that they were besieged!
That evening a conference of all the tribe was held, attended by every member with the exception of Ru, who was still inexplicably missing. While four or five of the men kept guard with clubs at the cavern entrance (which was too large to be blocked with boulders), the others convened about the fire, not more than a stone's throw from the gateway. They were not quite so numerous now as when they had assembled in that other cave many months' travel away; not less than thirty-five or forty of their number had succumbed to the attacks of the beast-men, to wild animals, to accident and to disease; and the losses had in no way been equalized by the few babes born during the migration. Yet, as the people gathered near the flames in whispering, furtive-eyed groups, they seemed to understand that the losses they had suffered were slight beside those which threatened. And such was their apprehension that their usual lively spirits had deserted them; their chattering was low-toned and suppressed, their cackling laughter infrequent; they had scarcely the energy even to quarrel; and for the most part their feelings were expressed by low moans, plaints, and wailings.
Nor was their depression relieved after Zunzun the Marvel-Worker had opened the meeting and lifted his voice to entreat the aid of the fire-god. His supplications had little of the air of conviction; he had something of the manner of one who implores a favor that must inevitably be denied. And though the people joined him in his incantations, at times even reaching a pitch of fervor, yet their enthusiasm was short-lived; and, as soon as he had gone shuffling away from the fire, their faces resumed a look of half-understood fear, of blank and uncomprehending misery.
"My people, what would you have us do?" asked Grumgra, when, in a less aggressive mood than usual, he took his place in the firelight. "The bad spirits of the woods have entered the hearts of the beast-men, so that they want to kill us all. They will not go away—and they know that we cannot always stay here. We have meat enough till the sun goes down, and then goes down once more, and then once again. But that is all—after that, the black demon of hunger will be with us, and we will cry out, and there will be terrible pains within us; but the more we cry out the more terrible the pains will be. What would you have us do, my people? Would you have us all wait here till the hunger-pain comes?"
"No! No! No!" rang out a chorus of despairing cries.
"No! No! No!" shouted a hoarse, deep-toned voice. And Woonoo the Hot-Blooded, springing up from somewhere among the shadows to the rear, plunged forward with the earnest appeal: "Let us not wait! Let us take our clubs and go down the rocks, and fight the beast-people and kill them all! Let us kill them all, O chief!"
"Let us kill them all!" echoed scores of voices.
But Grumgra, unimpressed, stood regarding Woonoo contemptuously. "And would you have them kill us instead?" he flung back. "Would you have them do to us as they did today to our tribesman? Hit us with big rocks, and then eat us like wolves?"