"Ru! Ru!" shouted some of the bolder, pressing forward while the more timid still retreated. "Where did you come from? We thought you were dead!"
Like a weird echo the others took up the cry, "We thought you were dead! We thought you were dead!"
In confusion that equaled their own, Ru stood regarding his tribesfolk. "I do not understand! Where do you come from?" he heard himself demanding. "How did you enter here?"
But before he could frame less excited speech, the torrent of their questions had overwhelmed him. The frightened ones, regaining their courage, had come crowding around him, all crying out simultaneously in such a storm that they were scarcely able to hear even themselves.
It was only by constant repetition that Ru managed to make himself heard. "Give me to eat, my people," was his insistent plea. "I am weak with hunger, for I have not tasted food since two suns have set. Give me to eat, and then I will tell you all you ask!"
"Give him to eat!" spoke a commanding voice; and Grumgra, edging his way through the mob, came glowering up to Ru.
"So the Sparrow-Hearted has come back!" he snarled. "He has come back, after leaving us when we needed him. He ran away when we sent him to find out about the cave—and now he comes creeping back like a hungry babe!"
Ru stood regarding Grumgra in puzzled hostility, but uttered not a word. And with a growl the chieftain continued: "But we will forget that now. The Sparrow-Hearted only remembers that he must eat—so let him eat. There will be time for other things later. But if he cannot tell us where he has been, his punishment will be such as no man can know twice!"
Whereat, with a significant flourish of his club, Grumgra went bristling away down the smoky corridor.
But the chieftain's threat passed immediately from Ru's mind. The next instant, provided with the juicy roasted hind quarter of a young wild boar, he was chewing and chewing with the gusto of a famished beast, while the meat disappeared at a rate that was truly astonishing. Meantime, at his side, Wuff ravenously gnawed at the head of a deer which one of the women, on a generous impulse, had flung to him; and on every hand, as though witnessing some extraordinary spectacle, the people hovered to watch the two feasters.