acious hold of every one of their treasures. But--their fire was
out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire
lurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless.

For a moment or two Grom looked into the girl's eyes steadily,
conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance of
their loss. The girl responded, after a second's dismay, with a look
of trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grom's heart.
He smiled proudly, and shook his club as if to reassure himself. Then,
climbing hurriedly into the tree, they stared back over the plumed
tops of the grasses.

The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot in
the grass which they had just escaped from was a shambles. The
foremost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of the
rhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his double
horn, and hurled to either side as if by some titanic plough. A couple
more had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayed
by the irresistible pressure of the surging, squealing mass.

There he had stood fast, like a jagged promontory in the surges,
tossing his mighty head and thrusting hideously, while the rest of the
herd passed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down the
canes and pouring around on either side. Of those that passed over him
about one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, and
went staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden out
by their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitives
came the cause of their panic--two immense black lions, who had
apparently been playing with their prey like cats.

When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood among
his victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, they
stopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match for
him. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew the
almost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, his
imperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engage
themselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat.

With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to set
the very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off in
enormous bounds through the grass, circling about as if to intercept,
in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. At
the s