er in order to lose no time in
seizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; and
presently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashing
into the water. The monster looked around for more victims--and was
just in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging down
upon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed back
to slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any other
time he would have given such an antagonist as the colossal
megatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses.
His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood which
dripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn was
plunged into the monster's paunch; but at the same time one of those
gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering the
vertebrae through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He
collapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed him
aside.

It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a few
moments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking the
trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At
length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she
brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off
slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides
of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a
wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her
wound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside the
trail, but effectively screened from it.

From their place in the tree Grom and the girl had followed
breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grom spoke:

"This is a country of very great beasts," he remarked, with the air of
one announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever to
dissent from this statement, he presently went on to his conclusion,
leaving her to infer his minor premise.

"We must go back and recover the Shining One. It is not well for us to
go on without him."

"Yes," agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and passionate
trust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over the
tops of the towering grasses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She feared
no beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lower
branches of the trees. "Yes!" she repeated. "Let us go back for the