ultimate issue was to hang. For days the
tribe was kept on the stretch collecting dry and leafy brushwood from
the other side of the valley, and bundles of dead grass from the rich
savannahs beyond the valley-mouth, on the other side of the dancing
flames. All this inflammable stuff Grom distributed lavishly through
the thickets before the plateau, to a distance of nearly a mile up the
slope, till the whole space was in reality one vast bonfire laid ready
for the torch.

While these preparations were being rushed--somewhat to the perplexity
of the tribe, who could not fathom the tactics of stuffing the
landscape with rubbish--Bawr was keeping a little band of scouts on
guard at the far-off head of the valley. They were chosen from the
swift runners of the tribe; and Bawr, who was a far-seeing general,
had them relieved twice in twenty-four hours, that they might not grow
weary and fail in vigilance.

When all was ready came a time of trying suspense. As day after day
rolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dry
as tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, began
to doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There were
murmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawr
suppressed with small ceremony. But the lame Ook-ootsk, squatting
misshapen in Grom's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew
more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grom, the longer the delay
the greater the force which was being gathered for the assault.

Having no inkling of Grom's larger designs, he looked with distrust on
the little heaps of wood that were to be fires along the edge of the
plateau, and wished them to be piled much bigger, intimating that his
people, though they would be terribly afraid of the Shining One, would
be forced on from behind by sheer numbers and would trample the small
fires out. The confidence of the Chief and Grom, and of A-ya as well,
in the face of the awful peril which hung over them, filled him with
amazement.

Then, at last, one evening just in the dying flush of the sunset, came
the scouts, running breathlessly, and one with a ragged spear-wound in
his shoulder. Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless
myriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley,
led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself.

"Are they as many," asked Grom, "as they who came against us in the
Little Hills?"