dened and pointed in fire.

On the day, now many weeks back, when Grom set out from the Caves
behind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of the
Bow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with the
seeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the hearts
of them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renew
the vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatient
spirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strength
and craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon the
weapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest of
the Shining One.

Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the
girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the
great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those
which undertook to hunt him.

He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild
honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded
at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven
branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the
leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without
giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due
east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy
meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the
Bow-legs.

Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him
to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a
betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same
hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as
soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the
branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn,
he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find
no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to
be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to
northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a
flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came
stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone
and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself
clearly as Mawg's--for there was no such thing as confounding that
arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish me