rk in, that rank thicket of jungle;
but the Bow-legs took no notice of the incongruity. Upon the girl,
however, the effect of the cry was magical. She gave no glance toward
the thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand the
orders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of her
shoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon a
tree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her whole
lithe body--as Grom had taught her--she made her throw. The white
fungus was split in halves.

With a hoarse clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examine
the fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interest
of his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For a
second his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light and
swift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of the
plover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as she
ran.

With a bellow of wrath, the Black Chief, the whole mob at his heels,
came pounding after her. The next instant, out from the thicket leapt
Grom, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion at
bay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances of
battle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confronting
him.

At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the Black
Chief came on like a mad buffalo. Grom hurled one of his two spears.
He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw high,
to clear A-ya's head. The Chief saw it coming, and cunningly flung
himself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, and
pierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. At
his yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural,
barking cries. But already Grom and the girl, side by side, were
fleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of still
water which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grom knew that the
way behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there was
no chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. But
in this direction there were only a few knots of shaggy women, who
shrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of the
bow-legged men having no great skill in the water.

All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grom and
the girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them wa