grass a couple of hundred yards or so to the
left rose heavily the menacing bulk of a red Siva moose bull, and
stood staring at them with mingled wonder and malevolence in his
cruelly vindictive eyes. In stature surpassing the biggest rhinoceros
that Grom had ever seen, he gave the impression of combining the
terrific power of the rhinoceros with the agile speed and devilish
cunning of the buffalo. His ponderous head, with its high-arched
eagle-hooked snout, was armed with two pairs of massive, keen-tipped,
broad-bladed horns, that seemed to be a deadly-efficient compromise
between the horns of a buffalo and the palmated antlers of a moose.
This alarming apparition snorted loudly, and at once from behind him
lurched to their feet some two score more of his like, and all stood
with their eyes fixed upon the little group of travelers by the edge
of the wood.

Grom had heard vague traditions of the implacable ferocity of these
red monsters, but having before never come across them he answered
their stare with keen interest. At the same time, edging in closer to
the wood, he whispered:

"Don't run. But if they come we must go up the first tree. They are
swift as the wind, these great beasts, and more terrible than the
saber-tooth."

"Can't go in _these_ trees!" said Loob, whose piercing eyes had
investigated them minutely at the first glimpse of the monsters in the
grass.

"Why not?" demanded Grom, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters.

"Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?"

Grom turned his head and scanned the belt of woodland, his ears now
suddenly comprehending a deep, humming sound which he had hitherto
referred solely to the winged foragers in the grass-tops. Scattered at
intervals from the branches, in the shadowy green gloom, hung a number
of immense, dark, semi-pear-shaped globes. They looked harmless
enough, but Grom knew that their inhabitants, the great jungle-bees,
were more to be dreaded than saber-tooth or crocodile. To disturb, or
seem to threaten to disturb, one of their nests, meant sure and
instant doom.

"No, we must trust to our running--and they are very swift," said
Grom. "But let us go softly now, and perhaps they will not charge upon
us."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the giant red bull, with a
grunt of wrath, lurched forward and charged down at them. And
instantly the whole herd, with their ridiculous little tails stuck up
stiffly in the