she spoke a hideous head, with immense, round, bulging eyes and long,
beak-like mouth arose over the sedge tops on a long, swaying neck and
stared at them fixedly.

"No, we don't," said Grom, with decision, making haste to swing the
head of the raft once more out into the channel. They were pursued by
a dense crowd of mosquitoes, voracious and venomous, which followed
them to mid-stream and kept tormenting them till an up-river gust blew
them off.

Grom made up his mind that the exploration of that unknown shore could
wait a more convenient season. He was now deeply absorbed in the
complex problem of directing and managing his raft. As he pulled his
spear through the water, and noted the additional effect of its flat
head, the conception came to him of something that would get a more
propulsive grip upon the water than was possible to a round pole.
Furthermore, he was quick to realize that the immense, shapeless mass
of debris on which they were traveling might be replaced by something
light and manageable which he would make by lashing some trimmed
trunks together with lengths of bamboo to give additional buoyancy. As
he brooded this in silence, with that deep, inward look in his eyes
which always kept A-ya from breaking in upon his vision, he came to
the idea of a formal raft, and a formal paddle. And to this he added,
with a full sense of its value, A-ya's suggestion that this new
structure might very well be pushed along, in shallow water, with a
pole. Having thought this out, he drew a deep breath, looked up, and
met A-ya's eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was to get back
home and put his new scheme into execution.

"Where are we going now?" asked A-ya.

Grom looked about him wildly--at the sky, at the far-off hills on
their right, at the course of the stream, which had changed within the
past few miles. His sense of direction was unerring.

"This river," he answered, "flows towards the rising sun, and must
empty into the bitter waters not more than a day or a half day from
the Caves. We are going home. We will come again to look for arrows in
a new raft which I will make."

As he spoke, Loob's spear darted down beside the raft, and came up
with a big, silvery fish writhing upon it. He broke its neck with a
blow and laid the prize at A-ya's feet.

"I wish we had fire with us, to cook it with," said she.

"On the new raft, as I will make it," said Grom, "that may very well
be. Our journey will be sa