In the Morning of Time Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  THE DESTROYING SPLENDOR

  I

  To Grom, hunting farther to the south of the Tribal Fires than he hadever ranged before, came suddenly a woman running, mad with fright, ababy clutched to her bosom. She fell at Grom's feet, gibberingbreathlessly, and plainly imploring his protection. Both she and thechild were streaming with blood, and covered with strange cup-likewounds, as if the flesh had been gouged out of them with someirresistible circular instrument.

  Grom swiftly fitted an arrow to his bow, and peered through the treesto see what manner of adversary the fugitive was like to bring uponhim. At the same time, he gave a piercing cry, which was answered atonce from some distance behind him.

  Having satisfied himself (the country being fairly open) that thewoman's pursuer, whatever it might be, was not close upon her heels,and that no immediate danger was in view, he turned his attention uponthe woman herself. She was not of his race, and he looked down uponher with cold aversion. At first glance he thought she was one of theBow-legs. But the color of her skin, where it could be seen for theblood, was different, being rather of a copper-red; and she wasneither so hairy on the body nor of so ape-like proportions. She wassufficiently hideous, however, and of some race plainly inferior tothe People of the Caves. The natural instinct of a Cave Man would havebeen to knock her and her offspring on the head without ceremony--aneffective method of guarding his more highly developed breed from themixture of an inferior blood. But Grom, the Chief and the wise man,had many vague impulses moving him at times which were novel to thehuman play-fellows of Earth's childhood. He disliked hurting a womanor a child. He might, quite conceivably, have refused to concernhimself with the suppliant before him, and merely left her and herbaby to the chances of the jungle. But the peculiar character of herwounds interested him. She aroused his curiosity. Here was a newmystery for him to investigate. The woman was saved.

  Knowing a few words of the Bow-legs' tongue, which he had learned fromhis lame slave Ook-ootsk, he addressed the crouching woman, tellingher not to fear. The tongue was unintelligible to her, but the tonesof his voice seemed to reassure her. She sat up, revealing again theform of the little one, which she had been shielding with her hair andher bosom as if she feared the tall white hunter might dash its brainsout; and Grom noted with keen interest that the child also had one ofthose terrible, cup-shaped wounds, almost obliterating its fat,copper-colored shoulder. He saw, also, that the woman's face, thoughuncomely, was more intelligent and human than the bestial faces of theBow-legs' women. It was a broad face, with very small, deep-set eyes,high cheek bones, a tiny nose, and a very wide mouth, and it looked asif some one had sat on it hard and pushed it in. The idea made himsmile, and the smile completed the woman's reassurance. She poured astream of chatter quite unlike the clicks and barkings of theBow-legs. Then she crept closer to Grom's feet, and proceeded to giveher little one the breast. It was twisting uneasily with the pain ofits dreadful wound, but it nursed hungrily, and with the prudentstoicism of a wild creature it made no outcry.

  As Grom stood studying the pair, the mother kept throwing glances ofhorror over her shoulder, as if expecting her assailants to arrive atany moment. Grom followed her eyes, but there was no sign of anypursuit. Then he observed the fugitives' wounds more closely, andnoted that the blood upon them was already, in most cases, pretty wellcoagulated. He noted also certain other wounds, deep, narrowpunctures, like stabs. He guessed that they could not be much lessthan an hour old. The Thing, whatever it was, which had inflictedthem--the Thing with so strange a mouth, and so strange a way of usingit--had apparently given up the pursuit. Grom's curiosity burnedwithin him, and he was angry at the woman because she could not speakto him in his own language, or at least in that of the Bow-legs. Itseemed to him willful obstinacy on her part to refuse to understandthe Bow-legs' tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly examined one ofthe wounds with his huge fingers. She winced, but made no complaint,only covering her baby with her hair and her arms in terror lest itshould suffer a like harsh handling.

  With a qualm of compunction, which rather puzzled him, Grom gave overhis investigating, and turned to a tall, slim youth with a great mopof chestnut hair who at this moment came running up to him. It wasA-ya's young brother, Mo, Grom's favorite follower and hunting mate;and he had come at speed, being very swift of foot, in answer toGrom's signal. Breathing quickly, he stood at Grom's side, and lookeddown with wonder and dislike upon the crouching woman.

  Briefly Grom explained, and then pointed to the inexplicable wounds.The youth, unable to believe that any human creature should be unableto comprehend plain human speech, such as that of the Cave People,tried his own hand at questioning the woman. He got a flow of chatterin reply, but, being able to make nothing out of it, he imagined itwas not speech at all, and turned away angrily, thinking that shemocked him. Grom, smiling at the mistake, explained that the woman wastalking her own language, which he intended presently to learn as hehad learned that of the Bow-legs.

  "But now," said he, "we will go and see what it is that has bitten thewoman. It is surely something with a strange mouth."

  Mo, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who would havefollowed Grom through the mouth of hell, sprang forward eagerly. Grom,who realized that the mystery before him was a perilous one, and wholoved to do dangerous things in a prudent manner, looked to hisbow-string and saw that his arrows were handy in his girdle, before hestarted on the venture. Besides his bow he carried the usual twospears and his inseparable stone-headed club. Though danger was hisdelight, it was not the danger itself but the thrill of overcoming itthat he loved.

  The moment he stepped forward, however, the woman divined his purposeand leapt wildly to her feet. She sprang straight in front of him,screaming and gesticulating. She was plainly horror-stricken at thethought that the two men should venture into the perils from which shehad so hardly escaped. To Grom's keen intelligence her gestures wereeloquent. She managed to convey to him the idea of great numbers, andthe impossibility of his dealing with them. When he attempted to passher, she threw herself down and clung to his feet, shaking with herterror. When she saw that Grom was at last impressed, she stretchedherself out as if dead, and then, after a few moments of ghastlyrigidity, with fixed, staring eyes, she came to and held up one handwith the fingers outspread.

  This frantic pantomime Grom could read in no other way than as anattempt to tell him that the unknown Something had killed five of thewoman's companions. The information gave him pause. Adventurous as hewas, he had small respect for mere pig-headed recklessness. He wasresolved to solve the problem--but after all it could abide his morethorough preparation.

  "Come back," he ordered, turning to the impetuous Mo. "She says theyare too many for us two. They have killed five of her people. We willgo back to the Caves, and after three sleeps for good counsel, we willreturn with fire and find the destroying Thing."

  II

  On their return to the Caves, Grom gave the strange woman and her babyto his faithful slave Ook-ootsk, who accepted the gift with enthusiasmbecause, being a Bow-leg, he had not been allowed to take any of theCave Women to wife. He lavished his attentions upon the unhappystranger, but he could make no more of her speech than Grom had done.The girl A-ya, however, in a moment of peculiar insight had gathered,or thought she gathered, from the stranger's signs, that the dreadfuland destroying Thing was something that flew--therefore, a greatflesh-eating bird. But she gathered, also, that it was something whichin some way bore a resemblance to fire--for the woman, after gettingover her first terror of the dancing flames, kept pointing to them andthen to her wounds in a most suggestive way. This, however, as Gromrather scornfully pointed out, was too absurd. There was nothing thatcould be in the least like fire itself; and the wounds of thefugitives had no likeness whatever to the corrosive bites of theflame. A-ya took the correction submissively, but held her ownthought; and when a day or two later, events proved her to have beenright, she discreetly refrained fr
om calling her lord's attention tothe fact--a point upon which Grom was equally reserved.

  With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved, Grom could notlong rest idle. Had she not known well it would be a waste ofbreath, A-ya would have tried to dissuade him from the perilous, andto her mind profitless, adventure. It was one she shrank from inspite of her tried courage and her unwavering trust in Grom's prowess.The mystery of it daunted her. She feared it in the same way thatshe feared the dark. But she kept her fears to herself, and claimedher long-established right to go with Grom on the expedition. Gromwas willing enough, for there was no one whose readiness and nerve, ina supreme crisis, he could so depend upon, and he wanted her close athand with her fire-basket. There was nothing to keep her at home, asthe children were looked after by Ook-ootsk.

  It was a very little party which started southward from theCaves--simply Grom, A-ya, young Mo, and a dwarfish kinsman of Grom's,named Loob, who was the swiftest runner in the tribe and noted for hiscunning as a scout. He could go through underbrush like a shadow, andhide where there was apparently no hiding-place, making himselfindistinguishable from the surroundings like a squatting partridge.Each one carried a bow, two light spears, and a club--except A-ya, whohad no club, and only one spear. The weapon she chiefly relied uponwas the bow, which she loved with passion. She considered herself theinventor of it; and in the accuracy of her shooting she outdid evenGrom. In addition to these weapons, each member of the party exceptthe leader himself carried a fire-basket, in which a mass of red coalsmixed with punk smouldered in a bed of moist clay.

  The little expedition traveled Indian file, Grom leading the way, withA-ya at his heels, then Loob the Scout, and young Mo bringing up therear. They had started about dawn, when the first of the morning rosewas just beginning to pale the cave-mouth fires. They traveledswiftly, but every two hours or so they would make a brief halt besidea spring to drink and breathe themselves and to look to the preciousfires in the fire-baskets. When it wanted perhaps an hour of noon,they came to a little patch of meadow surrounding a solitaryJudas-tree covered with bloom. Here they built a fire, for thereplenishing of the coals in the fire-baskets, and as a menace toprowling beasts. Then they dined on their sun-dried meat and on ripeplantains gathered during the journey. Having dined, the three youngermembers of the party stretched themselves out in the shade for theirnoon sleep, while Grom, whose restless brain never suffered him tosleep by day, kept watch, and pondered the adventure which lay beforethem.

  As Grom sat there, ten or a dozen paces from the fire, absorbed in thought,his eyes gradually focussed themselves upon a big purple-and-lemon orchidbloom, which glowed forth conspicuously from the rank greenjungle-growth fringing the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out ofa black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself outthrough the leafage. Grom's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon thispiece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness wink. Hisstartled vision cleared itself instantly, and revealed to him the hideous,two-horned mask of a black rhinoceros, peering forth just under theorchid blossom.

  Grom's first impulse was to wake the sleepers with a yell and shepherdthem to refuge in the tree--for the gigantic woolly rhinoceros, withhis armor of impenetrable hide, was a foe whom Man had not yet learnedto handle with any certainty. But a deeper instinct held Grommotionless. He knew that the monster, whose eyesight was always dimand feeble, could not see him distinctly, and was in all probabilitystaring in stupid wonder at the dancing flames of the camp-fire. Aslong as no smell of man should reach the brute's sensitive nostrils torouse its rage, it was not likely to charge. There was no wind, andthe air about him was full of the spicy bitterness of the wood-smoke.Grom decided that the safest thing was to keep perfectly still andwait for the next move in the game to come from the monster. Hedevoutly trusted that the sleepers behind him were sleeping soundly,and that no one would wake and sit up to attract the monster'sattention.

  Grom could now see plainly that it was the fire, and not himself,which the rhinoceros was staring at. The shifting flames, and thesmell of the smoke, apparently puzzled it. After a moment or two, ittook a step forward, so that half of its huge, black, shaggy bulkprojected from the banked greenery as from a frame. Then it stoodmotionless, blinking its little malignant eyes, till the silentsuspense grew to be a strain even upon Grom's well-seasoned nerves.

  At last a large stick, laid across the fire, burned through and fellapart. The flames leapt upwards with redoubled vigor, preceded by avolley of crackling sparks. Knowing the temper of the rhinoceros, Gromexpected it to fly into a fury and charge upon the fire at once. Hismouth opened, indeed, for the yell of warning which should wake thesleepers and send them leaping into the tree. But he checked himselfin time. The monster, for once in its life, seemed to be abashed. Thecurling red flames were too elusive a foe for it. With a grunt ofuneasiness, it drew back into the leafage; and in a moment or two Gromheard the giant bulk crashing off through the jungle at a gallop. Theunwonted sensation of alarm, once yielded to, had swollen to a panic,and the dull-witted brute fled on for a mile or more before it couldforget the cause of its terror.

  That afternoon toward sundown the expedition reached the point wherethe fugitive had made her appeal to Grom. For fear of givinginformation to the unknown enemy, no fires were lighted. The night waspassed in a dense and lofty tree-top. For Grom, strung up withexcitement, suspense and curiosity, there was little sleep. For themost part he perched on his woven platform with his arms about hisknees, listening to the sounds of the night--the occasional suddenrush of a hunting beast, the agonized scream and scuffle, thegurglings and noisy slaverings that told of the unseen tragediesenacted far down in the murderous dark. But there was no sound novelto his own experience. Once there came a scratching of claws and asniffing at the base of the tree.

  But Grom dropped a live coal from his fire-basket, and chanced to makea lucky shot. With a snarl some heavy body bounced away from the tree.The coal then fell into a tuft of dry grass, which flared up suddenly.Grom had a glimpse of huge shapes and startled, savage eyes backingaway from the circle of light. The blaze died down as quickly as ithad arisen; and thereafter the night prowlers kept at a distance fromthe tree. But the sleepers had all been thoroughly aroused and tilldawn they sat discussing, for the hundredth time, the chances of themorrow's venture.

  Before the sun was clear of the horizon, the little party was againupon the march, but now going with the wariness of a sable. They nolonger went Indian file, but flitting singly from tree to tree, fromcovert to covert, Grom picking up the old trail of the fugitive, therest of the party keeping him in view and peering ahead for some signof the unknown Terror. The red woman in her flight had left a sharptrail enough; but in the lapse of three days it had been soobliterated that all Grom's wood-craft was needed to decipher it, andhis progress was slow. He began to be puzzled at the absence of anyother trail, of any footsteps of a mysterious, unknown monster. Suchtracks as crossed those of the fugitive, however terrible, were allfamiliar to his eye.

  Suddenly he almost stumbled over a hideous sight. A low whistlebrought his followers closing in upon him. The skeleton of afull-grown man lay outstretched in the grass. The bones werefresh--bloodstained and bright--and a swarm of blood-sucking insectsarose from them. They were picked minutely clean, except for a portionof the skull, where the long, strong, densely matted hair seemed tohave served as an effective armor. The bones were not pulled about, orcrushed for their marrow, as they would have been if the victim hadbeen the prey of any of the great carnivorous beasts. And there wereno tracks about it save those of a few small rat-like creatures. Itwas clear that the Mystery, whatever it might be, had wings.

  "A bird!" whispered A-ya, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes, at thesame time glancing up into the tree-tops apprehensively. But Grom didnot think so. There were no marks of mighty claws on the turf aroundthe skeleton.

  Grom cast about him an eager but anxious eye. The country was notdensely wooded at this poin
t, but studded with low thickets, and sethere and there with scattered trees. From a little way ahead came agleam of calm water through the greenery. It was a scene of peace, andsecurity, and summer loveliness. Its very beauty seemed to Grom anadded menace, as if some peculiar treachery must lurk behind it.

  In the center of an open glade, not far from the skeleton, Grom sethis party to building a circle of fires, as likely to afford thesurest kind of a refuge. A supply of fuel having been gathered, hedirected A-ya and Mo to remain and tend the fires and not to leave thecircle unless he should summon them. Loob, the cunning scout, he sentoff to the left through the underbrush. He himself followed the trailof the fugitive--now doubled by that of the other fugitive whoseskeleton lay there in the sun--down toward that gleam of water throughthe trees. A-ya gazed after him anxiously as he vanished, half mindedto dare his displeasure and follow him.

  Grom was presently able to make out that the water was a wide, reedylake or the arm of a shallow river. There was no wind, and the surfaceshone like clear glass. But once and again his eyes were dazzled by adart of intense radiance, a great flash of rose or violet orblue-green flame, shooting over the surface of the water. A memory ofwhat A-ya had professed to gather from the stranger woman rushed intohis mind. Perhaps the Destroying Thing was like a bird, andnevertheless, at the same time, something like fire. He felt himselfconfronted by a mystery which made even his tried nerves creep; and hehid himself in the densest undergrowth as he stole forward toward thewater. He had forgotten, and forsaken, the trail he was following, inhis haste to solve the problem of those darting splendors.

  A few moments more and he gained the edge of an open glade which ledstraight to the water. He paused behind the screening leaves. Out overthe water a bar of ruby light, surrounded by a globe of rose-pinkmist, shot by and vanished from his narrow field of vision. He wasjust about to thrust out his head and crane his neck to follow thegorgeous apparition, when a peculiar dry rustling in the air abovechecked him. He glanced up cautiously, and saw hovering, not more thantwenty or thirty yards away, a beautiful and dreadful being.

  In shape it was exactly like a dragon-fly; but the length of itsflaming violet body was greater than that of Grom's longest arrow. Thespread of its two pairs of transparent, crystal-shining, colorlesswings was even greater than the length of its body. Its enormous eyes,wells of purple fire which took up the whole of the top and sides ofits monstrous head, seemed to see everywhere at once; and Gromshivered with the feeling that they had spied him out and were peeringinto his very soul.

  The awful eyes may have seen him, indeed; but at that moment theyspied out something else which apparently concerned them more. With apounce like a flash of violet lightning--and, indeed, almost asswift--the bright shape swooped to the grass. The four shining wingswaved there for a moment, and there seemed to be a mild struggle. Thenthe giant fly rose again, lightly, into the air, holding in the clutchof its six slender, jointed legs the body of one of those black,rat-like animals which Grom knew so well as infesting the grass of allmeadows near the water. The captor flew to a naked branch near thewaterside, alighted upon it, and proceeded to make its meal, holdingup the body between the end joints of its front pair of legs andturning it over and over deftly while its appalling jaws both crushedand mangled it. The process was amazingly swift. In the space of acouple of minutes all the blood, flesh, and soft material of the ratwere squeezed out and sucked down. The remnants were rolled into ahard little ball, perfectly spherical, and scornfully tossed aside.And the monster, leaping into the air with a rustle of its glitteringwings, flashed off over the water.

  Almost in the same moment an amazingly loud rustle, like the sweep ofa fierce gust of rain upon a rank of palmetto leaves, filled the airabove the glade, and Grom, looking up with a start, saw a great shoalof the radiant shapes storm by, as if with the rainbow entangled intheir wings. He wondered upon what foray they were bent; and now forthe first time he realized, with a creeping of the flesh, what it wasthat had overtaken the man whose skeleton he had found in the grass.The shoal swept out over the lake a little way, and then down theshore toward the left; and Grom drew a long breath as he assuredhimself that their course was taking them far from the fires of A-yaand Mo.

  When Grom lowered his eyes to earth again he started. On the side ofthe stump of a fallen tree, out in the glade not more than eight orten yards distant, clung one of the monsters, scintillating blue-greenand amethyst in the full blaze of the sun. Its wings, exquisitelynetted and of crystal transparency, were tinged with an ineffablepurple iridescence. Its jointed body, slightly longer than Grom's arm,was nearly as thick as his wrist, and ended at the tail with aformidable double claw. Its six legs, arranged in three pairs underthe thorax, were armed on the inner sides with powerful spines,needle-pointed and steel hard, with which to grip and hold itsvictims. The thorax, from the back of which sprouted the four greatwings, was of the thickness of Grom's forearm, while its head was asbig as Grom's two great fists put together. It was this head whichheld Grom's fascinated gaze, giving him more of the sensation of coldfear than he had ever known before. More than two-thirds of the headconsisted of a pair of huge, globose eyes, without pupil, ethereallytransparent, yet unfathomable. From the depths of them flamed aceaselessly changing radiance of blue-green, purple and violet. Gromfound the stare of those blank, pupilless eyes almost intolerable.

  It was plainly straight at him, through the ineffectual screen of theleafage, that the dreadful insect was staring. At first it stared withthe back of its head. Then, very deliberately, it turned its headcompletely around, without moving its body a hair-breadth, till itsmouth was in the same plane with its back. This gave Grom a sense ofdisgust, and his shrinking dread began to give way to a sort of rage.

  Then he took note of the monster's mouth--and understood those greatcup-shaped wounds on the woman and the child. The mouth took up theremaining third of the head, and seemed to consist of globular discsworking one over the other, so as either to cut cleanly or to grind.They were working, slowly, now--and Grom felt suddenly that he mustput a stop to it, that he must put out the awful light in thosemonstrous devil eyes. Stealthily, almost imperceptibly, he fitted anarrow to his bow, raised it, drew it, and took a long, steady aim. Hemust not miss. The shaft flew--and the great fly was pinned, throughthe thorax, to the soft, rotten wood of its perch.

  To Grom's horror that stroke, which to any beast he knew would have atonce been fatal, did not kill the monstrous fly. Its struggles, andthe beating of its four great wings were so violent that thearrow-head was presently wrenched loose from its hold in the wood, andthe raging splendor, with the shaft half-way through its thorax,bounded into the air. It darted straight at Grom, who had prudentlyedged in among a tangle of stems. Its fury carried it through thescreen of leafage--but then, its wings impeded by the branches, andthe arrow hampering it, it dashed itself to the earth. Instantly Gromwas upon it, stamping its slim body, as it lay there blazing andquivering, into the soil. The violet light in the huge, pupilless eyesstill stared up at him implacable, from a head turned squarely overthe back. But in a cold fury Grom shattered the gleaming head with hisclub. Then he trod the silver wings to dust.

  Having slaked his wrath effectually, Grom turned to stare forth againat those destroying splendors darting and glittering above the surfaceof the lake. To his surprise there were no more of them to be seen.Then far off down the shore he heard the voice of Loob, shouting forhelp. The shouting changed at once to a scream of terror, and Gromstarted to the rescue on the full run--taking care, however, to keepwithin cover of the thickets. But before he had gone a quarter of amile he heard A-ya's voice calling him, wildly, insistently, mingledwith excited yells from Mo. He shouted in reply and dashed madly forthe fires. The peril of A-ya put all other considerations out of hismind.

  As he burst forth into the glade of refuge, he saw A-ya and young Moleaping about frantically among their fires, now trying to stir thefires to a fiercer blaze, now beating upwards with their spears, while
above them darted and gleamed and swooped and scintillated, with ahorrid dry rustling of their silver wings, shoal upon shoal of thedevouring monsters. As he burst into the open, with a great shout ofencouragement, something dropped upon him. He felt his head instantlycaged by six steel-like legs which gripped like jaws, their spinessinking deep into the flesh of neck and cheek. He reached up his lefthand, caught his dreadful assailant just where the head and thoraxjoin, and strove to throttle it. This was impossible, by reason of theinsect's armor, but he succeeded in holding off those horrid jaws fromhis face as he dashed for the circle. Another monster swooped andstruck its spines into his back, and bit a great mouthful out of hisshoulder. But he gained the fires, and, holding his breath, sprangright through the fiercest flame. The wings of his assailantsshrivelled instantly, and the flame, drawn into the mouth of theirbreathing tubes, sealed them up. Grom tore them off, and slammed thewrithing, wingless bodies into the fire.

  Inside the circle, now that the fires were burning high, it waspossible to defend oneself effectually, as the bulk of the assailantsseemed to realize that the flames were fatal to their frail wings. Butthere were enough so headlong in their ferocity that both Grom and Mowere kept busy beating them off with spears, while A-ya fed the fires;and the ground inside the circle was littered with the radiant bodiesof the dying insects, which, even in dying, bit like bull-dogs if footor leg came within reach. Grom noticed that their supply of fuel wasall but gone, and his heart sank. He measured with his eyes thedistance to the nearest thickets that looked dense enough for ashelter.

  "We'll have to run for those bushes," he said presently. "They can'tfly in where the branches are thick. It breaks their wings."

  "Good," said young Mo. But A-ya, whose shapely shoulders and thighswere already covered with hideous wounds, trembled at the prospect.

  At that moment, however an amazing change came over the scene. A blackthunder-cloud passed across the face of the sun. The moment thesunshine vanished the destroyers seemed to forget their fury. All thelife and energy went out of them. They simply flocked to the nearesttrees and hung themselves up, gigantic, jewelled blooms, upon thebranches. In less than a minute every dreadful wing was stilled.

  "Now is our time. Come!" commanded Grom, leading the way out of thecircle.

  "Let's stop and kill them all!" pleaded young Mo, his eyes red withrage.

  But Grom pointed to the cloud. "It will pass quickly," said he. "Wemust be far from here before the sun shows his face again."

  He paused, however, to transfix upon his spear-head one of theirwounded but still fluttering foes, that he might be able to show thetribe what manner of monsters they had had to deal with. Both A-ya andMo followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searchingfor Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies ontheir spear-heads they went on. The monsters, clinging sullenly totheir perches, rolled baleful eyes of emerald and rose and amethystupon them as they went, but lifted never a wing to follow them. Tenminutes later the sun came out again. Then the monsters all spranghurtling into the air, and darted hither and thither above the gladein shoals of iridescent radiance, seeking their prey. But Grom andA-ya, Mo and Loob triumphant in spite of their wounds, were by thistime far away among the inland thickets, where those intolerable eyescould not search them out, nor the clashing wings pursue.