m. One she struck on the neck, but not to fell him, and he blundered
aside and spoilt his brother's blow at Ugh-lomi's head. In a moment
Ugh-lomi dropped his club and had his assailant by the waist, and had
pitched him sideways sprawling. He snatched at his club again and
recovered it. The man Eudena had hit stabbed at her with his spear as he
stumbled from her blow, and involuntarily she gave ground to avoid him.
He hesitated between her and Ugh-lomi, half turned, gave a vague cry at
finding Ugh-lomi so near, and in a moment Ugh-lomi had him by the
throat, and the club had its third victim. As he went down Ugh-lomi
shouted--no words, but an exultant cry.

The other red-haired man was six feet from her with his back to her, and
a darker red streaking his head. He was struggling to his feet. She had
an irrational impulse to stop his rising. She flung the axe at him,
missed, saw his face in profile, and he had swerved beyond little Si,
and was running through the reeds. She had a transitory vision of Snake
standing in the throat of the path, half turned away from her, and then
she saw his back. She saw the club whirling through the air, and the
shock head of Ugh-lomi, with blood in the hair and blood upon the
shoulder, vanishing below the reeds in pursuit. Then she heard Snake
scream like a woman.

She ran past Si to where the handle of the axe stuck out of a clump of
fern, and turning, found herself panting and alone with three motionless
bodies. The air was full of shouts and screams. For a space she was sick
and giddy, and then it came into her head that Ugh-lomi was being killed
along the reed-path, and with an inarticulate cry she leapt over the
body of Bo and hurried after him. Snake's feet lay across the path, and
his head was among the reeds. She followed the path until it bent round
and opened out by the alders, and thence she saw all that was left of
the tribe in the open, scattering like dead leaves before a gale, and
going back over the knoll. Ugh-lomi was hard upon Cat's-skin.

But Cat's-skin was fleet of foot and got away, and so did young Wau-Hau
when Ugh-lomi turned upon him, and Ugh-lomi pursued Wau-Hau far beyond
the knoll before he desisted. He had the rage of battle on him now, and
the wood thrust through his shoulder stung him like a spur. When she saw
he was in no danger she stopped running and stood panting, watching the
distant active figures run up and vanish one by one over the knoll. In a
litt