Wau and the others were but just emerging from
the shadow of the woods.

Seeing Ugh-lomi in peril, Eudena ran sideways, looking back, threw up
her arms and cried aloud, just as the antler flew. And young Ugh-lomi,
expecting this and understanding her cry, ducked his head, so that the
missile merely struck his scalp lightly, making but a trivial wound, and
flew over him. He turned forthwith, the quartzite Fire Stone in both
hands, and hurled it straight at Uya's body as he ran loose from the
throw. Uya shouted, but could not dodge it. It took him under the ribs,
heavy and flat, and he reeled and went down without a cry. Ugh-lomi
caught up the antler--one tine of it was tipped with his own blood--and
came running on again with a red trickle just coming out of his hair.

Uya rolled over twice, and lay a moment before he got up, and then he
did not run fast. The colour of his face was changed. Wau overtook him,
and then others, and he coughed and laboured in his breath. But he kept
on.

At last the two fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream
ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the
foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a
large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a
chisel edge, in either hand.

They sprang down the steep bank into the stream, rushed through the
water, swam the deep current in two or three strokes, and came out
wading again, dripping and refreshed, to clamber up the farther bank.
It was undermined, and with willows growing thickly therefrom, so that
it needed clambering. And while Eudena was still among the silvery
branches and Ugh-lomi still in the water--for the antler had encumbered
him--Wau came up against the sky on the opposite bank, and the
smiting-stone, thrown cunningly, took the side of Eudena's knee. She
struggled to the top and fell.

They heard the pursuers shout to one another, and Ugh-lomi climbing to
her and moving jerkily to mar Wau's aim, felt the second smiting-stone
graze his ear, and heard the water splash below him.

Then it was Ugh-lomi, the stripling, proved himself to have come to
man's estate. For running on, he found Eudena fell behind, limping, and
at that he turned, and crying savagely and with a face terrible with
sudden wrath and trickling blood, ran swiftly past her back to the bank,
whirling the antler round his head. And Eudena kept on, running stoutly
still, tho