ore, while
the world writhed and baked in the throes of the last great drought she
had been compelled to venture into the unknown land. The streams and
lagoons had dried; those of the animals that did not perish outright
migrated, and Suma had followed the living stream as a matter of
self-preservation for, without food and water, life could not be
sustained. But the venture had proved painful in at least one respect
for men dwelt along the border of the master river, and in the very
first encounter with them Suma had suffered the loss of one ear--neatly
shorn from her head by the broad, bamboo blade of a Cantana arrow. She
was glad to escape even with such sacrifice; but she never forgot the
injury. The haunts of the man-creatures were avoided thereafter, as well
as their trails and everything else that savored of them. This dread she
had tried to impart to her offspring.

In the height of his powers, Warruk was ready to ignore the warning.
Then, too, the sun now shone with an unusual brilliancy; fiery tongues
from the sky seemed to lap up the water in the lakes and marshes,
leaving nothing but vast areas of cracked and peeling mudflats
sprinkled with brown, withered reeds that were a pitiful reminder of the
waving expanses of green where the red-headed blackbirds had trilled
their cheery song.

The drying-up process was gradual, yet swift. The crocodiles sensed its
coming and buried themselves deep in the mud to aestivate until the
coming of the rainy season; also the lung-fishes, queer little creatures
resembling tadpoles, which could live week after week under the hard
crust with only a pinhole in the surface through which to breathe.

As the water receded, the finny tribe proper imprisoned in the
landlocked bodies became more and more crowded. They struggled in
frantic masses, churning up the mud from the bottom so that the liquid
in which they swam was thick and black. The smaller ones attacked one
another savagely tearing at fin and tail; and the larger devoured their
mutilated remains in the mad struggle to prolong life. But there came
the day of complete annihilation when there was not water enough left
to support the survivors; they slid feebly through the mire, threw
themselves clear of it onto the sun-baked mudflats surrounding it, and
then died.

The hordes that perished were numberless. And the stench of the decaying
masses that dotted the country for hundreds upon hundreds of miles hung
over the pant