right, smoked and smouldered a shallow,
saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brown
serpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curves
across the intense green.

Somewhat to the girl's apprehension, Grom seemed anxious to
investigate the smoking crater, but the only practicable path down the
mountain led them away from it, so he was content to leave it for
another time and another, perhaps less repellent, approach.

Descending presently into a region of ledges and ravines clothed with
dense thickets, they found on every hand traces of the giant bears and
the saber-tooth tigers whom they had driven from the caves in the
Valley of Fire. Grom hurriedly whirled the smoldering torch into a
flame, and from it lighted a couple of resinous brands, one for
himself, and one for A-ya to carry. Thus armed, they fearlessly
followed the broad trail of bears, which led them very conveniently
down the steep. And bear and saber-tooth alike, at sight of the flame
thus apparently seeking them out, remembered their recent scorching
discomfiture, and slunk off like whipped curs.

Grom's immediate object was to make his way straight to the shores of
that great water, whose gleaming on the horizon had been like an
invitation to his inquiring spirit. But when early in the forenoon of
the fourth day they reached the lowlands, he found that his way would
be anything but straight. The immense grasses, a species of cane, grew
so tall, so dense and so thick in the stem, that it was impossible to
force a path through them just where he would.

He saw that he must use the trails of the wild beasts, which
intersected it in all directions. There were the tracks of every
animal he knew--the hunters and the hunted alike--and of many more
which he did not know. But one broad trail in particular arrested his
attention. It struck such fear to the heart of the girl, whose eyes
were keen and understanding, that her knees trembled beneath her, and
had she dared she would have begged Grom to turn back from a land
which held such monsters.

Even Grom himself felt a thrill of awe as he stared at the trail which
bespoke so mighty a traveler. Wherever it led, the sturdiest growths
were crushed flat as if some huge bowlder from the mountains had been
rolled over them. And the monster footprints, which here and there
stamped themselves clearly in the trail, were thrice the size of those
of the hugest mammoth.

Grom stooped