look
which so enraged her that she raised her spear as if to transfix him.

But there was too much happening below for her attention to remain on
Mawg. Finding the tree quite too sturdy to be pulled down off-hand,
the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inches
through, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery.
Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once more
pumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching to
the next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking another
great strip from the main trunk. Grom saw that her purpose obviously
was to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at her
intended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too much
for him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, he
slipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster's
sight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran out
along it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed upon
the two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam the
creek, thrust his way through the grass-stems, darted back to snatch
up his club, shook it at Grom, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced
off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.

Neither Grom nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. The
monster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk was
almost split in half by its loss. Grom saw that unless he could stop
this process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would be
overthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the next
great bough. Spear in hand, Grom slipped down to meet her, and halted
on a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively,
stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendous
muscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down her
insignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch of
succeeding. Grom just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside
nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful red
tongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The next
moment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grom
drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. The
weapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flint
lodged in the vertebrae of the monster's neck. Then the shaft was
wrenched violently fr