hen he looked back and saw A-ya
rocking herself to and fro in heartless mirth, he felt like asking her
how she would have liked it herself, if she had been in the place of
the fat old woman. On the other hand, he knew that he had made a great
discovery, second only to the conquest of the fire. He had found a new
weapon, of unheard-of, unimagined powers, able to kill swiftly and
silently and at a great distance. All he had to do was to perfect the
weapon and learn to control it.

He strode haughtily up to the cave mouth to recover his shaft. The
people, even the mightiest of the warriors, looked anxious and
deprecating at his approach; but he gave them never a glance. It would
not have done to let them think he had wounded the old woman by
accident. He picked up the shaft and examined its bloodstained point,
frowning fiercely. Then he glared into the cave where the unlucky
victim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft to
the bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with further
chastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus of
shrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put the
shaft into the bundle under his arm, and strode back to rejoin A-ya.
He had done enough for the moment. His next step required deep thought
and preparation.

An hour or two later, Grom set out from the Caves alone in spite of
A-ya's pleadings. He wanted complete solitude with his new weapon.
Besides a generous bundle of canes, of varying lengths and sizes, he
carried some strips of raw meat, a bunch of plantains, his spear and
club, and a sort of rude basket, without handle, formed by tying
together the ends of a roll of green bark.

This basket was a device of A-ya's, which had added greatly to her
prestige in the tribe, and caused the women to regard her with
redoubled jealousy. By lining it thickly with wet clay, she was able
to carry fire in it so securely and simply that Grom had adopted it at
once, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes of
hollow bamboo.

Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Grom turned into a
high, winding ravine, and was soon lost to the sight of the tribe.
The ravine, the bed of a long-dry torrent, climbed rapidly,
bearing around to the eastward, and brought him at length to a high
plateau on a shoulder of the mountain. At the back of the plateau the
mountain rose again, abruptly, to one of those saw-tooth pinnacles
whi