favorite follower and hunting mate;
and he had come at speed, being very swift of foot, in answer to
Grom's signal. Breathing quickly, he stood at Grom's side, and looked
down with wonder and dislike upon the crouching woman.

Briefly Grom explained, and then pointed to the inexplicable wounds.
The youth, unable to believe that any human creature should be unable
to comprehend plain human speech, such as that of the Cave People,
tried his own hand at questioning the woman. He got a flow of chatter
in reply, but, being able to make nothing out of it, he imagined it
was not speech at all, and turned away angrily, thinking that she
mocked him. Grom, smiling at the mistake, explained that the woman was
talking her own language, which he intended presently to learn as he
had learned that of the Bow-legs.

"But now," said he, "we will go and see what it is that has bitten the
woman. It is surely something with a strange mouth."

Mo, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who would have
followed Grom through the mouth of hell, sprang forward eagerly. Grom,
who realized that the mystery before him was a perilous one, and who
loved to do dangerous things in a prudent manner, looked to his
bow-string and saw that his arrows were handy in his girdle, before he
started on the venture. Besides his bow he carried the usual two
spears and his inseparable stone-headed club. Though danger was his
delight, it was not the danger itself but the thrill of overcoming it
that he loved.

The moment he stepped forward, however, the woman divined his purpose
and leapt wildly to her feet. She sprang straight in front of him,
screaming and gesticulating. She was plainly horror-stricken at the
thought that the two men should venture into the perils from which she
had so hardly escaped. To Grom's keen intelligence her gestures were
eloquent. She managed to convey to him the idea of great numbers, and
the impossibility of his dealing with them. When he attempted to pass
her, she threw herself down and clung to his feet, shaking with her
terror. When she saw that Grom was at last impressed, she stretched
herself out as if dead, and then, after a few moments of ghastly
rigidity, with fixed, staring eyes, she came to and held up one hand
with the fingers outspread.

This frantic pantomime Grom could read in no other way than as an
attempt to tell him that the unknown Something had killed five of the
woman's companions. The information gave h