e, the adventurous party accomplished the journey
across the savannah without encountering a single foe. The mid-noon
blaze of the sun upon the windless grass, which was almost more than
they could endure, was probably keeping the monsters to their lairs;
and the only living things to be seen, besides the insects and a
high-wheeling vulture or two, were a few shy troops of a kind of small
antelope, incredibly swift of foot.

Grom drew a breath of relief as they reached the foot of the hills.
But just here it was impossible to climb them. A range of high
limestone downs, they were fringed at this point by an unbroken line
of cliff, perpendicular and at times overhanging, from forty or fifty
to perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height, and so smooth that even
these goat-footed cave-folk could not scale them. The rich plain-land
at their feet had once been a shallow, inland sea, and now its grasses
washed along their base in a gold-green, scented foam.

Turning to the right, Grom led the way close along the cliff-foot
toward the water, which glowed like brass about a mile ahead. Along
the right of their path the ground sloped off gently to a belt of that
high cane-like growth which Grom regarded with such suspicion. Before
they had gone many hundred yards his suspicion was more than
justified.

From a little way behind them there arose all at once a chorus of
explosive gruntings, mixed with a huge crashing of the canes. Glancing
over their shoulders, they saw a great rust-red animal, about the size
of a rhinoceros, which burst forth from the canes and stood staring
after them. Its hideous head was larger than that of any rhinoceros
they had ever seen, and armed with a pair of enormous conical horns,
each more than a foot in diameter at the base and tapering to a keen
point. Set side by side, at a moderate angle, upon the bridge of the
snout, they were far more terrible than the horns of any rhinoceros.
Their bearer lowered them menacingly, and charged down upon Grom's
party with a sound that was something between the grunting of a hog
and the braying of an ass. Immediately upon his massive heels a whole
herd of the red monsters surged forth from the canes, and came
charging after their leader at a ponderous gallop which seemed
literally to shake the earth.

For a moment or two Grom's party had paused, confident in their own
fleetness of foot, and wondering at that pair of amazing horns on the
monster's snout. But wh