tly, had no taste
for exploring the high, clean, windy downs.

On a certain golden morning it chanced that the caves were well-nigh
deserted. The men of the tribe, including the chiefs themselves, Bawr
and Grom, together with most of the women and the half-grown children,
had gone off down the shore to a shallow inlet five or six miles
distant to gather shell-fish--great luscious mussels and peculiarly
plump and savory whelks. The girl A-ya, absorbed in her special
occupation of fashioning bows and arrows for the tribe, had remained,
with a half-score of old men and women and Grom's giant slave, the
lame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk, to guard the little children and the tribal
fires. As Grom's mate, and his confidential associate in all his
greatest ventures, A-ya's prestige in the tribe had come to be only
less than that of Bawr and Grom themselves.

On the open, grassy level before the cave mouth, the two great fires
burned steadily in the sun. The giant Ook-ootsk, hideous with his
ape-like forehead, his upturned, flaring nostrils, his protruding jaw,
his shaggy, clay-colored torso, and his short, massive, grotesquely
bowed legs--of which one was twisted so that the toes pointed almost
backwards--lay sprawling and chuckling benevolently near the entrance,
while a swarm of little ones, A-ya's two among them, clambered over
him. The old men and the old women most of them dozed in the shade,
save two or three of the most diligent, who occupied their gnarled
fingers in twisting thin strips of hide into bow-strings, or lashing
slivers of stone into the heads of spears. A-ya sat cross-legged a
little apart, beside a tiny fire, laboriously fashioning her bows and
arrows by charring the wood in the embers and then rubbing it between
two rough stones. With her head bent low over her work, the heavy,
tangled masses of her hair fell upon it and got in her way, and from
time to time she shook them aside impatiently. It was a picture of
primeval peace.

But peace, in the days when earth was young, was something more
precarious than a bubble.

From around the green shoulder of the hill came a sound of trampling
hooves and labored breathing. A-ya sprang to her feet, snatching up
her own well-tried bow and fitting an arrow to the string. At the same
time she gave a sharp alarm-cry, at which the lame slave, Ook-ootsk,
arose, shaking off the swarm of children, and came hobbling towards
her with his weapons in both hands. An old woman pounce