fugitives. But their furious pursuers
would surely not venture their giant bulks upon it.

Approaching the point he slackened his pace, and steadied A-ya with
one hand. At the edge of the eddy he stopped, casting an appraising
eye over the collection of debris, in order to pick out a stable
retreat and also the most secure path to it. In this pause the
monsters swept up with a thunder of trampling hooves and windy
snortings. They had their victims at last where there was no escape.

The raging brutes were not more than a dozen paces behind, when Grom
led the way out upon the floating mass, picking his steps warily and
leaping from trunk to trunk. Loob and A-ya followed with like care.
Certain of the trunks gave and sank beneath their feet, but their feet
were already away to surer footing. And at the very outermost point of
that old collection of debris, where the current and the eddy wavered
for mastery, on a toughly interwoven tangle of uprooted trunks and
half-dead vines, they found a refuge which did not yield beneath them.
Here, steadying themselves by upthrust branches, they turned and
looked back, half apprehensive and half defiant, at their mighty
pursuers.

"They'll never dare to try to follow us here," gasped A-ya.

But she was wrong. Quite blind with rage through that galling shaft in
his muzzle, the giant bull came plunging on, and half a dozen of his
closest followers, infected with his madness, came with him. The inner
edge of the mass gave way at once beneath them--and the bank at this
point was straight up and down. The monsters floundered in deep water,
snorting and spluttering, while their fellows on the shore checked
themselves violently and drew back bawling with bewilderment. As the
drowning monsters battled to get their front legs up upon the raft,
the edges gave way continually beneath them, plunging them again and
again beneath the surface, while A-ya stabbed at them vengefully with
her spear, and Loob shot arrows into them till Grom stopped him,
saying that the arrows were too precious to waste. Thereupon Loob
tripped delicately over the surging trunks and smote at the struggling
monsters' heads with his light club.

The anchorage of this natural raft having been broken, the weight of
the monsters striving to gain a foothold upon it soon thrust its firm
outer portion forth into the grip of the current. In a minute or two
more this solid portion was torn away from the rest, and went sailing