lves up. The next moment the treacherous crust
crumbled away beneath them like an eggshell, and with screams that
tore the heavens they sank into the gulfs of pitch. The next two or
three ranks went over on them, trod them deeper down, heaved and
surged and battled for some moments along the edge of the crumbling
crust. With mad trumpetings, they were themselves swallowed up in that
sluggish, implacable flood. Here and there a black trunk, twisting in
agony, lingered long, awful moments above the pitch. Here and there
the pallid head of a giraffe, tongue protruding and eyes bursting from
their sockets, stood up rigid on its long neck and screamed
hideously.

As the thick tide closed slowly, slowly over its prey, the hosts in
the rear, having taken alarm at the agonized trumpetings, succeeded by
a gigantic effort in checking their career. Those nearest the edge of
doom reared up and fell back upon those next behind, to be ripped with
frantic tusks in the mad confusion. But presently the whole colossal
array brought itself to a halt, got itself turned to the left, and
went thundering off on the trail of the sambur remnants.

Grom stood staring for a long time, with wide, brooding eyes, at the
still-bubbling and heaving breadths of dark pitch. He was stunned by
the sudden engulfing and utter disappearance of such a monstrous
horde. He seemed to see the countless gigantic shapes heaped one upon
the other, laid to their long sleep there in the deeps of the pitch.
At last he shook himself, passed his shaggy hand over his eyes, and
shouted to the tribe that all was well. Then he set himself once more
at their head, and led them, slowly and cautiously, onward across the
dreadful level, till they gained the shelter of that sweetly wooded
and rivulet-watered hill.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts

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