aloft for a little time, and then, wearied, let them drop into the water and upon the ooze of the bottom, where they rested, sinking slowly. But at the end, brave men are always brave. I shouted at the ooze and quicksands. They should not take my life! They could not, for my life would be gone before they had all my body. There was the water, only half a foot of it, but enough, and of all deaths, drowning I knew was the easiest. I had seen men nearly drowned whom we had saved just in time, and they had told me that such a death must be pleasant. The very head alone was above the water now. I whooped defiance. CHAPTER VII THE TAMERS I was aroused from a bad dream by the sharp, yipping cry of dogs. I was glad to be awake, for in my dream there was suffocation. For a little time after I awoke I was dazed in mind, and could not recognize myself or my surroundings. I was lying in a little sunlit hollow upon a grass-green spot on the surface of a slight rocky height in the plain, and my bow and skin quiver of arrows and my flint-headed spear, smooth as the teeth of the river horse and keen of edge as the blades of the marsh grass, were beside me. Gradually I remembered that I had come alone to the plain to hunt the hares which were abundant in and about the scattered rocks, and the bustards which fed upon the seeds of the many bushes. I had climbed the little height to look about the better, but could see no game, and so had thrown myself down on the soft turf, to await whatever might appear, and then had fallen asleep. Two young wolf cubs had been captured by boys of the tribe, and brought into camp, and allowed to live; and, when they became grown, were not savage, like other wolves, but remained about, and were fed, and would sometimes prove obedient to what was told them. Once or twice they had even aided in the hunt, by pulling down some wounded animal, and so had earned their feed. It seemed now that they had followed me to the hunt, though I did not want them and had driven them back, and now I rose to my feet to see what it was that had been the occasion of their clamour. They were leaping frantically about a huge aurochs bull which had wandered from the wide forest glades where the aurochs were in greatest numbers, and now was feeding quietly upon the occasional sweet grass tufts about the thickets. To the two wolf dogs he paid little attention, save once in a while to shake his thick short horns, and make a little rush at them. A great pack of wolves would be required to pull down the mighty aurochs.