Some two hours after sunrise of the following day they came to a place where a belt of woods, perhaps a hundred to two hundred yards in depth, ran bordering the river, while behind it a broad stretch of grassy plain thrust back the jungle. Along the edge of the plain, skirting the belt of woods, the grass was short and the traveling was easy; but off to the left the growth was ranker, and interspersed with thickets such as Grom always regarded with suspicion. He had learned by experience that these dense thickets in the grass-land were a favorite lurking-place of the unexpected--and that the unexpected was almost always perilous. Suddenly from the deeper grass a couple of hundred yards or so to the left rose heavily the menacing bulk of a red Siva moose bull, and stood staring at them with mingled wonder and malevolence in his cruelly vindictive eyes. In stature surpassing the biggest rhinoceros that Grom had ever seen, he gave the impression of combining the terrific power of the rhinoceros with the agile speed and devilish cunning of the buffalo. His ponderous head, with its high-arched eagle-hooked snout, was armed with two pairs of massive, keen-tipped, broad-bladed horns, that seemed to be a deadly-efficient compromise between the horns of a buffalo and the palmated antlers of a moose. This alarming apparition snorted loudly, and at once from behind him lurched to their feet some two score more of his like, and all stood with their eyes fixed upon the little group of travelers by the edge of the wood. Grom had heard vague traditions of the implacable ferocity of these red monsters, but having before never come across them he answered their stare with keen interest. At the same time, edging in closer to the wood, he whispered: "Don't run. But if they come we must go up the first tree. They are swift as the wind, these great beasts, and more terrible than the saber-tooth." "Can't go in _these_ trees!" said Loob, whose piercing eyes had investigated them minutely at the first glimpse of the monsters in the grass. "Why not?" demanded Grom, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters. "Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?" Grom turned his head and scanned the belt of woodland, his ears now suddenly comprehending a deep, humming sound which he had hitherto referred solely to the winged foragers in the grass-tops. Scattered at intervals from the branches, in the shadowy green gloom, hung a number of immense, dark, semi-pear-shaped globes. They looked harmless enough, but Grom knew that their inhabitants, the great jungle-bees, were more to be dreaded than saber-tooth or crocodile. To disturb, or seem to threaten to disturb, one of their nests, meant sure and instant doom. "No, we must trust to our running--and they are very swift," said Grom. "But let us go softly now, and perhaps they will not charge upon us."