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 off slowly down stream with its living freight. The incoherent remnant was left in the eddy, where the snorting monsters struggled and threshed about amongst it, now climbing half-way out upon some great trunk, which forthwith reared on end and slid them off, now vanishing for a moment beneath the beaten stew of leaves and vines.