Before Grom could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateau there came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice in that pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble of beasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs and spears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forest of waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads. "The Two-Tails are upon us!" cried Grom, in a voice of awe. And his followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full view. Grom looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children, shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishing down the steep toward the beach. "It is time for us to go too," shouted Grom, clutching the lame slave by the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free. "I'll hold them back till you get away," he growled, and drove his great spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier at that instant. Grom saw it would be useless now to try and save him. With the rest of his band he ran for paths leading down to the beach. It was well, he thought, that the valiant slave should die for the Tribe. The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood. But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flood divided upon the massive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon a black rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surging pell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker and lighter were savagely torn and trampled underfoot. Then the Mammoths came thundering and trumpeting across the plateau, going through and over the lesser beasts like a tidal wave. Grom, having seen the last of his warriors pass down the beach paths, turned for one more glimpse of the monstrous and incredible scene. He had a swift vision of the squatting form of Ook-ootsk thrusting upward with reddened spear at the breast of a black monster which hung over him like a mountain. Then the mountain rolled forward upon him, blotting him out, and Grom slipped hurriedly over the brink and down the path. * * * * * At the rafts it was bedlam. A score or more of the women and children, as they were crossing to the water's edge, had been wiped out of existence by the rush of maddened bison along the beach, and the keenings of their relatives rose above the shouts and cries of embarkation. Fully half the rafts were afloat, with their loads, by now, and men grunted heavily in the effort to pry the others free, while women and children crowded into the water around them, waiting to struggle aboard as soon as the men would let them.