On the fourth day of the journey, however, the tribe met a foe whose dense brain was quite unimpressed by the menace of the human voice, and whose rage took no account of their numbers or their confidence. An enormous bull urus--perhaps the same beast which some days earlier, had driven Grom and the girl into the tree-tops--burst up, dripping and mud-streaked from his wallow in a reedy pool, and came charging upon the travelers with a roar. No doubt an outcast from the herd, he was mad with the lust of killing. With shouts of warning and shrieks of fear the tribe scattered in every direction. The nearest warriors hurled their spears as they sprang aside, and several of the weapons went deep into the monster's flanks, but without checking him. He had fixed his eyes on one victim, an old man with a conspicuous shock of snow-white hair, and him he followed inexorably. The doomed wretch screamed with despair when he found himself thus hideously selected, and ran, doubling like a rabbit. Just as the monster overtook him he fell, paralyzed with his fright, and one tremendous horn pinned him to the earth. At this instant the Chief arrived, running up from the rear of the line, and Grom, coming from the front. The Chief, closing in fearlessly, swung his club with all his strength across the beast's front, blinding one eye, and confusing him for the fraction of a moment. And in that moment, Grom, calculating his blow with precision, drove his spear clean through the massive throat. As he sprang back, twisting his ragged weapon in the wound and tearing it free, the monster, with a hoarse cough, staggered forward across his victim, fell upon his knees, and slowly sank, while the blood emptied itself in enormous, smoking jets from the wound. The incident caused a day's delay in the march; for there was the dead elder to be buried, with heavy stones heaped over his body, according to the custom of the tribe, and there was also the meat of the slain bull to be cut up for carrying--a rank food, but sustaining, and not to be despised when one is on a journey with uncertainties ahead. And the delay was more than compensated for by the new spirit which now seized this poor, fugitive remnant of the Tribe of the Little Hills. The speedy and spectacular triumph over a foe so formidable as the giant bull urus was unanimously accepted as an omen of good fortune. As they approached the valley whose mouth was guarded by the line of volcanic fire, Grom purposely led the tribe by such a path that they should get no glimpse of the dancing flames until close upon them. Down behind a long line of woods he led them, with no warning of what was to come. Then suddenly around into the open; and there, not a hundred paces distant, was the valley-mouth, and the long, thin line of flickering scarlet tongues drawn across it.