In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of the plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children of the Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less than annihilation. The flames were raging for a mile up the valley, wherever they were not choked by the piles and windrows of the dead or dying Bow-legs. The lurid night was shaken with the incessant rising and falling chorus of shrieks, and far off under the glare rolled that awful receding wave of fugitives, with the flames leaping upon them and slaying them as they fled. Leaning upon his club and gazing thoughtfully across the scene of incredible destruction, Bawr told himself that never again, so long as the memory of this night survived, would the Bow-legs dare to come against his people. Then wild lamentation from the women drew the Chief into the cave. Here he found that half the little ones had been killed in that swift incursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had been slaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grom's doorway, crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat of a dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk. Seeing that he still breathed, and marking the fury with which he had fought in defense of their little ones, the warriors lifted him aside gently. Beneath him, and safely guarded in the crook of his shaggy arm, they found Grom's baby, without a hurt. The women defending the head of the path on the right having seen the rape of A-ya, Bawr handed the babe to one of his own wives to cherish. Then search was made for Grom. At first the Chief imagined that he had followed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecting her rescue alone. But they found him under a heap of dead, so nearly dead himself that they despaired of him. Realizing that it was he who had saved the tribe, they began over him that great keening lamentation hitherto reserved strictly for the funeral of the supreme Chief himself. But Bawr, his massive features furrowed with solicitude, stopped them, vowing that Grom should not die. And lifting the hero in his arms he bore him into the cave.