"It is all true, for my mother had it from her mother, who in turn was told it by her mother--thus has it been handed down truthfully since it happened long time ago. "And even to this day is occasionally heard the growling of The Great Nagoola in his anger, and the earth shakes and trembles as he strives far, far beneath to shake the mountains from him and escape. Did you not hear his voice and feel the ground rock?" Thandar laughed. "Well, we are quite safe then," he cried, "for with two mountains piled upon him he cannot escape." "Who knows?" asked Nadara. "He is huge--as huge, himself, as a small mountain. Some day, they say, he will escape, and then naught will pacify his rage until he has destroyed every living creature upon the land." "Do not worry, little one," said Thandar. "The Great Nagoola will have to grumble louder and struggle more fiercely before ever he may dislodge the two mountains. Even now he is quiet again, so run to your cave, sweetheart, nor bother your pretty head with useless worries--it is time that all good people were asleep," and he stooped and kissed her as she turned to go. For a moment she clung to him. "I am afraid, Thandar," she whispered. "Why, I do not know. I only know that I am afraid, with a great fear that will not be quiet." CHAPTER IV THE BATTLE Early the following morning while several of the women and children were at the river drawing water the balance of the tribe of Thandar was startled into wakefulness by piercing shrieks from the direction the water carriers had taken. Before the great, hairy men, led by the smooth-skinned Thandar, had reached the foot of the cliff in their rush to the rescue of the women several of the latter appeared at the edge of the forest, running swiftly toward the caves. Mingled with their screams of terror were cries of: "The bad men! The bad men!" But these were not needed to acquaint the rescuers with the cause of the commotion, for at the heels of the women came Thurg and a score of his vicious brutes. Little better than anthropoid apes were they. Long armed, hairy, skulking monsters, whose close-set eyes and retreating foreheads proclaimed more intimate propinquity to the higher orders of brutes than to civilized man. Woe betide male or female who fell into their remorseless clutches, since to the base passions, unrestrained, that mark the primordial they were addicted to the foulest forms of cannibalism. In the past their raids upon their neighbors for meat and women had met with but slight resistance--the terrified cave dwellers scampering to the safety of their dizzy ledges from whence they might hurl stones and roll boulders down to the confusion of any foe however ferocious.