What had happened was this: A party of plume hunters had discovered the feeding-ground of the egrets; had gathered up great quantities of the imprisoned fish and after poisoning them had redistributed them over the surface of the water. The birds ate and died. Then the men returned, stripped the plumes from their luckless victims and departed in their canoes. The young in the platform nests in the forest island called in vain for their elders and for the food they brought, at first lustily, then feebly until they starved to death. Then the vultures came, making a loathsome feast on the bodies of the little creatures that had perished so miserably. The work of extermination was complete. Warruk advanced slowly and cautiously for now he knew that in the strange country danger lurked--danger of a kind unknown to him and of a subtle quality. If the creatures whose footprints he had seen and with whose scent the border of the marsh was redolent could outwit the wary birds that had always eluded him, what surprise might not they hold in store for him? But, there was that insistent urge that bade him advance. And, too, Tumwah was stretching his devastating hand toward the lower country. The animals that had found a temporary refuge in the oasis were moving onward also, for the water in the pools was vanishing and the vegetation began to droop. Day by day the sun's rays grew more intense until it seemed they must set the world afire. Two weeks later Warruk reached the margin of the great river that wound its sluggish way through a strip of forested country hugging its banks. But, mighty stream though it was, it had not been spared the wrath of Tumwah's onslaught. Where ordinarily a wide expanse of water greeted the eye, stretching in a ruffled, brown sheet to the dimly outlined fringe of palms on the distant bank, there was now a series of sun-baked sandbars several miles wide and many, many miles long. The river, still of imposing width, flowed through a channel in the center of the sandy wastes but bore little resemblance to its former awe-inspiring grandeur. Flocks of gulls and skimmers flew shrieking and wheeling in masses overhead or ran excitedly over the sand. Crocodiles, too, were in evidence, for here there were water and food so there was not the need to bury themselves in the mud and in a semi-conscious condition await the coming of a friendlier season, as did their fellows in the inland country. It was indeed a new and strange world veiled with an impenetrable air of mystery and romance.