A SON OF THE AGES

“His eyes were flaming and his teeth shone white.... We were alone to fight it out.”

A SON OF THE AGES

THE REINCARNATIONS AND
ADVENTURES OF SCAR,
THE LINK

A story of Man from the Beginning

BY
STANLEY WATERLOO
AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF AB”

Illustrated by Craig Johns

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1914

Copyright, 1914, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1914, by the
Frank A. Munsey Co.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

A waste of waters heaved sullenly beneath a dismal canopy. Thin, slimy masses floated here and there about the shallows of a little cove or clung to its sodden beach. The cove led into a bay, which opened, in its turn, upon a vast and soundless sea. But a single reach of land, gray, flat, and lifeless and encircling partially the cove, was all of earth there was in sight.

Close above and all about the huge and silent mystery and extending outward far into space, was a steaming world of vapour, condensed into enormous clouds beyond, an enshrouding curtain over all beneath. And ever this was smitten fiercely by the distant sun, whose rays could not yet fairly pierce the tremendous depths, yet shone through wanly here and there upon the sombre scheme, sombre in its awful lifelessness and silence, but with a promise, indefinable and yet assured, of life and light to come in the tremendous future.

And eons followed eons. Man had not yet measured time. The dateless ages passed. The vibrating waves of light, of heat, of electricity, of magnetism, the forces of attraction and repulsion, all the agencies and mysteries of nature’s law, laboured ceaselessly within and without the forming world, making for life. The dense exuding vapour became a warm yet ever present mist, through which the sun’s rays drove or filtered and reached the earth abundantly. The world had shrunken, yet the outlines of the bay, and even of the little cove, were there, though otherwise the scene had changed. The floating protoplasmic fragments had developed into a higher and far-extended life. No longer lay the waters flat and motionless; no longer was the land a dead and drear expanse. There were waves upon the seas and movements showing life there, and the land was green with an infant vegetation.

And the new planet rolled through its allotted orbit while upon it were wrought the endless processes of growth and transformation. The constellations of the heavens slowly changed and shifted into the forms and places which were in coming ages to be marked and named by the sons of earth. Suns flamed and faded while this globe strained toward its prime. Life advanced with an overwhelming rush. There might be check but never pause to the plunging growth from the primal cells which had floated by the sea until they had developed a looming vegetation and almost brainless monsters in that lush and growing time.

The warm waters teemed with the myriads of life. Strange creatures swarmed the seas devouringly or nosed and hunted along the shores, and others of other forms ranged and floundered and fought in the depths and glades of the gigantic fernlike forests. It was a time of heat and moisture and of fierce development, terrible, vast, imposing.

The time, uncounted, yet brought relentlessly its transmutations. The mottled, changing ages still trod upon each other’s heels, and reaction and condensation came into even the law of life. The warm seas became in area, though not in place, much as they are to-day. On land, the vast fernlike forests lay buried deep beneath the covering surface made by another and different vegetation. The reptilian monsters of the sea and land had almost gone, and in their place ranged the great creatures of another sort and type, as well of more timid life, the grass-eaters, upon whose bodies fed the savage beasts of the new epoch. At night the leaves rustled beneath the tread of murderous things; the air resounded with the roar of the great cave tiger, the growl of the cave bear or the cries and snarls of hyenas and the yelpings of the wolf packs. The green plains were dotted with herds of little wild horses, the aurochs, the urus, the ancient elk, and a host of other grazing things; wild hogs were in the thickets. All was life, as before, but life of another kind, one of pursuers and pursued, fierce, strenuous, bloody, but with more to the brute intelligence.

There were vast upheavals and fiery rendings, but life insisted, persisted. Gnawed by tooth of glacier, seamed and ridged by abysses and upheavals, the planet reeled through space. Life, animal and vegetable, retreated or advanced as Nature played or laboured with the crust she was fashioning and refashioning into its present shape, even as she still makes and unmakes continents or islands or blots them out at her will.

But life went on. New creatures, tree-climbing, ape-creatures had developed from one of the lower stems of the dim past and had become distinct from all other living things. Without expression, save by scream or roar or chuckle, helpless, as yet, as against the dangerous beasts, they still developed, and one group among them, by some mysterious happening, outstripped the rest. Of all the creatures, those tree-climbers, far from the strongest, possessing not greatly more than instinct, were yet the most perceptive. Mind was in growth, slowly, uncertainly, but still in growth. Reason fluttered within dull brains; the climbers could think a little. Nature had begun upon her Masterpiece!

A SON OF THE AGES

CHAPTER I
THE LINK

I had broken my thumb. It was a long fall and not only was my thumb broken, but the fingers on the same hand were crushed backward and so sprained that they were useless, and when I tried to climb the tree again, to renew the fight, I could not. I do not know what made me slip and fall, for there were few among the treetop people more certain upon a limb than I. But that upon which I had stood was old and it may be that the one to which I clung was rotten, and so I fell, though I was gripping the other hardly with the fingers of both my feet.

The Brown One—I call him that now, to distinguish him, though we had no names—was a strong creature, the biggest ape in all the forest, but it could not have been possible for him to throw me from the limb, even when its slighter upstanding branch which I was clutching with one hand proved weak and faithless as I lurched and slid. I should have clung easily with my other hands—those I now call my feet—and uptwisted myself and grappled him about the legs. Yes, it must be that the bark came away. That was why I fell far, head downward, with arms outreaching to break my fall, and that, so, my thumb was broken and my fingers on one hand bent backward and sprained into hurting uselessness.

It had been the start of a good fight. It was all because of It, as I will call her, the she thing who was the child of an old pair who had a nest in the fork of the tree with the noisy leaves. We both wanted her, the Brown One and I, and so we fought for her on the big limb while she screamed shrilly in the branches above, and her father and mother crouched chattering together in the nest of sticks and leaves in the great crotch of the tree. He was very old, the father of It, and could no longer climb well for either fruit or nuts. He was forced to eat such ripened things as fell to the ground, and the grasshoppers and the little creatures which came out of holes. But he was most crafty and still could climb the tree with an effort, and so continued to live. He was not quick, though, and, some day, one of the hungry, growling creatures of the forest must catch him on the ground and that, it seemed, must be the end of him.

My own tree, with its nest, was in an open glade of the wood, by the river, not very distant from the tree of the Old One of whom I have told, and before this time I could have taken It, had I but known, for she was full grown, as was I, and once when I had met her in a treetop we had chattered together and she had not appeared to be afraid. I gave her fruit, and she ate. I could have taken her with me then. I wonder why I did not?

Then, days later, I went howling through the treetops toward the home of the father of It, for the hunger for companionship had grown upon me. My own kith and kin were dead and I was grown big and strong and I wanted this one she thing to be mine and in the nest with me.

It was a very good nest. I had made it carefully and solidly with sticks laid across and interwoven with tough withes where big limbs joined the tree trunk until they were quite a platform with a deep hollow in the middle, and I had brought twigs and leaves to cushion the hollow, in which I could curl myself down and sleep most comfortably, far out of the reach of prowling beasts which came beneath at night. The tree stood alone in the glade, and this was good, for no creature could reach its top save by coming up its trunk. All we feared in the top of a tree which stood by itself, was the rare great serpent, which could climb and could even pass from one tree to another, though not so swiftly as we. But, sometimes, he would surprise one of us asleep, and what happened then was something of which I do not care to tell.

So, my nest was a fine one and the tree was near a great river and in a wood in which were fruit and nuts and many birds and where the roots of weeds in the ground were sweet and tender, and where the wild ducks and geese laid eggs in nests by the water, where all about were many things to eat. But the she thing hunger came upon me and I wanted It. I went through the forest to get her.

I scrambled on all fours from the trunk of my own tree and from the glade and so up into the treetops and swung from limb to limb toward the house of the Old One, where I could find my mate. As I neared the place I checked myself, clinging to a limb and listening, for I had heard from afar that which I did not like. There came from where stood the tree of the Old One sounds which told their story well. There was a combined roaring and whimpering and squalling, and I knew that the squalling came from It. I could not tell where was the roaring. I was in the tree itself before I learned. It was the big Brown One who was roaring in anger because he was baffled in what he sought. My It stood upon a limb of the tree, clinging to a branch beside her, while he clutched another and strove to tear her away. In the nest the Old One and his mate were crouching whimperingly. The Old One could not fight. He was too weak.

I was strong, very strong. Once when the dun jackal—the half-wolf thing which follows the big tiger and bear and leopard and gnaws the red bones after they have killed and eaten, went mad, as he sometimes does, fearing nothing, though a coward at other times—sprang at me when I was on the ground, I caught him by the throat as he leaped and, with the other hand gripped on him, tore away one of his forelegs, shoulder and all, clear from his body. He raged no more, and it was good for all of the creatures of the forest, since all feared him when he went mad. Yes, I was strong, but I was not stronger than the Brown One. I did not know that yet.

The rage which came upon me when I saw the Brown One trying to carry away the she thing I wanted is something of which I do not know how to tell. I would have her myself and I would kill him! I roared and bellowed, and clambered downward until I dropped upon the limb whereon he and It were struggling. He turned in a second and came snarlingly toward me, while It, still squalling for a moment, then chattering wildly, fled upward among the branches and then into another tree and so out of sight deep into the forest. We were alone to fight it out.

We did not wait. His eyes were flaming and his teeth shone white and whetting as he swung toward me, and we met each with one hand grasping the nearest branch for support and the other free with which to fence and clutch and tear. I caught him fairly by the skin on the back of his neck, at last, and pulled his head toward me and with my teeth tore away one ear and a strip of skin and flesh, though he bit me deeply and tore me on the shoulder. I should have rent at his neck and killed him before he could have hurt me had all gone as it should have done. But the slight limb clutched by my supporting hand broke at its base and I was swirled off and hanging by my unprotected feet. In an instant he was down upon the limb, biting and tearing at them. They were slipping and I could not lift myself and it was beyond endurance. My grip relaxed in agony and I fell far to the ground—fell to tear a deep gash in my face from eye to jaw, to leave a ghastly, lasting scar, to crush my arms beneath me and lie there stunned and with the fingers of one hand helpless, as I have told, and the thumb so broken that it lay flat and distorted across the palm of my hand.

The Brown One did not come down to finish me. He scarcely looked at me. He clambered higher up the tree and leaped into the next one and was off into the forest crying out triumphantly. He was in the chase of It.

I lay helpless for a long time. The Old One and his mate paid no attention to me, but crouched there, frightened and gibbering foolishly in their nest. At last I tried to rise, and got to my feet with many liftings and stood by a little tree, supporting myself with my uninjured hand. Then it came to me that I must get back to my own tree and nest at once, and I tried to climb, so that I might travel through the treetops, but I could not do it. My injured hand was still so weak and lame that I could not use the fingers. The blood flowed through the great gash in my cheek. But I must get to my own tree, somehow, else I might be killed. I started on my hind legs, bending and supporting myself by my well arm and hand, but it was not easy, for I was sorely bruised and, though all of my kind walked sometimes upright, or even ran for a distance leapingly, it was not our common mode of travel. Through the treetops we could pass most easily and swiftly. I do not know why it was, but I think that I had somehow acquired the habit of walking erect more frequently than any other ape I knew, though forelegs and clasping feet—or arms and hands as I call them now—were sure and the treetops were a splendid highway, while upon the ground it was rarely safe.

I reached my tree at last, almost crawling, and weak and sore, and tried again to climb, but it was useless. I could not grasp the trunk and lift myself, though at other times it had been but play to clamber up to where the great limbs and my nest were. I became afraid. Any of the fierce beasts of the night might find me lying there and kill and eat me. I crawled to the shore of the river and crouched beside it and let my maimed hand dangle in the cold water. That seemed to make the pain less. Then the darkness came, and with it I was more afraid. I crawled to where there uprose a mighty heap of tumbled, broken rocks and wedged myself in one of the deep, narrow hollows, where I could not well be seen from the outside, and where none of the great devouring things could reach me save the big serpent and, it might be, the slender leopard. A bear came smelling about and growled in his hunger, but the passage between the rocks was too narrow for his huge bulk. Finally, tired and suffering, I went to sleep.

I must have been near to death from exhaustion, for when I awoke the sun was shining and the birds were singing. There were many birds. The prowling night things must have gone away, I knew, and I crept out into the light and stretched myself. I was very sore, but my hand did not pain me so much, and, after I had drunk deeply and held my hand in the water again, I felt a little of my strength come back. I started slowly toward my tree and on my way found berries, which I ate. I tried to climb the tree again, but failed at first. I waited and then I growled and crunched my teeth together and forced myself to use the fingers of my injured hand, though it hurt sickeningly, and gained my nest at last. I was safe, but I could not rest nor lie still in my refuge. My broken thumb was throbbing and full of pain. It still lay crushed across my palm and was swollen and distorted. I licked it carefully and tried to press it back into its place, but it would not go. I sat upright in my nest and was afraid and suffering and weak—I, who had been so strong!

My ears were strained for any sound. There was little to fear, for only the great snake or the Brown One, should he seek me, could harm me where I was. But all the time I listened, and it seemed to me that there were many things about. I think now that I may have heard sounds that were not, for my head was queer. Still, I listened all the while, and at last I heard that which I knew was real. There was a rustle among the leaves and the breaking of a twig in a treetop across the glade. I peered forth anxiously to see what could have made the noise. I did not like it. I did not know what it might be. At last I saw something. A face was looking at me from between the leaves. It had big eyes.

Then the face disappeared and I waited long and watched for it and, at last, it came again, and in another place. The light reached it more clearly now and I could see the face of It. Then something happened that was very strange. I forgot my aching thumb, my head was clearer and I was no longer afraid of anything. I was suddenly glad and brave and almost like myself again. I do not know why that feeling came.

I called aloud to It, making the sound we all did when we wanted another one to come. She did not answer at first, but stayed where she was, peering upward and backward through the wood. Then she called softly but still clung to her safe place, still looking and searching back and above and all about her. At last she seemed assured, and then the slim creature swung from her perch and slipped to the ground and ran across to my tree and was in the top so swiftly that it was wonderful. I could not climb like that. There was no other ape in all the woods who could catch her in the treetops, where the slender branches intermingled.

She was there in my own tree and near me, but she did not come to the nest. She ran up and peered down at me from a great limb above. I tried to climb to her and could not, and crawled back into my nest again and licked my swollen thumb and mumbled sickly. She sat perched there and looked down at me and said nothing, but her eyes—they seemed so much larger than the eyes of others of us—opened more widely still. Then she made sounds like those I had been making and went back slowly to the body of the tree and came down to the limbs where my nest was, and raised herself and stood there with one hand on the tree and looking at me where I lay so nearly helpless.

It came but dimly to me, but I knew then, more than ever, that in all the forest and in all the hills there was no other she thing ape like her. I had never thought of that before. Her hair was short, but brown and glossy, and she was oddly slender, with a less protruding stomach than had we other apes. It was her head, though, which was most unlike the others. Her ears were not much outstanding nor were they ever twitching and turning, her under jaw did not protrude so much, and her upper lip was not a bank of a thing extending downward from almost no nose at all. My own big jaw did not protrude so much as did the jaws of many of my kind, and my upper lip was not so huge and wide, but I was a monster compared with It, and my upturned face, I think, more like the glaring countenances which we saw when the big swimming beasts in the river sometimes thrust their nozzles out of the water.

And her eyes, the big eyes, were as dark and deep, I thought, as the water in the spring with ferns about it behind a rock where I often drank, and, when she chuckled and chattered at anything, there came lights and twinkles in them, just as there came to the deep spring water when the breeze blew upon it and made it ripple and change in the sunlight. Of course I did not dream this out very clearly—I did not know enough—but, even before this, the eyes of It had made me think of the spring by the rock. I do not know why this was so. Our eyes were not like the water. I once saw an ape poke a sharp stick into the eye of another and the eye went away. But I had poked sticks into the water and it did not go away. Why should the eyes of It make me think of the deep spring by the rock?

She was never gloomy nor sat and moped as did many of us when the cold and mist sometimes came suddenly, and we others but crouched and huddled in our nests for warmth. Ever alert and alive, when it was cold, she still sought nuts and the dropping fruits and other things we ate, and brought them to her home nest. It was well for her father and mother, who were so very old. They were dead, even now, but I did not know that, nor did It.

So I wanted It for my mate, and it was not because she was so swift and wise and could gather so well the nuts and fruits and the shell things which clung to the rocks beside the river and which, when we had cracked the shells with stones, were good to eat. I did not consider that. I wanted her, I think, as I have said, because her eyes were like the spring by the rock, but that must have been a foolish reason. I had wanted her much, and now, as she stood there, I wanted her more than ever, sick and crippled as I was.

She looked at me but made no sound, though I mumbled and called and beckoned to her and reached out for her to come. She was still for a while, but at last there came that look into her eyes like the ripples I have told about, and then I knew that she would be my mate. She came out slowly along the limb and sat on the edge of the nest and reached out and stroked my thumb very gently. She lifted the hand and looked at it and then licked it and looked up at me and made a clucking, sighing sound. We could not talk, we apes, then, but we could make many different sounds that we understood, and I knew that she was trying to tell me that she pitied me. I tried to tell her, too, that I was glad, and she understood me surely. I put out my well arm and drew her into the nest with me and held her close, and she cuddled there contentedly. We were mates now, and I was very proud and nearly well again. So she stayed beside me for quite a time, I stroking her smooth back, and then she looked up and laughed, in our way, and chattered and then suddenly broke from me and ran to the tree trunk, and the sounds she made meant food. She was down in an instant and slipped into the forest, but she was not gone long. When she came back she had a branch which she carried between her teeth as she climbed, and on it was much fruit, which I ate, for again I was weak and hungry. And again and again she went and brought me many things to eat, more fruit and soft round roots, and, at last, by great fortune, a large bird she had caught upon its nest. It was what I needed. My strength came back. Then, we cuddled down together. Those were great days while I was growing well, with It beside me. She cared for me faithfully and soon I could clamber down the tree, though not yet swiftly. I have the memory of those fair days yet. But they were few.

There came, one afternoon, wild howling from the forest, not more than four or five trees away, and I could see the Brown One coming toward us. He had found the refuge of It and was coming for her! I must fight him now, weak as I was. I rose in front of It and grasped the upright limb and was ready, but it did not count. My mate slipped by me and ran to the trunk and was on the ground and running for the forest on the other side of the glade and in the treetops there almost before I knew that she was gone. She knew that I was not yet fit to fight the Brown One. She called from far aloft and I knew that she would come back to me when she could. As for the Brown One, he did not stop to climb my tree, and try to kill me, though I gibbered and roared at him challengingly. He swung through the tops circling the glade and I could hear his threatening cries as they died distantly away in the forest beyond. He was in chase of my It again. Somehow, I did not fear for her. As well pursue the silly shadows which fly across the treetops when the white things up in the sky came floating across the fire ball there. One so light and slender and sure-handed could pass along the slender outreaching branches where none heavier could follow. But I gnashed my teeth, for I wanted to follow the Brown One and try to kill him.

I slept at last, and when I awoke I was like another creature. I was almost well. I scarcely ached, and my fingers were all strong. The thumb lay stiffly and pressed crookedly down upon my palm, as it had been broken, but the thing was hardening and knitting. Well was it for me that we apes recovered quickly from our wounds. When hurt, we either died or were soon ourselves again.

I had none to help me now, and it may be it was good for me. I clambered down from the tree and wandered forth and found a little food and came back and waited for the return of It, but she did not come. I waited and it seemed to me that in my craze I was some other creature. I climbed down and ran about in the forest senselessly. Then, at night I came back again to the nest and slept. I seemed to know more in the morning. I had my senses. I went down beside the river and ate many of the shell things and I ate fruit I found. I would find It now. I searched the forest; I even went to the nest of the Old One, but it was vacant and the gnawed bones of the Old One and his mate lay on the ground beside his tree. I could find It nowhere. I did not believe that the Brown One could seize her in the treetops, but he might have chased her far away. I did not know what to do. So the days passed. Meanwhile, I became all my mighty self. My injured thumb was strong though crooked forward against my hand. Then, one day, a strange thing happened:

I had wandered far along the river bank and was sitting foolishly upon a rock and playing with a piece of wood which had floated down and stranded. It was a stout thing, larger at one end than the other, and very heavy. The crook of my broken thumb, as it lay pressed against the palm, left a space beneath, and through this space I idly thrust the small end of the wood. Thus my fingers were above on one side of the club and my thumb upon the other, bearing hardly when I chose, for I could press the thumb down strongly, though I could scarcely raise the end. It was a new sensation which came to interest me suddenly. I could clasp the stick with my fingers clutching the other side and I could do things with it. I whirled the club about my head and smote the bushes and broke them easily. It was wonderful! Never before had fingers and thumb of ape accomplished a grip together! The club was hard and heavy, yet in my strong grasp it was but a plaything. It delighted me. I would take it with me. That was well.

I started toward my glade, for night was coming and I had eaten enough. I took a path which ran through hollows and beside a long rocky upheaval in which were many abruptly ending defiles where, sometimes, I had caught small animals which could not climb the smooth, steep sides. I heard a rustling in one of these and thought that I had some prize assured. The entrance was but a few feet wide and the passage, as I knew, ended in a sheer height. I followed the defile to the end, but could find no living thing. The sound which had attracted me may have been made by some large bird which had flown before I entered. I turned toward the entrance again, but stopped with fear in my heart, from what I saw. I knew that death was close to me. I yelled aloud at first in my terror and then became suddenly quiet. That was the way with most of us big males of the apes in great emergencies. We became, when fatally at bay, sullen, desperate things. I would die fighting. The hair upon me bristled.

It was the great wolf. A gaunt and fearful creature was the wolf of the time, one we tree people fled from when we met him in the forest; and when he and others of his kind gathered sometimes and ran in packs, even the urus or the mighty aurochs ran fast and far, for few animals, even among the greatest, could face the onslaught of the pack. As for one of us apes, when he met a wolf singly, grapple as he might and tear with his shorter teeth, the wolf’s jaws ever, somehow, found the neck, and that was the end. For me there was no escape. The great wolf rushed upon me and leaped high at my throat.

I know not why nor how I did it. In the past I would have tried but blindly to seize upon the grisly brute, and so die grappling and seeking to bite, but some new and sudden impulse, some fierce, unconscious repetition of what I had just been doing in mere wantonness, impelled my tautened nerves and muscles and, even as he sprang, I swung the club with all my recovered strength, and, there in mid-air, it crashed down upon the fearsome head. It crashed as do the trees when the winds break them, and the big body dropped as it came hurtling against me and felling me—but the jaws seized not. I leaped to my feet for flight, but the monster only lay there heaving. Then I went mad, mad as the sick jackal. I swung the club again and again and brought it down upon the evil head until the skull was crushed to pulp. I was my old self no more. I ran out from the gorge and leaped up and down and howled across the waste and the river and toward all the forest in wild triumph. I was the king of the apes! I could kill as never ape had killed before! There were fewer things to fear in all the world. I had learned to use the club! It was wonderful. I howled daringly all the way homeward to my nest, and smote many things with my great weapon as I passed. I climbed the tree carrying it in my teeth, and could scarcely sleep for exultation. I was a new creature. I had found that which made me so.

I came down in the morning, bearing my club with me. Ever after that I carried it, and I may tell now, that as time passed, since I could not hold it constantly in my mouth, this club-carrying made me walk more and more on my hind legs until it became, unconsciously, a habit with me. Now I went more recklessly about my food-seeking. I met a herd of the wild hogs, a big sow with pigs, and ran among them and slew a pig with my club and then leaped into a tree, for the charging mother was too fearsome for me, even with my weapon. Then she and her living litter went away and I came down and ate my breakfast from the pig. It was good. So, for days, I ranged through the wood and by the river, but all was not yet well. Something sank within me. Now I know what it was. I wanted It.

Still, I was jubilant over my club. I was vain and drunken with the power I had. Another ape rose in the path ahead of me, an ape as big as I was, and I roared and ran at him, I know not why. I was not angry and did not want to hurt him, but I wanted to smite something alive. It had been good to hit the wolf. The ape stood his ground until I was almost upon him, then, amazed and alarmed by the whirling of the club, he leaped for a tree trunk and I struck him furiously on the haunches as he scrambled upward. He fled shrieking through the treetops.

But there came, stronger than ever, the hunger for It, and I ranged through the forest for many days and into places strange to me. Food I discovered in abundance. So I wandered restlessly until I passed, one afternoon, across a wide, bare space, almost a plain, where there stood a grove of trees, up one of which I climbed, and slept there in its great crotch.

In the morning something made me turn again toward my own region. I was nearing there when I heard a distant cry, and I knew in a moment what it meant. My It had returned to seek me and was again in peril. I bounded forward and saw it all. In a great treetop was my It, and beneath her was the Brown One. I did not know it then, but he had killed her old father and mother, even before he found her with me, and when she fled from our nest he had chased her far away, but vainly. After days of flight and hiding she had eluded him and had come back seeking me, and he had come back as well, thinking, in his dim way, thus to find her. He had found her, indeed, but he was about to find, too, what was not well for him.

She was above him, where the branches were weak and where he could not clamber to her easily, but she was shrieking loudly, as well she might. I made no sound at first. I ran to the tree and climbed, with my club between my teeth, until I reached a limb on which was fighting room, and then I roared aloud. The screaming of It changed in an instant to shrieks of joy. The Brown One glared downward and saw me and scrambled downward with a snarling roar, to the limb upon which I stood. He ran close, and we stood as we had in the other fight, scarce a yard apart, each sustained by the grip of our long toes and with one hand clutching an upright branch, leaving the other free. In his free hand was nothing; in mine was the club. He thrust forward to clutch and pull me to him.

It was his end! I swung my club aloft as he lurched toward me savagely, and smote down fairly upon his head with all my maddened strength. Like clay, his brute skull caved in, for the blow was devilish. He did not even scream. His fingers and toes clung to the limbs for an instant, and then he dropped silently far to the ground. He drew his arms and legs together quiveringly once or twice and then lay still. He was dead!

I danced upon the limb and roared and yelped and mocked. The Brown One was dead! In all the world there was none other so great and wise as I. What other knew the club?

My mate came to me wonderingly and chattering, and we caressed each other. We went down the tree and I beat the head of the Brown One as I had that of the wolf, but there was no need. Already the little insects were running over him. He was dead. In the night something would come and eat him.

We sought our own tree and our nest and were unafraid. We brought more leaves and soft grasses and mosses and coiled our arms about each other when the darkness came each night and were warm and happy. We were mates, and sometimes we would snuggle our heads together and make a soft sound like “Wee-chew, wee-chew, wee-chew.” There is a bird which makes a mating sound like that to-day, only, of course, more musically than could we apes.

Sometimes we went far from the tree, for always I had my club, and It imitated me by walking on her hind legs and, at last, carried a little club herself, though she could not use it very well at first. We had adventures and sometimes scant escapes, but my club was heavy and I was strong, and, when too hard pressed, there were always the treetops for our refuge. But we did not venture far out on the great plains where were the grass-eaters and the fierce things which devoured them, nor did we venture forth at night. Sometimes, for I feared none, we visited the nests of other apes and they came to visit us. And, because of this, a great change came.

There had been rare quarrels with other apes and I had smitten them sorely with my club and they had wondered at it and feared it. They saw my boldness, too, and how I killed for food things which I crept upon and which I could not have killed with my bare hands, and soon they, too, sought clubs and tried to imitate me, for imitation is ever the way of apes. They could not do as well, for they had no such grip as I with my maimed thumb, but, even with its use by their finger grip alone, the thing became a weapon and soon our kind, of whom there were not great numbers—there were other apes of other kinds whom we hated, because they were so like and yet so unlike us—carried each a club and so began to walk erect as I did. And we learned to band ourselves together, even more wisely than the wolves, and we could surround one of the wild horses in a gorge or beside a bluff and so get much meat at one time for all of us. We acquired new sounds and cries, too, with our increasing need for speech, and soon all began to recognize them. There was one wild cry sent out in emergency which meant “Club! Club! Bring your Club!” and so it was with other calls. We had no names yet, but something like the beginning of a language was at hand, a tongue of clucks and cries and yelps, but yet the seed of language. All our world was becoming different. The other creatures began to fear us. The smaller, once unafraid, now fled when we appeared, but the great flesh-eaters sought us more fiercely than ever, since we were more careless and conspicuous. But, if we were more daring, we had become more cautious also, and they seldom caught us.

And there came, before all this, a time when It stayed in the nest and I brought her food. And, one day, when I came back with eggs from the nest of a river duck, she held in her arms a tiny ape which was our child. It thrived amazingly, for well cared for were the child and It, my mate. And as a child, my young one ran about erect and smote things with his little stick. So it was, in a way, too, with the children of other apes of our kind. They also learned, though more slowly, to run about on their hind feet and to wield the little clubs they carried.

But sometimes all we apes were in mortal terror, not of the bears and tigers and other dread things of the wood, but of that which came suddenly and made even the fierce beasts themselves fly whining to their dens and hiding-places. Nothing could help us in those awful hours, for there would be rumblings and growlings in the earth beneath us and it would lift itself up in vast, heaving waves, and would sometimes burst open in long rents, and flames and deadly fumes would issue, and great reaches of the forest would disappear and all within them perish, and, when the thundering and roaring ceased, the look of all the world about us would be changed. But these things would pass, though there would be left great fissures through which came sheets of fire which burned continuously; and when the cold came, as it did at times, we could go as near the fire as we dared, and then the cold would seem to go away.

And the days went well for It and me, and other children came and were soon full grown, as was the way, and they took mates and there were many homes in the treetops. We became a strong people, my family and its kind, for we alone had the club. We yet lived much on fruits and nuts and roots and eggs and the shell-fish, but we ate more flesh now, for, as I have said, we had learned to hunt together and that brought an abundance.

But there was ever the thing we should have dreaded more. Away to the north high mountains upreared themselves toward the sky, and through a mighty gorge in these the river came. Beyond the mountains was a vast lake. Sometimes the mountain crests would redden and they would vomit up fire when the upheavals we so feared came and the ground lifted up and split and the forests fell. Then, afterward, would come great storms and the river would be wider and deeper and darker and rush down fiercely, bearing tree trunks and the floating carcasses of wild things. But still we thought little of all this. We lived for each day, as it came, unknowingly.

It was late one afternoon in the hot time when the leaves were heaviest and I was in the nest with It, for there was still another child, and we had done much climbing throughout the day and were curled down and resting, half asleep. Something at last aroused me and I looked about. The air was heavy, but soon there began a rustling of the leaves and then a shaking, but it seemed to come from far away and only the tremor of it to reach us.

Then, all at once, the sky darkened and the earth heaved. It sprang up screaming, with the child held to her, and we both clung desperately to the limbs beside us, as the trees threshed back and forth. Then came the fearful, thundering, blasting sound we knew so well, and flames burst from the distant mountains as they seemed themselves to lift and sway in air. Then followed a roar as of all the sounds of earth together, and I saw the great walls torn apart and rise and fall again, by the light of the awful flames in the darkness far away. The earthquake ceased, but not the dreadful roar, stunning and deafening from afar, but coming nearer and nearer with each instant. Something enormous, black, with a great white foaming crest, uprose and lifted higher than all the forest. The mountain had parted and the great lake was so hurled down upon us! It came, itself a mountain. I saw It, for a moment, with the child held in one arm, then something struck her and she fell. I could see the crest of the coming mountain towering far above me, then I was swept from the limb and, stunned, gasping, strangling, was carried away in the black waters.

CHAPTER II
THE AXEMEN

I awoke lying on a stretch of turf in an angle of the rocks by the river. It was almost midday and it seemed to me that I must have been aroused by the sunshine on my face. I rose to my feet and stretched myself dazedly, for my head hurt me. I reached for the club which lay near me, and examined it curiously. It was not my club at all, and, when I looked about, the rocks and earth and trees appeared as unfamiliar as the weapon. I swung the club joyously, for it was a better one than I had ever seen, strong, well balanced, and heavy at the end. I tried to think, but only mists would come to me. Had I ever another club? Then I perceived that there was something tied around my waist, a broad belt of hyena skin, doubled up on one side into a sort of pocket held together by knotted sinews. In this pocket was a thin flake of flint nearly as broad as my hand and with sharp edges. How came I to have such a thing? And then I noticed, suddenly, and wondered how it was, that the hair all over me was thin and scant. I was frightened, I could not understand it.

I strode out from my place in the rocks and looked across the river. Its banks were new to me. I turned toward the north and there were mountains, though unlike those of old, and when I passed around the ledge, even the forest trees and the rocky passes appeared changed. Had I ever seen other rocks or forests? Then I heard a shout. I turned and saw two great apes—at least I thought them such—each beckoning to me and calling. The cries were followed by loud clucks and gurglings, a kind of talk. And I understood it. How could I do that?

I went toward them slowly, alert and with my club grasped in all readiness, but I was not much alarmed. I felt, but dimly, that the two great creatures were my friends. Each bore a club like mine, but neither lifted it as I advanced. They but pointed up the river and jabbered noisily.

What creatures they were! Almost straight they stood, with no more hair upon their bodies than had I, and their thumbs closed readily and easily upon the fingers, making the grip of their club secure. But it was their faces and the expression upon them which most astonished me. They were quite unlike the dream of apes, still, somehow, with me. They had noses more distinct, their ears were rounded, there was less repellent expanse of jaw and upper lip between the mouth and nostrils, and the teeth, which showed as they chattered, were not so long and sharp. Their eyes, though, were their striking feature, since in them appeared a look of understanding which I recognized. They were of my kind.

I made no answer to them and, as I came near, they looked upon me pityingly, putting their hands to their heads and pointing toward the place where I had awakened. Then, for the first time, I began to realize things. They were saying that I had been hurt. Instinctively I lifted my own hand and there came away a little blood. Who had struck me? I swung my club furiously, but they only chattered the more and made motions, one of them running to the ledge and pointing upward to its top and making a sound which I knew. I had been with them on some sort of an expedition and a stone had rolled down and hurt me as I slept. That was why my head ached and why I could, at first, remember nothing. I was no longer angry. I listened eagerly to what they were trying to tell me.

One of the two, as they pointed up the river, made a repeated bleating, as of an animal in distress, and when he said “Stag,” “Stag,” I knew that there was good hunting close at hand. I shouted and waved my club, and we dashed away together.

The pathway near the river led but a short way before it opened out upon a little low-lying grassy plain extending to the bank, with marshy places here and there, and upon this natural meadow half a score or more great, splendid antlered things were feeding. They grouped near together, with the exception of a single cow, walking round and round one of the marshy pools and bleating piteously at intervals. We shouted when we saw her. We knew that her fawn was mired and helpless and we should kill it and have food.

We entered the tall reeds and grass of the lowland and stooped low, slipping through noiselessly until we were near the distressed mother. Then we uprose and rushed and yelled together. The startled elk leaped and ran swiftly for a distance, then, as there came the sound of struggle and plaintive bleating from the quagmire, she checked herself and turned to charge. There came an awful interjection. There rose from the forest edge, though far away up the river, a roar so fearful and appalling, so dreadful and far-reaching, that all the world seemed dazed from the moment the sound tore across the valley and, even before these echoes died away, the herd of feeding elk leaped forward together in frantic bounds and swept close beside us in their flight, carrying with them the mother cow. The great cave tiger was abroad, though not yet near, and before him all living things must flee. We were shaking ourselves, with fright, but we knew the monster had doubtless just now slain because of the cruel roar which told it, and so we were in no danger for the moment. The elk calf, a great thing nearly a third grown, was standing helpless near the quagmire edge. We ventured in a little way and crushed the thin bones of its head with our hard clubs and, together, dragged it to the firm earth and so, hurriedly, across the valley and up among the rocks. With one on watch, we attacked the body of the calf with our sharp flakes of flint, and with much toil and many strokes made openings in the skin and hacked and hewed and wrenched until we had the beast divided into three parts. Then, each with his burden of skin and flesh upon his back and his club thrust in his belt, we went straining hurriedly across the lowland and up the path among the rocks whence we had come until we were another long distance away, where, climbing upon a huge boulder, we ate ravenously. It was a feast. Very good to eat is the flesh of young stag.

Rested and full of strength, we took up our march again until we turned into the opening of a long gorge, almost a valley, which lay not far from the river and nearly parallel with it. I knew that in this gorge our homes were, but I could not yet remember much about them, though each new scene, as we advanced, became familiar. I recognized the place where I had once killed a hare with a well-hurled stone.

Suddenly one of my companions gave utterance to a long drawn cry, “O-o-e-e, O-o-e-e,” far reaching and sustained, until there came an answer from farther up the valley, “O-o-e-e, O-o-e-e!” Then, in the distance, seeming to issue from the solid rock, came three figures, and I knew they were our people.

In the lead were two women and behind them was a child, a little girl. The woman first to reach us was of middle age, and, chattering joyously, she took the load from the older of my companions and trudged along beside him, as did the younger woman with the other man, and I knew that the women were their mates. All together, we went on to the place whence the woman and child had issued, and there was the entrance to a cave, not very large, but which rose and widened out inside into what was a vast chamber, fifty feet across, at least, and nearly as many high. Away off in one corner of the floor there gleamed a tiny light which indicated a smouldering fire, and about it, tending it, an old man tottered. There were heaps of leaves and grass, too, and upon the floor were a few skins of animals and many bones and roots and the shells of nuts, all scattered heedlessly about. The women chattered continuously, for they were delighted with the meat. Each was eating torn strips, raw, but soon one ran out and brought in an armful of meat, which was stuck firmly upon long sharpened sticks, and thrust into the fed flame until it was burned and blackened and then eaten with greater gusto. The child devoured her share like a young hyena, while the elders sucked and mumbled. The women seemed to know me and be glad that I had come. One of them pointed, laughing, to the burden I had carried, and then up toward the valley, and I knew that my own cave was there. Soon, refreshed, I took up my own burden of the meat and left my friends and followed the path southward, knowing instinctively each rise and run. I reached a place where the rock sloped sharply down and where, halfway up, appeared the dark mouth of a narrow opening. I had reached my home at last.

Up the steep ascent of thirty feet or more was a twisting way, worn smooth. Long travelled must have been that path. I entered the cave and found it very like the other, save that it was not more than a fourth as large. The one I had just left was the largest in all the region.

There were embers still alive where was a spot of red at one end of the cave, and I cast down my load and threw on fresh wood, which was at hand, and then lay down to sleep, for I was tired. But I could not sleep. There were flames and light in the cave and, now, everything came back to me. I remembered the two days before I went away with my companions. I remembered the pleasures and perils of my life, and all the horrors of the discovery, not long ago, when I, returning from a night spent with a hunter in another cave, found all of those I had lived with dead and nearly all devoured, all slain in the cave together, surprised while sleeping, by the wolf pack which had found swift entrance through the opening, for once left carelessly unblocked by slabs of stone.

Then, all at once, with my clearing mind came to me the thought that I was not a solitary creature inhabiting that cave. I ran to its mouth and my “O-o-e-e” went forth resoundingly.

Again and again I called, and at last there was an answer, nearer and nearer with each reply, and a man came running easily. I was glad. It was Woof, my hunting mate, who lived with me in the cave. A great companion was Woof. He had left his own people to come and live with me, for we had known each other a long time. He was almost as tall and strong as I and could run almost as swiftly as the little deer. He loped up the pathway to our home, saw the meat, and shouted aloud in satisfaction and began to roast and eat. He had not been over-fortunate in his hunting in my absence.

We talked long in our clucking way until the day was late. Then we heaped up the stone slabs until the entrance to the cave was filled nearly to the top and threw ourselves down to sleep. As my eyes grew heavy I dreamed again perplexedly. Again I was in the treetops, swinging easily along and hearing familiar cries. And there were flames and roaring and tottering forests. I would waken at times and look upon the smouldering fire and toward where Woof lay breathing deeply, and realize the present, and then a fog would arise and Woof and the cave side would disappear. Had there been something before? I could see, at times, a face, but to whom it belonged I could not tell. I knew it now; it was a face of another time, the merry, impish face of an ape-like creature with whom I had had comradeship. I awakened and groped hungrily in my mind, but could remember nothing. At last I slept contentedly.

With the flood of the fair morning light came still greater clearness to my thoughts. I forgot for a time even that I had dreamed and was, like Woof, eager for the outside. It was a good thing that there was yet meat enough to finish in a great breakfast. As things went we were well-to-do young men. Club in hand, we tumbled down the pathway and swung up the long ravine.

We finally clambered to the summit of towering rocks and looked up and down seekingly; it was a way we had, and with reason, in those death-laden times, never to travel far without ascending a tree or some eminence and searching the entire country in sight. Now we saw nothing moving save two black spots in the direction whence we came. We knew what they meant, and the long-drawn call for them went forth, “O-o-e-e, O-o-e-e!” The two men, running, were Gurr and Hair, my companions of the day before, who were soon beside us there on the rock pile.

Strictly speaking, we had yet no proper names, though we had the result of an effort toward them. We could indicate an absent one, but in most cases only by a sort of mimicry. Thus Woof was so known because of a trick of his in imitating well the “woof” of a startled beast. Gurr was so designated because of his husky voice, and his wife was Goor because her call was similar to his though not so harsh. There was another man with a split lip and singular utterance, and we said “Chu-Chu” when we referred to him. Hair was so called because he was the most hairy one among us. We must have known more than a hundred different sounds for different things. Names, or sounds, we had for fire, water, food, the sun and moon and trees and rocks and clubs, and for most of the great beasts.

And certain other words we had, too, that had to do with actions, such as fighting and the hunt. We had indeed the inception of a language which lifted us above and beyond all other creatures. Of some personal names, mostly imitative, there were Gluck-Gluck, Blink, and Limp, and there was one big cave man Ugh, who grunted savagely at times, and who was very strong. His jaws were heavy, his mouth was armed with great teeth, and his thumbs and great toes were very long. He could climb better than most of us, but was dull-witted and not any more successful than others in the hunt. Once he built a great nest in a treetop, but abandoned it and returned to his hollow in the rocks, because it was warmer there.

Not long had there been fire in the caves, and in some tribes they had no fire at all, and ate flesh raw. Once the old man, Hair’s father, tried to tell me what his father had told him of how they first learned that they could bring fire with lighted brands from the fire mountains. It was a wonder that he could remember so much. Now, when the fire failed us we went to the burning places miles away and lighted fagots and journeyed back, building frequent fires on our way, so that each of us could keep his torch alight until we reached the caves again. It was rarely, though, that this was necessary, for we had learned to keep our fires by covering giant brands with ashes when we went away, and when, at times, a failure came, the fire could usually be renewed from another cave. Always some of the old women or old men remained at home to keep the fires alight. Our life was fierce and simple. We thought little, and cared not, save for the moment. We were hungry and must eat; we were cold and must seek warmth; we were in peril and must flee or fight; we had the elementary passions and must mate; we had rages sometimes and sought to slay. There were not many of us in the long gorge or valley, though nature had made it a place abounding in caves everywhere. We were but a dozen or two in all, doubtless all related or descended from a single family, and the nearest creatures of our kind were another group living in the hills far to the southward. These people we seldom met, and when by chance there was a meeting, it was with a somewhat sullen watchfulness on either side, though we had never warred. Such were we, hungry and gorged, alternately, alert among the other creatures, seeking some, fearing some, chasing or fleeing, and having the vast advantage of being almost omnivorous in our feeding. And there was a fierce joy to it as well. Hoo! It was a life!

We four trooped onward together, for we had made a plan, and when we neared the cave of Ugh we howled together and he joined us, grim as the great-jawed hyena. We wanted him along because we might have need of one who could deal strong blows, and his club was heavy. I envied him that tough club of blackened wood, the more so because it chanced that I alone among us might not find the thing too mighty for the arm.

We needed force that day, for ours was to us a mighty prospect. There were urus, which Woof had discovered a day or two before, now pasturing in a not distant lowland, and the slaying of the urus was a great event comparable only to the rare killing of the aurochs, the mighty bison of the time. Woof had discovered a band of urus a day or two before feeding in a narrow valley which ended in a precipice some thirty feet in height as it neared the river. In this valley were various small mounds, and we could, by utilizing these, get the urus between us and the river, and by loud shouting and a sudden rush drive them in a panic to their deaths. This had been done once in the past and might be done again. We went eastward through the hills, until we could see the urus feeding below, and then crept down into the valley, ever keeping the little mounds between us and the grazing beasts, Ugh in the lead. Then something happened. There was a threatening bellow as Ugh crept by one of the mounds between us, and he sprang back, with abundant reason, for, within twenty yards of him was a huge bull feeding apart from the rest. For a moment the beast stood still, then, with lowered head and glaring eyes, charged savagely upon the hunter, while the rest of us fled, yelling.

Not a moment too soon did Ugh leap and crouch beside the mound, but even his mortal peril did not destroy his hardihood. Even as he eluded the rush, he swung his club and brought it down with all his might as the brute swept by, seeking, by some chance, to stun him. It was not to be, nor, because of an amazing happening, was Ugh in further peril. It was the strange chance in a thousand, but the club, driven so hardly by that enormous, muscular arm, came fairly down upon the sharp point of one of the great horns and, dense and tough as was its fibre, split and impaled itself and was wrenched from the grip of Ugh as the beast crashed by. And then followed a grotesque spectacle.

Stunned, dazed, crazed with the pain of the benumbing blow, the urus galloped blindly about in circles, bellowing and almost bleating and shaking its great head. The impaled club was flung off at last, flying a score of yards, and, a moment later, the beast, regaining his senses, went dashing off in the direction already taken by the flying herd. So ended the urus hunt. We had failed, but that hunt, in its indirect results, was vast in its effects upon the future of the Cave men.

Ugh regained his weapon, split at its end, and, as we gathered again, stood gazing upon it ruefully. We wandered away to where the creek of the valley entered the river, and found crayfish and the eggs of waterfowl, and feasted merrily, and lay there resting in a place where the sun shone warm on the rocks.

But Ugh could not keep his eyes from his split club. It was rent fairly across the middle of its heavier end for a length of more than a foot from its head, and he, with his strong hands, could pull the sides an inch or two apart. Woof stood beside him, and as Ugh thus strained the wood until there was an opening, Woof, in sheer sport, dropped into the inviting space a great flake of flint which had parted from the rock and lay there ready to his hand. As Ugh, surprised, released the parts they clashed together upon the flint and held it there, for the wood was tough of fibre and had a vicious springiness. There, held strongly and tenaciously in the jaws of the cleft club, was the broad, heavy flint flake, its sharp edges outstanding inches on either side. In the hand of Ugh was a rude axe, the first whose handle was ever clutched by man!

We all stood looking curiously at this strange mingling of wood and stone, when Ugh, with a hoarse cry, swung it aloft and waved it above our heads in mock threatening and shouted “Kill!” Well might he yell out “Kill!” We knew it could do that were the stone but firmly fixed, and we all alike yelled, but wondered at it. The stone was left in the club just as it had been gripped and so was carried back with us. More than it did the others, the stone and wood so seemingly grown together in what might be a mighty weapon, fascinated me. For the split club with a stone—already we sometimes, by signs, exchanged things in the beginning of all barter—I gave Ugh my own fine club, and my new possession I carried with me to my cave that night. A dim idea of something great was forming in my mind. Could the stone be held there always, what a weapon I would have! I smote with the rude axe, and unshattered and unmoved it bit deep into thick tree bark. With repeated strokes the axe stone loosened a little in its accidental socket and I was troubled. I strained it into proper bearing in the cleft again and studied how to make it permanently firm. The problem was still with me when I reached our cave with Woof. It came to me to tie the axe as we tied things, with sinews—for we had, somehow, learned how to make a knot—and with sinew I toiled long beside the fire until I had bound, with my utmost straining strength, and firmly fastened together the intersection of the rugged flake of stone and the tough wood. Then I ran out and down the path in the moonlight and tried the axe recklessly upon a tree trunk and found the stone immovable. It could not be wrenched nor sprung from the eye. I had an axe! The axe, mightiest weapon and implement in the hand of man for thousands of years to come, had been invented by chance, and rudely, in a single day. The age of wood and the club alone had passed. The Age of Stone had come!

So I alone had the axe, and soon, in our hunting as in the littler things, like the getting away of a vine in our paths through the forest, as compared with the axe the club was a feeble thing. The sharp stone could shear the little things, and the sharp and heavy stone, driven deeply, could bring death where the club might only stun or bruise. With the axe I could readily open a way along the thick skin of a slain thing, making easy the stripping for the flint flakes, and with the axe I could divide the body. We must all have axes! With my own I split the ends of other clubs, and flint flakes were sought to bind in them, and soon all grown males of our kith and kin bore axes as did I. But, oddly enough, there was no axe possessed in all the clan quite so hard and rightly shaped and keen as mine. Nature had made, accidentally, a better axe than we, in our crude and bungling way, could fashion at the time. Yet we were better equipped now than ever before for either hunt or fray, though there came soon a miserable time when we almost lost our courage and were fearful in our coming and going.

There was a broad and pleasant wide-open space, almost a plain, in the near forest which was our nearest and favoured hunting ground. It was acres in extent and upon it were hosts of berry bushes and little nut thickets, in which harboured many hares and small game of all sorts, and also birds that ran upon the ground where were nuts, which were good to eat. Food of some kind we always found there. In the midst of this small plain uprose, as if all out of space, though near the mountains, a long, huge rock, perhaps some twenty feet in height, and with sides so sheer that none except a man or other climbing animal could reach the top. But some great upheaval had split this monster rock crosswise, and so there gapped through it a passageway, broad at one end and narrowing at the other, the space between the walls filled with soil up to the level of the land about. There stood this strange split rock, almost in the midst of this little plain, of so much importance to us, but which now we dared not enter. There had come there one of the things we feared and had made it his chosen haunt.

What brought the cave bear to our hunting place no one could tell. It may have been the berries or the roots or some whim of the beastly savage brain. We had, shudderingly, to hunt around but not near the little plain, and in my own heart a great anger was growing. “Why? Why?” I said in my dull brain.

Whatever the cause, there he was, and one day, when two of the cave men had ventured a little way in the bushes, one of them was smitten down by a huge paw, and the other heard but one gasp in the bushes as he fled. Daily, watching from the treetops which fringed the place, could we see the hulking monster as he ranged the open spaces or went toward his lair, to be lost there for a while. And near that thicket lair rose the vast rock.

One night we were together, a company of us, in the great cave of Hair and Gurr, and we were hungry, because we had come from bad hunting toward the north. We could have found more had we not feared to invade the bushy plain, and I could have howled aloud in anger, for I was half famished. I thought of the purple berries and the sweet nuts and the sucking roots and the little things to kill, and I sulked off alone and dared and ventured in my mind, and there came the thought, a thing so dreadful that I gasped in the thinking of it, yet which clung to me as fiercely as cling the vines which bear the blood-red blossoms on the rocks. And my dreams came to a red climax the next day, when one man, venturing into the borders of the plain, just narrowly escaped the monster. All through the night I tossed fitfully, and again the desperate fancy gripped me. I leaped to my feet and swung my axe and yelled out “Bear” and “Kill!” and Woof awakened and leaped in alarm, and laughed when he saw that I seemed raving. Sometimes Cave men had madness.

But the craze was on me, and, the next morning, I ran up and down the valley and howled aloud and screamed and yelped that I, I alone, would kill the monster in the plain. The others heard my ravings and came out, but they only grinned and chuckled, though all followed me as I turned and ran southward and toward the wood-path which led through the forest to where was the little plain—and death. I did not linger, and my following tribe ran close behind me until I reached the very edge of the dangerous ground, when, as monkeys climb, they swarmed into the treetops while I slipped forward among the bushes, a crazed and yet contained thing, half demented, strong and unconsciously, blindly, seeking what seemed suicide, but—with the Axe.

I crept into a little pathway and saw nothing, and so slipped along unhindered until I reached the rock. I climbed it, tremblingly, for another mood had come upon me now. I was afraid. I threw myself down upon the stone and shook all over as the leaves shake in the aspen tree which the wind owns. So in awful terror I tossed about for a time until, in my very desperation, the rage came back again and I cared for nothing in all the world, for the blue sky or the people in the treetops or myself or death or mangling. I leaped to my feet and danced up and down and whooped and swung my arms. Then, in a near thicket, there was a rustle, and “woof,” and the huge cave bear rushed forth and gazed about.

Slowly at first, looking up toward me, the monster came shuffling and shambling into the open. He saw me plainly now, and there was another great “woof,” a growl, and he lurched forward with astounding swiftness. And then just when the dread was most appalling, the awful sickness, which had come again, left me, and I became cold of blood and insanely crafty and blood-hungry. Then I, the Axeman, dropped to the ground, not a score of yards before the approaching beast!

The monster uprose, for a moment, apparently astonished, then plunged forward with a growling roar as I dashed in flight between the gaping jaws of the split rock.

Not twenty yards through the rock did the fissure run, but I was near that fearful paw-stroke when I leaped through the further narrow opening and fell panting to the ground. And even as I sprawled, the great body hurled and wedged itself into the tapering space, and the “swish” of the paw passed close beside my head. I lay just out of reach. I could see the red jaws and grinding teeth and wicked, glaring eyes and hear the rush of the foul breath above me.

Straining outward with his one free arm the brute struck savagely, and his great strokes fairly whistled through the air as they swept within a hand’s breadth of me. For a moment I was faint again with the sickening fear, and then once more the change came. I leaped to my feet and yelled. There, pushing, gnashing his teeth and striking, clawing blows in vain, was the monster who had been our dread. I became a sudden demon. I roared as roars the tiger. I danced about closely as the beast strained out with lowered head, and then I leaped in as the paw went by and whirled my axe aloft and struck. What a blow was that! When had even the strong arm of the Cave man delivered stroke as mighty as that which sent my axe clean to the haft into the bone and brain of that huge head? Clean to the haft the blade was driven, and there it stayed as I leaped backward wrenching in vain at the tough handle. I shrank aside to avoid another stroke, but that was needless. There was a roar, a wild, helpless clawing, and then the huge head in which the axe was buried sagged downward and the monstrous thing was dead! I, single-handed, had slain the great cave bear! Never before in all the happenings of time had so great a thing been done!

The shuddering, breathless people in the treetops were the insane ones now. Their frenzied shoutings filled the wood at first, and soon they were around me, but wondering and awestricken and silent again. Their demeanour toward me was such as they had never shown before. I was greater than they. The huge body of the bear was hauled out and the skin taken, toilsomely, and ever after I slept upon it in my cave.

The world had changed for me. I was another being and I could not help it. I had been called “Scar” because of the great scar upon my face straight up and down from eye to jaw, but they changed my name and called me “Bear,” and like a bear I must have grown somewhat as time passed. The news of the great slaying went about among the creatures of our kind as far as our world extended and I became an awesome man apart. Even Woof, my comrade, seemed half afraid of me and, at last, following the mating instinct, took a mate and went away from me to live in a cave far up the gorge. I had it in my mind to take a mate myself, and resolved upon an almost burly woman of the Cave people I had met afar, who feared nothing and who hunted, sometimes alone, as did the men. I went to get her, but she had disappeared. She had hunted once too often recklessly. I might have taken another, but, I know not why, the mood to do so never came again. I still joined with the others in the chase and my axe stroke was the heaviest, and none surpassed me whenever there was danger to be met.

And the seasons and the years passed, and all men had the stone axes, and we fed well, and children were born, and the people of the long gorge grew in number. Then came a pall. The world was going wrong.

Creeping as creeps the snake in the grass and bushes, down where the rocks shelve off into the lowlands, had come, with the swiftly passing seasons, a dreadful something. The sun, the big blazing thing up in the sky, seemed growing old and helpless and did not warm us as he had before. And down the sides of the mountain came crawling those wide blue-white cloaks of ice, never stopping, always crawling.

The seasons had been changing steadily. Each year was unlike the one before it, with skies more lowering and chillier blasts and less of sunshine. And in the cold time the snow fell and stayed longer than in the past and did not leave the mountain tops at all in summer, and the days of the seasons when the sun shone and there came the fruits and nuts were not so many. Ever the grass upon the plains grew less and the creatures feeding there became less in their numbers, and it was not good hunting. There was a constant thinning of the creatures which felt the change and ever they turned toward the south, the south above which the sun seemed to shine less coldly. The chill came even to me, and I thought dimly that it might be because I was no longer young, for I had seen old men shudder when the cold came. But it was not that, it was the world itself, the ice sheets pushing themselves down from the north.

Sometimes the hunters, venturing too far away, hampered in snow, would become exhausted and go to sleep, and when they did this they never woke. When we found them they would not answer, and we took their axes and left them. It came to me at last, that we must do as had done the beasts, and flee southward, where, perhaps, it would be warmer. Why had I not sooner seen the need? Why had our clan alone been reckless fools and failed to join the birds and beasts, and others of our own kind?

The cold became more dreadful. The wind howled and swept away the snow, leaving bare the ice masses on mountains down which swift streams had once run. The great river was ice-locked and silent. An awful stillness came upon the world about us, so that our own cries sounded hoarse and loud. We were cold and starving and, at last, we were forced together in the cave of Hair and Gurr, where there was room for all who remained of us. We gathered much fuel and kept up a fire, about which we huddled, famished and desperate. The end seemed very near.

One night, a storm fiercer than any we had ever known, raged down the valley. From the mouth of the cave we could see but the swirling drifts and hear only the roaring and shrieking of the wind. But at midnight it seemed to me I could distinguish another sound amid the unearthly clamour. It was different from the other noises, a bellowing in which was a note of fear. I had heard the trumpetings of the great mammoths once, and this somewhat recalled the sound, but it could not be. This was no haunt of the monster things, yet from somewhere up the gorge the sound continued, now higher or lower and sometimes moaning and most pitiful. Near morning it ceased entirely, but I must know what it meant. At daybreak I started up the gorge with four companions.

We did not have far to go. Fighting our way through, we came to a mighty hollow in which the snow had drifted to a depth many times the height of a man, and there, plunged deeply, almost buried, was an enormous, brown, hairy mass. It was incredible; it could not be that there had come to us such salvation, but it was true. Here was a strayed mammoth, last of his gigantic kind in the accursed region, caught helpless in the pass and dead, now to our hands!

With shouts of joy that were near to madness we hurled ourselves down upon the mountain of flesh, hewed frantically with our axes and cut out great chunks of meat and bore them to the cave, and there the whole starved company of us roasted and ate until we could eat no more. We could but eat and lie about and sleep and eat, and sleep again throughout all that day and night. And the next day, with much hewing and many burdened journeys, the whole of the vast body was stored within the cave. We were prisoners, but we had food and warmth. Soon all were strong again and there was almost merriment, for we were foolish.

We fed—for we were not many and the body of the mammoth was a monster thing—we fed and lounged before the flames for many days, but we did not think, though the wind still roared outside and the drifts were becoming deeper. I, who should have been wiser than the others—fool that I was—remained as dazed and warm and sluggish as the rest. Surely the trials which had come upon us must have changed me. But at last I woke to an affrighted half-understanding. The heap of mammoth flesh was growing smaller, and warmth, it seemed to me, might never come again. The storm ceased and a cold sun appeared and we could see the way, at least, along the silent valley. We must go or die. I became a furious thing. I leaped about and shouted. I whirled my axe and threatened overmasteringly. I made all left of the following burden themselves with what remained of the flesh and so drove them out before me to the southward.

All day long we plodded, and when night fell we harboured, shiveringly, in a vacant cave, and with the next morning took up the journey again, though some fell fainting as we struggled. We left them as they fell, for we could do no more. And then, toward the evening of the third day, I caught my foot in a rock crevice and wrenched my ankle as I lurched, so that I heard the bones crack, and I, the strongest, became in a moment the most helpless of the band. I plunged and floundered ahead in agony. I bellowed as does the bull to his dun following, but my companions did not heed me. We were past all helping and I was left alone. I fell prone in the deep snow and the cold crept upon me. It was bitter cold. And then to me it became less cold, and the snow began falling heavily and softly again, covering me with a warm blanket. I was tired and I could but sleep, restfully, too, as often I had done after some long chase. And I had barely slept when there came to me dreams like the pleasant memories of a thousand years. There were soft skies above me, and waving boughs, and a fragrance in my nostrils. And a laughing, apish face peered at me from between the branches bright with blossoms. And then there came other visions, but dimmer and more senseless, and so I slipped away into all dreamlessness.

CHAPTER III
THE BOWMEN

The sunlight was filtering down upon me through the broad foliage of a tree of an unfamiliar kind. Birds with hooked bills, brilliant plumage, and squalling voices were flitting among the branches all about. The rank perfume of strange flowers was in my nostrils, and to my ears came a pleasant, distant sound, the softened roar and lapping of waves upon a beach. I was lying in a little glade, wood-surrounded on three sides, but open to the southward. Through the space thus unobscured I could see a blue expanse of sky but nothing more, prone as I was upon the turf, my head resting on what was soft and furry, the folded skin of some wild animal. I was faint and weak; my eyes were opened for a moment only, and then once more I slept. An hour later I awoke again, refreshed and stronger, and, with much difficulty, succeeded in raising myself upon an elbow. My appreciation of things was returning slowly and it seemed to me—I cannot tell why—that I was not alone, that there must be another presence in the glade. I turned my head as well as my position would allow, and looked about me.

Seated upon a little hummock was a woman and, even as I turned, she saw the movement and ran toward me with a glad cry. She was a splendid creature. Tall she was, and her long hair, thrown back uncombed and tangled, swung down below her slender waist. There was down upon her brown arms and her bare legs, and she moved with the swift grace of the tiger or leopard kind. Her mouth was large, and her teeth gleamed sharply, but it was a fair mouth nevertheless, and her eyes were dark and deep. Her only garment was a soft robe of coney skin passing over one shoulder, and leaving half the full bosom exposed. The robe was held close to her body by a belt of some sort and extended to her knees. Brown she was indeed, a creature of the sun and air and storm, yet her skin was smooth and soft. But it was her eyes I saw. They spoke to me.

The appearance of the woman did not surprise me. It seemed a matter of course that she should be there, and my heart leaped as I looked upon her. I was still dazed, but I knew that she belonged to me. There was a sense of protective ownership of her and of a need of her, this savage beauty whom I might smite if she displeased me, but for whom I would battle to the death. She was beside me in a moment, kneeling with a pitying look in her eyes and beginning at once to unwind the strings of inner bark which held in place a huge bandage around my leg not far above the knee. Very gently and carefully she removed the mass of green, wet leaves covering others nearest the flesh. These macerated into a sort of pulp. Cautiously she lifted the mass and there, in my thigh, I saw a gash which had ceased to bleed but which was raw and open. Nor deep nor dangerous was this wound, but evidently I had lost much blood and so had fallen weak and senseless. As gently as she had taken it away the woman renewed the bandages with new pulp and leaves and, the binding finished, she looked at me happily.

“The Boar,” she said.

The boar, the savage boar! Yes, I dimly remembered now. There had been a chase somewhere, and the wild boar had charged me, but where were the rest of my tribe, those I had led away from the devouring of the mammoth, to take up the desperate southward quest? Where were the drifting snows and the fierce winds and bitter cold and awful loneliness, the drowsiness and dream of death?

The bandage in its place, the woman sat beside me and stroked my face softly, but only for a little time. She arose quietly, went a little distance away, curled herself down upon the green turf, and seemed to fall asleep on the instant. Then I realized what it meant. She must have been alert and watching throughout the night, and how much longer I could not tell, and so was wearied, if not near to exhaustion. My own strength I felt returning to me, though when I sought to rise to my feet I failed miserably because of the pain the effort brought to my wounded leg. I crawled to the foot of the tree, and leaning my back against the trunk, sought to collect my scattered senses and realize, if I could, the situation. Where could I be? Who, indeed, was I?

As my glance wandered about it was drawn to certain objects upon the ground not two yards away from me. Only one of them was familiar; it was a stone axe, but the haft was of a different wood and colour from that of the axe with which I had slain the great cave bear, and the heavy blade was polished so that it shone in the sunlight. It was a beautiful axe and I resolved that I must have it, if it were not mine already. Beside the weapon lay something which greatly puzzled me at first. It was a long shaft of some tough wood, but its head was of stone like that of the axe, though of a different shape, long and sharp and pointed and held in the shaft’s split end by knotted sinews. At last I comprehended; it must be a spear, but the only spears we had ever known in the land of cold were long sticks sharpened at the end and charred and hardened in the fire. They were but trifling things compared with what this must be in the fight or hunt.

But it was what remained that most aroused my curiosity and perplexed me. There was a stout, springy length of ash, as long nearly as my own height, with the ends bent toward each other and so held by a strong sinewy cord which stretched between them. Lying beside this curious thing was a number of very slender shafts, each notched at one end and bearing at the other a little stone head shaped like that of the spear. I could not understand them and finally gave up the problem. I crawled back to the skin bundle and lay down and slept again.

It had been mid-forenoon when my latest sleep began; when I awoke it was almost night. I was aroused by the call of a pleasant voice beside me, “Scar! Scar!” and the continuous patting of a hand upon my shoulder. I was wide awake and with my mind all restored in an instant.

“What is it, Otter?” I answered.

She laughed joyously. “You know again; you will soon be well. He struck hard, but the cut is not deep. Soon you will run. Your arrows killed him. We will go and eat.”

All this she said in short, chattering words and with much gesticulation. It was an odd sort of incomplete speech. She helped me to my feet and I found that I could stand without much difficulty. I managed to hobble along by her side, leaning on her heavily. My wound ceased to pain me and my strength was fast returning. As for my dreams of cold and of other things, such as the great beast buried in the snow, they were but dreams, assuredly.

We came out upon a far extending shore, and there, magnificently coloured in blue and crimson by the sky and the setting sun, extending beyond all vision, heaved the mighty sea. How great was then the later named Mediterranean! Far back where now the desert is, lay its unseen southern shores, and the strand upon which we stood lay farther to the north than when existed kingdoms of later ages. The spectacle was wonderful, but all familiar to me.

We passed slowly along the shore until we reached a rocky place wherein was a little hollow in front of which was burning a fire replenished by my anxious mate while I had slept. Brands for the fire had been brought from our distant cave before my hurt had been received. Otter led me into the little opening and brought flesh of a boar from a hiding place in the rocks and roasted it in the fire and fed me to repletion. Then, having eaten herself as eats a healthy, omnivorous animal of the wild, she coiled down beside me in the little recess, after leaning logs and driftwood against the opening, as some defence against all prowling things. My weapons she placed at my hand.

I awoke in the morning astonishingly refreshed, and could limp about without the assistance of Otter, and with little pain. We must go inland to where were the ledges and where was our cave among the others. There I could rest easily until all my strength returned. So we took up the slow journey and entered the forest, plodding doggedly along the paths within its depths. We had with us some of the roasted boar’s flesh and ate of it when we were hungry.

On the journey we came upon a little open space where were great birds, the bustards, moving about, and I killed one with an arrow, rejoicing the while that I was so good a bowman. Otter carried the huge bird lightly, saying we should have the best of food when we reached our home. My dazedness of the day before, when I failed to recognize my weapons, was all gone now. Was not I, Scar, the greatest archer among my people? Was not Otter, my mate, the greatest in the water of them all? Yet, as to Otter, it had been but a little time since the Cave people had learned to swim. Like the monkeys, which we sometimes shot with arrows in the woods, the Cave men had ever dreaded the water. It was in the days of our great, great grandfathers, so the very old men told us, that the change came, and then by accident.

There had been a wide and deep creek close beside the caves in which our forefathers dwelt, and it had been a great barrier between the rocky country and good hunting grounds on the other side. One day my own great grandfather, when a young man, slipped upon a wet stone and fell into the water and was swept away and they did not even look for him, for in those days he who fell into deep water was drowned, and what good to seek for that which was gone? But my great grandfather caught hold of a piece of light driftwood, and though it would not lift him entirely, yet, with his chin upon it, his head was sustained above the water until he reached a shallow place where he could wade ashore. He came back to the caves and beat my great grandmother sorely, because she was eating when he returned. He brought back with him the bit of driftwood and thenceforth played in the water with it, tying it beneath his chin and making great strokes with his arms and legs until there came a day when he found, to his wonder, that he did not need the driftwood to sustain him, but could go about in the water as did the otter and the beaver, though never in a way to equal them. And others tried to do as he did, and, though some were drowned, in the end it came that all the Cave people, even the children, could swim. A great advantage was this in the hunt or on a journey of any kind. And among us all, at this time, my mate, my slender Otter, was swiftest in the water. So her name had come to her.

We travelled far this day and crossed many streams and I was nearly spent, when after nightfall we came upon ledges of tumbled rocks uprising near the river and in the midst of a dense wood, and there entered our own cave without arousing any of the people in the other caves. It was not a large cave, but was most comfortable. There was a great bed of moss covered with skins beside one of the brown walls, and from an ash-filled hollow at one side Otter uncovered still glowing embers. In front of this hollow were a lot of stones laid carefully, whereon meat could be roasted. Just inside the cave’s entrance, but not large enough to entirely fill it, was a round rock of sandstone, not too heavy, which Otter alone rolled into the opening. We sought the couch of moss and skins and slept at once, for each of us was weary.

I awoke, it seemed to me, almost well, for from flesh wounds we Cave men recovered swiftly. I awoke with a fragrance in my nostrils. Otter had already risen, and the bustard, cleanly plucked, was roasting on the stones before the fire my mate had built. We ate most of the big bird at that one meal, for we had slept long and were hungry. Then, with Otter beside me, I took my bow and bark quiver of arrows and limped outside the cave. We had hardly come into the sunlight when there came to our ears a shout and the twanging of a bowstring and, a moment later, around a turn in the ravine, appeared the Climber, often my companion in the hunt. He was shooting arrows upward and catching them as they fell, in mere sport, shouting meanwhile to arouse me, for he did not yet know that I had been lamed by the boar. We called to him and he clambered up to us and heard the story of my hunt, laughing only when he heard its issue, for we did not sympathize deeply in that age, though we would sometimes fight for each other valiantly enough. The Climber was armed as I with bow and spear and clad in the same way, with only a clout of skin about his middle. Despite his careless demeanour he had news to bring. Some of the Hill men had been seen lurking about at the foot of the wooded mountain slopes to the westward!

The Hill men were our natural enemies and had been so since a time beyond which none of the old men could remember. They were unlike us in their ways, existing chiefly on fruit and nuts and roots, which they stored in the mountain caves, where they lived, and they had no bows, carrying only stone axes and long spears. They hunted less than we, but were extremely strong and savage and their numbers made them dangerous. Many a wanderer of the Cave men had disappeared when these hairy savages of the hills had sometimes invaded our side of the river, and word of a threatened raid by them was but a signal for more than ordinary caution.

In a few days I was well again and the fight with the big boar something almost forgotten. There came, for a time, no incident in the life of our scattered group. We hunted and fished and fed well and were warm, for it was a good country and the climate mild. But for old Fang, the arrow-maker, there would have been a pleasant enough monotony to our existence. Fang was more vicious than any of the beasts in the wood; he seemed more like the Things we had never seen, but dreaded, the Things which whispered strangely when the wind blew through the forests at night and which roared and bellowed when the great storms came. He was not like the rest of us. He was the first monopolist, too, the world had ever known.

Our arrows were excellent, not rude chipped things such as our ancestors had known, but smoothed and polished and keen-edged and deadly when launched by a strong arm from a strong bow. A task it was to make an arrow such as one of ours, for there was first the rude chipping and then the weary polishing of the flint by rubbing it upon wetted sandstone. Few of us had patience for all this, and old Fang, who lived alone in a cave in a thicket close beside a little waterfall of the brook running down to the river, was arrow-maker for most of us. We paid him for the arrows by bringing him meat and skins and all the means for living, and his wicked eyes would gleam when we brought them to him.

He was a misshapen creature, with one leg so distorted that it made him half a cripple, teeth which protruded viciously, and eyes like those of the snakes which sunned themselves upon the clogged driftwood beside the river banks. A great archer he was, but he seldom hunted, for he could but limp, with his twisted leg. At last came a time when he never went abroad at all. It came curiously and in a wicked way.

The fall in the little brook which ran beside the cave of Fang was but three or four yards in height, but the water dropped sheerly and strongly and had worn a little hollow in the stone beneath, a broad bowl a yard across, in which, in a miniature whirlpool, the waters swirled round and round as if aboil. One day a hunter who had brought to Fang some arrow-heads to be polished, accidentally dropped one of them in the water as he leaped the brook above the falls and, counting it lost, paid no attention to it. The keen eye of the arrow-maker had seen the thing and, knowing that the arrow-head could be easily recovered, he said nothing. He would get it for himself.

The old man, busied at his work, forgot the arrow-head for a month, then one day he remembered and found it at last amid the swirling pebbles and looked upon it in astonishment as he drew it forth. Not with all his labour of rubbing the flint heads upon coarse sandstone could he polish an arrow like to this, The sand and pebbles in the foaming bowl had done the work far better than could he. An idea came to him. The pool should be his and his alone, and the water and the little pebbles should do his polishing. So he put chipped arrow-heads into the bowl and, after that, the hunters for a time wondered more than ever at the perfection of his work.

One day an old woman leading a child and seeking nuts came close to the edge of the falls and peered over the bank curiously. Her body was found there later and it was plain that an arrow had passed through it, though the shaft could not be found. The child, which had fled shrieking back to the cave, could but tell what the old woman was doing when she fell down. Later, a hunter who lingered carelessly near the pool was shot as ruthlessly, but lived long enough to reach companions to whom he could give no account as to whence the arrow came. But all understood. There was little justice then, and there were no attempts at punishment. The old demon owned the waterfall. As for me, I paid slight heed to the matter. For that I nearly lost my Otter.

One day I had shot an arrow into a wild pig in a wooded height just beyond the cave of Fang and, as I pursued it straightforwardly through the bushes, Otter ran around through an open space to intercept its flight and pierce it with another arrow, if she might, for she shot almost as well as I, though far less strongly. She was near the pool when the pig dashed from the thicket, and she shot at it as I broke through. Then, of a sudden, she shrieked wildly and dropped her bow and I saw her bravely plucking at an arrow which had pierced her arm. It had come from the cave of Fang. I called to Otter, who had already darted into the bushes, and she came running to me. I drew the arrow forth with little difficulty, for it was not a dangerous wound, though through no fault of the murderous archer. Only Otter’s swift step as she shot at the pig had kept the arrow from her body.

We went back into the wood and there I left Otter while I circled about to regain the cave of Fang. I saw him close beside the pool and shot, though it required a long arrow-flight. The shaft lowered with the distance, but pierced him slightly in the thigh, and, with a snarl, he glided into the bushes and behind the trunk of a great tree. A moment later an arrow tossed my hair, and then I, too, went into hiding. We sought glimpses of each other as we circled about, but there was no fair chance afforded until my quiver was emptied and then—for Fang could not run as could I—I rejoined my mate in safety. I knew that either Fang or I must die.

There was little thought of Fang after we had reached the cave. There was heard all about us the cry: “The Hill men! The Hill men!” and there was reason for the alarm. A great band of the mountain savages had just been seen by a hunter, going up the river on the further bank. Well we knew what that portended. They outnumbered us five to one, but the Hill men could not swim and they were going up the river to the first shallow where they could cross in safety. The fording place was where a gorge entered the river through a rock which rose in a long precipice on either side. Into and up this gorge, if they could, must the Hill men come. All the Cave people were now together and we held anxious consultation. It seemed to me that there was but one thing to do, and in the end all our fighters agreed with me. We must assemble at the mouth of the gorge before the Hill men reached the place and there dispute the crossing to the end; there, with our bows and upon firm ground, we might have some chance against them despite their overpowering numbers. Soon all those capable of fight were on the hurried march, including over half the women. Only the old men and women and the children were left in the caves, since all lives were at stake. Even the vengeful old Fang, who had been summoned, was limping with us, for he was in equal danger with the rest. All night we wound our way along the forest paths and by dawn were in the gorge, where we rested and ate of the dried food brought with us. No Hill men appeared in sight until a little after noon and then they came in what seemed to us a host. There were of us Cave men and women some seventy-five, of the Hill men at least four hundred, fierce looking creatures, armed with spears and stone axes, and terrifying to look upon. Yet our fathers had once beaten them and why should not we? We had a vast store of arrows and good bows, and better spears and axes than had the foe.

They came, bellowing like wild beasts, and we went down the sloping bank to meet them at the crossing. The leader, a huge creature, shaking his spear threateningly, plunged in first and I yelled with delight as I saw, when he reached the middle of the river, that the water rose to his armpits. As he gained a shallower part and upreared his hairy breast, I drove an arrow into it, and his spear fell and he toppled over and was swept down stream. My comrades were doing as well, since there was room for nearly all of us to shoot; and the slaughter was fairly on! The Hill men seemingly knew no fear. They plunged in from behind by scores and one or two had almost reached our banks when they were speared, one after another, by Bull, the most gigantic of the Cave men, who had rushed in to meet them. Still they came in a desperate, roaring mass. So I have seen a herd of the great aurochs cross a stream mightily. There were not enough of us to do the killing. The waters of the river were red. More than half the Hill men had been slain, but the pack came howling on, now, still more like monstrous wolves. We shot until there was no more time to notch our arrows, and then we waded in a little way and met them with our spears and axes. I had no fear; I was but a raging, blood-thirsty, killing thing! We held them at bay for a time, and so many of them were slain that now they did not more than twice outnumber us, but those of us in front were exhausted by the struggle, and the remnant of the Hill men were still fresh. I staggered back, as another Cave man took my place, and went a little up the slope and refilled my quiver and stood there breathing heavily for a moment with others as spent as I. That breathing space did us good, and well that it was so, for it saved the Cave men. There was a wild cry, a yielding, and our comrades lower down came pressing back upon us. The Hill men had gained the shore! We rallied to the fight, but there could be no more arrow-shooting. It was spear and axe work now. Ever raging in front, the leader of the remaining Hill men was a giant whose spear seemed irresistible, and more than one of the Cave men fell before him. The sight drove me into a still more murderous craze. I was rested now. I leaped forward to meet the grisly savage and in a moment we were facing, with spears clattering together. It was death for the Hill man! He was stronger, but not so swift as I at this deadly fencing, and, as I turned his spear aside, I leaped in and drove my own cleanly through him. He toppled with a roaring growl, like that of a bear dying, and, with that, a panic came upon the Hill men and they turned and fled, pursued and speared as they floundered in the waters of the river. The fight was over!

And then, just then, as I lifted my hand to my streaming face, something smote me fiercely in the back and I looked dazedly at an arrow-head which protruded from my breast. I turned, tottering, to see the stone axe of the Climber crash down into the head of the glaring Fang, who crumpled weakly to the ground, and to see Otter running toward me, screaming and with arms outstretched. Then I pitched forward upon my face.

CHAPTER IV
THE CLANSMEN

It was dark, absolutely dark, and I could hear no sound. I could not remember who I was nor where I was, and there came upon me something like a feeling of alarm, though I felt that to be afraid of anything was most unlike me. Furthermore, I was in pain; there was a hurt in my breast and, instinctively, I clutched at the place with my hand. Ah! I knew what it must be—a protruding arrow-head—and I strove to get such a hold upon it that I could pull it forth in the hope that so relief would come, but I could not get my grasp upon the thing. What had become of it? My mind wandered in a search for all about me and an understanding of it. I had a dreamy vision in my mind of some rocky gorge, of enemies coming up from a sloping river bank, of a desperate struggle there, and of my own part therein, which seemed to end with a murderous bowshot from behind, driving a shaft through my body; but what had happened afterward? Where had they carried me and how could I be living after such fearful hurt? I fumbled still at my breast seeking the arrow-head, and found at last what I had mistaken for it. It was but a jagged piece of flint which had slipped in between my flesh and the rough skin coat I wore and which, as I had borne upon it, turning in my sleep, had pricked me sharply and awakened me. There was no arrow-head nor trace of wound. I could not understand it, but I no longer feared; I only realized that I was cold. I felt about me in the darkness and my hands fell upon what I recognized as the skins of animals, and I drew them together and over me from head to foot and was warm and slept again. When I awoke the darkness was not so dense; light came in through an opening not far away and I could distinguish objects about me.

I lay upon the floor in a sort of niche in a cave. Weapons, as I judged them to be, leaned against the wall opposite, and away beyond them, close to the wall, lay a gray heap over which I puzzled. I studied it at first dreamily and then curiously, as the light grew stronger from the narrow arched entrance, then started half upright, for the gray thing seemed alive. It heaved uneasily and I forgot my own perplexity as to who I was or where I was in watching the mysterious thing. All at once the mystery was solved. The mass separated, part of it upheaved, and then I understood. There had been a man sleeping there, like me, beneath a heap of wolf skins. As he arose he turned his face toward me and called out hoarsely but cheerily enough: “Oo-ee! Scar!”

“Oo-ee,” I answered back instinctively. I knew that his call was but to learn if I were awake and I knew, too, that I was his friend and comrade. I became instantly another being from the one lying dazed and dreaming the moment before. The thought of all that dim vision of some fight at a ford and my own awful hurt there, passed as the smoke goes when the wind sweeps over a fire, and swift, keen memory of all that related to my present relations and surroundings returned to me at once. Why, there we were in our cave, Six Toes and I, and it was morning. I called out to him:

“I am hungry, Six Toes; let us eat.”

He grinned, went over to the back of the cave, drew forth strips of dried meat from a store heaped up there, and I, getting to my feet at the same time, took from the weapons by the wall our two stone axes. We sat down together, hacked away fragments of the cold, hard meat, and ate as ravenously as two wild animals.

It was all simple enough. Why had I so awakened still dreaming of a river and a fight in a region warm and pleasant? Certainly in such a country I had never lived, though dreams of it had come to me before and I was in no such country now. Here was I with Six Toes, at murderous odds with others of our kind and with a prospect ahead of us as dangerous as uncertain. Not that it worried us much. We were only less reckless of what was to come than the prowling creatures of the swift, ever-fearing grass-eaters of the plains.

Six Toes was tall and strong, and so, indeed, was I, though not so great of bulk as he. He was a huge man, though springy as the reindeer, and the crush of his hairy arms was something to be feared in any grapple. We were garbed nearly alike, each in a single garment made of skin reaching from neck to knee, with holes for the arms and belted at the waist with a thong of rawhide. The garment of Six Toes was of a single bearskin; mine of wolfskin well stitched together with long sinews. In each of our belts whenever we left the cave was a stone axe, and each bore as well his bow and arrows, and sometimes his flint-headed spear. In a skin pouch hanging from the belt in front we carried the smaller things—the stone, skinning and cutting knife, and, it might be, dried meat. Our arrows we carried in skin quivers slung across our backs. We had no other clothing or weapons or gear of any kind, but our axes and our arrow-heads and knives were sharp and polished and our bows were strong. The Cave men everywhere had learned many things.

We two were not in a good way, even as ways went with the Cave men in that rough land and time. We were outlaws—I, Scar, and Six Toes, a greater personage than I, and all because of the deadly enmity between my companion and the head man of our clan. We had been driven from the great galleried cave in the cliff beside the river a mile above us where all had sought refuge together for the harsh winter, and, thus forced to fare alone, had, after some perilous wandering, found shelter in this smaller and less pleasant and safe abode. We were cold, but in this respect not so greatly worse off than the body of the clan who, through rare misfortune, were, temporarily, nearly as unfortunate as we. The winter was upon us. Long ago, so the legend of the story-telling old men ran, our people had drifted to the south, where was a warmer clime, but something had driven them northward again and they had long lived a roving, sturdy, and fierce community in a country of rock and plain, fruitful in season, it is true, and with good hunting, peopled as it was by many grass-eating brutes and furred beasts of prey, and warm as well, but hard to bear in winter because of the breath of northern glaciers.

Now, the clan had been for a time in a strait such as was never known before. Venturing, because of an unaccountable influx of the deer and the little wild horses, into a ruder country than our ordinary haunts, we had lost our fire. There were no fire mountains here, and, despite the finding of the big cave, living had become uncomfortable. We had not yet learned the art of making fire ourselves, and, when the clan moved as a body, carried it always with us, moving slowly and making fires ahead on our way as far as the runners could go with brands. Now, it had, for once, been neglected by the keepers in the cave and become lost, and we must half freeze and live on roots and nuts and dried meat until we should visit some distant clan, or the fire from the sky, as it sometimes did, should smite some towering dead tree and make it burn for us. But no such good fortune had come, and those of our own kind of whom we knew were far removed from us, and sometimes hostile. We must endure until the warm time came again.

The little cave in which Six Toes and I—he was called Six Toes because he had, when a youth, left four of his toes in the jaws of a savage river fish, though the hurt did not impair his strength or swiftness—were harbouring was close to the edge of a declivity which overhung the river valley. We were savagely restless and discontented, and not without great reason. Not only against the bear and wolf and prowling tiger of the time must we be on guard, but against even the creatures of our own kind and clan.

The deadly enmity between Six Toes and the chief among the Cave men was all because of Laugh, the shrewd and swift and always merry daughter of old Hairy, desired by the huge leader, Wolf, and desired also by Six Toes, my friend, he who had found me a child abandoned by some wandering tribe and who had reared me as his younger brother, teaching me all his craft of field and fight, and making of me one not lightly to be encountered. With him and beside him in all stress I would always be. So it had come that we were one in our watchful exile.

There had been harsh action in the great cave. Wolf and Six Toes had each asked old Hairy for his daughter, and the old man, fearing Wolf the more, had rather favoured him, while the girl as far as she might dare, inclined to the other man. The time had come in the history of the Cave men when a woman could scarcely be taken by force and, next to Wolf, Six Toes was the most important man among us. Then came the craft which was our undoing. Wolf and his immediate and obedient following accused us of a great crime—forever I was counted one with Six Toes—of having stolen and hidden in the wood for our own use a store of weapon heads, than which there was no more valued possession in the community. Of the rarest flint, polished and keen, were these arrow-heads and spear-heads, fashioned with infinite care and toil by the men too old for hunting, and counted, rightly, among our best possessions, for arrows were often lost in the hunt or carried away by wounded beasts. To steal of these reserves, as they were to be dealt out fairly from the common store at need, was death. Boldly had Wolf made the accusation against us—though, as the end proved, he had hidden the arrows himself—and had so inflamed all the men that we escaped the stern penalty only by sudden flight. As crafty as he was fierce and vicious was the big Wolf.

We had found the little cave in which we were now concealed, and in a way intrenched, for none could force the narrow entrance; had found good hunting, and so, gloomily but healthily enough, we abode together, planning, it seemed vainly, some scheme of retribution. We chafed and raged, thus helpless, like the great wild elk with antlers caught in the thicket, or the huge bear sometimes imprisoned in a pitfall of the rocks. The life we led was trying; in some unguarded moment we might be stolen upon and slain by Wolf and his followers, and, besides, our little cave was colder than the other. The life was hardly endurable. Some change must come; upon that we were resolved alike and bitterly. And, when the change came, it came swiftly—in a single hour—with the holding of a new power in our hands, something never known before and bringing great happenings with it. It was a simple thing, but wonderful and most mysterious.

One somewhat cold but glittering afternoon, having eaten lightly of our stored raw meat and nuts, we were lounging in front of the cave, where it was warmer than inside. I was moving about listlessly, noting the tracks made in the snow by lurking beasts and calling once in a while to Six Toes, who sat upon a little rock enjoying the sunshine and fumbling idly with bits of shining stone which he had found beside him. One of these bits he held for some time in his hand, turning it carelessly about. It was thin at the edges, roughly oval in shape and singularly clear. In the centre on each side it rose outward, smooth and even. It was somewhat like a transparent arrow-head and I remember that, as I came to the side of Six Toes, I wondered if we could not put it to some such use. A flake of stone just like it I had never seen before. Then, as Six Toes turned the stone in his hands, a darting yellow gleam fell on the snow, and he laughed as he found that by moving the flake he could shift the shining spot at will. At last he turned it upon one of his own bare feet and in sheer curious foolishness held it there in one place steadily. But not for long. Suddenly he leaped up with a howl and flung the thing away as alarmedly as if it were one of the little adders we did not like but sometimes found hidden amid the leaves where the nuts were on the ground. Something had bitten or burned his foot!

I ran to where the stone had fallen and picked it up and examined it closely, but could find nothing strange about it except its odd shape and clearness. How could I know, how could Six Toes know, that he had stumbled upon the first natural burning-glass that men had ever known, a flake of tourmaline brought perhaps with a boulder from the far north in some ancient glacial move—a tourmaline, the only stone which flakes in such a way!

If we had little wisdom, we had at least unbounded curiosity. We played with the curious thing and the yellow spot it made, and, finally, I held the spot upon the stalk of a dry weed. I held it so for quite a time and then the wonder happened! There came a darkening of the weed’s fibre, next a faint smoking, and then, suddenly, a flame. We yelled aloud our amazement and triumph as we danced about. We were beside ourselves with joy. We had Fire!

We wasted no time then. We gathered armfuls of the stout dry weeds and laid them carefully upon the one now burning and added such fagots of dead wood as we could find. Soon we had a bonfire and we kept it going. Fire, fire in abundance! We could not contain ourselves, for we knew all that it meant—warmth, always warmth, and the fragrance and rich taste of cooked flesh. I dashed within the cave and brought out great slabs of the cold meat, and we sharpened long thick weeds and thrust the meat into the glowing embers until it curled and browned and the odour and savour of it were in our nostrils, and then we ate! We ate as if famished, for never, it seemed to us, had been so great a feast before. It brought new life and courage.

Gorged at last, we had yet energy to go out among the reeds and gather more armfuls of them and stack them near at hand for use, and then we clambered down the precipice at a place not far distant where we could reach the river bank, and brought up driftwood, and so we worked furiously until nightfall and until we had a great store of fuel. Then we made another fire, inside the cave, and warmed it, and there we ate more meat. In all that region there were no others so fortunate as we. We were boastfully merry. Outside, we renewed our fire upon the very edge of the precipice—for that we had a reason—and throughout the night we fed it in turn, one while the other slept, and the light leaped high in the darkness, a flaming defiance to our enemies. What would they think of it, they in the great cave? It was not long before we learned.

They had seen the flash of fire, as the night fell, and their amazement could not be told. Then came a rage. Six Toes and Scar had fire, and Wolf and all the band had none and were cold and ate raw meat. The thing was unendurable! The outcasts should yield up their great possession, and with early dawn half a score of the Cave men, led by Wolf, would come storming down the valley to kill the outlaws and bring fire to where it was most needed.

As morning broke we saw them coming, for they could not remain concealed against the snowy background. We knew their errand well, and Six Toes laughed loudly, but the laugh was as ugly as the cough of the lank hyena which cried sometimes in the wastes. We heaped on more fuel and made the fire blaze merrily, but we saw to it that it was at the very edge of the shelf of the rock. Six Toes brought out his spear and I stood beside him with my bow, an arrow clutched on the string.

They came rushing toward us, armed and fierce, and we waited until they were not two hundred yards away. Then Six Toes, with shoves and sweeps of his long spear, hurled every particle of fire from off the ledge, to be utterly quenched in the deep snow of the far depths below. We leaped for the cave’s shelter and stood inside with notched arrows and drawn bows. Eager for a sight of them we were, but could not get it. Even Wolf would not venture fairly in front of that dark, narrow entrance. Death was waiting to leap out.

We called to them and jeered at them, but there came no answer. Finally I ventured to peer forth cautiously, and saw our enemies gathered just out of bowshot. They stood there, baffled and raging, and we came into sight and howled out insults. We yelled taunting allusions to those who hungered for the taste of roasted flesh but not for the taste of sharp arrows from a cave. We gibed and mocked, until maddened, they started toward us, and then we sought the cave again, only to come forth once more as they moved, and yelp out things concerning those who had no fire and must eat raw meat and shiver all the time. They could do nothing but shake their weapons and threaten, and at last they stalked away sullenly.

The sun was shining, and later in the day we built a fire outside again and laid on wet leaves to make a towering smoke which they in the great cave might see. How they must marvel, we thought, and so we later learned. Where did we get our fire? Was it possible that Six Toes had become a wizard—for of such beings there were stories even then—a medicine man such as had been heard of, one who was familiar with the strange things in the water and in the forest and, above all, with the Black Things in the clouds which sometimes made streaks of fire when the storms came? Yes, it must be so; and there were perplexity and apprehension. What might not Six Toes do next?

But not for long could such a state of things exist. There were venturesome men among the hunters, and Wolf did not believe in wizards. Furthermore, it was in his mind that Laugh was more inclined toward his rival than to him. He had been too negligent. The fire must be secured and Six Toes and Scar slain speedily!

Meanwhile our own wrath grew. Was it not enough that we had been driven from the tribe, wanderers on the waste, lonely as outlying wolves, without now being hunted down as if we were wolves indeed? As our rage increased, we devised a plan of vengeance.

As I have told, the slight ledge in which was our cave projected out upon a narrow shelf which overhung the valley. This tongue of rock held the cave almost at its very end, the opening extending back but a few yards, while the walls were of slight thickness. Because of these thin walls there came to us a great idea. We would cut holes in them and thus have a view on either side, up or down the valley, and from them, too, send murderous, unexpected arrows. The stone was soft and the openings were soon chipped through with our hard flint axes. We hunted stealthily and at night only, for we feared a possible surprise, and slew one of the little wild horses and a deer and hacked them apart and stored away the meat, and ever carefully within the cave we nursed a slight fire, for the wonderful stone, we had now learned, would not bring flame in the darkness nor when the sky was dull. So, with food and warmth provided and weapons at our hands, we awaited with little patience the time of certain fray. Each day we built our flaunting fire outside and cooked our meat there. We knew the fight would come. It came soon and in a way we had not thought of.

I must tell here of what I learned afterward. There was new trouble in the great cave. Wolf had again demanded Laugh for his wife, and her father, the aged and feeble Hairy, could not protect her if he would. She was in a desperate strait, but a most resolute maiden and a daring one was Laugh, and she at this time resolved swiftly and desperately. She had watched longingly the distant smoke. She would flee to Six Toes, who was, at heart, her choice. Besides, had he not fire and roast meat, and, oh, how good roast meat was!

Little preparation had the girl to make. She wrapped her few belongings tightly in a skin which she fastened to her back with thongs, and then, one morning, just as the light was coming and the dangerous creatures of the night had sought their hiding-places in the hills and forests, she glided from the cave, at first unnoticed, and began her run. The sun was shining all over the snow fields and down the valley now, but she relied upon her swiftness. A fourth of the way she had gained when Wolf, suspicious concerning her and ever watchful, seeking her early, found that she was not with her father, and, rushing from the cave, at once perceived her in the distance. He knew what her flight portended. He seized his weapons with a bellow, shouted to his immediate followers, and bounded forth in hot pursuit.

Fleeter of foot than most of the Cave women was Laugh, but the fall of snow had not been light and she was not as strong and tireless for such hampered run as were the angry ones pursuing her. They gained upon her almost from the first, and her flight became more straining, though she did not falter. Bravely, if even gaspingly, she ran, but when she attained the slope which led upward to the awaiting shelter the rushing Wolf was scarce a dozen yards behind, though here on the wind-swept ascent the snow became lighter and Laugh almost held her own. Then she did what alone saved her. She yelled as only a Cave woman can yell, which meant much, and Six Toes, leaping to the porthole, saw it all. He rushed to the cave entrance, I at his heels.

It was a close finish—there could be no doubt of that. Wolf’s final swift rush told as they neared the cave, as with outstretched hand he almost succeeded in clutching the fleeing girl as she dived into the opening of the cave. Six Toes caught her in his arms as she came, and I sent an arrow whistling outward, but Six Toes was in my way and Wolf leaped aside unhurt. Then came a few moments’ pause. Laugh was safe within the cave. Wolf and his followers, who had by this time joined him, were gathered just aside from the entrance in noisy council. We waited alert and hungrily, for we knew that our time of vengeance was at hand, I guarding the cave opening, Six Toes at the porthole on the left.

As they conferred excitedly the party of Wolf moved farther to the side and I crept nearer and nearer to the mouth of the cave. I knew there would be happenings. Then I heard the voices moving more to the side and ran back into the cave again and looked over Six Toes’ shoulder. Suddenly the men outside moved again, and there, now they stood, not six yards from the point of Six Toes’ arrow, Wolf, with his broad back to it, waving his arms and commanding violently. Never was fairer mark offered a Cave man and never a deadly opportunity seized upon more eagerly. Slowly Six Toes drew the long shaft backward until the stone head touched the great bow, which creaked and groaned beneath the strain; then he released it!

There was a tearing thud; Wolf threw up his hands and stood wavering there with a short length of the knotted wood jutting from his back. For a moment he swayed and trembled, and then pitched forward as dead as the deer and the little wild horse stored beside us in the cave. With a yell of terror his followers started up the valley and I bounded out from the cave and sent an arrow after them as they ran. I could hear the “thut” and one of them began to run waveringly and laggardly. It was a fine shot.

It was good to see Laugh eat. Little cared she what we were doing. The smell of roasted meat had assailed her, and she was gnawing greedily at a bone with cooked flesh still upon it as we turned to look upon her, still flushed from the race. She looked up at Six Toes and laughed happily. Then he, too, laughed and sat down beside her. They were mated now, and were content.

So, for a few days, there were no happenings of note. Six Toes and Laugh were cheerful in their end of the cave, and I only less so in a little alcove at the side where I slept now dreamlessly. Laugh helped in the skinning of the game. We brought and cooked the flesh and kept ever a sharp lookout up and down the valley. Did Laugh become lax in any of her duties, Six Toes, as a husband should, admonished her with a strip of hide, but she rarely needed such correction, and his strokes were light, for were they not newly wed? I alone became, finally, somewhat restless. I felt that there was more to come, not that I feared it, but I was curious. The half-freezing tribe would soon be heard from.

We had not long to wait. Following the death of Wolf there had been much debate in the great cave. Evidently Six Toes was a wizard, and evidently a great wizard was a good thing for a clan to have. Besides, Six Toes was a famous hunter and a man of might, and why not yield to him?

They came, one day, a straggling group, including even the older men, and I, who guessed their mission as I saw them in the distance, conferred swiftly with Six Toes and advised him earnestly. They halted at a distance from the cave and yelled forth the nature of their visit and then, assured of safety, laid down their weapons and came forward. Six Toes, I standing beside him, received them somewhat gruffly. They said that they were cold and that he could make fire for them; as they were leaderless, too, would he not return to them?

Six Toes was stern but not unfriendly. He said that they were right. He was a wizard and could make fire. They were leaderless, because he had slain Wolf. He could slay others. He had been driven forth from the band, he and his brother Scar, but he would not remain angry with them if they would take him as a wizard and as the head of the clan and so obey him. If they disobeyed, well, he could burn all enemies. The sun was shining and he drew forth the fire-stone from his pouch and set into flame the bundle of dry reeds I brought. The sight startled and appalled them, and some of the old men even grovelled at his feet. All yielded wildly and blindly and, the young men carrying our belongings, Six Toes and Laugh and I in the lead, we took our way to the great cave of many galleries where the remainder of the band received us with mingled fear and joy. Then Six Toes made fire outside and lighted from it, other fires soon blazed within the great cave’s chambers, and meat was roasting everywhere, and there were warmth and feasting and rejoicing.

There were hosts of wild things for the hunting, the band had stores of nuts and roots, there were fire and warmth, and the winter passed in comfort for the Cave man. There came the spring and summer and the brown autumn, and in all our wanderings with Six Toes as our head we had fire at need, and the clan flourished beyond the ordinary lot of the wild man of that time. Next to Six Toes, I was the strongest and starkest man among them, and it came to me that, like him, I would take a wife. There was a girl, Black Eye they called her, who was most holding of desire to look upon. She I resolved to take, and I knew, from the looks she sometimes gave me, that she would come willingly. I was content in those days.

None other of all the band was so soft of foot as I when need came. I could thread the wood without the crackling of a twig. I could creep as silently as the forest cats which caught the birds upon the ground; I could steal so close to any creature that, if it saw me not, nor smelled me, I could come to stand beside it and impale it with a close driven arrow or even with my spear. So I wanted no clumsy-footed companion with me to mar the outcome when I hunted, and, save when we sought the fiercer creatures, rarely went forth other than alone.

One day it chanced that I was creeping upon a flock of ptarmigan feeding in a thicket where were many berries. Already, in another place I had killed a number of them, and cared little whether I shot more of them or not. Glancing about as I so crept along, I saw what interested me. Upon one of the bushes with a foliage darkly green hung great clusters of berries not scarlet, like those the birds ate and which we ate ourselves, but of a purple such as I have never seen before. They were wonderful. Surely, I thought, they must be better than the smaller red things, richer and more luscious. I tasted them and found them sweet and musky and fragrant, and, yielding, I gorged myself from their abundance, and then lay down upon the dry grass in a little open space, to rest and dream, and, it might be, sleep, for there came a sort of languor over me and sleep seemed good. I lay there dozing when I heard a fluttering of birds about me and reached for my bow and tried to rise, but could not. My legs refused to aid me and my arms seemed heavy. There came a doubt upon me. We had learned that there were poison things, though never had I known them in this region, and surely berries so luscious could not be harmful. But I cared not. I seemed in another world. What to me that fruit I had eaten was of the deadly things?

I lay there helpless, but in no pain. The drowsiness which deepened brought curious scenes and fancies. Then the visions dimmed and I drifted deeper into the sleep from which I might not waken. Steadily all faded. It was done. Not for me was it to hunt or fight with Six Toes to the end. Not for me to take my mate and live the full Cave man’s life; not for me to be with the brave clan as it waxed in numbers and in strength until it became the greatest in all that changing region of what men call the Dardogne Valley, where our spear and arrow-heads are sometimes dug from deep in the earth, and where little children prattle in the vineyards.

CHAPTER V
THE BOATMEN

When it is warm there is no sound sweeter to me than the sound of splashing water. It was such a sound that came to my ears as I awoke from my sleep on a little leaf-covered mound, beneath the boughs of a thicket-surrounded beech tree on a gently sloping and wooded hillside. I knew that near me a brook came hurrying down the slope, and that it was its rejoicing that I heard as it tumbled in little cataracts along its stony bed. It had worn the stone for centuries, and had accomplished much on its way to the deep waters of which it was in search; but of such matter of course I did not think as I opened my eyes and realized what were my surroundings. I knew that I was content and sound and full of vigour, though only half awake as yet, but somehow I was puzzled. Of what had I been dreaming, and which was the real, and which the unreal? I seemed at home where I was, and yet it seemed but an hour ago that there were birds,—birds which were good to eat, about me, and that there were sweet berries, and that I had eaten them, and then had gone to sleep. But there were no birds about me now, and there were no berry bushes. The beech tree was familiar, and so were the singing and laughing of the water. I was in my own place and well. What foolish things are dreams!

There came a long call,—“Co-ee! coo-ee!”—from a distance below me, and the sound was most familiar. It was the call of Droopeye, close friend and companion of mine, though not, it may be, so near to me as Thin Legs the wise one, upon whom I relied concerning many things of which I was in doubt. But I cared much for the merry Droopeye, who made one forget the heavy thoughts which would come at times, and we were often together in our hunting or any other of the journeys made by us, the men of the water caves.

I was glad to hear the summons of Droopeye—he was called so because he had had a hurt in his youth such that one eyelid drooped, and gave him an odd look—since there had come to me strange dreams as I slept there beside the brook which tumbled down the hillside into the lake. I wonder why it is that I have always had strange dreams? Queer and singular they have been, not like those dreamed by my tribesmen, as they have told them to me. They dream of the hunt or the fishing or of the men and women among us; but I do not dream of such things. My dreams are such as I cannot understand; for they are of places and people and ways ever different from what is all about me, of men and women and lands and beasts I have never seen, of countries of hot sands and mighty deserts, or deep, steaming jungles, or cold lands of ice and snow, or of mighty forests where were no men at all, but only fierce, wild creatures upon the ground, and in the treetops other creatures looking somewhat like men indeed, but living in lofty nests, and ever fearful of the beasts below. I do not understand these dreams, and they make me wonder, with almost a little fear. Before the call of Droopeye I had dreamed of a far land of caves and people somewhat like our own, it is true, but with cruder spears and bows and arrows, and with some trouble in the making of fire, which has become to us so easy. And it seemed to me, too, that in my dreams I had myself been in some great peril, but I remembered it only dimly.

So, when I awoke to the call of Droopeye, I answered lustily and leaped to my feet, and met him as he came running up the slope from the shining water. He held in his hand a wonderfully bright shell, which he had found upon the shore, and which he showed to me laughingly.

It is hard to say why I, so different in all my ways, should care at all for the companionship of such a man as Droopeye, who was not the best aid in the hunt, and who could not run as fast or far as I, nor send an arrow from his bow so surely and so strongly. But I liked to have him with me, to hear his merry words, often, it seemed to me, not at all unwise, and to laugh at his shots, when, as he often did, he missed the little standing deer upon which he had crept unseen, or the great bustard which offered so fair a mark. Surely a poor bowman was Droopeye, though a good fisherman, and knowing as to all the roots and fruits and berries which were fit for eating. So I liked to have him with me in the forest or in the hills, despite his uselessness in the hunt, and cared for him as I have seen some great wild beast endure and seem to care for a lesser one about him. Ever ready was Droopeye to build the fire with the hard pointed stick twisted with the bowstring into the dried, punky wood, and he was ready in the skinning and in carrying his burden of whatever might be our spoil to the distant camp.

It was Droopeye who first learned to make sounds upon stretched skins, which drew to him the younger men and the girls, and made them utter odd singing noises, and want to skip about. Very curious was this thing. We had been at work upon the skin of a groundhog, one time, scraping it clean of all flesh, and making it fit for use as some sort of pouch, and when we had done this Droopeye stretched it across the end of a short hollow length of log which chanced to be lying near his hut, that it might dry there flat and firm until he should take it off to knead and stretch into softness, as was the way. It was pinned tightly with strong thorns driven through its edge into the wood, and there it dried, flat and taut and firm. Then, one day, when I was with him, Droopeye remembered the skin he had left out in the sun to dry so, and brought it to the entrance of the hut, where he took a seat beside me, preparing to pull out the thorns, and make the skin soft again by kneading. We were talking, and he forgot for the time about the skin, playing with a short, hard stick he had chanced to pick up as we talked. At last he lifted the short length of log—it was light and thin and very dry—and, in idleness, hit the skin a smart blow with the stick he held. The sound made us both leap to our feet, it was so loud and odd and booming in a queer way. Again and again did Droopeye hit the skin, and each time came the booming sound, and others came running to see what it was.

“I will not take off the skin,” said Droopeye then. “I will keep the sounding thing to play with.”

And this he did; and it came, at last, that he fastened a skin across the other end of the little dried hollow log, and the booming was increased, and a great thing finally came of this, for, in time, a bigger length of hollow log was taken, and chipped and scraped smooth inside and outside, and when other skin was stretched and fastened tightly across the ends, and the thing was beaten, the booming drumming could be heard from afar, and we had a means of summons for all the tribe should any time of peril come.

But the sounding upon the skin was not all that came of this queer discovery of Droopeye. It so pleased him that he tried stretching more skins across hollow things, making still different sounds, and other sound-making things he tried. Finally he stretched a bowstring of sinew above the half of a great dried wild gourd upon which a skin was stretched, and it made a twanging which pleased him much, though the sound was not at all like that of the beating upon the drum.

Then to Droopeye came another fancy, for he was ever different from the rest of the tribe, in thinking of that which might be strange and new. There was a boy so pinched of face that he was called the Rat, and this Rat was so charmed by the noise that Droopeye made with his new things that he was hovering about constantly when the sounds were made. Him Droopeye taught to strum upon the sinew stretched across the gourd, and soon they would make the new and strange noises together and at night—that is, in the early night, when the hunters and others had returned to camp, and had eaten—there would always be a swift clustering around the players, though I cannot tell why this was so. The strumming noise seemed to touch the feet of those who listened, and they moved uneasily, and would often shout when the sounds came swiftly and regularly together in some way I had never heard before. Very odd it was to see them thus swaying together, sometimes clapping their hands as the sounds came, and at last they would caper and circle about, stepping as came the sounds, and all were delighted with it. So came what Droopeye said was the first music, and, whatever it may be, it assuredly was marvellous.

Such a merry man was Droopeye, whose call I answered, and with whom I often went to the huts and caves of our little village by the lake in the hills. He had done a wonderful thing, but nothing so wonderful as that which Thin Legs and I did, and which proved so great a thing for all the tribe.

Never before, so the old men said, had the Cave people been more quiet and prosperous; for we had a good region in which to live, the winters were not so white and hard as they were in the times of which the old men say their fathers’ forefathers told, and there were fewer of the great man-eating wild beasts. Very huge and dangerous were these beasts once, and even at this time it was not good to meet the great bear or the tree leopard, or the wolf pack, or even the huge lone wolf which sometimes crouches by the woodpaths at night, and springs out upon and tears the throat of the unwary. Once such a wolf sprang out upon me; but I throttled him, though my arms were torn, and I was sick and weak for many days. The teeth of the old wolf are very long; but I am strong, and my grip is crushing.

We had not been at war with any other tribe since I was a youth, and we had not been driven away from the camping place by the great floods which sometimes came in the past times, and so we had thriven here, and had done many things. There were the boat and the barb!

Very well do I remember how the first boat came. It was after a great storm, before which I had been hunting with One Ear far up the river which runs to the sea, and to which one now paddles through the lake from which the creek runs to our smaller lake about which were our huts and caves. The water had come in a vast flood, and had caught us in the distant valley, and we had climbed into a tree, that we might not drown, and there we crouched and clung throughout the night. When morning came we could see nothing but the tops of other trees and the great waters. We were weak and hungry. We must leave the tree or die; and, when a log big enough to carry us both came closely by, we dropped down upon it together. We were swept into the deep water, and tossed about in eddies, and tangled and delayed, but not for a very long time. We were going straight toward a little island I knew well, though only its bare crest now showed above the waters.

We stranded against the island’s shore, and crawled up a little way, and rested, lying very still, for there was little life left in us. At last I rose and looked about, and then I shook One Ear by the shoulder, and shouted loudly. There was game upon the little island, game imprisoned by the flood. There were hares, a score of them; and we slew them with our axes, for they could not escape, and fed upon them, for we were famished. Then we slept, and it was night when we awoke. We were hungry still, and ate and slept again until the morning came.

The storm was ended, but not the flood. We could see no land except the little space on which we were, and even that was lessening. What should we do? We ate more of the hare, and sat down upon the sand, and One Ear became sad, and howled as the lone wolf sometimes does. The sound was not good to me, for it made me sorrowful, and I threw my axe at him, but did not hit him. Nevertheless, he ceased his howling.

It was mid-afternoon when I saw coming down the river what seemed to float higher on the water than did the other things. As it neared us, I recognized it as something I had seen before. It was only a log, but it turned up at the ends, and rode high in the water, because it was hollow throughout most of its length, and nearly to its bottom.

Often had I seen that curious log in my hunting far up the river, and well I understood what had made it as it was. The old sycamore which had stood so long beside the river had been blown down, and in falling had struck an uprearing jagged rock, which broke it in two not far from its torn stump. This part of the trunk rolled aside a little way, a log of three men’s length and not straight, but curved upward a little at each end, for the tree had grown crookedly. The log had lain there long, as I had seen it, and become dry and light, and the middle, on its upper side, had become a little rotten and wormy. Then came the great crested woodpecker, the bird which calls so loudly, who hammered and bored away in search of grubs until he had left there a furrow of dry dust and chips. The big pine tree which stood near the sycamore was smitten by the lightning, and sparks from its flaming top had fallen on the dust on the log left by the woodpecker, and so the fire upon the log burned, eating its way deeply downward and extending either way. It had almost reached the ends, and was nearly through the sides and bottom of the log, when a torrent of rain fell, and there was no more fire, but still left of the log a big charred and hollow thing, at the look of which I had often wondered. But I had thought it worthless. Of what use was a charred and hollow log?

It floated so high that, as it grounded on the beach of the little island, it came easily within reach of our hands, and we pulled it ashore. We chattered foolishly over it, and then, all at once, to each of us, came the thought that the thing might carry us more easily than the heavier log which had brought us to where we were. We must leave the island or starve. There were no more hares. We put the log in the water again, and I held it by an end while One Ear waded out and got astride it. Then a new thought came to him, and he lifted his legs and dropped squattingly into the great hollow the fire had made, and looked up at me, and cackled excitedly. The log floated, and yet he was away from the water! I clambered in beside him with a shout, the current caught us and carried us away, and then we yelled together in our exultation. We were floating, warm and dry, and resting. We would have suffered, clinging desperately to the log, with our bodies in the chill water, and, it might be, fallen off and drowned. It was wonderful! Never had men floated thus before, and we were great men indeed! Swiftly we were carried toward the promontory afar down where were the caves where we and our people dwelt. Close in, just at nightfall, the current swayed us, and we leaped out as we reached the shallows, and dragged our prize ashore, while the clan gathered about us, all chattering and wondering. We had what we came to call a Boat!

We ate much and slept soundly, after this our great peril and great discovery. In the morning followed another gathering of the Cave people about the strange thing which could carry men safely upon the water; and he who could draw pictures of wild creatures on the rocks, and who could chip spear-heads most wisely of us all, was the one who looked upon the fire-hollowed log longest and most earnestly, though he at first was silent. Then finally he came to me. A boat seemed to be a good thing. Why not have another boat? What fire had done, fire could do!

Not far from the caves, and close by the shore of the currentless lagoon which reached in from the river, lay the trunk of a large fallen tree. Our stone axes were good, so Thin Legs said, but might not suffice to make a boat like that brought by One Ear and me; but surely we could in time hack off a log, and then make the fire which warmed us and cooked our food do the rest. So we fell to work eagerly, all the strong men of the clan coming to aid in turn. It was long work and wearing, and there were tired arms and blistered hands, but within two days the log was hacked away from the trunk of the fallen big tree, and then Thin Legs alone took leadership, and fire was brought.

“With long poles thrust to the bottom, we guided the boats here and there about the shallow waters.”

Very wise is Thin Legs. None of the rest of us can think as he does; none of us can so tell what is going to happen after you have done things. Now he rested a little. Upon the top of the great log we had cut away he built a little fire, and supplied it with dry fuel as it ate its way into the wood. When it threatened to reach too far toward the end or sides, he dammed it with wet mud, and so made it eat this way or that way, as he would have it, until of the huge log there remained but a thing hollowed and charred, with thin, strong sides and bottom. We pushed it into the water, and it floated high, carrying half a score of us at once. So came the first man-made boat. Now we could fish throughout the whole lagoon!

With long poles thrust to the bottom, we guided the boats here and there about the shallow waters, and had better fortune than ever before, spearing the fish at all their feeding places. Sometimes, too, we would guide the boats into the depths of the wild rice which grew in the water, and lie in wait there for the water-fowl which came at night. So our fortunes were bettered.

It was a wonderful boat, one we could pole through the water far more swiftly than we could the other, and it seemed as if there could be nothing better. But we did not know. Not a great time passed when a strange thing happened. It was that I saw foolish boys make the clumsy boat we had before move in the water without a pole. We could make a boat move in the water only when we thrust down a pole to the bottom, and leaned against it and pushed; but the idle boys, playing in the one lying by the bank in the still lagoon, began pulling a flat stick through the water beside them, and the boat moved out, and then they were afraid, and yelled loudly, for they could not get back to shore. We got them back, poling with the only other boat we had. It was all most foolish, but I wondered. I saw the boys pull the flat stick through the water, and saw the boat move. I, myself, saw it. After that, I sought the flat stick the boys had used, and looked upon it and all over it carefully. It was just as any other flat stick.

When all were gone into the caves or the wood I took the stick and got into the boat myself; but I carried the pole with me, and laid it in the boat, lest without it I could not get back to shore. Then I took the flat stick, and thrust it into the water, and pulled backward with it, first on one side of the boat and then the other, as we used our pole, and again the strange thing happened, for the boat moved on the water as it had done with the boys! Farther and farther it went from the land, and I took up the pole with which to push myself back, but it would not reach bottom. The flat stick had carried me too far. I was frightened. I knew not what to do. I yelled, but there was no one to hear me. I was afraid of the water.

Then, in my desperation, I took the flat stick again, and pulled with it in the water, and the boat went farther, and soon, as I looked about, I saw that I was close to the wood on the other side of the lagoon. I pulled with the flat stick again, and the boat touched land again, and I climbed out and lay down upon the ground.

Long I thought. Could the flat stick make the boat go back? I would try. I clambered into the boat, and turned it about with the pole, so that it pointed toward the other shore, and then took the stick and pulled with it in the water again, and was carried back to very nearly the place from which I had started. I sprang upon the bank, and yelled and leaped up and down. I wonder why it is that men always dance up and down and yell when they are happy? The other creatures do not act in that foolish way.

So I danced and whooped, and then, finally, I became tired. But I was the greatest man in the tribe. I alone had the flat stick, and none should take it from me. There was another flat stick lying on the shore, and I took it up in sport, and got into the boat with it, laughing, because I knew it would not make the boat move. I was wrong. I pulled with it as I had with the other, and, behold! the boat moved as it had done before! Other flat sticks I took then, and pulled with them, and the boat obeyed them all. Any flat stick would move the boat, if it were only to be pulled with the flat side against the water. I was no richer than any other man of the tribe. Then I tried to move the boat with round sticks—many of them—but it lay still. The sticks simply glided through the water, and the boat would not heed them.

I shouted again, still more loudly, because I wanted to tell about the flat stick, and Thin Legs came running from the wood where he had been gathering nuts and roots. No game had he, for Thin Legs does not often hunt, though he alone can chip the best arrow-heads and spear-heads. I told him of the wonderful flat stick, and all it had done, and there came the thinking look in his eyes which I do not understand, and then he tried the flat stick himself in the boat, and then climbed ashore and leaped and shouted almost as wildly as I had done. After a time he sat down upon a little rock, and sat there long, saying no word, holding the flat stick in his hand, and looking at it. He could think long. It did not hurt his head as it did mine, and the heads of others of the Cave men, if we thought too much. Then we went to the caves together. Thin Legs carried with him the flat stick, but he said nothing.

When I left the cave the next morning the big yellow thing that makes the light had not yet come up above the great forest to the east. I could not wait. I was too eager to try to go upon the water again with a flat stick to move the boat. I ate but a mouthful or two of the flesh of the little deer I had killed in the ravine in the hills, and then I ran to where were the boat and the flat sticks. I took my bow and arrows with me. I would get across the lagoon, and go into the beech wood where many birds fed on the nuts, and where it was good hunting. There was no boat there! Then there came to my ears a yell from the other shore.

I called aloud in answer, and from the shadow of the distant bushes across the water came out the boat with Thin Legs kneeling in it, and digging the water, as it seemed, with a flat stick again, and the boat was coming toward me. But far more swiftly and straight it came than it had done the day before, and I knew in a moment that Thin Legs, the wise, had been at work in the night, at work by his fire in the cave, and that, somehow, he had given more strength to the flat stick.

It was the same flat stick at one end, but not at the other. The day before it had been hard to grasp and hold, because it was so broad, and I could not get my fingers round it. I could hold it only with a hard clutch, pressing on each side, and so could not pull it through the water without a strain. Now it was another kind of stick. All night long Thin Legs had worked with his stone hatchet and with his knife. For what would be the length from a man’s foot to his knee he had chopped and chipped on each side of the wood until there was left something that could be clasped easily in the hand, and this part he had cut and scraped until it was round, like a spear-handle. At the end was still a flat stick with which a man could pull in the water with all his strength, grasping the round handle above. No man had seen such a stick before, and I spoke not, though Thin Legs grinned.

“We will call it a paddle—which means what pulls,” he said, and grinned again. “Get into the boat.”

I got into the boat, and took the strange stick, and dug it into the water, and pulled swiftly with all my might, and the boat shot away as do some of the swimming birds upon the water; for now I had my grip and I was strong. I went to the other shore, and, very swiftly, back again. What a thing had we!

And another paddle made Thin Legs, so that we each had one, and day by day we learned about the boat and the flat stick, until, when we pulled together, we went over the water like the queer clacking water bird of the rushes, which need not fly from danger, so swiftly can it swim.

And all this time, in the day, was Thin Legs toiling upon a new boat, the little boat for us two alone, which should be greater than the boat the tribe had already made. All day he toiled, chipping with his stone axe, and burning with little fires covered by wet clay, that the fire might not reach too far, and each night I brought him food—nuts and berries and meat—for I was as eager about the boat as he. And, one day, Thin Legs declared the boat was done.

It was a wonderful boat! Never before had such a boat been seen. Not great in size was it—only the length of two men, and but broad enough for one—and each of its ends was pointed like the other. But it was not that which made the boat so marvellous. Long and patiently had Thin Legs laboured. Much had he chipped and burned, and so watchful had he been that the boat, smooth on the outside as the shell of the river turtle, was itself but the thinnest shell, alike in thickness throughout every part of the tough wood, yet as strong as the clumsy boats we had already made, and so light that one man alone could carry it. Even Thin Legs found it not too great a burden. To me, Scar, the Strong One, it was as nothing. Yet this shell thing could easily carry the two of us upon the water, and a considerable burden besides. Very wise was Thin Legs.

Wondering were the other Cave men when we put our boat in the lagoon and they saw how great indeed it was. Many days we practised, and learned to paddle, alone or together, and to turn the boat this way or that as we willed. We might, we thought, even venture upon the deep river, but we were not sure of that yet. Some day, though, we would make the venture; though far down the river, so the old men said their fathers had told them, were a strange people, who lived upon the shell-fish they dug from the sands of the shores and who were very fierce, and slew all strangers, though they had no bows, but only spears and axes and stone knives. Of all these things Thin Legs and I talked much, but we had no thought of going upon the deep river at this time.

For a long time we used the boat, going where we would in the lagoon, and spearing the fish, though many we lost, because our spears would not hold them well; and great hunting had I in the beech and oak woods on the farther side, which we could not reach so easily before, and where the bush birds, and the cock that struts and calls, and all the creatures that feed upon the nuts and berries, were not so fearful as those on the side of the lagoon where were the caves, because they had not been hunted so often. Close upon these creatures I would creep, and drive my arrows through them; and we would come back to the caves with much meat. And there was none among the hunters who matched with me, Scar, the strong bowman. Then another great discovery.

I had shot and killed a porcupine, and went back to the caves with him most carelessly; and because there was more than I could eat—he was a very fat porcupine—I called to Thin Legs to come and cook and eat him with me. I was careless, and one of the spines, the things upon the back of the porcupine, slipped into my thumb, and I could not pull it out again from the flesh below the first joint. Thin Legs tried to help me get the piece of porcupine out of my hurt thumb; but it would not come back, though we pulled, and it hurt me, and I yelled. Then suddenly I pushed it—I don’t know why I pushed it—and it went easily and smoothly. Thin Legs took hold of the other end of it, and pulled the great quill through without hurting me at all.

The next day we took our little boat, and rowed up and down all around the edges in the yellow, shallow water, and, with our flint spears, speared many of the fishes; but many of them slid off—not all of them, because sometimes we used to toss them swiftly into our boat or to the bank. But the most of them slid off; and though we were very keen of eye and deft of hand, Thin Legs and I, we never got the half of them.

But something came into my mind that afternoon, and I looked at Thin Legs as we lost fish after fish, and rowed to the shore with him, and sat down on a little rock, and then I asked him what it was that made the quills of the porcupine hold things so.

He did not answer, but thought a little. There came the distant look upon his face again, as if he had found something, and then, with a shout, he leaped up, and began running toward the cave. I paddled back with the boat and fish, but I did not see Thin Legs again that day. He was working in his cave, and would allow none to enter it. In the morning I knew. All night he had worked, and he had chipped the heads of two flint spears so that they were barbed, as were the quills of the porcupine, only in a far coarser way. Then I knew. Never had been such spear-heads before, nor any worth so much in food-getting! How can I tell the story of the Barb?

We went to the lake the next day with our spears—for Thin Legs had made another like the first one—and we rowed in our boat among the shallows, and there came beneath us the great fish; and we speared them, and none of them slipped away, because of the great barbs at the side of our flint spears.

Very heavily laden was our boat, for it was full of fish when we paddled back that day, and very rich in fishes were we now, and great men in the tribe were Thin Legs and I, because of the spears which held the fishes. There would soon be other spears—very many of them—like these spears that Thin Legs and I had made; but that does not matter. After this, in all the time when the winter had not come, there would be fish enough to eat in the caves. So Thin Legs and I were very proud as we strutted along the narrow pathway below the caves and close to the water where the frogs croak so oddly in the weeds of the sloping bank. The boat and the barb were ours!

There is a curious white fish, very tender and flaky, and sweet in the mouth, which gathers in schools in the big river just above where the swift current begins, and it came to me that I might go among them with tied lines and barbed hooks trailing from the boat, and so catch at least one or two of them. I wanted Thin Legs to go with me, but he declared it to be unsafe. If once the current got hold of the boat too strongly, he said, it would be carried down the river and over the falls and upon the jagged rocks where no man could live; but I only laughed at him, and said, since he feared, I would fish alone. I took my lines with me, with bait for the barbed hooks, and tied one end of the lines about my waist, letting the hooks float in the water far behind. When I heard the roar of the falls, I became afraid, and wished to turn the boat to row back with the floating hooks; but I found all at once that I had come too far. As I strove to turn, the fierce current caught the paddle, and exerted its strength against me. How could Thin Legs have chanced upon such treacherous wood? The paddle snapped short in the middle, and I was helpless with the fragment of the handle in my hand. The boat whirled round in the rushing waters. The falls roared more loudly. There were the jagged rocks below, and certain death there. I threw myself along the bottom of the tossing boat, lest it overturn even before the leap. But of what avail? There was only death below!

I closed my eyes, and, with a roaring of the waters in my ears, shot downward toward the jagged rocks, and then came nothingness.

CHAPTER VI
THE SOWERS

The hut, which was made of poles leaning against the perpendicular side of the rocky height, was cool and pleasant to lie in during the heat of the day. It was mid-afternoon, and why I should have been sleeping at such a time of day I could not understand. Through the entrance to the hut I could look across the valley, through which ran a shallow little river, and could see huts like the one I occupied ranged against the extending wall of the precipice, and people moving about. For a moment or two I was lost in mind. Surely I never had seen the valley and the huts before. I dreamed I had been somewhere else—in a boat tossing madly on a wild river. But soon my senses returned. I, Scar, the Strong, was in my own hut, and with my own people, and all was well. Where was Thin Legs? Where was our boat? How came I to be wearing a coat of deerskin, and how came I to be wearing leggings of the same skin? Always had my legs been bare. Then I laughed; for, all at once, my mind came back to me. I had only dreamed. I was in my own hut, in the village of my clan, than which there was none more prosperous. What clan had better homes or better bows and spears and axes in the hands of better hunters and fisherman living near the broad lake which lay between the rocky hills sloping downward to the plain and woods, through which a river led to the not-far-distant sea? The water of the lake was salt, for the tides came up the river to it; and there were many fish there, and shell-fish, where the wild things fed. There were no people who excelled us, and indeed we knew of no other tribes, save one living far to the south and another which it was said lived still farther to the westward. We were a satisfied people, remaining long in one place, though sometimes, in the summer, we abandoned the village to the women and children and old men, and made hunting trips to where the great ox, the urus, was more abundant than nearer us, to bring home the dried meat to make full the winter’s store. Fish from the lake we had, and dried them, and from the forest the women brought the wild plums and a sort of apple, and many berries, which also were dried, and which we ate in winter. Also the women gathered seeds and grains, which they pounded into a coarse meal, between smooth stones, and this they mixed with water into cakes, and made that which was good to eat with the meat and fish, either fresh or dried, as in the winter-time, when the game might have drifted southward, and the ice was thick upon the lakes, so that the hunting and fishing were not easy, and starvation might come had we not the dried things. We were ordinarily provident, though, for Old Bear, the head of the clan, had wisdom, and his axe was heavy. He was a huge old man, heavy of aspect, and strong, and rarely was he disobeyed.

I became more thoroughly awake, and rose from my bed of wolf-skins, and stretched out my arms, and flexed my muscles, and went out into the sunlight, and looked about me. I was hungry, and there had come to my nostrils the odour of roasting meat, as there should have been that of fish as well. I knew what I should find. There would be Limp, who lived in a nearby hut, who always rose before me, and prepared the food, as was right, for was it not I who brought in all save the fish, for the broken and shortened leg of Limp made him of little use in the hunt? He could fish well, and do many other things better than the rest of us. I have heard that it has been always the way with men, that those who were crippled have been deepest of thought and discovered most of the new things that have been good for us. The old men tell us so. And in almost every clan there are cripples; for there are dangers all about, and it is only natural that some of us should be killed or at least maimed. Why the maimed should often become the wisest, I do not know. Perhaps it is because they have more time to think, and so conceive of new things. It seems to me that must be the reason. Limp, my closest friend, was full of dreams. He should have had a wife, instead of living with me, who cared little for women; but the woman he sought he could not get. I was sorry for Limp, because of his disappointment over the woman beyond his reach, and told him so; and sorry also that I could not aid him, and so he had to endure his sorrow nearly alone, unless it may be that he had the sympathy of old Ox, and Feather, his wife, whose hut was up the ravine a little way apart from the village. It had at one side of it an open swarded space, where the two old people worked together in the sunshine, he fashioning bows and arrows, and she attending to the drying of the fruits and berries she had gathered, or grinding the seeds and nuts. Very wise was Feather in the gathering of seeds. She knew where grew the millet and the wild barley, and, old as she was, gathered more of those seeds for the winter than did any other woman of the tribe, though of nuts and fruit she did not get so much, because she was too old and weak to climb. So she sought the seeds, though the millet and barley did not grow in abundance anywhere, and to get the seeds she must often wander far and search most patiently. It was pretty to see the old man and the woman working together in the sunshine in the rock-surrounded glade, and Limp was often with them; for times would come when the whole village was abandoned,—the men upon the hunt, and the women and children gathering wood or fruits and nuts, and only these three would be left. I have said that old Feather was wise—shrewd she was, too—and it may be that it was she who, being a woman and old, must know the hearts of women, first gave to Limp the idea from which came the thing he did to help him toward Little Toes, the woman he so desired.

I have said there was no smell of fish when I awoke. Great fisherman as Limp was, we had fared without fish, and I had threatened him with my unstrung bow; but he only laughed and cared not, for he knew that I would not strike him. For days he had been absent, and I knew not where he had been; and I did not question him, for that was our way. The hut people, save in light obedience to the head of the clan, were each a law unto himself. It chanced, though, that on this day of which I tell, after I had eaten and again threatened Limp because there was no fish, I went down the river toward a forest near the lake, and, as I neared it, saw Limp walking up and down the shore, and stooping often to pick up something he had found. I ran down to where he was seeking, and caught him by the shoulders, and shook him, and then laughingly he told me what he had been doing.

Ever, Limp said, even when he tried to sleep at night, there was the vision of Little Toes before him—Little Toes, with her necklace of red berries. He had been sad day and night because neither the father nor the mother of Little Toes wanted to give her to such as he, who was lame, and could only fish, and furthermore because another man, whom they favoured, wanted her. Big Bow, the great hunter, was wooing her; and she often smiled upon him.

Big Bow had cast eyes on Little Toes, whose father and mother were old and lazy, and thought he could buy her by gifts of meat and skins, as well he might; but the goodwill of Little Toes herself must be considered, for we did not seize upon the women we bought, as was once the custom, and for Little Toes there were other suitors. Limp, it must be admitted, was not very fine to look upon. He could talk better than Big Bow, and women like one who can talk; but he could not bring many skins or much meat, though of fish he brought abundance. But people cannot live on fish alone. It seemed that Limp had little chance, and I, his friend, was sorry for him; but I had not fully considered his shrewdness and his ways.

Ever the young girls sought to bedeck themselves, that they might be fair to look upon, and sometimes they would string red berries upon grass, and hang the loop about the neck, and it was a pretty thing to see. It could last but for a little time, but, while it lasted, it was glittering; and ever Little Toes wore such a necklace and much she grieved that the beautiful thing would wither so soon into hardness and dullness, and of all this Limp knew well. So it came that he conceived a thing that was wondrous. He told me of what he had done. He was walking beside the lake one day, black of mood, thinking of Big Bow, and of how hard his chances were of getting the woman who seemed so fair to him. It was as he walked thus—as he told me—that his eyes rested, at first unseeing, on the shore’s margin, where the creek tumbled into the lake, and where there was a blaze of colouring as the sun shone on the tossed-up shells of white and of a glittering pink of which the lake had many. Somehow they made him think more than ever, if that were possible, of the red berries around the throat of Little Toes. Much he thought, he told me, until, suddenly, he knew what it was that made him see Little Toes with her necklace. The white shells were like her white skin, and the pink shells were like the berries. Then came to him a great idea. He ran up and down the shore, gathering the pink shells and the white ones, and filled his wolfskin pouch with them, and then ran to his cave, and stayed within it long. So it was that for many days I had seen so little of him, and had wondered what he might be doing thus alone.

In a hidden place among the rocks near the lake he was at work with bits of sandstone and his drill of the hardest flint, working more eagerly than ever he had worked on spear or arrow-head, and wonderful things began to show in his strong hands as he so laboured. He was most patient, as surely he had need to be. He bored each white shell and each one of the bright pink until there were many of them thus pierced, and then he rounded and polished them until they glittered wondrously when he brought them to the light. He marvelled at them himself. They were wonderful beads. He took a long tendon from the leg of a great elk which we had killed, such tendon as we used for a bowstring, and which would last a lifetime, and upon this he strung the beads, first a pink one and then a white one, and so on to the end. He knotted the ends of the tendon together, in a knot that could not be untied, and then held up before his eyes something which no one had ever seen before—the most glorious shining thing that men had ever known. It was the first necklace that would not shrink and wither. All this Limp told me, and showed me what he had made. It was marvellous. And, after this, the days passed, and he still laboured on the bauble. But no longer did I reproach him about the fish. My heart was with him, my lame companion.

And all this time, while Limp had been working in the hiding place in the rocks, Big Bow had been seeking to gain Little Toes and take her to his living place. To him, as to Limp, came a new idea. He would make a gift to the girl. One night, just after the darkness came, Big Bow went to the cave of Little Toes when he knew that the girl would be alone, for that was the time that Old Log and Groundnut, his wife, went forth to gossip in the neighbouring caves. Tossed over one of his shoulders was the body of a little deer, very fat, that he had killed that day; and over the other hung down to his very feet a great glossy mass, which was the most wonderful skin in the world, for it was the skin of the great cave bear, the only one in the tribe, and had come to Big Bow because he was foremost in the famous chase and fight when the bear was killed. The bear put an end to old Chuck that day.

Few words had Big Bow. He laid the deer at the feet of Little Toes, and then spread out the skin on the ground before her.

“It is yours,” he said. “To-morrow I am coming to take you to my cave.”

Little Toes did not answer at first. She only threw herself down upon the furry skin, and cuddled herself there.

“It is good,” she said.

Then Big Bow went away.

Soon there was a little sound in the almost darkness, and Limp stood beside the girl, as Big Bow had done. The fire in the cave blazed up, and he called her to it. Then from his wolfskin pouch he drew forth something which flashed and glittered almost like the flying blazing bugs of the night among the bushes or the shining things in the sky above. It seemed almost alive. He hung it about her neck. The girl looked down upon it in speechless amazement. She lifted the beads in her shaking fingers, but her lips were still. She seemed almost to be in one of the dreams which come to one sleeping.

“Come with me to my cave, and be my wife,” said Limp.

She did not answer, even then. She only put her hand in his, and they went out into the night.

They took the bearskin with them.

There is nothing more to tell of the marrying of Limp and Little Toes. He was with me less. I was sometimes most lonesome without him.

Raging like a bull aurochs was Big Bow when he learned that Little Toes was lost to him, and that the wonderful skin was lost as well, and deep were his threats of vengeance upon Limp; but I—I, Scar, the Strong—told him that I would slay him if evil came to Limp through him; and he did not dare to hurt him. Not always do the lake people fight for their friends—we were but rude; but I had for Limp a liking which was my own, and I am sometimes hard of mood. And soon there were other necklaces of shell and pebbles, and amulets and anklets of coloured shells worn by the young women. Very strenuous are lovers.

Never before, as I have said, had the wild people lived so peacefully nor learned so many things to make the living easier. Fine was the climate, for even in winter the snows were not too deep nor the cold too biting, and there were game and fish, and the fruits and nuts and soft roots of the forest were there in plenty. We were soon to have them all the more because of the things, as I have said, that we learned.

Many times had the sun risen since Limp and Little Toes began living in the hut that Limp builded. And one thing, greatest of all, we found, because now we feared the winters less.

I have told of old Ox, and of old Feather, his wife, who were friends of Limp, and who lived alone in a hut above the village, and of how the woman winnowed and pounded her seeds in an open wide earthy space near the hut, surrounded on all sides by rocks, and never entered save by her and Ox, or by the birds of the air. Much she laboured there, being so patient in her gathering of seeds; and it often chanced that when gusts of wind came in her winnowing by tossing up the grain in her hands, some of the seeds would be carried away, and scattered over the little field, and after that the birds would come to eat them. Many a bird did old Ox get there with his arrows; for though his eyes were growing dim, because of age, he still shot very well, for he had been a master bowman in his day. But it is not of the birds he killed that I am going to tell, but of another matter concerning the scattered seeds, and what came at first through no man’s thought or doing, but all by accident, and later because of the wisdom of old Feather.

All through the autumn Feather had winnowed the great store of seeds she had gathered, and there was an abundance in the skin bags in the hut for the winter—both to make into the water cakes, and to trade for meat or fish. But likewise there remained many seeds missed by the birds, scattered over the little bare field, which, though amid the rocks, had a soil which was quite deep, the washings from the heights above. Then came winter and the snow, and the field was hidden.

And then followed the spring, and the rains and the warm sun, and Feather saw what was curious to her, yet what, as she thought upon it, pleased her mightily. Thoughtful and far-sighted was old Feather. What she saw was a green carpet on a little portion of the field near the hut, and, looking at it closely, she saw that it was made up of shoots and spears of the millet and the barley, for in her years she had learned discernment, and knew them well, even as they grew in greenness. Then came to her a great idea. She and old Ox would not trample upon the green space, but would let the plants grow and ripen their seeds there. “So I shall have more seeds for the winter,” thought she, “and shall not have to go afar for a part of them, at least.” And so they guarded the patch of barley and millet, and it grew lustily, and the seeds ripened, and from the fruitful patch old Feather garnered in the autumn quite a store of seeds, to add to that which she gleaned in long journeyings across the plain, and between the rocks where a little soil might be, or in the forest openings. Long and deeply did Feather ponder over this thing when the winter came again, and she and Ox, well fed, huddled and talked or slept in their skins beside the fire in the clod-covered hut. Seeds she had in abundance, and from her store she filled two bags—one of barley, and one of millet—picking these seeds carefully one by one from the others with which they were mixed. To old Ox she told of the strange thing she was going to do, and he promised to aid her, for well had he learned, through the long years, of the shrewdness and wisdom of the faithful woman he had taken in his lusty youth.

To Limp and me, as well as to old Ox, her husband, Feather told her plan, because she knew that we cared for her, and would not deride her; and, as for me, I became almost as earnest and curious as she herself over the outcome of what she was to do. Why should not something come of that? Plants grew from the seed—we all knew that—and why should we not put the seeds where we wanted the plants to grow? But only old Feather had thought of that.

And the spring came again, and the warm rains, and carefully old Feather scattered her seeds all over the little field, with its scant covering of short grasses here and there. The barley she scattered on half of the field, and the millet on the other. I was there when she did it, and even scattered some of the seed myself, for the field was not so very little, after all. Nearly a score of yards across, it must have been. And, after the seed was sown, we sat down beside the hut to talk. Then to the feast spread for them suddenly the keen-eyed birds, the pigeons, and even some of the pheasants and many smaller things. Old Feather ran yelling, and waved a skin at them, and they flew away, only to return when she came from the field, for the seeds showed everywhere but too plainly, and were too inviting. Then happened something because of what was observed of Feather, but did for good far more than she intended. The seeds must be hidden! She found a little fallen tree, a great branch to which still clung the dried leaves, and, I aiding her, we dragged it all over the field, by its trunk, the ragged points and ends of the limbs tearing up the earth, not deeply, but enough, and so hiding all the seeds beneath the ground. Then the birds came no more, though old Ox was watchful and ever ready with his bow.

And as soon as the sun smote down and warmed the earth, though the snows still came at times, there came sprouts from the soil all over the little field, and then it became all a vivid green, and later there was sent up a broad waving mass of the green plants, which yellowed as the autumn came, and the seeds formed, and Feather, the wonderful old woman, had, all together, and close beside her hut, such store of seed as would have taken many weary leagues of search to gather and long carrying in all weather. The birds came again as the grain ripened; but the field was guarded by old Ox and me, and great sport we had in the shooting. A wonderfully good bait for the birds which were best to eat was the grain field of old Feather. And all the grain there was she gathered and put into the skin bags. It was good to see old Ox then. Somehow very close together were these two old creatures, and he was proud.

“There is none like Feather,” he said to me. “Her neck wrinkles are fairer than the beads of the girls.”

And all the tribe wondered and admired, and much desired such store of seed as was in the hut of old Ox and Feather. And others would do as she had done; and that year they garnered many seeds, and stored them, and when the spring came again they cleared a field on the plain close to the hillside and near the village, and made a high fence of brush about it to keep out the wild beasts at night, and there planted the seed. The grain grew and ripened, and the children guarded the field to keep away the flocks of hungry birds; and with the autumn came such store of seeds as the tribe never had owned before. The winter might be cold, and the snow lie deep, and the hunting be bad, but there would in time be no starving in the huts, for with each year the field was made larger, and the crop the greater. But old Feather joined not with the others. She but worked in her own little field, and pondered much and planted carefully.

And old Ox became very feeble and died, and we carried him into the hills, and heaped many stones upon him, that the prowling beasts might not reach him, and promised Feather that some day we would lay her beside him, for so she asked us. Feather then lived alone beside her little field; but an abundance she had brought to her of fish and game, because of what she had done for all of us, and because she had such an abundance of good grain to furnish for the seeding.

There was a great marsh perhaps two leagues away from where we lived, beside the river which ran beside the cliffs, and this opened on a great creek which ran into our river after it had reached the plain. In the midst of the marsh was an island with not many trees but much shrubbery upon it, and all sorts of plants and grasses. Once old Feather had gone to the island in the later autumn, when the marsh was frozen over, for it was dangerous and avoided by all at other times, and there had found, not only much millet and barley, but another seed which grew a little like the barley, but with shorter husks and prickles to it, and another kind of seed. She had gathered but little of this seed; but it had proved most toothsome and best of all seeds to eat. The wheat, she called it. Much she longed for this seed, that she might plant it in her field, and raise plants of this kind, but she was too old and tired for such a journey now, and so I, who cared for the old couple who had done so much for the clan, made promise that some day I would get it for her. And this word I did not forget.

There came a day, when it was early autumn still, that I had great good fortune in the hunt soon after the sun had risen. There was a fog upon the plain where the deer and the urus and other wild things of the grass eaters fed, and no wind to carry my scent; and before daylight I crept far out on the wild meadow, for well I knew the way, even in darkness, and hid myself in a little clump of bushes near the forest. I carried my strongest bow and the sharpest and best of my flint arrows. So I lay hidden and silent, and soon I could hear, very close beside me, the sound of moving, feeding things. And slowly, very slowly, the fog thinned, and more light came.

Not ten yards from me—so close that it seemed impossible he could not have felt me near, nor caught my scent, broad side toward me—fed a great stag leading his does. Already, before the fog lessened, I had prepared myself—one knee on the ground, and arrow notched for whatever hap might come with the light. Never was afforded fairer mark so close. I held my aim upon where the heart of the stag should be, and drew with all my strength until the great bow groaned, and the head of the arrow was beside my hand, and then I released it—I, the strongest of bowmen. With the loud twang there came a great snorting, and the does were gone. Not so the huge stag. He leaped far aloft, and gave a mighty bleat, and rolled to earth, thrashing about in his death agony. I had driven the arrow through his heart, and so mightily that the arrow-head stuck out on the farther side!

I ran to the village, and called aloud to the men, and we brought the stag slung beneath a great pole borne on the shoulders of half a dozen of us at either end. A great feast of venison had the whole clan that morning. Much I ate, and then I slept a little; but the sun was not yet at its highest when I awoke refreshed and strong, and full of vauntingness. I said to myself, “I will do yet another thing this day. I will go to the great marsh, and get for old Feather the strange new seed she wants.” So I said to old Feather, and I spoke vauntingly:

“Already to-day have I killed a great stag, and we have much meat. More yet will I do before the darkness comes. I will go to the island in the marsh and gather for you as nearly a bagful as I can of the new kind of seeds that you need, and will bring the bag to you, that you may keep the seeds for the spring planting.”

And I threw out my breast.

But Feather cried out that I should not go. Very treacherous was the marsh, she said, and its sand and its black slime had sucked down to death many beasts which ventured into it. I must wait until the winter came, and the marsh was frozen, so that a man might walk upon it safely. True, there might not be any of the seeds left, for the birds would have taken most of them, but with the few she had she could raise a little crop, and the next year there would be an abundance for the planting. But I only laughed at her. I, Scar, was vain, and thought it an easy thing for me to do.

Still, after I had left Feather, there was almost a little fear in me. I knew that many beasts had perished in the marsh, and that in past times more than one person who had hunted along its edges, and maybe ventured a little way into it after some wounded game, had never been seen in the village again; but I was proud, and would not give up the venture. I sought, however, one of the very old men, Three Tooth, who had been a great hunter and very daring in his youth, and who, I thought, might give me good advice as to the way I should take to get to the island safely. He was very old, and mumbled as he talked, but from him I learned that once he had reached the island in midsummer, though after a most perilous journey, leaping from tussock to tussock, where from the land to the east of the island they rose more closely than elsewhere; but he raised his thin arms, and shook his wrinkled hands, and warned me in his cracked voice against trying to make the journey. Barely had he come back from the island with his life. Once he slipped as he leaped, and the black ooze and sucking sand caught him; and had there not been on the tussock from which he slipped a deep-rooted overhanging willow, to a limb of which he clung, and by aid of which he at last pulled himself out, he would surely have been lost. He begged me not to go, but I told him that I had resolved, and so he told me again the way he had taken, but as I left him he was shaking his head and mumbling wildly.

One of Feather’s skin bags I took, and fastened it to my skin belt, that I might not be bothered with the carrying of it, and, besides it, only my flint spear, the long, strong staff of which I thought might aid me in my leaping or in balancing upon the tussocks. Across the plain I went until I reached the eastern side of the great marsh, in the midst of which rose the island—not very high, but showing green with its shrubs against the dreary gray stretch of little ponds and black mud and brown rushes which lay between it and where I stood. It was true, as the old man had told me, that there stretched irregularly across this space a line of little uprising mounds and tussocks, upon some of which were stunted willows growing, but they were not as close together as I could have liked, and all seemed desolate and threatening. However, the sun shown brightly, and some of the scummy pools were glittering in a way, and I felt a little braver than I would have had the day been gloomy, and so set my teeth together and started to make the passage.

There was shallow water between me and the nearest uprearing hummock; but I felt the bottom with my spear, and found it to be safe enough, and waded out easily to the hummock, which was gray and grassy, and firm beneath my feet. The next was farther away; but again I felt the bottom with my spear, and again I waded, and once more landed easily. And so from hummock to hummock I waded, sometimes leaping when the dry places were near together, always feeling my way carefully with my spear, but going forward rapidly. I laughed then at the foolish fears of the people of the village.

“It is but an old tale,” I shouted aloud in my glee. “It is but a fearsome story invented by the old men and women. A child might wade to the island.”

I was within a hundred yards of it. I leaped to the next hummock and across it, and again thrust down my spear. The water was shallow now all the way to the shore. But, though I thrust it in to the butt, I could reach no solid bottom through the black ooze. It clung to the spear, and strength was required even in pulling out the slender shaft.

Now I thought deeply, and something like a fear came to me again. Between me and the island’s shore there rose in almost a straight line a series of sedgy tussocks within leaping distance of each other, but some of them were small, and I feared unstable in their rooted anchorage. However, I must try to cross upon them. They might all be solid. And I must take them with a rush, leaping from one to another before there could be time for any settling. I braced myself at the hummock’s edge, holding my spear crosswise in front of me, to assist me as a balance, and leaped forward in a mad race for the firm land. From tussock to tussock I sprang, each affording stoutness enough for the next leap, though some I could feel sway beneath my feet beneath the thrusting force, and so desperately I gained my way until I leaped triumphantly for the last, a little sedge-tufted uprising not six feet from the shore. It turned beneath my feet!

I did not fall, but my feet and legs shot straight downward into the black ooze, and I stood erect there in water less than a hand’s-breadth deep, but engulfed nearly to my hips. For a moment I did not seem in such a dreadful strait. There was the firm land so near me that I could reach it with my spear; and surely I, strongest man in a tribe where were many strong ones, could, some way, pull myself from the clutching, and flounder out to safety. I laid the spear crosswise upon the bottom in front of me, that I might press upon it as a sort of leverage, and bore down hardly, and strove to lift my right leg to the surface. I could not. The spear but sank into the ooze, affording no resistance, and the leg seemed held in an awful grip such as I never before had felt. I tried to lift the other, but it would not come from the clasp of the monster beneath. My struggling but sank me more deeply. That would not do. I stood motionless, thinking that perhaps I would sink no deeper. If I could but remain thus, even though I should suffer, they would—since all the village knew of my quest—come at least to the border of the marsh, in the morning, to seek for me, and would hear my shouting. It might be then that they would devise some means of reaching and rescuing me. I made note of a thong in my skin leggings below the waist, and so waited, shouting all the time, with a little hope that some hunter might be passing along by the distant shore. But there came no answer. Rarely did the hunters seek the water birds of the marsh. I looked at the thong again. I could not see it! Though I was making no move, the quicksand of the ooze was drawing me steadily downward. I lost my wits. I sought to rush to the solid land by some huge effort of main strength and force, but there was nothing beneath my feet to aid me, and I sank deeper and deeper. When my struggling ceased, I was engulfed to my shoulders. Even to free my arms I must uplift them, and I knew that the end of me was very near. I held them aloft for a little time, and then, wearied, let them drop into the water and upon the ooze of the bottom, where they rested, sinking slowly.

But at the end, brave men are always brave. I shouted at the ooze and quicksands. They should not take my life! They could not, for my life would be gone before they had all my body. There was the water, only half a foot of it, but enough, and of all deaths, drowning I knew was the easiest. I had seen men nearly drowned whom we had saved just in time, and they had told me that such a death must be pleasant. The very head alone was above the water now. I whooped defiance.

CHAPTER VII
THE TAMERS

I was aroused from a bad dream by the sharp, yipping cry of dogs. I was glad to be awake, for in my dream there was suffocation. For a little time after I awoke I was dazed in mind, and could not recognize myself or my surroundings. I was lying in a little sunlit hollow upon a grass-green spot on the surface of a slight rocky height in the plain, and my bow and skin quiver of arrows and my flint-headed spear, smooth as the teeth of the river horse and keen of edge as the blades of the marsh grass, were beside me. Gradually I remembered that I had come alone to the plain to hunt the hares which were abundant in and about the scattered rocks, and the bustards which fed upon the seeds of the many bushes. I had climbed the little height to look about the better, but could see no game, and so had thrown myself down on the soft turf, to await whatever might appear, and then had fallen asleep.