THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
THE Stone Age on earth lasted for a very long time; much longer than
you would think, as you read this story. From the time when Ra made his
first stone-pointed spear many, many thousands of years had passed,
and still men knew nothing of the use of metals. In some parts of the
earth, as the tribes migrated, and spread to new countries, stone
weapons and tools were used for thousands of years longer; in fact,
they are still used, even to-day, by certain savage tribes. But in
other parts of the earth, men discovered metals, and how to use them,
and soon the age of bronze began.
In Nature's great storehouse metals are found in two different ways.
Some of them, such as gold, tin, and copper, occur free, that is, they
are found in the rocks in solid veins. When these rocks are broken up
by the action of the weather, or by swift-flowing streams, the bits of
metal, being very heavy, fall to the bottom, and are found in lumps, or
nuggets in the sand and earth along the shores.
Other metals, such as iron, are usually found in nature in the shape of
ores, and can only be gotten out of these ores by smelting, that is, by
heating the ores in a hot fire.
Early man, of course, found the free metals first, and it was a very
long time before he learned how to smelt ores, and make iron, and
steel. The ancient Egyptians carved their wonderful statues, their huge
obelisks, with tools of copper, hardening the soft metal in some way,
so that it would cut the toughest stone. The secret of hardening and
tempering copper in this way has been lost, and the most skilful metal
workers to-day do not know how to do it.
When Man first discovered gold, the only use he made of it was for
ornaments, just as Modor twisted the golden bracelet about his arm.
Tin, too, although harder than gold, was of little use to him. Even
copper, the hardest of the three, was too soft in its natural state to
be used for anything but knives, or swords, and even these were not
so good as those made of very hard stone. But when it was found that
copper and tin, melted together, would form what is known as bronze,
hard, tough and strong, a new era or age began, known as the Age of
Bronze.
It was long after Modor found the lump of gold, however, that the use
of bronze began.
The island men kept watch from their village on the cliffs for many
years, expecting each day to see a fleet of canoes come across the
water from the far-off mainland, but as time passed they forgot about
their enemies, and went on fishing and hunting and building boats in
peace.
Then, one day, when the sea was quiet and smooth, a watcher on the
cliffs saw a boat far off on the horizon, and as it came closer, others
appeared behind it until there were forty or more in sight. He gave the
alarm, and soon the smoke went up from the signal fires, calling all
the fishing and hunting parties home as quickly as possible.
The attacking fleet was made up of many large log canoes, driven by
both paddles and sails. The hill men whom Ban had led to conquer the
tribe by the sea knew little or nothing about making boats when they
came, but the prisoners they had taken, women, and a few men, they
made their slaves, and from these they learned how to make canoes of
wicker and skins, and also how to burn them out of logs. As time went
on Ban's tribe became great fishermen, just as the sea people had
been before them, and travellers came down from the valley, bringing
grain, and fine pottery, and many other new things that the sea people
had known nothing about. This made the tribe of Ban very powerful and
strong; from the slaves they had learned to make fish hooks, and nets,
and grass cloth and boats, and from the hill people, and the dwellers
in the valley, they learned how to make bread, and wine, and to plant
things for food, and make clothing of leather and skins instead of
grass cloth, and much besides. Soon all the country between the valley
and the sea was covered with people, and now the new tribes that
wandered away from the valley went inland, settling new country, for
there was no longer any room for them, in the direction of the sea.
When the tribe of Ban, and the other tribes that now lived along the
seacoast, wanted to find new places where there was plenty of game,
there was nowhere for them to go. The sea stopped them. But they knew,
when they saw the boat of Modor sail along their coast, that the old
legend about the land of the flying birds was true, and that somewhere
across the Great Water was a new country, where there might be plenty
of game, and room for them to live. So a thousand of them, in fifty
great canoes, twenty men to a canoe, set sail on a voyage of discovery.
It was their boats that the watchers on the cliffs saw coming toward
them.
When the smoke signals went up, all the boats of the island men came
flying home, and gathered in the bay below the cliffs. The entrance to
the bay was narrow, and they decided to fight from their ships, and
keep the enemy's boats out. Unless these could get into the bay, there
was no way in which the men in them could climb up to the village on
the high ground above, for the cliffs on the ocean side were much too
steep to climb.
The invaders lowered their sails and paddled about the mouth of the
bay, trying to make up their minds what to do. They had not expected to
find such a rocky shore, for their own coast was flat and sandy. Then
suddenly they decided to sail into the bay and attack the ships of the
island men inside.
The island men's ships were larger and higher out of the water than the
log canoes, but there were not nearly so many of them; less than thirty
in all, some large and some small. Their sails were lowered, but rowers
manned the oars, while on the decks forward stood fighting men, with
spears, slings and heavy rocks, and bows and arrows. Along the shore
of the bay, at the foot of the cliffs, more fighting men stood, while
above, in the village on the plateau, were the women, the old men and
children, all ready to roll great stones down the path which led up the
cliff, in case any of the enemy should try to climb up that way.
The canoes of the invaders swept into the bay through its narrow
mouth, and at once dashed toward the opposing fleet, their crews
cheering and shouting. At the same time the boats of the island men
advanced to meet them, led by Modor, who had become the chief of the
tribe, now that Gudr was dead. Modor, whose vessel was in the lead,
told his men to row as hard as they could, straight at the first canoe.
The tall prow of his boat hit the canoe and crushed in its side, so
that it sank, and all the crew were thrown into the water. This battle
was the very first sea-fight, and Modor was the first man to ram an
enemy's ship.
Other ships belonging to the island men came up, and other canoes were
rammed. The men in the water tried to climb aboard the ships, but they
were struck with axes, or pierced with spears, so that the water of
the bay was red with blood. But the island men did not have things all
their own way. Some of the canoes attacked the ships in pairs, one on
each side, and their crews sprang aboard and fought with the island men
on the decks, so that many were killed on both sides.
Some of the sea people ran their canoes ashore, and jumped out on the
sand. Here they were met by the defenders on the beach, who fought with
them to protect their homes.
The battle raged with fury for two or three hours, but at last, when
many of their boats had been sunk, and the crews killed, the sea people
gave up the fight and paddled out of the bay.
Modor now gave a great shout and called to his men to follow in
pursuit. The ships, with their long oars, were faster than the canoes,
in the rough water outside the bay, and rammed and sank many of them.
Only twelve out of the fifty that came, managed to escape; their crews
paddled away with all their might, and soon they were mere specks in
the distance.
Then Modor and his ships came back to the bay, the wounds of his men
were washed and bound up, and a great feast was held that night to
celebrate the victory.
In the enemy's canoes that had been driven up on the shore they found
all sorts of provisions; cakes made of grain meal, and jars of wine,
neither of which they had ever seen before. They also found round
wicker baskets, for holding fish, and strong cords of twisted grass,
and many pottery jars and bowls.
[Illustration: THE FIRST MUSIC
One of the men had taken the shell of a sea turtle, and stretched some
thin strings of gut across it and he picked these strings with his
fingers while singing his song.]
They ate the bread cakes, and drank the wine, which made them very
merry and gay. The old men, who later on were called bards, made a
song in honour of Modor's victory, and one of them played the first
music that man had ever heard. He had taken the shell of a sea turtle,
and stretched some thin strings of gut across it and he picked these
strings with his fingers while singing his song. Many hundreds of
years later these bards, with their rude harps, wandered all through
the country, from village to village, entertaining the people around
the fires at night with songs of the mighty deeds of Modor and other
great chiefs and leaders of the past. In those days, before people had
learned to write, these bards were the ones who kept the history of
the past, and even to-day we can find some of their songs and stories
in the ancient sagas and legends of almost every people and country.
Some of the deeds of these ancient heroes as told by the bards were so
wonderful that the people came to look upon them as gods.
One of the young men in Modor's boat made a new discovery, while the
battle was going on. When the attacking canoes came alongside, he
sprang into one of them, followed by some of his companions, and fought
the crew with his axe. A shower of sling stones from another canoe flew
about him. To protect his face and head from the stones he snatched up
the round wicker top of one of the fish baskets, and held it before
him, so that the sling stones bounced off and did him no harm. This was
the first shield.
Later on, when the battle was over, he took one of these round wicker
tops, and stretched a piece of heavy leather over it. Then he fastened
two leather thongs on the inside, so that he could slip his arm through
them and so hold the shield before him while still having his hand free
to grasp his bow.
Modor, who was a great chief, as well as a skilful carpenter, saw how
useful this was at once. He sent a party up the coast to where he had
seen the reeds growing, and had them bring back many bundles of them.
With these he showed the women how to make frames of basket-work, and
cover them with tough hide, so that each man had a shield to defend
himself with.
[Illustration: THE FIRST ARMOUR
Modor made wide gold bands and put them on each arm from the elbow to
the shoulder, and these bands, originally ornaments, formed the first
metal armour.]
Another thing that came from this battle was the beginning of the use
of armour. One of the sea folk had struck Modor a heavy blow across the
arm, that would have cut it to the bone, had not the axe fallen upon
the thick band of gold Modor wore on his arm. After this, Modor hunted
for more of the gold, and when he found it, he made many more wide gold
bands, and put them on each arm from the elbow to the shoulder, and
this was the first use of metal armour. But it was a very long time
before men came to use heavy armour of brass, and iron and steel.
Modor loved adventure, and he made up his mind to gather a fleet of
ships, and cross the water to the land of the sea people, and attack
them. But he did not live to do this. One day, while hunting in the
marsh of the reeds, up the coast, a great beast like a rhinoceros, with
long woolly hair, and sharp horns on its snout, charged down on him and
his companions. They fought bravely, but Modor and two of his men were
killed, and the rest fled to their boat, afraid.
The whole village mourned Modor with songs and cries of grief, and the
next day a party went to the marsh and brought back his body. They
buried it in a grave on the plateau, with great stones over it to mark
the place. With his body they buried the dead chief's spear, and axe,
and his gold armlets and shield, for these people believed that the
dead would live again, and would need their weapons in the other world.
For hundreds and hundreds of years after this the island people lived
in peace. The tribe grew very large, and spread far inland, where they
found pleasant meadows, and forests, and banks of clay from which to
make pottery. They built many stone villages and temples, and made
armlets of gold, as Modor had done, and sewed plates of it to their
belts, and ornamented the handles of their spears and knives with it.
They also found tin, from which they made ornaments of a shining colour
like silver, and copper, from which they made spear heads, and axes,
beating them into shape with hammers of stone. With coloured clays, and
the juices of plants, they stained their bodies in strange patterns,
and coloured the shafts of their arrows and spears.
In the forests of the island were many wild animals, bears, great
horned deer, and savage wolves, while along the rivers that flowed
through the marshy country were huge beasts like the rhinoceros, and
wild boar and snakes. From fighting these enemies they became fierce
and brave, and when the bards sang of the men who came to attack them
from over the sea, they would beat their weapons on the ground, with
a loud noise, and talk of setting out to conquer them, as Modor had
planned to do. But it was not until long after, when a chief named Mor
came to be head of the tribe that they crossed the Great Water.
The twelve boats that escaped from the sea fight never reached home
again. They had no compass to steer by, and the wind and tide drove
them to a far-off shore, where no man had ever been. Here they settled,
just as the island men had done before, and grew into a new tribe and
people.