A SON OF THE AGES
[Illustration: “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”
[Illustration]
_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
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction ix
I. The Link 3
II. The Axemen 25
III. The Bowmen 48
IV. The Clansmen 63
V. The Boatmen 81
VI. The Sowers 101
VII. The Tamers 121
VIII. The Deluge 145
IX. The Kitchen-Middenites 165
X. The Lake-Dwellers 191
XI. The Armourers 212
XII. The Sailors 237
XIII. The Hercynian Forest 271
XIV. Alesia and the End 298
ILLUSTRATIONS
“His eyes were flaming, and his teeth shone white....
We were alone to fight it out” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“With long poles thrust to the bottom, we guided
the boats here and there about the shallow
waters” 90
“I, too, would seek to learn what might be done to
make the wind our servant” 246
“I am weakening and dying. The Valkyrie are
circling in the sky” 324
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.