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.