Nat-ul kept to the beach as she tramped southward. Upon her right was
the jungle, upon her left the great sea, stretching away she knew not
whither. To her it represented the boundary of the world--all beyond
was an appalling waste of water. To the south-east she could see the
outlines of islands. They were familiar objects, yet shrouded in
mystery. Often they formed the topic of conversation among her people.
What was there upon them? Were they inhabited? And if so, were the
creatures men and women like themselves? To Nat-ul they were as full
of romantic mystery as are the stars and planets to us, but she knew
less of them than we do of the countless brilliant islands that dot
the silent sea of space--they were further from Nat-ul and her people
than is Mars from us. A boat was as utterly unknown to Nat-ul as was a
telescope.
Just beyond a rise of ground ahead of Nat-ul fifty or sixty men, women
and children were busy beside a little stream that flowed into the sea.
When Nat-ul topped the rise and her eyes fell upon these strangers she
dropped suddenly flat upon her belly behind a bush. There she watched
the peculiar actions of these people. It was evident that they had
but just arrived after a long march. They differed in many ways from
any people she had ever seen. Their skins were of the less dangerous
animals--those which fed upon grasses. Their head-dresses bore the
horns of bulls and antelope, giving them, altogether, a most fearsome
aspect.
But it was their habitations and the work upon which they were engaged
which caused Nat-ul the greatest wonderment. Their caves were not caves
at all. They were constructed of a number of long saplings leaned
inward against one another in a circle, and covered with skins and
brush, or the great fronds of giant palms as well as those of the plant
which is known today as it was in Nat-ul's time as elephant's ear,
because of its resemblance to that portion of the great pachyderm.
The weapons of these peoples were unlike those with which Nat-ul was
familiar. The stone ax was of a different shape, and the spear was much
shorter and stouter, its point being barbed, and having one end of a
long, plaited sinew rope tied to it, while the balance of the rope was
fastened in a coil at the warrior's side. Nat-ul knew nothing of fisher
folk. Her own people often caught fish. Sometimes they speared them
with their light spears, but they did not make a business of fishing.
So she did not know that the spears of these strangers answered the
double purpose of weapons of warfare and harpoons.
What interested her most, however, was the strange work upon which many
of the people were engaged. They had cut down a number of large trees,
which they had chopped and burned into different lengths, from fifteen
to twenty feet. With their stone axes they had hewn away the bark and
heavier growth along the upper surfaces of the logs. The softer, pithy
centers had been scooped out and fires built within.
Nat-ul could not but wonder at the purpose of all this labor. She saw
the men and women tending the fires carefully, extinguishing with water
any blaze that seemed threatening to pierce too far from the center of
a tree. Deeper and deeper the flames ate until there remained but a
thin outer husk of fire-hardened wood.
So intent was the girl upon the strange sights before her that she
did not note the approach of a tall, young warrior from the jungle at
her right and a little behind her. The man was tall and straight. A
shaggy bison hide fell from his shoulders, the tail dragging upon the
ground behind him. Upon his head the skull of the bull fitted firmly--a
primitive helmet--clothed in its dried skin and with the short, stout
horns protruding at right angles from his temples.
In his right hand was the stout harpoon and at his waist the coil of
sinew rope. The robe, falling away in front, disclosed a well knit,
muscular figure, naked but for a loin cloth of doe skin in which was
stuck his stone knife and ax.
For several minutes he stood watching the girl, his eyes glowing at
the beauties of her profile and lithe, graceful figure. Then, very
cautiously, he crept toward her. It was Tur of the Boat Builders. Never
in his life had Tur looked upon a more beautiful woman. To see her was
to want her. Tur must own her. He was almost upon her when a dried twig
snapped beneath his tread.
Like a startled antelope Nat-ul was upon her feet. At the same instant
Tur leaped forward to seize her. She was between him and the camp she
had been watching. To run toward them would have meant certain capture.
Like a shot she wheeled right into Tur's outstretched arms, but as they
closed to grasp her they encircled but empty air. Nat-ul had ducked
beneath the young warrior's eager embrace and was fleeing north along
the beach, like a frightened deer.
After her sprang Tur, calling upon her to stop; but with terror goaded
speed the fleet footed Nat-ul raced on. A hundred paces behind her came
Tur. For a short distance she might outstrip him, he knew, but in the
end his mightier muscles would prevail. Already she was lagging. No
longer was the distance between them growing. Soon it would lessen. He
would close upon her--and then!
* * * * *
To the north of the Barren Cliffs Nu overtook the tribe of Nu, his
father. He came upon them during a period of rest, and as he approached
he noted the constraint of their manners as they greeted him. The young
women looked at him with sorrowing eyes. His young warrior friends did
not smile as he called their names in passing.
Straight to Nu, his father, he went, as became a returning warrior. He
found the chief sitting with Tha before a small fire where a ptarmigan,
clay wrapped, was roasting.
His father rose and greeted him. There was pleasure in the older man's
eyes at sight of his son, but no smile upon his lips. He glanced at the
head and pelt of Ur.
"Oo did not return?" he asked.
"Oo did not return," replied the son.
Nu, the son of Nu, looked about among the women and children and the
uneasy warriors. She he sought was not there. His mother came and
kissed him as did Una his sister.
"Where is Nat-ul?" asked Nu.
His mother and his sister looked at one another and then at his father.
Nu, the chief, looked at Tha. Tha rose and came before the young man.
He laid his hand upon the other's shoulder.
"Since your mother bore you," he said, "always have I loved you--loved
you second only to Aht, my own son. Some day I hoped that you would
become my son, for I saw that you loved Nat-ul, my daughter. But now
Nat-ul has gone away with Hud. We know not how it happened, but Ra-el,
the daughter of Kor, says that she went willingly."
He got no further.
"It is a lie!" cried Nu, the son of Nu. "Nat-ul never went willingly
with Hud or any other. When did they go? Whither went they? Tell me,
and I will follow and bring back Nat-ul, and with her own lips she
will give Ra-el the lie. I will bring her back if she still lives, but
unless she escaped Hud she is dead, for she would have died rather than
mate with another than Nu, the son of Nu. I have spoken. Which way went
they?"
No one could tell him. All that they knew was that when the tribe set
out from their old dwellings Hud and Nat-ul could not be found, and
then Ra-el had come forward and said that the two had fled together.
When he questioned Ra-el he could glean nothing more from her, but she
stuck obstinately to her assertion that Nat-ul had gone willingly.
"And will Nu, the son of Nu, be such a fool as to follow after a woman
who has chosen another mate when there are those as beautiful whom Nu,
the son of Nu, could have for the asking?" she said.
At her words the young man saw the motive behind her statement that
Nat-ul had run away voluntarily with Hud, and now he was more positive
than ever that the girl did not speak the truth. Her words recalled
many little occurrences in the past that had slipped by unnoticed at a
time when all his thoughts were of the splendid Nat-ul. It was evident
that Ra-el would have liked Nu for herself.
The young man returned to his father's side.
"I go," he said, "nor shall I return until I know the truth."
The older man laid his hand upon the shoulder of the younger.
"Go, my son," he said; "your father's heart goes with you."
In silence Nu, the son of Nu, retraced his steps southward toward the
Barren Cliffs. It was his intention to return directly to the former
dwellings of his people and there search out the spoor of Hud and
Nat-ul. A great rage burned in his heart as he thought of the foul
deed that Hud had done. The tribe of Nu had progressed far beyond the
status of the beasts. They acknowledged certain property rights, among
them the inalienable right of the man to his mate, and, going a step
further, the right of the woman to mate as she chose. That Nat-ul had
chosen to mate with Hud, Nu could not for a moment admit. He knew the
courageous nature of the girl, and, knowing it, knew that had she
preferred Hud to him she would have mated with the man of her choice
openly after the manner of the tribe. No, Nat-ul would never have run
off with any man--not even himself.
Half way up the face of the Barren Cliffs Nu was arrested by a faint
moan, coming apparently from a cave at his right. He had no time to
devote to the pleasures of the chase, but there was a human note in the
sound that he had heard that brought him up all suddenly alert and
listening. After a moment it was repeated. No, there could be no doubt
of it--that sound came only from a human throat. Cautiously Nu crept
toward the mouth of the cave from which the moaning seemed to issue. At
the entrance he came to a sudden halt, at the sight that met his eyes.
There, in the half light of the entrance, lay Hud in a pool of blood.
The man was breathing feebly. Nu called him by name. Hud opened his
eyes. When he saw who stood over him he shrugged his shoulders and lay
still, as though to say, the worst has already been done to me--you can
do no more.
"Where is Nat-ul?" asked Nu.
Hud shook his head. Nu knelt beside him raising his head in his arms.
"Where is Nat-ul, man?" he cried, shaking the dying warrior. "Tell me
before you die. I do not ask if she went with you willingly, for I know
that she did not--all I ask is what have you done with her? Does she
live? And if she lives, where is she?"
Hud tried to speak. The effort cost him dear. But at last he managed to
whisper a few words.
"She--did--this," he panted. "Then she--went--away. I don't--know--" he
gasped, and died.
Nu dropped him back upon the stone floor of the cave and ran out upon
the ledge. He searched about the face of the cliff, even going down
upon all fours and creeping from ledge to ledge, oftentimes with his
nose close to the trail--sniffing.
After half an hour of going back and forth over the same ground and
following a rocky ascent upward toward the summit of the cliff a
dozen times, as though proving and re-proving the correctness of his
deductions, Nu at last set forth across the Barren Cliffs and down onto
the beach beside the Restless Sea.
Here he found the spoor more plainly marked in many places above high
tide where Nat-ul's little sandals had left their legible record in the
soft loam or upon the higher sand that the water had not reached. The
way led southward, and southward hurried Nu, the son of Nu. Straight
to the old dwellings led the trail. There Nu found evidence that Nat-ul
had spent the night in a cave above the one in which he had slept.
There was the bed of grasses and a trace of the delicate aroma that our
blunted sense of smell could never have detected, but which was plain
to Nu, and deliciously familiar.
A pang of regret seized him as he realized that his Nat-ul had been so
close to him, and that he had unwittingly permitted her to remain alone
and unprotected amidst the countless dangers of their savage world, and
to go forth, none knew where, into other myriad dangers.
Returning to the foot of the cliff he once more came upon the girl's
spoor. Again it led south along the beach. Swiftly he followed it
until it stopped behind a little clump of bushes at the top of a rise
in the ground. Before Nu realized that this was the southern limit of
the trail he had seen the village beyond and the people engaged in
what to him seemed a strange occupation. He knew that the same sight
had brought Nat-ul to a halt a few hours before, and now he saw where
she had lain upon her belly watching, just as he was watching. For a
few minutes he lay watching the workers and seeking through the little
cluster of skin and thatch shelters for some sign that Nat-ul was a
prisoner there.
Nu had never seen a boat or guessed that such a thing might be. His
people had been hunters from time immemorial. They had come down from
the great plateaus far inland but a few generations since. Then, for
the first time, had his forefathers seen the ocean. As yet they had not
met with any need that required them to navigate its waters, nor had
they come in contact with the Boat Builders who dwelt far south at the
mouth of a great river that emptied into the Restless Sea.
Now, for the first time, Nu saw both the boats and the Boat Builders.
For the first time he saw artificial shelters, and to Nu they seemed
frail and uncomfortable things by comparison with his eternal caves.
The Boat Builders had been several days in this new camp. What had
driven them so far north of their ancestral home, who may guess? A
tribal feud, perhaps; or the birth of a new force that was to drive
them and their progeny across the face of the world in restless
wanderings to the end of time--the primitive wanderlust from which so
many of us suffer, and yet would not forego.
Nu saw that of all the workers one tall young giant labored most
rapidly. His haste seemed almost verging upon frenzy. Nu wondered what
he could be about upon the felled tree trunk that required so much
exertion. Nu did not like work of that nature. It is true that he
had never done any manual labor outside the needs of the chase, but
intuitively he knew that he disliked it. He was a hunter, a warrior,
and even then, in his primitive and untutored mind, there arose a
species of contempt for the drudge. At last, tiring of watching, he
turned his attention again to the spoor he had been following. Where
had Nat-ul gone after lying here behind these bushes?
Nu crawled about until he saw evidences of the girl's quick leap to her
feet and her rapid flight. Then it was he came upon the footprints of
Tur. Now Nu's blood ran hot. It surged through his heart and pounded
against his temples--Nat-ul, his Nat-ul, was in danger!
He saw where the girl had dodged past the man. He saw, distinctly in
the sand, the marks of Tur's quickly turning footsteps as he wheeled
in pursuit. He saw that the two had been running rapidly along the
beach toward the north--the man following the girl, and then, to his
surprise, he saw that the man had come to a sudden stop, had taken a
few steps forward, stood for some time looking seaward and then turned
and raced back toward the strange camp at breakneck speed.
And the girl's trail had continued toward the north for perhaps a
hundred paces beyond the point at which the man had halted. Nu followed
it easily--they were fresh signs since the last high tide, alone and
uncrossed upon a wide stretch of smooth, white sand.
Nu followed the dainty imprints of Nat-ul's swiftly flying little feet
for a hundred paces beyond the end of the man's pursuit--and came
to a dead, bewildered halt. The footprints ended abruptly upon the
beach midway between the ocean and the jungle. About them was only an
expanse of unbroken sand. They simply ceased, that was all. They did
not double back upon themselves. They did not enter the ocean. They did
not approach the jungle. They stopped as though Nat-ul had suddenly
been swallowed by a great hole in the beach. But there was no hole. Nu
halted and looked about in every direction. There was no trace of any
living thing about. Where had Nat-ul gone? What had become of her? Had
the footprints of the man who pursued her reached the point upon the
sand where hers ended, Nu would have concluded that he had picked her
up and carried her back to his village; but the man had been a hundred
paces behind Nat-ul when her trail ceased, nor had he approached closer
to the spot at any time. And when he had returned to his village he had
done so at a rapid run, and the lightness of his spoor indicated that
he had not been burdened with a heavy load.
For some time Nu stood in bewildered thought, but at last he turned
back toward the village of the Boat Builders. Nu knew little of the
super-natural, and so he turned first to the nearest material and
natural cause of Nat-ul's disappearance that he could conceive--the man
who had pursued her. And that man had returned to the village of the
strangers who were diligently burning and scooping the hearts out of
felled trees.
Nu returned to the vantage of the bush before the village. Here he lay
down again to watch--he was positive that in some way these people
were responsible for the disappearance of Nat-ul. They knew where she
was, and, judging by his own estimate of the girl, he knew that the
man who had seen her and pursued her would not lightly relinquish his
attempts to obtain her. Nu had seen the women of the strangers--beside
his Nat-ul they looked like the shes of the ape-folk. No, the man would
seek to follow and capture the radiant stranger. Nu wished that he
could guess which of the men it was who had chased Nat-ul. Something
told him that it was the young giant who worked with such feverish
haste, so Nu watched him most closely.
At last Tur's boat was completed. The centers of the trees the Boat
Builders selected for their craft is soft, and easily burned and
scooped. The fires kindled in the hollowed trunk served a double
purpose--they ate away the harder portions nearer the outside and at
the same time tended to harden what remained. The result was a fairly
light and staunch dug-out.
When Tur's boat was finished he called to several of the other workers.
These came, and, lending a hand with Tur, dragged the hollowed log down
to the water. One of the women came with a long stick, larger at one
end than the other, and with the large end flattened upon both sides.
It was a paddle. Tur tossed this into the boat and then running through
the surf he launched his primitive craft upon the crest of a receding
roller, leaped in, and seizing the paddle struck out vigorously against
the next incoming wave.
Nu watched him with wide eyes. His estimate of the man rose in leaps
and bounds. Here was sport! And Nu did not have to attempt the feat he
had witnessed to know that it required skill and courage. Only a brave
man would venture the perils of the awful waters. Where was he going?
Nu saw that he paddled straight out into the sea. In the distance
were the islands. Could he be going to these? Nu, from childhood, had
always longed to explore those distant lands of mystery. These people
had found a way. Nu had learned something--an aeroplane could not have
presented greater wonders to him than did this crude dug-out.
For a while he watched the man in the little boat. They grew smaller
and smaller as wind, tide and the sturdy strokes of the paddler
carried the hollowed log farther out to sea. Then Nu turned his
attention once more to the other workers. He saw that they, too, were
rapidly completing their boats. They were talking back and forth
among themselves, raising their voices, as they were scattered over a
considerable distance about the village. Nu caught a word now and then.
The language was similar to his own. He discovered that they were
talking about the man who had just departed, and about his venture. Nu
wanted to hear more. He crept cautiously through the dense vegetation
to the little clearing the strangers had made about their shelters. As
he peered through the curtain of tangled creepers that hid him from
their view, he saw the camp more closely. He saw the ring of ashes
that surrounded it--the remains of the nocturnal fires that kept off
the beasts of prey by night. He saw the cooking fire before each rude
shelter. He saw pots of clay--something new to him. He saw the women
and the children and the men. They did not differ greatly from his own
people, though their garments and weapons were dissimilar. And now he
could hear all their conversation.
"She must be beautiful," a man was saying, "or Tur would not venture
across this strange water to those unknown lands in search of her,"
and he grinned broadly, casting a knowing glance at a young woman who
suckled a babe, as she sat scraping, scraping, scraping with a bit of
sharpened flint upon the hide of an aurochs, pegged out upon the ground
before her.
The young woman looked up with an ugly scowl.
"Let him bring her back," she cried, "and she will no longer be
beautiful. This will I do to her face," and she fell to scraping
viciously upon the skin.
"Tur was very angry when she escaped him," continued the man. "He
almost had his hands upon her; but he will find her, though whether
there will be enough left of her to bring back is hard to say--I,
myself, rather doubt it and think that it is a foolish thing for Tur to
waste his time thus."
Nu was non-plussed. Could it be possible that the man they called Tur
was pursuing Nat-ul to those distant islands? How could Nat-ul be
there? It was impossible. And yet there seemed little doubt from the
conversation he had overheard that the man was following some woman
across the water to the mysterious lands--a woman he had just surprised
and chased that very day, and who had eluded him. Who else could it be
but Nat-ul?
V