“_Our remote ancestor was probably arboreal.”_--Eminent scientist.
From his hut in the tree-top Probably Arboreal looked lazily down
a broad vista, still strewn with fallen timber as the result of a
whirlwind that had once played havoc in that part of the forest, toward
the sea. Beyond the beach of hard white sand the water lay blue and vast
and scarcely ruffled by the light morning wind. All the world and his
wife were out fishing this fine day. Probably Arboreal could see dozens
of people from where he crouched, splashing in the water or moving about
the beach; and even hear their cries borne faintly to him on the breeze.
They fished, for the most part, with their hands; and when one caught
a fish it was his custom to eat it where he caught it, standing in the
sea.
In Probably Arboreal's circle, one often bathed and breakfasted
simultaneously; if a shark or saurian were too quick for one, one
sometimes was breakfasted upon as one bathed.
In the hut next to Probably Arboreal, his neighbour, Slightly Simian,
was having an argument with Mrs. Slightly, as usual. And, as usual,
it concerned the proper manner of bringing up the children. Probably
listened with the bored distaste of a bachelor.
“I _will_ slap his feet every time he picks things up with them!”
screamed Slightly Simian's wife, an accredited shrew, in her shrill
falsetto..
“It's _natural_ for a child to use his feet that way,” insisted the
good-natured Slightly, “and I don't intend to have the boy punished
for what's natural.” Probably Arboreal grinned; he could fancy the
expression on Old Sim's face as his friend made this characteristically
plebeian plea.
“You can understand once for all, Slightly,” said that gentleman's wife
in a tone of finality, “that I intend to supervise the bringing-up of
these children. Just because your people had neither birth nor breeding
nor manners----”
“Mrs. S.!” broke in Slightly, with a warning in his voice. “Don't you
work around to anything caudal, now, Mrs. S.! Or there'll be trouble.
You get me?”
On one occasion Mrs. Slightly had twitted her spouse with the fact
that his grandfather had a tail five inches long; she had never done
so again. Slightly Simian himself, in his moments of excitement, picked
things up with his feet, but like many other men of humble origin who
have become personages in their maturity, he did not relish having such
faults commented upon.
“Poor old Sim,” mused Probably Arboreal, as he slid down the tree and
ambled toward the beach, to be out of range of the family quarrel. “She
married him for his property, and now she's sore on him because there
isn't more of it.”
Nevertheless, in spite of the unpleasant effect of the quarrel, Probably
found his mind dwelling upon matrimony that morning. A girl with bright
red hair, into which she had tastefully braided a number of green
parrot feathers, hit him coquettishly between the shoulder blades with a
handful of wet sand and gravel as he went into the water. Ordinarily
he would either have taken no notice at all of her, or else would have
broken her wrist in a slow, dignified, manly sort of way. But this
morning he grabbed her tenderly by the hair and sentimentally ducked
her. When she was nearly drowned he released her. She came out of the
water squealing with rage like a wild-cat and bit him on the shoulder.
“Parrot Feathers,” he said to her, with an unwonted softness in his
eyes, as he clutched her by the throat and squeezed, “beware how you
trifle with a man's affections--some day I may take you seriously!”
He let the girl squirm loose, and she scrambled out upon the beach and
threw shells and jagged pieces of flint at him, with an affectation of
coyness. He chased her, caught her by the hair again, and scored the wet
skin on her arms with a sharp stone, until she screamed with the pain,
and as he did it he hummed an old love tune, for to-day there was an
April gladness in his heart.
“Probably! Probably Arboreal!” He spun around to face the girl's father,
Crooked Nose, who was contentedly munching a mullet.
“Probably,” said Crooked Nose, “you are flirting with my daughter!”
“Father!” breathed the girl, ashamed of her parent's tactlessness. “How
can you say that!”
“I want to know,” said Crooked Nose, as sternly as a man can who
is masticating mullet, “whether your intentions are serious and
honourable.”
“Oh, father!” said Parrot Feathers again. And putting her hands in front
of her face to hide her blushes she ran off. Nevertheless, she paused
when a dozen feet away and threw a piece of drift-wood at Probably
Arboreal. It hit him on the shin, and as he rubbed the spot, watching
her disappear into the forest, he murmured aloud, “Now, I wonder what
she means by that!”
“Means,” said Crooked Nose. “Don't be an ass, Probably! Don't pretend
to _me_ you don't know what the child means. You made her love you. You
have exercised your arts of fascination on an innocent young girl, and
now you have the nerve to wonder what she means. What'll you give me for
her?”
“See here, Crooked Nose,” said Probably, “don't bluster with me.” His
finer sensibilities were outraged. He did not intend to be _coerced_
into matrimony by any father, even though he were pleased with that
father's daughter. “I'm not buying any wives to-day, Crooked Nose.”
“You have hurt her market value,” said Crooked Nose, dropping his
domineering air, and affecting a willingness to reason. “Those marks
on her arms will not come off for weeks. And what man wants to marry a
scarred-up woman unless he has made the scars himself?”
“Crooked Nose,” said Probably Arboreal, angry at the whole world because
what might have been a youthful romance had been given such a sordid
turn by this disgusting father, “if you don't go away I will scar every
daughter you've got in your part of the woods. Do you get me?”
“I wish you'd look them over,” said Crooked Nose. “You might do worse
than marry all of them.”
“I'll marry none of them!” cried Probably, in a rage, and turned to go
into the sea again.
A heavy boulder hurtled past his head. He whirled about and discovered
Crooked Nose in the act of recovering his balance after having flung
it. He caught the old man half way between the beach and the edge of
the forest. The clan, including Crooked Nose's four daughters, gathered
round in a ring to watch the fight.
It was not much of a combat. When it was over, and the girls took
hold of what remained of their late parent to drag him into the woods,
Probably Arboreal stepped up to Parrot Feathers and laid his hand upon
her arm.
“Feathers,” he said, “now that there can be no question of coercion,
will you and your sisters marry me?”
She turned toward him with a sobered face. Grief had turned her from a
girl into a woman.
“Probably,” she said, “you are only making this offer out of generosity.
It is not love that prompts it. I cannot accept. As for my sisters, they
must speak for themselves.”
“You are angry with me, Feathers?”
The girl turned sadly away. Probably watched the funeral cortège winding
into the woods, and then went moodily back to the ocean. Now that she
had refused him, he desired her above all things. But how to win her?
He saw clearly that it could be no question of brute force. It had gone
beyond that. If he used force with her, it must infallibly remind her of
the unfortunate affair with her father. Some heroic action might attract
her to him again. Probably resolved to be a hero at the very earliest
opportunity.
In the meantime he would breakfast. Breakfast had already been long
delayed; and it was as true then, far back in the dim dawn of time, as
it is now, that he who does not breakfast at some time during the day
must go hungry to bed at night. Once more Probably Arboreal stepped into
the ocean--stepped in without any premonition that he was to be a hero
indeed; that he was chosen by Fate, by Destiny, by the Presiding Genius
of this planet, by whatever force or intelligence you will, to champion
the cause of all Mankind in a crucial struggle for human supremacy.
He waded into the water up to his waist, and bent forward with his arms
beneath the surface, patiently waiting. It was thus that our remote
ancestors fished. Fish ran larger in those days, as a rule. In the
deeper waters they were monstrous. The smaller fish therefore sought the
shallows where the big ones, greedy cannibals, could not follow them. A
man seldom stood in the sea as Probably Arboreal was doing more than
ten minutes without a fish brushing against him either accidentally or
because the fish thought the man was something good to eat. As soon as
a fish touched him, the man would grab for it. If he were clumsy and
missed too many fish, he starved to death. Experts survived because they
_were_ expert; by a natural process of weeding out the awkward it had
come about that men were marvellously adept. A bear who stands by the
edge of a river watching for salmon at the time of the year when they
rim up stream to spawn, and scoops them from the water with a deft
twitch of his paw, was not more quick or skillful than Probably
Arboreal.
Suddenly he pitched forward, struggling; he gave a gurgling shout, and
his head disappeared beneath the water.
When it came up again, he twisted toward the shore, with lashing arms
and something like panic on his face, and shouted:
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he cried. “Something has me by the foot!”
Twenty or thirty men and women who heard the cry stopped fishing and
straightened up to look at him.
“Help! Help!” he shouted again. “It is pulling me out to sea!”
A knock-kneed old veteran, with long intelligent-looking mobile toes,
broke from the surf and scurried to the safety of the beach, raising the
cry:
“A god! A god! A water-god has caught Probably Arboreal!”
“More likely a devil!” cried Slightly Simian, who had followed Probably
to the water.
And all his neighbours plunged to land and left Probably Arboreal to
his fate, whatever his fate was to be. But since spectacles are always
interesting, they sat down comfortably on the beach to see how long it
would be before Probably Arboreal disappeared. Gods and devils, sharks
and octopi, were forever grabbing one of their number and making off to
deep water with him to devour him at their leisure. If the thing that
dragged the man were seen, if it showed itself to be a shark or an
octopus, a shark or an octopus it was; if it were unseen, it got the
credit of being a god or a devil.
“Help me!” begged Probably Arboreal, who was now holding his own,
although he was not able to pull himself into shallower water. “It is
not a god or a devil. It doesn't feel like one. And it isn't a shark,
because it hasn't any teeth. It is an animal like a cleft stick, and my
foot is in the cleft.”
But they did not help him. Instead, Big Mouth, a seer and _vers libre_
poet of the day, smitten suddenly with an idea, raised a chant, and
presently all the others joined in. The chant went like this:
“Probably, he killed Crooked Nose,
He killed him with his fists.