THE FEAR
The People of the Caves were beginning to dread their good fortune.
Plenty was being showered upon them with so lavish and sudden a hand
that they looked at it askance, distrustful of the unsought-for
largess. For a week or more their hunting-grounds had been swarming
with game, in amazing and daily increasing numbers, till there was
little more of chance or of excitement in the hunt than in plucking a
ripe mango from its branch. It was game of the choicest kinds,
too--deer of many varieties, and antelope, and the little wild horse
whose flesh they accounted such a delicacy. They slew, and slew, and
their cooking-fires were busy night and day, and the flesh they could
not devour was dried in the sun in long strips or smoked in the reek
of green-wood fires. They feasted greedily, but there was something
sinister in the whole matter, something ominous; and they would stop
at times to wonder anxiously what stroke of fate could be hanging over
the Caves.
During the past day or two, moreover, there had been a disquieting
influx of those great and fierce beasts which the Cave Men were by no
means anxious to hunt. The giant white and the woolly rhinoceros had
arrived by the score in the dense thickets of the steaming savannah
which unrolled its green-and-yellow breadths along the southward base
of the downs. These half-blind brutes appeared to be waging a dreadful
and doubtful war with the red herds of those monstrous, cone-horned
survivals from an earlier age, the Arsinotheria, who had ruled the
reeking savannah for countless cycles. The roar and trampling of the
struggle came up from time to time to the dwellers in the Caves, when
the hot breeze came up from the southward.
What concerned the Cave Folk far more than any near-sighted and
blundering rhinoceros, however malignant, was the sudden arrival of
the great red bears, the black lions, the grinning and implacable
saber-tooth tigers, and giant black-gray wolves which hunted in small,
handy packs of six or seven in number. All these, the dread foes of
Man for as long as tradition could remember, had been mercifully few
and scattered. Now, in a night, they had become as common as conies;
and not a child could be allowed to play beyond shelter of the
cave-mouth fires, not a woman durst venture to the spring without a
brightly blazing fire-brand in her hand. Yet--and this seemed to the
Tribe the most portentous sign of all--these blood-thirsty beasts
appeared to have lost much of their ancient hostility to Man. They
were all well fed, of course, their accustomed prey being now so
abundant that they had little more to do than put forth an armed paw
and seize it. But they all seemed uneasy and half-cowed, as if weighed
down by a menace which they did not know how to face. When a man
confronted them, the fiercest of them made way with a deprecating air,
as if to say that they had troubles enough on their minds.
* * * * *
Bawr, the Chief, and Grom, his right hand and his counselor, stood
upon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared down
anxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyes
to discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets and
cane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of a
cattle-farm. Here and there a battle raged between such small-brained
brutes as the white rhinoceros and the cone-horned monster; but for
the most part there was an apprehensive sort of truce, the different
kinds of beasts keeping as far as possible to themselves.
Further out in the plain pastured a herd of gigantic creatures such as
neither Bawr nor Grom had ever seen before. A pair of rhinoceros
looked like pygmies beside them. They were both tall and massive, of a
dark mud-color, with colossal heads, no necks whatever, huge ears that
flapped like wings, immensely long, up-curving tusks of gleaming
yellow--mighty enough to carry a bison cradled in their curve--and it
seemed to the astonished watchers on the ridge that from the snout of
each monster grew a great snake, which reared itself into the air, and
waved terribly, and pulled down the tops of trees for the monster's
food.
It was the Cave Man's first view of the Mammoth--which had not yet
developed the shaggy coat it was later to grow on the cold sub-Artic
plains.
Recovering at length from his amazement, Bawr remarked:
"They seem to have two tails, those new beasts--a little tail behind,
in the usual place, and a very big tail in front, which they use as a
hand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is they
who are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?"
Grom thought long before replying.
"No," said he, "they are not flesh-eaters. See! They do not heed the
other beasts. They eat trees. And they, too, seem restless. I think
they are themselves driven. But what dreadful beings must be they who
can drive them!"
"If they are driven over us," muttered Bawr, "they will grind us and
our fires into the dust."
"It must be men," mused Grom aloud, "men far mightier than ourselves
and so countless that the hordes of the Tree Men would seem a handful
in comparison. Only men, or gods, and in swarms like locusts, could so
drive all these mighty beasts before them as a child drives rabbits."
"Before they come," said Bawr, dropping his great craggy chin upon his
breast, "the People of the Caves will be trodden out. Whither can we
escape from such foes? We will build great fires before the caves, and
we will go down fighting, as befits men."
He lifted his maned and massive head, and shook his great spear
defiantly at the unknown doom that was coming up from the south. But
Grom's eyes were sunken deep under his brows in brooding thought.
"There is one way, perhaps," he said at length. "We have learned to
journey on the water. We must build us rafts, many rafts, to carry all
the tribe. And when we can no longer hold our fires and our caves we
will push out upon the water, and perhaps make our way to that blue
shore yonder, where they cannot follow us."
"The waves, and the monsters of the waves, will swallow us up,"
suggested Bawr.
"Some of us, perhaps many of us," agreed Grom. "But many of us will
escape, to keep the tribe-fires burning, if the gods be kind upon that
day and bind down the winds till we get over. If we stay here we shall
all die."
"It is well," grunted Bawr, turning to hurry down the steep. "We will
build rafts. Let us hasten."
* * * * *
On the beach below the Caves the Men of the Tribe worked furiously,
dragging the trunks of trees together at the water's edge, lashing
them with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously lopping
some of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire and
split stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk--with the old
men, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of their
hands for such a heavy task as raft-building--remained before the
Caves under the command of A-ya, Grom's mate. They had enough to do in
feeding the chain of fires, keeping the children out of danger, and
fighting back with spear and arrow the ever-encroaching mob of
wild-eyed beasts. The beasts feared the fires, and feared the human
beings who leaped and screamed and smote from among the fires. But
still more they seemed to fear some unknown thing behind them. For a
time, however, the crackling flames and the biting shafts proved a
sufficient barrier, and the motley but terrifying invaders went
sheering off irresolutely to westward over the downs.
Down by the edge of the tide the raft-builders worked under Grom's
guidance. The broad water--some four or five miles across--was the
tidal estuary of a great river which flowed out of the north-west. Its
brimming current bore down from the interior jungles the trunks of
many uprooted trees, which the tides of the estuary hurled back and
strewed along the beach. The raft-builders, therefore, had plenty of
material to work with. And the fear that lay chill upon their hearts
urged them to a diligence that was far from their habit.
It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time would
come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach
between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till
the rabble went by, then fall to work again.
Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossing
their wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled the
whole space so that the men had to plunge out into deep water to
escape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish which
infested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in shore, and paid
for their irresolution by being gored savagely.
It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days,
and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. By
sunrise Bawr and Grom estimated that there were rafts enough to carry
the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided,
however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less
buoyant than they hoped.
But for this most wise provision Fate refused to grant the time.
A naked slip of a girl, her one scant garment of leopard skin caught
upon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeing
down the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air.
Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old women
carrying babies or bundles of dried meat.
"They must not come yet. They'll be in the way!" cried Bawr angrily,
waving them back. But they paid no attention--which showed that there
was something they feared more even than the iron-fisted Chief.
"There are none of the young women or the old men, who can fight,
among them," said Grom. "A-ya must have sent them, because the time
has come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a
message."
Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one hand, the girl fell at
Bawr's feet.
"A-ya says, 'Come quick!'" she gasped. "They are too many. They run
over the fires and trample us."
Grom sprang forward with a cry, then stopped and looked at his Chief.
"Go, you," said Bawr, "and bring them to us. I will stay here and look
to the rafts."
Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with him, Grom raced up
the steep, torn with anxiety for the fate of A-ya and the children.
It was now about three-quarters tide, and the flood rising strongly.
By way of precaution some of the rafts had been kept afloat, let down
with ropes of vine to follow the last ebb, and guided carefully back
on the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had
been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as
hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a
freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down
the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each
clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it.
For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges in
place that they might not be swept away by the incoming tide.
When Grom and his eager handful, passing a stream of trembling
fugitives on the way, reached the level ground before the Caves, the
sight that greeted them was tremendous and appalling. It looked as if
some great country to the southward had gathered together all its
beasts and then vomited them forth in one vast torrent, confused and
irresistible, to the north. It was a wholesale migration, on such a
scale as the modern world has never even dreamed of, but suggested in
a feeble way by the torrential drift of the bison across the North
American plains half a century ago, or the sudden, inexplicable
marches of the lemming myriads out of the Scandinavian barrens that
give them birth.
The shrill cries of the women, fighting like she-wolves in defense of
the children and the home-caves, the hoarse shouts of the old men,
weak but indomitable, were mingled with an indescribable medley of
noises--gruntings, bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings and
brayings--from the dreadful mob of beasts which besieged the open
space behind the fires. Some of the beasts were maddened with their
terror, some were in a fighting rage, some only wanted to escape the
throng behind them. But all seemed bent upon passing the fires and
getting into the Caves, as if they thought there to find refuge from
the unknown fear.
At the extreme right of the line the two farthest fires were already
overwhelmed, trodden out by frantic hooves, and three or four old
men, with a couple of desperate young women, behind a barrier of
slain elk and stags were fighting like furies to hold back the
victorious onrush. Two of the old men were down, trodden out between
the fires by blind hooves, and a third, jammed limply against the
rocky wall beside the furthest cave, was being worried by a
bear--hideously but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heeded
what it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying in the
animal's preoccupation.
At the center of the line, immediately before the main Cave-mouth--whose
yawning entrance seemed to be the objective of the swarming
beasts--A-ya was heading the battle, with the lame slave, Ook-ootsk,
crouched fighting at her side like a colossal frog gone mad. Here the
fires were almost extinguished--but the line of slain beasts formed a
tolerable barricade, upon the top of which the women leapt, stabbing
with their spears and screeching shrill taunts, while the old men
leaned upon the gory pile to save their strength with frugal
precision. Here and there among the carcases was the body of a woman or
an old man, impaled on the horn of a bull or ripped open by the
rending antler of an elk. As Grom and his men came shouting across the
level a huge woolly rhinoceros plunged over the barrier, his bloody
horn ploughing the carcases, trod down a couple of the defenders without
appearing to see them, dashed through the nearest fire, and charged
blindly into the Cave-mouth with his matted coat all ablaze. The
children and old women who had not already fled down to the beach
shrieked in horror. The frantic monster heeded them not at all, but went
thundering on into the bowels of the cavern.
"Go back, all you women!" yelled Grom above the tumult, as he and his
men raced to the barrier. "Get down to the beach with the children.
We'll hold the rush back till you get down. Run! Run!"
Sobbing with the fury of the struggle, the women obeyed, darting back
and pouncing upon their own little ones--all but A-ya, who remained
doggedly at Grom's side.
"Go," ordered Grom fiercely. "The children need you. Get them all
down."
Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still lusting for
the fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than lift
the spear.
Under the shock of these fresh fighters, with lionlike heads,
masterful eyes, and smashing, irresistible weapons, the front ranks of
the animals recoiled, trampling those behind them; and for a few
minutes the pressure was relieved. Grom turned to the old men.
"You go now," he ordered.
But they refused.
"We stay here," cried one, breathless, but with fire in his ancient
eyes. "None too much room on the rafts." And they fell again grimly to
the fight.
Grom laughed proudly. With such mettle even in withered veins, the
Tribe, he thought, was destined to great things. He turned to the lame
slave, whom he had ever favored for his faithfulness.
"You go! You are lame and cannot run."
The crouching giant looked up at him with a widemouthed grin.
"I am no woman," said he. "I stay and hold them back when you all go.
I kill, and kill. And then I go very far."
He waved one great gnarled hand, dripping with blood, toward the sun
and the high spaces of air.
Before Grom could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateau
there came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice in
that pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble of
beasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs and
spears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forest
of waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads.
"The Two-Tails are upon us!" cried Grom, in a voice of awe. And his
followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full
view.
Grom looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children,
shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishing
down the steep toward the beach.
"It is time for us to go too," shouted Grom, clutching the lame slave
by the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free.
"I'll hold them back till you get away," he growled, and drove his
great spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier at
that instant. Grom saw it would be useless now to try and save him.
With the rest of his band he ran for paths leading down to the beach.
It was well, he thought, that the valiant slave should die for the
Tribe.
The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood.
But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flood
divided upon the massive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon a
black rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surging
pell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker and
lighter were savagely torn and trampled underfoot.
Then the Mammoths came thundering and trumpeting across the plateau,
going through and over the lesser beasts like a tidal wave. Grom,
having seen the last of his warriors pass down the beach paths, turned
for one more glimpse of the monstrous and incredible scene. He had a
swift vision of the squatting form of Ook-ootsk thrusting upward with
reddened spear at the breast of a black monster which hung over him
like a mountain. Then the mountain rolled forward upon him, blotting
him out, and Grom slipped hurriedly over the brink and down the path.
* * * * *
At the rafts it was bedlam. A score or more of the women and children,
as they were crossing to the water's edge, had been wiped out of
existence by the rush of maddened bison along the beach, and the
keenings of their relatives rose above the shouts and cries of
embarkation. Fully half the rafts were afloat, with their loads, by
now, and men grunted heavily in the effort to pry the others free,
while women and children crowded into the water around them, waiting
to struggle aboard as soon as the men would let them.
As Grom and his panting band, covered with blood from head to foot,
reached the waterside and flung their dripping weapons upon the rafts,
a fringe of animals came over the edge of the steep, crowded aside
from the caves. Some, being sure-footed, like the lions and bears,
made their way with care down the paths. Others, pushed over and
struggling frantically, came rolling downward, bouncing from rock and
ledge, and landing on the beach a mass of broken bones. Then behind
them, along the brink, black and gigantic against the blue sky-line,
appeared a group of the Mammoths. They waved their long trunks, and
trumpeted piercingly, but hesitated to try the descent.
"Hurry! hurry!" thundered Bawr, straining at the stranded timbers till
the great veins stood out on neck and forehead as if they would
burst.
Under the added efforts of Grom and his band the last of the rafts
floated. The children were thrown aboard, the women clambered after
them, and the men, wading and guiding, lest the rafts should ground
again, began to follow cautiously.
At this moment, along the beach came a new rush of animals--chiefly
buffalo, headed by three huge white rhinoceros. These all seemed quite
blind with panic. They dashed on straight ahead, paying no heed
whatever either to the people on the rafts or to the other beasts
coming down the steep. On their heels thundered a second herd of
Mammoths, their trunks held high in the air, the red caverns of their
mouths wide open.
As these colossal, rolling bulks came abreast of the rafts, a child
shrieked at the terrifying sight. The leader of the herd turned his
malignant little eye upon the rafts, seeming to perceive them for the
first time. Without pausing in his huge stride he reached down his
trunk, whipped it about the waist of Bawr, and swung him aloft,
crushing in his ribs with the terrific pressure, and carried him along
high in the air above the trumpeting ranks.
A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya, whose bow was quick
as thought, let fly an arrow before Grom could stay her hand. The
shaft struck deep in the monster's trunk. Dashing down its lifeless
victim among the feet of the herd, the monster tried to turn back to
take vengeance for the strange wound. But unable to stem the avalanche
behind, it was borne up the beach, screaming with rage.
Grom, who was now sole chief and master of the tribe, signed every
raft to push out into deep water, beyond reach of further attack. With
all responsibility now upon his shoulders, he had little time to
grieve for the death of Bawr, who, after all, had died greatly, as a
Chief should. The rafts were now traveling inland at a fair rate, on
the last half-hour of the flood; and, as the estuary narrowed rapidly
above their starting-place, he hoped to be able, during the slack of
tide, to work the clumsy rafts well over towards the northern shore
before getting caught in the full strength of the ebb. As he studied
out this problem, and urged the warriors to their utmost effort on the
heavy and awkward pole-paddles, he kept puzzling all the time over the
great mystery. What was it that swept even the mighty mammoths before
its face? How should he name the Fear?
Then all at once, when the rafts were about three or four hundred
yards out from shore, he saw. A low cry of wonder broke from his lips,
and was reechoed in chorus from all the burdened rafts.
Down over the heights where the Cave Folk had been dwelling, up along
the beach from which the rafts had just escaped, in countless
ravening, snapping swarms, poured hyenas by the myriad--huge hyenas,
bigger than the mightiest timber wolves, their deep-jowled heads
carried close to the ground. It was clear in a moment that they were
mad with hunger, driven by nothing but their own raging appetites.
They fled from nothing, but some of them stopped, in struggling
masses, to devour the bodies of the beasts which they found slain,
while the rest poured on insatiably, to pull down by sheer weight of
numbers and the might of their bone-crushing jaws the mightiest of the
monsters which fled before them. Here and there a mammoth cow,
maddened by the slaughter of her calf, or an old rhinoceros bull,
indignant at being hunted by such vermin, would turn and run amuck
through the mass, stamping them out by the hundred. But this made no
impression at all, either upon their numbers or the rage of their
hunger, and in a few minutes the colossus, its feet half eaten off,
would come crashing down, to be swarmed over and disappear like a fat
grub in an ant-heap. Here and there, too, a mammoth, more sagacious
than its fellows, would wade out belly deep into the water--upon
finding its escape cut off--and stand there plucking its foes one by
one from the shore to trample them under its feet, screaming shrill
triumph.
Grom turned with a deep breath from the unspeakable spectacle, looked
across to the green line of the opposite shore, and thanked his
unknown gods that it was so far off. With that great river rolling its
flood between, he thought the Tribe might rest secure from these
fiends and once more build up its fortunes.