THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP
Driven from their home beside the Bitter Water by the great
migration of the beasts, the Tribe of the Cave Folk, diminished in
numbers and stricken in spirit, had escaped on rafts across the
broad river-estuary which washed the northern border of their
domain. There they had found a breathing-space, but it had proved a
perilous one. The whole region north of the estuary was little
better than a steaming swamp, infested with poisonous snakes and
insects, and with strange monsters, survivals from a still earlier
age, whose ferocity drove the Cave Folk back to their ancestral life
in the tree-tops. Under these conditions it was all but impossible
to keep alight the sacred fires--as precious to the tribe as life
itself--which they had brought with them in their flight upon the
rafts. And Grom, the Chief, saw his harassed people in danger of
sinking back into the degradation from which his discovery and
conquest of fire had so wonderfully uplifted them.
From the top of a solitary jobo tree, which towered above the rank
surrounding jungle, Grom could make out what looked like a low bank of
purple cloud along the western and north-western horizon. As it was
always there, whenever he climbed to look at it, he concluded that it
was not a cloud-bank, but a line of hills. Where there were hills
there might be caves. In any case, the People must have some better
place to inhabit than this region of swamps and monsters. The way to
that blue line of promise lay across what would surely be the path of
the migrating beasts, if they should take it into their heads to swim
across the river. The possibility was one from which even his resolute
spirit shrank. But he felt that he must face any risk in the hope of
winning his way to those cloudy hills. Within an hour of his reaching
this decision the Tribe of the Cave Folk was once more on the march.
The first few days of the march were like a nightmare. Grom led the
way along the shore of the river, both because that seemed the
shortest way to the hills, and because, in case of emergency, the open
water afforded a door of escape by raft. Had it been possible to make
the journey by raft matters would have been simplified; but Grom had
already proved by experience that his heavy unwieldy rafts could not
be forced upwards against the mighty current of the river. At the last
point to which the flood-tides would carry them the rafts had been
abandoned--herded together into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shore
by twisted vine-ropes against some possible future need.
At the head of the dismal march went Grom, with his mate A-ya, and her
two children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were as
quick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were as
untiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind these came the
main body of the warriors, on a wide line so as to guard against
surprise on the flank. Then followed the women and children, bunched
as closely as possible behind the center of the line; and a knot of
picked warriors, under young Mo, the brother of A-ya, guarded the
rear. There were no old men and women, all these having gone down in
the last great battle at the Caves, selling their lives as dearly as
possible to cover the retreat. Such of the young women as had no small
children to carry bore the heavy burdens of the fire-baskets, or
bundles of smoke-dried meat, leaving the warriors free to use their
bows and spears.
In traversing the swamp the march was sometimes at ground-level,
sometimes high in the tree-tops. In the tree-tops it was safer, but
the progress was slow and laborious. At ground-level the swarms of
stinging insects were always with them, till Grom invented the use of
smudges. When every alternate member of the tribe carried a torch of
dry grass and half-green bark, the march was enveloped in a cloud of
acrid smoke, which the insects found more or less disconcerting.
Of the grave perils of this weary march to the hills a single instance
may suffice. The nights, as a rule, were passed by the whole tribe in
the tree-tops, both for the greater security, and because there was
seldom enough dry ground to sleep upon. But one evening, toward
sunset, they came upon a sort of little island in the reeking jungle.
Its surface was four or five feet above the level of the swamp. The
trees which dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with wide
fans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between these
clean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with a
rich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Such
an opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, and
Grom ordered an immediate halt.
A fat, pig-like water beast, of the nature of the dugong, had been
speared that day in a bayou beside the line of march, and with great
contentment the tribe settled themselves down to such a comfortable
feasting as they had not known for many days. While the fat dugong was
being hacked to pieces and divided under the astute direction of A-ya,
Grom made haste to establish the camp-fires in a chain completely
encircling the encampment, as a protection against night-prowlers from
the surrounding jungle. As darkness fell the flames lit up the soaring
trunks, but the roof of the over-arching foliage was so high that the
smoky illumination was lost in it.
While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the feasting, Grom and
Loob, and half a dozen of the other warriors, kept vigilant watch
whilst they ate, distrusting the black depths of jungle and the deep,
reed-fringed pools beyond the circle of light. Suddenly, all along one
side of the island there arose a sound of heavy splashing, and out of
the darkness came a row of small, malignant eyes, all fixed upon the
feasters. Then into the circle of light swam the masks of giant
alligators and strange, tusked caymans. Quite unawed by the fires they
came ashore with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed.
While the clamoring women snatched the children away to the other side
of the encampment, Grom and the other warriors hurled themselves upon
the hideous invaders as they came waddling with amazing nimbleness in
between the fires. But these were no assailants to be met with bow and
spear. At Grom's sharp orders each warrior snatched a blazing brand
from the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearest
assailant. In their stupid ferocity the monsters invariably bit upon
the brand before they realized its nature. Then, bellowing with pain,
they wheeled about and scrambled back toward the water, lashing out
with their gigantic tails, so that three of the warriors were knocked
over and half a dozen of the fires were scattered.
The feasters had hardly more than settled down after this startling
visitation, when from the darkness inland came a hoarse, hooting cry,
followed by a succession of crashing thuds, as if a pair of mammoths
were playing leap-frog in the jungle. All the men sprang again to
their weapons, and stood waiting, in a sudden hush, straining their
eyes into the perilous dark. Some of the women herded the children
into the very center of the island, while others fed the fires with
feverish haste. The hooting call, and the heavy, leaping thuds, came
nearer and nearer at a terrifying speed; and suddenly, amid the
far-off, vaguely-lighted tangle of the tree-trunks appeared a giant
form, seven or eight times the height of Grom himself. Leaping upon
its mighty hind-legs, and holding its mailed fore-paws before its
chest, it came bounding like a colossal kangaroo through the jungle,
smashing down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancing
itself at each spring with its massive, reptilian tail. Its vast head,
something like a cross between that of a monstrous horse and that of
an alligator, was upborne upon a long, snaky neck, and its eyes, huge
and round and lidless, were like two discs of shining and enamelled
metal where they caught the flash of the camp-fires.
This appalling shape had apparently no dread whatever of the flames.
When it was within some thirty or forty yards of the line of fire,
Grom yelled an order and a swarm of arrows darted from the bows to
meet it. But they fell futile from its armored hide, which gleamed
like dull bronze in the fire-light. Grom shouted again, and this time
the warriors hurled their spears--and they, too, fell harmless from
the monster's armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster to
the edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feet
obliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head it
seized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, high
into the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the same
instant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly an
arrow which pierced full half its length into the center of one of
those horrifying enamelled eyes; while Grom, who alone, of all the
warriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving a spear
deep into the unarmored inner side of the monster's thigh. But both
these wounds, dreadful though they were, failed to make the colossus
drop its prey. With mighty, braying noises through its nostrils it
brushed the spear shaft from its hold like a straw, flopped about, and
with the arrow still sticking in its eye, went leaping off again into
the darkness to devour its victim.
For several hours, with the fires trebled in number and stirred to
fiercer heat, the tribe waited for the monster to return and claim
another victim. But it did not return. At length Grom concluded that
his spear-head in its groin and A-ya's arrow in its eye had given it
something else to think of. Once more he set the guards, and gradually
the tribe, inured to horrors, settled itself down to sleep. It slept
out the rest of the night without disturbance--but the following
night, and the next two nights thereafter, were spent in the
tree-tops. Then, on the fourth day, the harassed travelers emerged
from the swamp into a pleasant region of grassy, mimosa-dotted,
gently-rolling plain. The hills, now showing green and richly wooded,
were not more than a day's march ahead.
And just here, as the Fates which had of late been pursuing them would
have it, the worn travelers found themselves once more in the line of
the hordes of migrating beasts.
Grom's heart sank. To reach the refuge of the hills across the march
of those maddened hordes was obviously impossible. Were his people to
be forced back into the swamp, to resume the cramped and ape-like life
among the branches? Having ordered the building of a half-circle of
fire around a spur of the jungle, he climbed a tree to reconnoiter.
The river ran but a mile or two distant upon his left. Immediately
before him the fleeing beasts were not numerous, consisting merely of
small herds and terrified stragglers. Further out, however, toward the
hills, the plain was blackened by the fugitives, who were thrust on by
the myriads swimming the river behind them. Assuredly, it was not to
be thought of that he should attempt to lead his people across the
path of that desperate flight. But a point that Grom noted with relief
was that only certain kinds of beasts had ventured the crossing of the
river. He saw no bears, lions or saber-tooths among those streaming
hordes. He saw deer of every kind--good swimmers all of them--with
immense, rolling herds of buffalo and aurochs, and scattered companies
of the terrible siva moose, and some bands of the giant elk, their
antlers topping the mimosa thickets. Here and there, lumbering along
sullenly as if reluctant to retreat before any peril, journeyed a huge
rhinoceros, stopping from time to time for a few hurried mouthfuls of
the rich plains grass. But as yet there was not a mammoth in
sight--whereat Grom wondered, as he thought they would have been among
the first to dare the crossing of the river. Had they kept on up the
other shore, hesitating to trust their colossal bulks to the current,
or had they turned at bay, at last, in uncontrollable indignation, and
gone down before the countless hordes of their ignoble assailants?
The absence of the mammoths, which he dreaded more than all the other
beasts because of the fierce intelligence that gleamed in their eyes,
decided Grom. He would lead his people along to the right, skirting
the swamp and marching parallel to the flight of the beasts,
calculating thus to have the jungle always for a refuge, though not
for a dwelling, until they should come to a region of hills and caves
too difficult for the migrating beasts to traverse.
For several days this plan answered to a marvel. The fugitives nearest
to the swamp-edge were mostly deer of various species, which swerved
away nervously from the line of march, but at the same time afforded
such good hunting that the travelers revelled in abundance and rapidly
recovered their spirits. Once, when a great wave of maddened buffalo
surged over upon them, the whole tribe fled back into the jungle,
clambering into the trees, and stabbing down, with angry shouts, at
the nearest of their assailants. But the assault was a blind one. The
buffalo, a black mass that seemed to foam with tossing horns and
rolling eyes, soon passed on to their unknown destination. And the
tribe, dropping down from the branches, quite cheerfully resumed its
march.
On the fifth day of the march they saw the jungle on their right come
to an end. It was succeeded by a vast expanse of shallow mere dotted
with half-drowned, rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles. After
some hesitation, Grom decided to go on, though he was uneasy about
forsaking the refuge of the trees. Some leagues ahead, however, and a
little toward the left, he could see a low, thick-wooded hill, which
he thought might serve the tribe for a shelter. With many misgivings,
he led the way directly towards it, swerving out across the path of a
vast but straggling horde of sambur deer which seemed almost
exhausted.
To Grom's surprise these stately and beautiful animals showed neither
hostility nor fear toward human beings. According to all his previous
experience, the attitude of every beast toward man was one of fear or
fierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcome
the companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for some
protection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacity
perceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against the
contact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none of
these beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not without
apprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army of
tall, high-antlered beasts which stared at them with mild eyes of
inquiry and appeal.
Marching at their best speed, the Tribe kept easily in the van of the
distressed sambur, and more than once in the next few hours, Grom had
reason to congratulate himself upon his venture into this strange
fellowship. First, for instance, he saw a herd of black buffalo
overtake the sambur host and dash heavily into its rear ranks. The
frightened sambur closed up, instead of scattering, and the impetus of
the buffalo presently spent itself upon the unresisting mass. They
edged their way through to the left leaving swathes of gored and
trodden sambur in their wake, and went thundering off on another line
of retreat, caroming into a herd of aurochs, which fought them off and
punished them murderously. It was obvious to Grom, as he studied the
dust-clouds of this last encounter, that the buffalo herd, here in the
open, would have rolled over the tribe irresistibly, and trampled it
flat.
Journeying thus at top speed toward that hill of promise before them,
the travelers came at length to a wide space of absolutely level
ground which presented a most curious appearance. It was as level as a
windless lake, and almost without vegetation. The naked surface was of
a sort of indeterminate dust-color, but dotted here and there with
tiny patches of vegetation so stunted that it was little more than
moss. Grom, with his inquiring mind, would have liked to stop to
investigate this curious surface, unlike anything he had ever seen
before. But the hordes of the sambur were behind, pressing the tribe
onwards, and straight ahead was the wooded hill, dense with foliage,
luring with its promise of safe and convenient shelter. He led the
way, therefore, without hesitation, out across the baked and barren
waste, sniffing curiously, as he went, at a strange smell, pungent but
not unpleasant, which steamed up from the dry, hot surface all about
him.
The first peculiarity that he noticed was a remarkable springiness in
the surface upon which he trod. Then he was struck by the fact that
the dust-brown surface was seamed and criss-crossed in many places by
small cracks--like those in sun-scorched mud, except that the cracks
were almost black in color. These things caused him no misgivings. But
presently, to his consternation, he detected a slight but amazing
undulation, an immensely long, immensely slow wave rolling across the
dry surface before him. He could hardly believe his eyes--for
assuredly nothing could look more like good solid land than that
stretch of barren plain. He stopped short, rubbing his eyes in wonder.
A-ya grabbed him by the arm.
"What is it?" she whispered, staring at the unstable surface in a kind
of horror.
Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among the tribe behind
him, and they all rushed forward, almost sweeping Grom and A-ya from
their feet.
The surface of the barren, all along the edge of the grass land,
had given way beneath the weight of the sambur herds, and the front
ranks were being engulfed with frantic snortings and awful groans,
in what looked like a dense, blackish, glistening ooze. The ranks
behind were being forced forward to this awful doom, in spite of
their panic-stricken struggles to hold back; and it was the
pressure of this battling mass that was creating the horrible,
bulging undulation on the plain.
Grom's quick intelligence took in the situation on the instant.
The naked brown surface beneath the feet of the tribe was nothing
more than a thin crust overlying a lake of some dense, dark,
strange-smelling liquid.
His first impulse, naturally, was to turn back--and A-ya, with wide
eyes of terror, was already dragging fiercely at his elbow. But to
turn back was utterly impossible. That way lay the long strip of
engulfing pitch, swallowing up insatiably the ranks of the groaning
and kicking sambur. There was but one possible way of escape left
open, and that was straight ahead.
But would the crust continue to uphold them? Already, under the weight
of the whole tribe pressing together, it was beginning to sag
hideously. With furious words and blows he tried to make the tribe
scatter to right and left, so as to spread the pressure as widely as
possible. Perceiving his purpose, A-ya and Loob, and several of the
leading warriors, seconded his efforts with frantic vehemence; till in
a few minutes the whole tribe, amazed and quaking with awe, was
extended like a fan over a front of three or four hundred yards.
Seeing that the perilous sagging of the crust was at once relieved,
Grom then ordered the tribe to advance cautiously, keeping the same
wide-open formation, while he himself brought up the rear.
But in a few minutes every one, from Grom downwards, came to a halt
irresistibly, in order to watch the monstrous drama unfolding behind
them.
For nearly half a mile to either side of their immediate rear, between
the still unbroken surface of the dust-brown expanse and the edge of
the trampled grassy plain, stretched a sort of canal, perhaps ten
paces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thrashing
antlers, and tossing heads that whistled despairingly through wide
nostrils, and heaving, agonizing bulks that went down slowly to their
doom. After several ranks of the herd had been engulfed those next
behind turned about in terror and fought madly to force their way back
from the fatal brink. But the inexorable masses behind them rolled
them on backwards, and slowly they too were thrust down into the
pitch, till the canal was filled to the brink, and writhed horribly
along its whole length. By this time, however, the alarm had spread
through the rest of the sambur ranks. By a desperate effort they got
themselves turned, and went surging off to the left in a direction
parallel to the edge of the plain of death.
Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Grom drew a deep breath
and relaxed the tension of his watching. He was just about to turn and
order the tribe forward again, when he was arrested by the sight of a
vast cloud of dust rolling up swiftly upon the left flank of the
retreating sambur.
A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching tribe, as they saw a
forest of waving trunks appear in the front of the dust-cloud. A
second or two more and a long array of mammoths emerged along the path
of the cloud. Among the mammoths, here and there, raced a black or a
white rhinoceros, or a towering, spotted giraffe. Behind this front
rank, vague and portentous through the veiling cloud, came further
colossal hordes, filling the distance as far as eye could see.
This advance looked as if nothing on earth, not even the lake of
pitch, could ever stop it, and certain of the tribe started to flee.
But Grom, after a moment of misgiving and hasty calculation, checked
the flight sternly. He must, at all risks see the incredible thing
that was about to happen. And he felt certain that, at this distance
out upon the crust of the gulf, the tribe would be secure.
The stupendous wave of dust and waving trunks and galloping black
bulks thundered up at a terrific pace, and fell with irresistible
impact upon the flank of the marching sambur. These unhappy beasts
went down like grass before it. They were rolled flat, trodden out
like a fire in thin grass, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpeting
monsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path,
arrived at the edge of the canal.
Here and there an old bull, leading, took alarm, trumpeted wildly, and
strove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with the
packed bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very serious
barrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it. Moreover, the panic of
a long flight was upon them, and the rear ranks were thrusting them
on. The trumpeting leaders were overborne in a twinkling. The
ponderous feet of the front rank sank into the mass of bodies and
horns and pitch, stumbled forward, belly deep, and strove to clamber
out upon the solid-looking further edge. With trunks eagerly
outstretched as if seeking to grip something, the huge, bat-eared
heads heaved themselves up. The next moment the treacherous crust
crumbled away beneath them like an eggshell, and with screams that
tore the heavens they sank into the gulfs of pitch. The next two or
three ranks went over on them, trod them deeper down, heaved and
surged and battled for some moments along the edge of the crumbling
crust. With mad trumpetings, they were themselves swallowed up in that
sluggish, implacable flood. Here and there a black trunk, twisting in
agony, lingered long, awful moments above the pitch. Here and there
the pallid head of a giraffe, tongue protruding and eyes bursting from
their sockets, stood up rigid on its long neck and screamed
hideously.
As the thick tide closed slowly, slowly over its prey, the hosts in
the rear, having taken alarm at the agonized trumpetings, succeeded by
a gigantic effort in checking their career. Those nearest the edge of
doom reared up and fell back upon those next behind, to be ripped with
frantic tusks in the mad confusion. But presently the whole colossal
array brought itself to a halt, got itself turned to the left, and
went thundering off on the trail of the sambur remnants.
Grom stood staring for a long time, with wide, brooding eyes, at the
still-bubbling and heaving breadths of dark pitch. He was stunned by
the sudden engulfing and utter disappearance of such a monstrous
horde. He seemed to see the countless gigantic shapes heaped one upon
the other, laid to their long sleep there in the deeps of the pitch.
At last he shook himself, passed his shaggy hand over his eyes, and
shouted to the tribe that all was well. Then he set himself once more
at their head, and led them, slowly and cautiously, onward across the
dreadful level, till they gained the shelter of that sweetly wooded
and rivulet-watered hill.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts