This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning
of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we
call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed
through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and
level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we
know by the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which
runs along the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey
was a range of hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped for
the better part of the year. The cores of its summits still remain as
Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill, and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the
range, below the grassy spaces where the wild horses grazed, were
forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and elm, and the thickets and dark
places hid the grizzly bear and the hyaena, and the grey apes clambered
through the branches. And still lower amidst the woodland and marsh and
open grass along the Wey did this little drama play itself out to the
end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand
years--if the reckoning of geologists is correct.
And in those days the spring-time was as joyful as it is now, and sent
the blood coursing in just the same fashion. The afternoon sky was blue
with piled white clouds sailing through it, and the southwest wind came
like a soft caress. The new-come swallows drove to and fro. The reaches
of the river were spangled with white ranunculus, the marshy places were
starred with lady's-smock and lit with marsh-mallow wherever the
regiments of the sedges lowered their swords, and the northward-moving
hippopotami, shiny black monsters, sporting clumsily, came floundering
and blundering through it all, rejoicing dimly and possessed with one
clear idea, to splash the river muddy.
Up the river and well in sight of the hippopotami, a number of little
buff-coloured animals dabbled in the water. There was no fear, no
rivalry, and no enmity between them and the hippopotami. As the great
bulks came crashing through the reeds and smashed the mirror of the
water into silvery splashes, these little creatures shouted and
gesticulated with glee. It was the surest sign of high spring. "Boloo!"
they cried. "Baayah. Boloo!" They were the children of the men folk, the
smoke of whose encampment rose from the knoll at the river's bend.
Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted hair and little broad-nosed
impish faces, covered (as some children are covered even nowadays) with
a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in the loins and long in the
arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing
that still, in rare instances, survives. Stark-naked vivid little
gipsies, as active as monkeys and as full of chatter, though a little
wanting in words.
Their elders were hidden from the wallowing hippopotami by the crest of
the knoll. The human squatting-place was a trampled area among the dead
brown fronds of Royal Fern, through which the crosiers of this year's
growth were unrolling to the light and warmth. The fire was a
smouldering heap of char, light grey and black, replenished by the old
women from time to time with brown leaves. Most of the men were
asleep--they slept sitting with their foreheads on their knees. They had
killed that morning a good quarry, enough for all, a deer that had been
wounded by hunting dogs; so that there had been no quarrelling among
them, and some of the women were still gnawing the bones that lay
scattered about. Others were making a heap of leaves and sticks to feed
Brother Fire when the darkness came again, that he might grow strong and
tall therewith, and guard them against the beasts. And two were piling
flints that they brought, an armful at a time, from the bend of the
river where the children were at play.
None of these buff-skinned savages were clothed, but some wore about
their hips rude girdles of adder-skin or crackling undressed hide, from
which depended little bags, not made, but torn from the paws of beasts,
and carrying the rudely-dressed flints that were men's chief weapons and
tools. And one woman, the mate of Uya the Cunning Man, wore a wonderful
necklace of perforated fossils--that others had worn before her. Beside
some of the sleeping men lay the big antlers of the elk, with the tines
chipped to sharp edges, and long sticks, hacked at the ends with flints
into sharp points. There was little else save these things and the
smouldering fire to mark these human beings off from the wild animals
that ranged the country. But Uya the Cunning did not sleep, but sat with
a bone in his hand and scraped busily thereon with a flint, a thing no
animal would do. He was the oldest man in the tribe, beetle-browed,
prognathous, lank-armed; he had a beard and his cheeks were hairy, and
his chest and arms were black with thick hair. And by virtue both of his
strength and cunning he was master of the tribe, and his share was
always the most and the best.
Eudena had hidden herself among the alders, because she was afraid of
Uya. She was still a girl, and her eyes were bright and her smile
pleasant to see. He had given her a piece of the liver, a man's piece,
and a wonderful treat for a girl to get; but as she took it the other
woman with the necklace had looked at her, an evil glance, and Ugh-lomi
had made a noise in his throat. At that, Uya had looked at him long and
steadfastly, and Ugh-lomi's face had fallen. And then Uya had looked at
her. She was frightened and she had stolen away, while the feeding was
still going on, and Uya was busy with the marrow of a bone. Afterwards
he had wandered about as if looking for her. And now she crouched among
the alders, wondering mightily what Uya might be doing with the flint
and the bone. And Ugh-lomi was not to be seen.
Presently a squirrel came leaping through the alders, and she lay so
quiet the little man was within six feet of her before he saw her.
Whereupon he dashed up a stem in a hurry and began to chatter and scold
her. "What are you doing here," he asked, "away from the other men
beasts?" "Peace," said Eudena, but he only chattered more, and then she
began to break off the little black cones to throw at him. He dodged and
defied her, and she grew excited and rose up to throw better, and then
she saw Uya coming down the knoll. He had seen the movement of her pale
arm amidst the thicket--he was very keen-eyed.
At that she forgot the squirrel and set off through the alders and reeds
as fast as she could go. She did not care where she went so long as she
escaped Uya. She splashed nearly knee-deep through a swampy place, and
saw in front of her a slope of ferns--growing more slender and green as
they passed up out of the light into the shade of the young chestnuts.
She was soon amidst the trees--she was very fleet of foot, and she ran
on and on until the forest was old and the vales great, and the vines
about their stems where the light came were thick as young trees, and
the ropes of ivy stout and tight. On she went, and she doubled and
doubled again, and then at last lay down amidst some ferns in a hollow
place near a thicket, and listened with her heart beating in her ears.
She heard footsteps presently rustling among the dead leaves, far off,
and they died away and everything was still again, except the
scandalising of the midges--for the evening was drawing on--and the
incessant whisper of the leaves. She laughed silently to think the
cunning Uya should go by her. She was not frightened. Sometimes, playing
with the other girls and lads, she had fled into the wood, though never
so far as this. It was pleasant to be hidden and alone.
She lay a long time there, glad of her escape, and then she sat up
listening.
It was a rapid pattering growing louder and coming towards her, and in a
little while she could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs.
It was a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a
boar is an ill fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway
slash of his tusks, and she made off slantingly through the trees. But
the patter came nearer, they were not feeding as they wandered, but
going fast--or else they would not overtake her--and she caught the limb
of a tree, swung on to it, and ran up the stem with something of the
agility of a monkey.
Down below the sharp bristling backs of the swine were already passing
when she looked. And she knew the short, sharp grunts they made meant
fear. What were they afraid of? A man? They were in a great hurry for
just a man.
And then, so suddenly it made her grip on the branch tighten
involuntarily, a fawn started in the brake and rushed after the swine.
Something else went by, low and grey, with a long body; she did not know
what it was, indeed she saw it only momentarily through the interstices
of the young leaves; and then there came a pause.
She remained stiff and expectant, as rigid almost as though she was a
part of the tree she clung to, peering down.
Then, far away among the trees, clear for a moment, then hidden, then
visible knee-deep in ferns, then gone again, ran a man. She knew it was
young Ugh-lomi by the fair colour of his hair, and there was red upon
his face. Somehow his frantic flight and that scarlet mark made her feel
sick. And then nearer, running heavily and breathing hard, came another
man. At first she could not see, and then she saw, foreshortened and
clear to her, Uya, running with great strides and his eyes staring. He
was not going after Ugh-lomi. His face was white. It was Uya--_afraid_!
He passed, and was still loud hearing, when something else, something
large and with grizzled fur, swinging along with soft swift strides,
came rushing in pursuit of him.
Eudena suddenly became rigid, ceased to breathe, her clutch convulsive,
and her eyes starting.
She had never seen the thing before, she did not even see him clearly
now, but she knew at once it was the Terror of the Woodshade. His name
was a legend, the children would frighten one another, frighten even
themselves with his name, and run screaming to the squatting-place. No
man had ever killed any of his kind. Even the mighty mammoth feared his
anger. It was the grizzly bear, the lord of the world as the world went
then.
As he ran he made a continuous growling grumble. "Men in my very lair!
Fighting and blood. At the very mouth of my lair. Men, men, men.
Fighting and blood." For he was the lord of the wood and of the caves.
Long after he had passed she remained, a girl of stone, staring down
through the branches. All her power of action had gone from her. She
gripped by instinct with hands and knees and feet. It was some time
before she could think, and then only one thing was clear in her mind,
that the Terror was between her and the tribe--that it would be
impossible to descend.
Presently when her fear was a little abated she clambered into a more
comfortable position, where a great branch forked. The trees rose about
her, so that she could see nothing of Brother Fire, who is black by day.
Birds began to stir, and things that had gone into hiding for fear of
her movements crept out....
After a time the taller branches flamed out at the touch of the sunset.
High overhead the rooks, who were wiser than men, went cawing home to
their squatting-places among the elms. Looking down, things were clearer
and darker. Eudena thought of going back to the squatting-place; she let
herself down some way, and then the fear of the Terror of the Woodshade
came again. While she hesitated a rabbit squealed dismally, and she
dared not descend farther.
The shadows gathered, and the deeps of the forest began stirring. Eudena
went up the tree again to be nearer the light. Down below the shadows
came out of their hiding-places and walked abroad. Overhead the blue
deepened. A dreadful stillness came, and then the leaves began
whispering.
Eudena shivered and thought of Brother Fire.
The shadows now were gathering in the trees, they sat on the branches
and watched her. Branches and leaves were turned to ominous, quiet black
shapes that would spring on her if she stirred. Then the white owl,
flitting silently, came ghostly through the shades. Darker grew the
world and darker, until the leaves and twigs against the sky were black,
and the ground was hidden.
She remained there all night, an age-long vigil, straining her ears for
the things that went on below in the darkness, and keeping motionless
lest some stealthy beast should discover her. Man in those days was
never alone in the dark, save for such rare accidents as this. Age after
age he had learnt the lesson of its terror--a lesson we poor children of
his have nowadays painfully to unlearn. Eudena, though in age a woman,
was in heart like a little child. She kept as still, poor little animal,
as a hare before it is started.
The stars gathered and watched her--her one grain of comfort. In one
bright one she fancied there was something like Ugh-lomi. Then she
fancied it _was_ Ugh-lomi. And near him, red and duller, was Uya, and as
the night passed Ugh-lomi fled before him up the sky.
She tried to see Brother Fire, who guarded the squatting-place from
beasts, but he was not in sight. And far away she heard the mammoths
trumpeting as they went down to the drinking-place, and once some huge
bulk with heavy paces hurried along, making a noise like a calf, but
what it was she could not see. But she thought from the voice it was
Yaaa the rhinoceros, who stabs with his nose, goes always alone, and
rages without cause.
At last the little stars began to hide, and then the larger ones. It was
like all the animals vanishing before the Terror. The Sun was coming,
lord of the sky, as the grizzly was lord of the forest. Eudena wondered
what would happen if one star stayed behind. And then the sky paled to
the dawn.
When the daylight came the fear of lurking things passed, and she could
descend. She was stiff, but not so stiff as you would have been, dear
young lady (by virtue of your upbringing), and as she had not been
trained to eat at least once in three hours, but instead had often
fasted three days, she did not feel uncomfortably hungry. She crept down
the tree very cautiously, and went her way stealthily through the wood,
and not a squirrel sprang or deer started but the terror of the grizzly
bear froze her marrow.
Her desire was now to find her people again. Her dread of Uya the
Cunning was consumed by a greater dread of loneliness. But she had lost
her direction. She had run heedlessly overnight, and she could not tell
whether the squatting-place was sunward or where it lay. Ever and again
she stopped and listened, and at last, very far away, she heard a
measured chinking. It was so faint even in the morning stillness that
she could tell it must be far away. But she knew the sound was that of a
man sharpening a flint.
Presently the trees began to thin out, and then came a regiment of
nettles barring the way. She turned aside, and then she came to a fallen
tree that she knew, with a noise of bees about it. And so presently she
was in sight of the knoll, very far off, and the river under it, and the
children and the hippopotami just as they had been yesterday, and the
thin spire of smoke swaying in the morning breeze. Far away by the
river was the cluster of alders where she had hidden. And at the sight
of that the fear of Uya returned, and she crept into a thicket of
bracken, out of which a rabbit scuttled, and lay awhile to watch the
squatting-place.
The men were mostly out of sight, saving Wau, the flint-chopper; and at
that she felt safer. They were away hunting food, no doubt. Some of the
women, too, were down in the stream, stooping intent, seeking mussels,
crayfish, and water-snails, and at the sight of their occupation Eudena
felt hungry. She rose, and ran through the fern, designing to join them.
As she went she heard a voice among the bracken calling softly. She
stopped. Then suddenly she heard a rustle behind her, and turning, saw
Ugh-lomi rising out of the fern. There were streaks of brown blood and
dirt on his face, and his eyes were fierce, and the white stone of Uya,
the white Fire Stone, that none but Uya dared to touch, was in his hand.
In a stride he was beside her, and gripped her arm. He swung her about,
and thrust her before him towards the woods. "Uya," he said, and waved
his arms about. She heard a cry, looked back, and saw all the women
standing up, and two wading out of the stream. Then came a nearer
howling, and the old woman with the beard, who watched the fire on the
knoll, was waving her arms, and Wau, the man who had been chipping the
flint, was getting to his feet. The little children too were hurrying
and shouting.
"Come!" said Ugh-lomi, and dragged her by the arm.
She still did not understand.
"Uya has called the death word," said Ugh-lomi, and she glanced back at
the screaming curve of figures, and understood.
Wau and all the women and children were coming towards them, a scattered
array of buff shock-headed figures, howling, leaping, and crying. Over
the knoll two youths hurried. Down among the ferns to the right came a
man, heading them off from the wood. Ugh-lomi left her arm, and the two
began running side by side, leaping the bracken and stepping clear and
wide. Eudena, knowing her fleetness and the fleetness of Ugh-lomi,
laughed aloud at the unequal chase. They were an exceptionally
straight-limbed couple for those days.
They soon cleared the open, and drew near the wood of chestnut-trees
again--neither afraid now because neither was alone. They slackened
their pace, already not excessive. And suddenly Eudena cried and swerved
aside, pointing, and looking up through the tree-stems. Ugh-lomi saw
the feet and legs of men running towards him. Eudena was already running
off at a tangent. And as he too turned to follow her they heard the
voice of Uya coming through the trees, and roaring out his rage at them.
Then terror came in their hearts, not the terror that numbs, but the
terror that makes one silent and swift. They were cut off now on two
sides. They were in a sort of corner of pursuit. On the right hand, and
near by them, came the men swift and heavy, with bearded Uya, antler in
hand, leading them; and on the left, scattered as one scatters corn,
yellow dashes among the fern and grass, ran Wau and the women; and even
the little children from the shallow had joined the chase. The two
parties converged upon them. Off they went, with Eudena ahead.
They knew there was no mercy for them. There was no hunting so sweet to
these ancient men as the hunting of men. Once the fierce passion of the
chase was lit, the feeble beginnings of humanity in them were thrown to
the winds. And Uya in the night had marked Ugh-lomi with the death word.
Ugh-lomi was the day's quarry, the appointed feast.
They ran straight--it was their only chance--taking whatever ground came
in the way--a spread of stinging nettles, an open glade, a clump of
grass out of which a hyaena fled snarling. Then woods again, long
stretches of shady leaf-mould and moss under the green trunks. Then a
stiff slope, tree-clad, and long vistas of trees, a glade, a succulent
green area of black mud, a wide open space again, and then a clump of
lacerating brambles, with beast tracks through it. Behind them the chase
trailed out and scattered, with Uya ever at their heels. Eudena kept the
first place, running light and with her breath easy, for Ugh-lomi
carried the Fire Stone in his hand.
It told on his pace--not at first, but after a time. His footsteps
behind her suddenly grew remote. Glancing over her shoulder as they
crossed another open space, Eudena saw that Ugh-lomi was many yards
behind her, and Uya close upon him, with antler already raised in the
air to strike him down. Wau and the others were but just emerging from
the shadow of the woods.
Seeing Ugh-lomi in peril, Eudena ran sideways, looking back, threw up
her arms and cried aloud, just as the antler flew. And young Ugh-lomi,
expecting this and understanding her cry, ducked his head, so that the
missile merely struck his scalp lightly, making but a trivial wound, and
flew over him. He turned forthwith, the quartzite Fire Stone in both
hands, and hurled it straight at Uya's body as he ran loose from the
throw. Uya shouted, but could not dodge it. It took him under the ribs,
heavy and flat, and he reeled and went down without a cry. Ugh-lomi
caught up the antler--one tine of it was tipped with his own blood--and
came running on again with a red trickle just coming out of his hair.
Uya rolled over twice, and lay a moment before he got up, and then he
did not run fast. The colour of his face was changed. Wau overtook him,
and then others, and he coughed and laboured in his breath. But he kept
on.
At last the two fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream
ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the
foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a
large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a
chisel edge, in either hand.
They sprang down the steep bank into the stream, rushed through the
water, swam the deep current in two or three strokes, and came out
wading again, dripping and refreshed, to clamber up the farther bank.
It was undermined, and with willows growing thickly therefrom, so that
it needed clambering. And while Eudena was still among the silvery
branches and Ugh-lomi still in the water--for the antler had encumbered
him--Wau came up against the sky on the opposite bank, and the
smiting-stone, thrown cunningly, took the side of Eudena's knee. She
struggled to the top and fell.
They heard the pursuers shout to one another, and Ugh-lomi climbing to
her and moving jerkily to mar Wau's aim, felt the second smiting-stone
graze his ear, and heard the water splash below him.
Then it was Ugh-lomi, the stripling, proved himself to have come to
man's estate. For running on, he found Eudena fell behind, limping, and
at that he turned, and crying savagely and with a face terrible with
sudden wrath and trickling blood, ran swiftly past her back to the bank,
whirling the antler round his head. And Eudena kept on, running stoutly
still, though she must needs limp at every step, and the pain was
already sharp.
So that Wau, rising over the edge and clutching the straight willow
branches, saw Ugh-lomi towering over him, gigantic against the blue;
saw his whole body swing round, and the grip of his hands upon the
antler. The edge of the antler came sweeping through the air, and he saw
no more. The water under the osiers whirled and eddied and went crimson
six feet down the stream. Uya following stopped knee-high across the
stream, and the man who was swimming turned about.
The other men who trailed after--they were none of them very mighty men
(for Uya was more cunning than strong, brooking no sturdy
rivals)--slackened momentarily at the sight of Ugh-lomi standing there
above the willows, bloody and terrible, between them and the halting
girl, with the huge antler waving in his hand. It seemed as though he
had gone into the water a youth, and come out of it a man full grown.
He knew what there was behind him. A broad stretch of grass, and then a
thicket, and in that Eudena could hide. That was clear in his mind,
though his thinking powers were too feeble to see what should happen
thereafter. Uya stood knee-deep, undecided and unarmed. His heavy mouth
hung open, showing his canine teeth, and he panted heavily. His side was
flushed and bruised under the hair. The other man beside him carried a
sharpened stick. The rest of the hunters came up one by one to the top
of the bank, hairy, long-armed men clutching flints and sticks. Two ran
off along the bank down stream, and then clambered to the water, where
Wau had come to the surface struggling weakly. Before they could reach
him he went under again. Two others threatened Ugh-lomi from the bank.
He answered back, shouts, vague insults, gestures. Then Uya, who had
been hesitating, roared with rage, and whirling his fists plunged into
the water. His followers splashed after him.
Ugh-lomi glanced over his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished
into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya
preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside
him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the
tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and
rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the rush coming, and hurling the antler at Uya,
turned about and fled.
When he halted to look back from the shadow of the thicket, he found
only three of his pursuers had followed him across the river, and they
were going back again. Uya, with a bleeding mouth, was on the farther
side of the stream again, but lower down, and holding his hand to his
side. The others were in the river dragging something to shore. For a
time at least the chase was intermitted.
Ugh-lomi stood watching for a space, and snarled at the sight of Uya.
Then he turned and plunged into the thicket.
In a minute, Eudena came hastening to join him, and they went on hand in
hand. He dimly perceived the pain she suffered from the cut and bruised
knee, and chose the easier ways. But they went on all that day, mile
after mile, through wood and thicket, until at last they came to the
chalkland, open grass with rare woods of beech, and the birch growing
near water, and they saw the Wealden mountains nearer, and groups of
horses grazing together. They went circumspectly, keeping always near
thicket and cover, for this was a strange region--even its ways were
strange. Steadily the ground rose, until the chestnut forests spread
wide and blue below them, and the Thames marshes shone silvery, high and
far. They saw no men, for in those days men were still only just come
into this part of the world, and were moving but slowly along the
river-ways. Towards evening they came on the river again, but now it ran
in a gorge, between high cliffs of white chalk that sometimes overhung
it. Down the cliffs was a scrub of birches and there were many birds
there. And high up the cliff was a little shelf by a tree, whereon they
clambered to pass the night.
They had had scarcely any food; it was not the time of year for berries,
and they had no time to go aside to snare or waylay. They tramped in a
hungry weary silence, gnawing at twigs and leaves. But over the surface
of the cliffs were a multitude of snails, and in a bush were the freshly
laid eggs of a little bird, and then Ugh-lomi threw at and killed a
squirrel in a beech-tree, so that at last they fed well. Ugh-lomi
watched during the night, his chin on his knees; and he heard young
foxes crying hard by, and the noise of mammoths down the gorge, and the
hyaenas yelling and laughing far away. It was chilly, but they dared not
light a fire. Whenever he dozed, his spirit went abroad, and straightway
met with the spirit of Uya, and they fought. And always Ugh-lomi was
paralysed so that he could not smite nor run, and then he would awake
suddenly. Eudena, too, dreamt evil things of Uya, so that they both
awoke with the fear of him in their hearts, and by the light of the dawn
they saw a woolly rhinoceros go blundering down the valley.
During the day they caressed one another and were glad of the sunshine,
and Eudena's leg was so stiff she sat on the ledge all day. Ugh-lomi
found great flints sticking out of the cliff face, greater than any he
had seen, and he dragged some to the ledge and began chipping, so as to
be armed against Uya when he came again. And at one he laughed heartily,
and Eudena laughed, and they threw it about in derision. It had a hole
in it. They stuck their fingers through it, it was very funny indeed.
Then they peeped at one another through it. Afterwards, Ugh-lomi got
himself a stick, and thrusting by chance at this foolish flint, the
stick went in and stuck there. He had rammed it in too tightly to
withdraw it. That was still stranger--scarcely funny, terrible almost,
and for a time Ugh-lomi did not greatly care to touch the thing. It was
as if the flint had bit and held with its teeth. But then he got
familiar with the odd combination. He swung it about, and perceived that
the stick with the heavy stone on the end struck a better blow than
anything he knew. He went to and fro swinging it, and striking with it;
but later he tired of it and threw it aside. In the afternoon he went
up over the brow of the white cliff, and lay watching by a rabbit-warren
until the rabbits came out to play. There were no men thereabouts, and
the rabbits were heedless. He threw a smiting-stone he had made and got
a kill.
That night they made a fire from flint sparks and bracken fronds, and
talked and caressed by it. And in their sleep Uya's spirit came again,
and suddenly, while Ugh-lomi was trying to fight vainly, the foolish
flint on the stick came into his hand, and he struck Uya with it, and
behold! it killed him. But afterwards came other dreams of Uya--for
spirits take a lot of killing, and he had to be killed again. Then after
that the stone would not keep on the stick. He awoke tired and rather
gloomy, and was sulky all the forenoon, in spite of Eudena's kindliness,
and instead of hunting he sat chipping a sharp edge to the singular
flint, and looking strangely at her. Then he bound the perforated flint
on to the stick with strips of rabbit skin. And afterwards he walked up
and down the ledge, striking with it, and muttering to himself, and
thinking of Uya. It felt very fine and heavy in the hand.
Several days, more than there was any counting in those days, five days,
it may be, or six, did Ugh-lomi and Eudena stay on that shelf in the
gorge of the river, and they lost all fear of men, and their fire burnt
redly of a night. And they were very merry together; there was food
every day, sweet water, and no enemies. Eudena's knee was well in a
couple of days, for those ancient savages had quick-healing flesh.
Indeed, they were very happy.
On one of those days Ugh-lomi dropped a chunk of flint over the cliff.
He saw it fall, and go bounding across the river bank into the river,
and after laughing and thinking it over a little he tried another. This
smashed a bush of hazel in the most interesting way. They spent all the
morning dropping stones from the ledge, and in the afternoon they
discovered this new and interesting pastime was also possible from the
cliffbrow. The next day they had forgotten this delight. Or at least, it
seemed they had forgotten.
But Uya came in dreams to spoil the paradise. Three nights he came
fighting Ugh-lomi. In the morning after these dreams Ugh-lomi would walk
up and down, threatening him and swinging the axe, and at last came the
night after Ugh-lomi brained the otter, and they had feasted. Uya went
too far. Ugh-lomi awoke, scowling under his heavy brows, and he took his
axe, and extending his hand towards Eudena he bade her wait for him
upon the ledge. Then he clambered down the white declivity, glanced up
once from the foot of it and flourished his axe, and without looking
back again went striding along the river bank until the overhanging
cliff at the bend hid him.
Two days and nights did Eudena sit alone by the fire on the ledge
waiting, and in the night the beasts howled over the cliffs and down the
valley, and on the cliff over against her the hunched hyaenas prowled
black against the sky. But no evil thing came near her save fear. Once,
far away, she heard the roaring of a lion, following the horses as they
came northward over the grass lands with the spring. All that time she
waited--the waiting that is pain.
And the third day Ugh-lomi came back, up the river. The plumes of a
raven were in his hair. The first axe was red-stained, and had long dark
hairs upon it, and he carried the necklace that had marked the favourite
of Uya in his hand. He walked in the soft places, giving no heed to his
trail. Save a raw cut below his jaw there was not a wound upon him.
"Uya!" cried Ugh-lomi exultant, and Eudena saw it was well. He put the
necklace on Eudena, and they ate and drank together. And after eating he
began to rehearse the whole story from the beginning, when Uya had cast
his eyes on Eudena, and Uya and Ugh-lomi, fighting in the forest, had
been chased by the bear, eking out his scanty words with abundant
pantomime, springing to his feet and whirling the stone axe round when
it came to the fighting. The last fight was a mighty one, stamping and
shouting, and once a blow at the fire that sent a torrent of sparks up
into the night. And Eudena sat red in the light of the fire, gloating on
him, her face flushed and her eyes shining, and the necklace Uya had
made about her neck. It was a splendid time, and the stars that look
down on us looked down on her, our ancestor--who has been dead now these
fifty thousand years.