It was not until the night of our first day on the south bank of the
river that we discovered the Fire People. What must have been a band of
wandering hunters went into camp not far from the tree in which Lop-Ear
and I had elected to roost for the night. The voices of the Fire People
at first alarmed us, but later, when darkness had come, we were
attracted by the fire. We crept cautiously and silently from tree to
tree till we got a good view of the scene.
In an open space among the trees, near to the river, the fire was
burning. About it were half a dozen Fire-Men. Lop-Ear clutched me
suddenly, and I could feel him tremble. I looked more closely, and saw
the wizened little old hunter who had shot Broken-Tooth out of the tree
years before. When he got up and walked about, throwing fresh wood upon
the fire, I saw that he limped with his crippled leg. Whatever it was,
it was a permanent injury. He seemed more dried up and wizened than
ever, and the hair on his face was quite gray.
The other hunters were young men. I noted, lying near them on the
ground, their bows and arrows, and I knew the weapons for what they
were. The Fire-Men wore animal skins around their waists and across
their shoulders. Their arms and legs, however, were bare, and they wore
no footgear. As I have said before, they were not quite so hairy as we
of the Folk. They did not have large heads, and between them and the
Folk there was very little difference in the degree of the slant of the
head back from the eyes.
They were less stooped than we, less springy in their movements. Their
backbones and hips and knee-joints seemed more rigid. Their arms were
not so long as ours either, and I did not notice that they ever
balanced themselves when they walked, by touching the ground on either
side with their hands. Also, their muscles were more rounded and
symmetrical than ours, and their faces were more pleasing. Their nose
orifices opened downward; likewise the bridges of their noses were more
developed, did not look so squat nor crushed as ours. Their lips were
less flabby and pendent, and their eye-teeth did not look so much like
fangs. However, they were quite as thin-hipped as we, and did not weigh
much more. Take it all in all, they were less different from us than
were we from the Tree People. Certainly, all three kinds were related,
and not so remotely related at that.
The fire around which they sat was especially attractive. Lop-Ear and I
sat for hours, watching the flames and smoke. It was most fascinating
when fresh fuel was thrown on and showers of sparks went flying upward.
I wanted to come closer and look at the fire, but there was no way. We
were crouching in the forks of a tree on the edge of the open space,
and we did not dare run the risk of being discovered.
The Fire-Men squatted around the fire and slept with their heads bowed
forward on their knees. They did not sleep soundly. Their ears twitched
in their sleep, and they were restless. Every little while one or
another got up and threw more wood upon the fire. About the circle of
light in the forest, in the darkness beyond, roamed hunting animals.
Lop-Ear and I could tell them by their sounds. There were wild dogs and
a hyena, and for a time there was a great yelping and snarling that
awakened on the instant the whole circle of sleeping Fire-Men.
Once a lion and a lioness stood beneath our tree and gazed out with
bristling hair and blinking eyes. The lion licked his chops and was
nervous with eagerness, as if he wanted to go forward and make a meal.
But the lioness was more cautious. It was she that discovered us, and
the pair stood and looked up at us, silently, with twitching, scenting
nostrils. Then they growled, looked once again at the fire, and turned
away into the forest.
For a much longer time Lop-Ear and I remained and watched. Now and
again we could hear the crashing of heavy bodies in the thickets and
underbrush, and from the darkness of the other side, across the circle,
we could see eyes gleaming in the firelight. In the distance we heard a
lion roar, and from far off came the scream of some stricken animal,
splashing and floundering in a drinking-place. Also, from the river,
came a great grunting of rhinoceroses.
In the morning, after having had our sleep, we crept back to the fire.
It was still smouldering, and the Fire-Men were gone. We made a circle
through the forest to make sure, and then we ran to the fire. I wanted
to see what it was like, and between thumb and finger I picked up a
glowing coal. My cry of pain and fear, as I dropped it, stampeded
Lop-Ear into the trees, and his flight frightened me after him.
The next time we came back more cautiously, and we avoided the glowing
coals. We fell to imitating the Fire-Men. We squatted down by the fire,
and with heads bent forward on our knees, made believe to sleep. Then
we mimicked their speech, talking to each other in their fashion and
making a great gibberish. I remembered seeing the wizened old hunter
poke the fire with a stick. I poked the fire with a stick, turning up
masses of live coals and clouds of white ashes. This was great sport,
and soon we were coated white with the ashes.
It was inevitable that we should imitate the Fire-Men in replenishing
the fire. We tried it first with small pieces of wood. It was a
success. The wood flamed up and crackled, and we danced and gibbered
with delight. Then we began to throw on larger pieces of wood. We put
on more and more, until we had a mighty fire. We dashed excitedly back
and forth, dragging dead limbs and branches from out the forest. The
flames soared higher and higher, and the smoke-column out-towered the
trees. There was a tremendous snapping and crackling and roaring. It
was the most monumental work we had ever effected with our hands, and
we were proud of it. We, too, were Fire-Men, we thought, as we danced
there, white gnomes in the conflagration.
The dried grass and underbrush caught fire, but we did not notice it.
Suddenly a great tree on the edge of the open space burst into flames.
We looked at it with startled eyes. The heat of it drove us back.
Another tree caught, and another, and then half a dozen. We were
frightened. The monster had broken loose. We crouched down in fear,
while the fire ate around the circle and hemmed us in. Into Lop-Ear’s
eyes came the plaintive look that always accompanied incomprehension,
and I know that in my eyes must have been the same look. We huddled,
with our arms around each other, until the heat began to reach us and
the odor of burning hair was in our nostrils. Then we made a dash of
it, and fled away westward through the forest, looking back and
laughing as we ran.
By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land, made, as we
afterward discovered, by a great curve of the river that almost
completed a circle. Right across the neck lay bunched several low and
partly wooded hills. Over these we climbed, looking backward at the
forest which had become a sea of flame that swept eastward before a
rising wind. We continued to the west, following the river bank, and
before we knew it we were in the midst of the abiding-place of the Fire
People.
This abiding-place was a splendid strategic selection. It was a
peninsula, protected on three sides by the curving river. On only one
side was it accessible by land. This was the narrow neck of the
peninsula, and here the several low hills were a natural obstacle.
Practically isolated from the rest of the world, the Fire People must
have here lived and prospered for a long time. In fact, I think it was
their prosperity that was responsible for the subsequent migration that
worked such calamity upon the Folk. The Fire People must have increased
in numbers until they pressed uncomfortably against the bounds of their
habitat. They were expanding, and in the course of their expanding they
drove the Folk before them, and settled down themselves in the caves
and occupied the territory that we had occupied.
But Lop-Ear and I little dreamed of all this when we found ourselves in
the Fire People’s stronghold. We had but one idea, and that was to get
away, though we could not forbear humoring our curiosity by peeping out
upon the village. For the first time we saw the women and children of
the Fire People. The latter ran for the most part naked, though the
former wore skins of wild animals.
The Fire People, like ourselves, lived in caves. The open space in
front of the caves sloped down to the river, and in the open space
burned many small fires. But whether or not the Fire People cooked
their food, I do not know. Lop-Ear and I did not see them cook. Yet it
is my opinion that they surely must have performed some sort of rude
cookery. Like us, they carried water in gourds from the river. There
was much coming and going, and loud cries made by the women and
children. The latter played about and cut up antics quite in the same
way as did the children of the Folk, and they more nearly resembled the
children of the Folk than did the grown Fire People resemble the grown
Folk.
Lop-Ear and I did not linger long. We saw some of the part-grown boys
shooting with bow and arrow, and we sneaked back into the thicker
forest and made our way to the river. And there we found a catamaran, a
real catamaran, one evidently made by some Fire-Man. The two logs were
small and straight, and were lashed together by means of tough roots
and crosspieces of wood.
This time the idea occurred simultaneously to us. We were trying to
escape out of the Fire People’s territory. What better way than by
crossing the river on these logs? We climbed on board and shoved off. A
sudden something gripped the catamaran and flung it downstream
violently against the bank. The abrupt stoppage almost whipped us off
into the water. The catamaran was tied to a tree by a rope of twisted
roots. This we untied before shoving off again.
By the time we had paddled well out into the current, we had drifted so
far downstream that we were in full view of the Fire People’s
abiding-place. So occupied were we with our paddling, our eyes fixed
upon the other bank, that we knew nothing until aroused by a yell from
the shore. We looked around. There were the Fire People, many of them,
looking at us and pointing at us, and more were crawling out of the
caves. We sat up to watch, and forgot all about paddling. There was a
great hullabaloo on the shore. Some of the Fire-Men discharged their
bows at us, and a few of the arrows fell near us, but the range was too
great.
It was a great day for Lop-Ear and me. To the east the conflagration we
had started was filling half the sky with smoke. And here we were,
perfectly safe in the middle of the river, encircling the Fire People’s
stronghold. We sat and laughed at them as we dashed by, swinging south,
and southeast to east, and even to northeast, and then east again,
southeast and south and on around to the west, a great double curve
where the river nearly tied a knot in itself.
As we swept on to the west, the Fire People far behind, a familiar
scene flashed upon our eyes.
It was the great drinking-place, where we had wandered once or twice to
watch the circus of the animals when they came down to drink. Beyond
it, we knew, was the carrot patch, and beyond that the caves and the
abiding-place of the horde. We began to paddle for the bank that slid
swiftly past, and before we knew it we were down upon the
drinking-places used by the horde. There were the women and children,
the water carriers, a number of them, filling their gourds. At sight of
us they stampeded madly up the run-ways, leaving behind them a trail of
gourds they had dropped.
We landed, and of course we neglected to tie up the catamaran, which
floated off down the river. Right cautiously we crept up a run-way. The
Folk had all disappeared into their holes, though here and there we
could see a face peering out at us. There was no sign of Red-Eye. We
were home again. And that night we slept in our own little cave high up
on the cliff, though first we had to evict a couple of pugnacious
youngsters who had taken possession.