Of our wanderings in the great swamp I have no clear knowledge. When I
strive to remember, I have a riot of unrelated impressions and a loss
of time-value. I have no idea of how long we were in that vast
everglade, but it must have been for weeks. My memories of what
occurred invariably take the form of nightmare. For untold ages,
oppressed by protean fear, I am aware of wandering, endlessly
wandering, through a dank and soggy wilderness, where poisonous snakes
struck at us, and animals roared around us, and the mud quaked under us
and sucked at our heels.
I know that we were turned from our course countless times by streams
and lakes and slimy seas. Then there were storms and risings of the
water over great areas of the low-lying lands; and there were periods
of hunger and misery when we were kept prisoners in the trees for days
and days by these transient floods.
Very strong upon me is one picture. Large trees are about us, and from
their branches hang gray filaments of moss, while great creepers, like
monstrous serpents, curl around the trunks and writhe in tangles
through the air. And all about is the mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth
gases, and that heaves and sighs with internal agitations. And in the
midst of all this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our
bones show through our tight-stretched skins. We do not sing and
chatter and laugh. We play no pranks. For once our volatile and
exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued. We make plaintive, querulous
noises, look at one another, and cluster close together. It is like the
meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the end of the
world.
This event is without connection with the other events in the swamp.
How we ever managed to cross it, I do not know, but at last we came out
where a low range of hills ran down to the bank of the river. It was
our river emerging like ourselves from the great swamp. On the south
bank, where the river had broken its way through the hills, we found
many sand-stone caves. Beyond, toward the west, the ocean boomed on the
bar that lay across the river’s mouth. And here, in the caves, we
settled down in our abiding-place by the sea.
There were not many of us. From time to time, as the days went by, more
of the Folk appeared. They dragged themselves from the swamp singly,
and in twos and threes, more dead than alive, mere perambulating
skeletons, until at last there were thirty of us. Then no more came
from the swamp, and Red-Eye was not among us. It was noticeable that no
children had survived the frightful journey.
I shall not tell in detail of the years we lived by the sea. It was not
a happy abiding-place. The air was raw and chill, and we suffered
continually from coughing and colds. We could not survive in such an
environment. True, we had children; but they had little hold on life
and died early, while we died faster than new ones were born. Our
number steadily diminished.
Then the radical change in our diet was not good for us. We got few
vegetables and fruits, and became fish-eaters. There were mussels and
abalones and clams and rock-oysters, and great ocean-crabs that were
thrown upon the beaches in stormy weather. Also, we found several kinds
of seaweed that were good to eat. But the change in diet caused us
stomach troubles, and none of us ever waxed fat. We were all lean and
dyspeptic-looking. It was in getting the big abalones that Lop-Ear was
lost. One of them closed upon his fingers at low-tide, and then the
flood-tide came in and drowned him. We found his body the next day, and
it was a lesson to us. Not another one of us was ever caught in the
closing shell of an abalone.
The Swift One and I managed to bring up one child, a boy—at least we
managed to bring him along for several years. But I am quite confident
he could never have survived that terrible climate. And then, one day,
the Fire People appeared again. They had come down the river, not on a
catamaran, but in a rude dug-out. There were three of them that paddled
in it, and one of them was the little wizened old hunter. They landed
on our beach, and he limped across the sand and examined our caves.
They went away in a few minutes, but the Swift One was badly scared. We
were all frightened, but none of us to the extent that she was. She
whimpered and cried and was restless all that night. In the morning she
took the child in her arms, and by sharp cries, gestures, and example,
started me on our second long flight. There were eight of the Folk (all
that was left of the horde) that remained behind in the caves. There
was no hope for them. Without doubt, even if the Fire People did not
return, they must soon have perished. It was a bad climate down there
by the sea. The Folk were not constituted for the coast-dwelling life.
We travelled south, for days skirting the great swamp but never
venturing into it. Once we broke back to the westward, crossing a range
of mountains and coming down to the coast. But it was no place for us.
There were no trees—only bleak headlands, a thundering surf, and strong
winds that seemed never to cease from blowing. We turned back across
the mountains, travelling east and south, until we came in touch with
the great swamp again.
Soon we gained the southern extremity of the swamp, and we continued
our course south and east. It was a pleasant land. The air was warm,
and we were again in the forest. Later on we crossed a low-lying range
of hills and found ourselves in an even better forest country. The
farther we penetrated from the coast the warmer we found it, and we
went on and on until we came to a large river that seemed familiar to
the Swift One. It was where she must have come during the four years’
absence from the horde. This river we crossed on logs, landing on the
other side at the base of a large bluff. High up on the bluff we found
our new home most difficult of access and quite hidden from any eye
beneath.
There is little more of my tale to tell. Here the Swift One and I lived
and reared our family. And here my memories end. We never made another
migration. I never dream beyond our high, inaccessible cave. And here
must have been born the child that inherited the stuff of my dreams,
that had moulded into its being all the impressions of my life—or of
the life of Big-Tooth, rather, who is my other-self, and not my real
self, but who is so real to me that often I am unable to tell what age
I am living in.
I often wonder about this line of descent. I, the modern, am
incontestably a man; yet I, Big-Tooth, the primitive, am not a man.
Somewhere, and by straight line of descent, these two parties to my
dual personality were connected. Were the Folk, before their
destruction, in the process of becoming men? And did I and mine carry
through this process? On the other hand, may not some descendant of
mine have gone in to the Fire People and become one of them? I do not
know. There is no way of learning. One thing only is certain, and that
is that Big-Tooth did stamp into the cerebral constitution of one of
his progeny all the impressions of his life, and stamped them in so
indelibly that the hosts of intervening generations have failed to
obliterate them.
There is one other thing of which I must speak before I close. It is a
dream that I dream often, and in point of time the real event must have
occurred during the period of my living in the high, inaccessible cave.
I remember that I wandered far in the forest toward the east. There I
came upon a tribe of Tree People. I crouched in a thicket and watched
them at play. They were holding a laughing council, jumping up and down
and screeching rude choruses.
Suddenly they hushed their noise and ceased their capering. They shrank
down in fear, and quested anxiously about with their eyes for a way of
retreat. Then Red-Eye walked in among them. They cowered away from him.
All were frightened. But he made no attempt to hurt them. He was one of
them. At his heels, on stringy bended legs, supporting herself with
knuckles to the ground on either side, walked an old female of the Tree
People, his latest wife. He sat down in the midst of the circle. I can
see him now, as I write this, scowling, his eyes inflamed, as he peers
about him at the circle of the Tree People. And as he peers he crooks
one monstrous leg and with his gnarly toes scratches himself on the
stomach. He is Red-Eye, the atavism.