In the Morning of Time Part 21

Then all at once, when the rafts were about three or four hundred yards out from sh.o.r.e, 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 appet.i.tes.

They fled from nothing, but some of them stopped, in struggling ma.s.ses, 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-crus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s, 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, and thanked his unknown G.o.ds 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.

CHAPTER XIV

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-s.p.a.ce, 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 hara.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 unenc.u.mbered, 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 splas.h.i.+ng, 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 ash.o.r.e with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed.

While the clamoring women s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.sailants to be met with bow and spear. At Grom's sharp orders each warrior s.n.a.t.c.hed a blazing brand from the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearest a.s.sailant. 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, las.h.i.+ng 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 hoa.r.s.e, hooting cry, followed by a succession of cras.h.i.+ng 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, smas.h.i.+ng down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancing itself at each spring with its ma.s.sive, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 hara.s.sed travelers emerged from the swamp into a pleasant region of gra.s.sy, 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. a.s.suredly, 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 gra.s.s. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 ign.o.ble a.s.sailants?

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 a.s.sailants. But the a.s.sault was a blind one. The buffalo, a black ma.s.s that seemed to foam with tossing horns and rolling eyes, soon pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude of every beast toward man was one of fear or fierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcome the companions.h.i.+p 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 fellows.h.i.+p. 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 ma.s.s. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.suredly 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 gra.s.sy plain, stretched a sort of ca.n.a.l, perhaps ten paces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thras.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.ses behind them rolled them on backwards, and slowly they too were thrust down into the pitch, till the ca.n.a.l 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 gra.s.s before it. They were rolled flat, trodden out like a fire in thin gra.s.s, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpeting monsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path, arrived at the edge of the ca.n.a.l.

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 s.p.a.cious 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 ma.s.s 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 eggsh.e.l.l, 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, pa.s.sed his s.h.a.ggy 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