Лондон Джек. Before Adam

Thus was momentum gained in the Younger World. But we were
without this momentum. We were just getting started, and we
could not go far in a single generation. We were without
weapons, without fire, and in the raw beginnings of speech. The
device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled
when I think of it.

Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To show
you how fortuitous was development in those days let me state
that had it not been for the gluttony of Lop-Ear I might have
brought about the domestication of the dog. And this was
something that the Fire People who lived to the northeast had
not yet achieved. They were without dogs; this I knew from
observation. But let me tell you how Lop-Ear's gluttony
possibly set back our social development many generations.

Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to
the south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. These were little
frequented for two reasons. First of all, there was no food
there of the kind we ate; and next, those rocky hills were
filled with the lairs of carnivorous beasts.

But Lop-Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day. We
would not have strayed had we not been teasing a tiger. Please
do not laugh. It was old Saber-Tooth himself. We were perfectly
safe. We chanced upon him in the forest, early in the morning,
and from the safety of the branches overhead we chattered down
at him our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch, and
from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an infernal row
and warning all the forest-dwellers that old Saber-Tooth was
coming.




We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him
good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his tail, and
sometimes he paused and stared up at us quietly for a long
time, as if debating in his mind some way by which he could get
hold of us. But we only laughed and pelted him with twigs and
the ends of branches.

This tiger-baiting was common sport among the folk.
Sometimes half the horde would follow from overhead a tiger or
lion that had ventured out in the daytime. It was our revenge;
for more than one member of the horde, caught unexpectedly, had
gone the way of the tiger's belly or the lion's. Also, by such
ordeals of helplessness and shame, we taught the hunting
animals to some extent to keep out of our territory. And then
it was funny. It was a great game.

And so Lop-Ear and I had chased Saber-Tooth across three
miles of forest. Toward the last he put his tail between his
legs and fled from our gibing like a beaten cur. We did our
best to keep up with him; but when we reached the edge of the
forest he was no more than a streak in the distance.

I don't know what prompted us, unless it was curiosity;
but after playing around awhile, Lop-Ear and I ventured across
the open ground to the edge of the rocky hills. We did not go
far. Possibly at no time were we more than a hundred yards from
the trees. Coming around a sharp corner of rock (we went very
carefully, because we did not know what we might encounter), we
came upon three puppies playing in the sun.

They did not see us, and we watched them for some time.
They were wild dogs. In the rock-wall was a horizontal
fissure--evidently the lair where their mother had left them,
and where they should have remained had they been obedient. But
the growing life, that in Lop-Ear and me had impelled us to
venture away from the forest, had driven the puppies out of the
cave to frolic. I know how their mother would have punished
them had she caught them.

But it was Lop-Ear and I who caught them. He looked at me,
and then we made a dash for it. The puppies knew no place to
run except into the lair, and we headed them off. One rushed
between my legs. I squatted and grabbed him. He sank his sharp
little teeth into my arm, and I dropped him in the suddenness
of the hurt and surprise. The next moment he had scurried
inside.

Lop-Ear, struggling with the second puppy, scowled at me
and intimated by a variety of sounds the different kinds of a
fool and a bungler that I was. This made me ashamed and spurred
me to valor. I grabbed the remaining puppy by the tail. He got
his teeth into me once, and then I got him by the nape of the
neck. Lop-Ear and I sat down, and held the puppies up, and
looked at them, and laughed.

They were snarling and yelping and crying. Lop-Ear started
suddenly. He thought he had heard something. We looked at each
other in fear, realizing the danger of our position. The one
thing that made animals raging demons was tampering with their
young. And these puppies that made such a racket belonged to
the wild dogs. Well we knew them, running in packs, the terror
of the grass-eating animals. We had watched them following the
herds of cattle and bison and dragging down the calves, the
aged, and the sick. We had been chased by them ourselves, more
than once. I had seen one of the Folk, a woman, run down by
them and caught just as she reached the shelter of the woods.
Had she not been tired out by the run, she might have made it
into a tree. She tried, and slipped, and fell back. They made
short work of her.

We did not stare at each other longer than a moment.
Keeping tight hold of our prizes, we ran for the woods. Once in
the security of a tall tree, we held up the puppies and laughed
again. You see, we had to have our laugh out, no matter what
happened.




And then began one of the hardest tasks I ever attempted.
We started to carry the puppies to our cave. Instead of using
our hands for climbing, most of the time they were occupied
with holding our squirming captives. Once we tried to walk on
the ground, but were treed by a miserable hyena, who followed
along underneath. He was a wise hyena.

Lop-Ear got an idea. He remembered how we tied up bundles
of leaves to carry home for beds. Breaking off some tough
vines, he tied his puppy's legs together, and then, with
another piece of vine passed around his neck, slung the puppy
on his back. This left him with hands and feet free to climb.
He was jubilant, and did not wait for me to finish tying my
puppy's legs, but started on. There was one difficulty,
however. The puppy wouldn't stay slung on Lop-Ear's back. It
swung around to the side and then on in front. Its teeth were
not tied, and the next thing it did was to sink its teeth into
Lop-Ear's soft
and unprotected stomach. He let out a scream, nearly
fell, and clutched a branch violently with both hands to save
himself. The vine around his neck broke, and the puppy, its
four legs still tied, dropped to the ground. The hyena
proceeded to dine.

Lop-Ear was disgusted and angry. He abused the hyena, and
then went off alone through the trees. I had no reason that I
knew for wanting to carry the puppy to the cave, except that I
WANTED to; and I stayed by my task. I made the work a great
deal easier by elaborating on Lop-Ear's idea. Not only did I
tie the puppy's legs, but I thrust a stick through his jaws and
tied them together securely.

At last I got the puppy home. I imagine I had more
pertinacity than the average Folk, or else I should not have
succeeded. They laughed at me when they saw me lugging the
puppy up to my high little cave, but I did not mind. Success
crowned my efforts, and there was the puppy. He was a plaything
such as none of the Folk possessed. He learned rapidly. When I
played with him and he bit me, I boxed his ears, and then he
did not try again to bite for a long time.

I was quite taken up with him. He was something new, and
it was a characteristic of the Folk to like new things. When I
saw that he refused fruits and vegetables, I caught birds for
him and squirrels and young rabbits. (We Folk were meat-eaters,
as well as vegetarians, and we were adept at catching small
game.) The puppy ate the meat and thrived. As well as I can
estimate, I must have had him over a week. And then, coming
back to the cave one day with a nestful of young-hatched
pheasants, I found Lop-Ear had killed the puppy and was just
beginning to eat him. I sprang for Lop-Ear,--the cave was
small,--and we went at it tooth and nail.

And thus, in a fight, ended one of the earliest attempts
to domesticate the dog. We pulled hair out in handfuls, and
scratched and bit and gouged. Then we sulked and made up. After
that we ate the puppy. Raw? Yes. We had not yet discovered
fire. Our evolution into cooking animals lay in the
tight-rolled scroll of the future.

There yet remain to us a few minutes before we climb to
our caves. We are tired from the play of the day, and the
sounds we make are subdued. Even the cubs, still greedy for fun
and antics, play with restraint. The wind from the sea has died
down, and the shadows are lengthening with the last of the
sun's descent. And then, suddenly, from Red-Eye's cave, breaks
a wild screaming and the sound of blows. He is beating his
wife.

At first an awed silence comes upon us. But as the blows
and screams continue we break out into an insane gibbering of
helpless rage. It is plain that the men resent Red-Eye's
actions, but they are too afraid of him. The blows cease, and a
low groaning dies away, while we chatter among ourselves and
the sad twilight creeps upon us.

We, to whom most happenings were jokes, never laughed
during Red-Eye's wife-beatings. We knew too well the tragedy of
them. On more than one morning, at the base of the cliff, did
we find the body of his latest wife. He had tossed her there,
after she had died, from his cave-mouth. He never buried his
dead. The task of carrying away the bodies, that else would
have polluted our abiding-place, he left to the horde. We
usually flung them into the river below the last
drinking-place.

Not alone did Red-Eye murder his wives, but he also
murdered for his wives, in order to get them. When he wanted a
new wife and selected the wife of another man, he promptly
killed that man. Two of these murders I saw myself. The whole
horde knew, but could do nothing. We had not yet developed any
government, to speak of, inside the horde. We had certain
customs and visited our wrath upon the unlucky ones who
violated those customs. Thus, for example, the individual who
defiled a drinking-place would be attacked by every onlooker,
while one who deliberately gave a false alarm was the recipient
of much rough usage at our hands. But Red-Eye walked rough-shod
over all our customs, and we so feared him that we were
incapable of the collective action necessary to punish him.

It was during the sixth winter in our cave that Lop-Ear
and I discovered that we were really growing up. From the first
it had been a squeeze to get in through the entrance-crevice.
This had had its advantages, however. It had prevented the
larger Folk from taking our cave away from us. And it was a
most desirable cave, the highest on the bluff, the safest, and
in winter the smallest and warmest.



To show the stage of the mental development of the Folk, I
may state that it would have been a simple thing for some of
them to have driven us out and enlarged the crevice-opening.
But they never thought of it. Lop-Ear and I did not think of it
either until our increasing size compelled us to make an
enlargement. This occurred when summer was well along and we
were fat with better forage. We worked at the crevice in
spells, when the fancy struck us.

At first we dug the crumbling rocks away with our fingers,
until our nails got sore, when I accidentally stumbled upon the
idea of using a piece of wood on the rock. This worked well.
Also it worked woe. One morning early, we had scratched out of
the wall quite a heap of fragments. I gave the heap a shove
over the lip of the entrance. The next moment there came up
from below a howl of rage. There was no need to look. We knew
the voice only too well. The rubbish had descended upon
Red-Eye.

We crouched down in the cave in consternation. A minute
later he was at the entrance, peering in at us with his
inflamed eyes and raging like a demon. But he was too large. He
could not get in to us. Suddenly he went away. This was
suspicious. By all we knew of Folk nature he should have
remained and had out his rage. I crept to the entrance and
peeped down. I could see him just beginning to mount the bluff
again. In one hand he carried a long stick. Before I could
divine his plan, he was back at the entrance and savagely
jabbing the stick in at us.

His thrusts were prodigious. They could have disembowelled
us. We shrank back against the side-walls, where we were almost
out of range. But by industrious poking he got us now and
again--cruel, scraping jabs with the end of the stick that
raked off the hide and hair. When we screamed with the hurt, he
roared his satisfaction and jabbed the harder.

I began to grow angry. I had a temper of my own in those
days, and pretty considerable courage, too, albeit it was
largely the courage of the cornered rat. I caught hold of the
stick with my hands, but such was his strength that he jerked
me into the crevice. He reached for me with his long arm, and
his nails tore my flesh as I leaped back from the clutch and
gained the comparative safety of the side-wall.

He began poking again, and caught me a painful blow on the
shoulder. Beyond shivering with fright and yelling when he was
hit, Lop-Ear did nothing. I looked for a stick with which to
jab back, but found only the end of a branch, an inch through
and a foot long. I threw this at Red-Eye. It did no damage,
though he howled with a sudden increase of rage at my daring to
strike back. He began jabbing furiously. I found a fragment of
rock and threw it at him, striking him on the chest.

This emboldened me, and, besides, I was now as angry as
he, and had lost all fear. I ripped fragment of rock from the
wall. The piece must have weighed two or threepounds. With my
strength I slammed it full into Red-Eye's face. It nearly
finished him. He staggered backward, dropping his stick, and
almost fell off the cliff.

He was a ferocious sight. His face was covered with blood,
and he was snarling and gnashing his fangs like a wild boar. He
wiped the blood from his eyes, caught sight of me, and roared
with fury. His stick was gone, so he began ripping out chunks
of crumbling rock and throwing them in at me. This supplied me
with ammunition. I gave him as good as he sent, and better; for
he presented a good target, while he caught only glimpses of me
as I snuggled against the side-wall.

Suddenly he disappeared again. From the lip of the cave I
saw him descending. All the horde had gathered outside and in
awed silence was looking on. As he descended, the more timid
ones scurried for their caves. I could see old Marrow-Bone
tottering along as fast as he could. Red-Eye sprang out from
the wall and finished the last twenty feet through the air. He
landed alongside a mother who was just beginning the ascent.
She screamed with fear, and the two-year-old child that was
clinging to her released its grip and rolled at Red-Eye's feet.
Both he and the mother reached for it, and he got it. The next
moment the frail little body had whirled through the air and
shattered against the wall. The mother ran to it, caught it up
in her arms, and crouched over it crying.

Red-Eye started over to pick up the stick. Old Marrow-Bone
had tottered into his way. Red-Eye's great hand shot out and
clutched the old man by the back of the neck. I looked to see
his neck broken. His body went limp as he surrendered himself
to his fate.
Red-Eye hesitated a moment, and Marrow-Bone, shivering
terribly, bowed his head and covered his face with his crossed
arms. Then Red-Eye slammed him face-downward to the ground. Old
Marrow-Bone did not struggle. He lay there crying with the fear
of death. I saw the Hairless One, out in the open space,
beating his chest and bristling, but afraid to come forward.
And then, in obedience to some whim of his erratic spirit,
Red-Eye let the old man alone and passed on and recovered the
stick.

He returned to the wall and began to climb up. Lop-Ear,
who was shivering and peeping alongside of me, scrambled back
into the cave. It was plain that Red-Eye was bent upon murder.
I was desperate and angry and fairly cool. Running back and
forth along the neighboring ledges, I gathered a heap of rocks
at the cave-entrance. Red-Eye was now several yards beneath me,
concealed for the moment by an out-jut of the cliff. As he
climbed, his head came into view, and I banged a rock down. It
missed, striking the wall and shattering; but the flying dust
and grit filled his eyes and he drew back out of view.

A chuckling and chattering arose from the horde, that
played the part of audience. At last there was one of the Folk
who dared to face Red-Eye. As their approval and acclamation
arose on the air, Red-Eye snarled down at them, and on the
instant they were subdued to silence. Encouraged by this
evidence of his power, he thrust his head into view, and by
scowling and snarling and gnashing his fangs tried to
intimidate me. He scowled horribly, contracting the scalp
strongly over the brows and bringing the hair down from the top
of the head until each hair stood apart and pointed straight
forward.

The sight chilled me, but I mastered my fear, and, with a
stone poised in my hand, threatened him back. He still tried to
advance. I drove the stone down at him and made a sheer miss.
The next shot was a success. The stone struck him on the neck.
He slipped back out of sight, but as he disappeared I could see
him clutching for a grip on the wall with one hand, and with
the other clutching at his throat. The stick fell clattering to
the ground.

I could not see him any more, though I could hear him
choking and strangling and coughing. The audience kept a
death-like silence. I crouched on the lip of the entrance and
waited. The strangling and coughing died down, and I could hear
him now and again clearing his throat. A little later he began
to climb down. He went very quietly, pausing every moment or so
to stretch his neck or to feel it with his hand.



At the sight of him descending, the whole horde, with wild
screams and yells, stampeded for the woods. Old Marrow-Bone,
hobbling and tottering, followed behind. Red-Eye took no notice
of the flight. When he reached the ground he skirted the base
of the bluff and climbed up and into his own cave. He did not
look around once.

I stared at Lop-Ear, and he stared back. We understood
each other. Immediately, and with great caution and quietness,
we began climbing up the cliff. When we reached the top we
looked back. The abiding-place was deserted, Red-Eye remained
in his cave, and the horde had disappeared in the depths of the
forest.

We turned and ran. We dashed across the open spaces and
down the slopes unmindful of possible snakes in the grass,
until we reached the woods. Up into the trees we went, and on
and on, swinging our arboreal flight until we had put miles
between us and the caves. And then, and not till then, in the
security of a great fork, we paused, looked at each other, and
began to laugh. We held on to each other, arms and legs, our
eyes streaming tears, our ,sides aching, and laughed and
laughed and laughed.





But he had learned something, which was more than I had
done. Later in the afternoon, he deliberately launched out from
shore on the log. Still later he persuaded me to join him, and
I, too, learned the trick of paddling. For the next several
days we could not tear ourselves away from the slough. So
absorbed were we in our new game that we almost neglected to
eat. We even roosted in a nearby tree at night. And we forgot
that Red-Eye existed.

We were always trying new logs, and we learned that the
smaller the log the faster we could make it go. Also, we
learned that the smaller the log the more liable it was to roll
over and give us a ducking. Still another thing about small
logs we learned. One day we paddled our individual logs
alongside each other. And then, quite by accident, in the
course of play, we discovered that when each, with one hand and
foot, held on to the other's log, the logs were steadied and
did not turn over. Lying side by side in this position, our
outside hands and feet were left free for paddling. Our final
discovery was that this arrangement enabled us to use still
smaller logs and thereby gain greater speed. And there our
discoveries ended. We had invented the most primitive
catamaran, and we did not have sense enough to know it. It
never entered our heads to lash the logs together with tough
vines or stringy roots. We were content to hold the logs
together with our hands and feet.

It was not until we got over our first enthusiasm for
navigation and had begun to return to our tree-shelter to sleep
at night, that we found the Swift One. I saw her first,
gathering young acorns from the branches of a large oak near
our tree. She was very timid. At first, she kept very still;
but when she saw that she was discovered she dropped to the
ground and dashed wildly away. We caught occasional glimpses of
her from day to day, and came to look for her when we travelled
back and forth between our tree and the mouth of the slough.

And then, one day, she did not run away. She waited our
coming, and made soft peace-sounds. We could not get very near,
however. When we seemed to approach too close, she darted
suddenly away and from a safe distance uttered the soft sounds
again. This continued for some days. It took a long while to
get acquainted with her, but finally it was accomplished and
she joined us sometimes in our play.

I liked her from the first. She was of most pleasing
appearance. She was very mild. Her eyes were the mildest I had
ever seen. In this she was quite unlike the rest of the girls
and women of the Folk, who were born viragos. She never made
harsh, angry cries, and it seemed to be her nature to flee away
from trouble rather than to remain and fight.

The mildness I have mentioned seemed to emanate from her
whole being. Her bodily as well as facial appearance was the
cause of this. Her eyes were larger than most of her kind, and
they were not so deep-set, while the lashes were longer and
more regular. Nor was her nose so thick and squat. It had quite
a bridge, and the nostrils opened downward. Her incisors were
not large, nor was her upper lip long and down-hanging, nor her
lower lip protruding. She was not very hairy, except on the
outsides of arms and legs and across the shoulders; and while
she was thin-hipped, her calves were not twisted and gnarly.

I have often wondered, looking back upon her from the
twentieth century through the medium of my dreams, and it has
always occurred to me that possibly she may have been related
to the Fire People. Her father, or mother, might well have come
from that higher stock. While such things were not common,
still they did occur, and I have seen the proof of them with my
own eyes, even to the extent of members of the horde turning
renegade and going to live with the Tree People.

All of which is neither here nor there. The Swift One was
radically different from any of the females of the horde, and I
had a liking for her from the first. Her mildness and
gentleness attracted me. She was never rough, and she never
fought. She always ran away, and right here may be noted the
significance of the naming of her. She was a better climber
than Lop-Ear or I. When we played tag we could never catch her
except by accident, while she could catch us at will. She was
remarkably swift in all her movements, and she had a genius for
judging distances that was equalled only by her daring.
Excessively timid in all other matters, she was without fear
when it came to climbing or running through the trees, and
Lop-Ear and I were awkward and lumbering and cowardly in
comparison.

She was an orphan. We never saw her with any one, and
there was no telling how long she had lived alone in the world.
She must have learned early in her helpless childhood that
safety lay only in flight. She was very wise and very discreet.
It became a sort of game with Lop-Ear and me to try to find
where she lived. It was certain that she had a tree-shelter
somewhere, and not very far away; but trail her as we would, we
could never find it. She was willing enough to join with us at
play in the day-time, but the secret of her abiding-place she
guarded jealously.





For Big-Tooth also had an other-self, and when he slept
that other-self dreamed back into the past, back to the winged
reptiles and the clash and the onset of dragons, and beyond
that to the scurrying, rodent-like life of the tiny mammals,
and far remoter still, to the shore-slime of the primeval sea.
I cannot, I dare not, say more. It is all too vague and
complicated and awful. I can only hint of those vast and
terrific vistas through which I have peered hazily at the
progression of life, not upward from the ape to man, but upward
from the worm.

And now to return to my tale. I, Big-Tooth, knew not the
Swift One as a creature of finer facial and bodily symmetry,
with long-lashed eyes and a bridge to her nose and down-opening
nostrils that made toward beauty. I knew her only as the
mild-eyed young female who made soft sounds and did not fight.
I liked to play with her, I knew not why, to seek food in her
company, and to go bird-nesting with her. And I must confess
she taught me things about tree-climbing. She was very wise,
very strong, and no clinging skirts impeded her movements.

It was about this time that a slight defection arose on
the part of Lop-Ear. He got into the habit of wandering off in
the direction of the tree where my mother lived. He had taken a
liking to my vicious sister, and the Chatterer had come to
tolerate him. Also, there were several other young people,
progeny of the monogamic couples that lived in the
neighborhood, and Lop-Ear played with these young people.

I could never get the Swift One to join with them.
Whenever I visited them she dropped behind and disappeared. I
remember once making a strong effort to persuade her. But she
cast backward, anxious glances, then retreated, calling to me
from a tree. So it was that I did not make a practice of
accompanying Lop-Ear when he went to visit his new friends. The
Swift One and I were good comrades, but, try as I would, I
could never find her tree-shelter. Undoubtedly, had nothing
happened, we would have soon mated, for our liking was mutual;
but the something did happen.

One morning, the Swift One not having put in an
appearance, Lop-Ear and I were down at the mouth of the slough
playing on the logs. We had scarcely got out on the water, when
we were startled by a roar of rage. It was Red-Eye. He was
crouching on the edge of the timber jam and glowering his
hatred at us. We were badly frightened, for here was no
narrow-mouthed cave for refuge. But the twenty feet of water
that intervened gave us temporary safety, and we plucked up
courage.

Red-Eye stood up erect and began beating his hairy chest
with his fist. Our two logs were side by side, and we sat on
them and laughed at him. At first our laughter was
half-hearted, tinged with fear, but as we became convinced of
his impotence we waxed uproarious. He raged and raged at us,
and ground his teeth in helpless fury. And in our fancied
security we mocked and mocked him. We were ever short-sighted,
we Folk.

Red-Eye abruptly ceased his breast-beating and
tooth-grinding, and ran across the timber-jam to the shore. And
just as abruptly our merriment gave way to consternation. It
was not Red-Eye's way to forego revenge so easily. We waited in
fear and trembling for whatever was to happen. It never struck
us to paddle away. He came back with great leaps across the
jam, one huge hand filled with round, water-washed pebbles. I
am glad that he was unable to find larger missiles, say stones
weighing two or three pounds, for we were no more than a score
of feet away, and he surely would have killed us.

As it was, we were in no small danger. Zip! A tiny pebble
whirred past with the force almost of a bullet. Lop-Ear and I
began paddling frantically. Whiz-zip-bang ! Lop-Ear screamed
with sudden anguish. The pebble had struck him between the
shoulders. Then I got one and yelled. The only thing that saved
us was the exhausting of Red-Eye's ammunition. He dashed back
to the gravel-bed for more, while Lop-Ear and I paddled away.

Gradually we drew out of range, though Red-Eye continued
making trips for more ammunition and the pebbles continued to
whiz about us. Out in the centre of the slough there was a
slight current, and in our excitement we failed to notice that
it was drifting us into the river. We paddled, and Red-Eye kept
as close as he could to us by following along the shore. Then
he discovered larger rocks. Such ammunition increased his
range. One fragment, fully five pounds in weight, crashed on
the log
alongside of me, and such was its impact that it drove a
score of splinters, like fiery needles, into my leg. Had it
struck me it would have killed me.

And then the river current caught us. So wildly were we
paddling that Red-Eye was the first to notice it, and our first
warning was his yell of triumph. Where the edge of the current
struck the slough-water was a series of eddies or small
whirlpools. These caught our clumsy logs and whirled them end
for end, back and forth and around. We quit paddling and
devoted our whole energy to holding the logs together alongside
each other. In the meanwhile Red-Eye continued to bombard us,
the rock fragments falling about us, splashing water on us, and
menacing our lives. At the same time he gloated over us, wildly
and vociferously.

It happened that there was a sharp turn in the river at
the point where the slough entered, and the whole main current
of the river was deflected to the other bank. And toward that
bank, which was the north bank, we drifted rapidly, at the same
time going down-stream. This quickly took us out of range of
Red-Eye, and the last we saw of him was far out on a point of
land, where he was jumping up and down and chanting a paean of
victory.



Beyond holding the two logs together, Lop-Ear and I did
nothing. We were resigned to our fate, and we remained resigned
until we aroused to the fact that we were drifting along the
north shore not a hundred feet away. We began to paddle for it.
Here the main force of the current was flung back toward the
south shore, and the result of our paddling was that we crossed
the current where it was swiftest and narrowest. Before we were
aware, we were out of it and in a quiet eddy.

Our logs drifted slowly and at last grounded gently on the
bank. Lop-Ear and I crept ashore.The logs drifted on out of the
eddy and swept away down the stream. We looked at each other,
but we did not laugh. We were in a strange land, and it did not
enter our minds that we could return to our own land in the
same manner that we had come.

We had learned how to cross a river, though we did not
know it. And this was something that no one else of the Folk
had ever done. We were the first of the Folk to set foot on the
north bank of the river, and, for that matter, I believe the
last. That they would have done so in the time to come is
undoubted; but the migration of the Fire People, and the
consequent migration of the survivors of the Folk, set back our
evolution for centuries.

Indeed, there is no telling how disastrous was to be the
outcome of the Fire People's migration. Personally, I am prone
to believe that it brought about the destruction of the Folk;
that we, a branch of lower life budding toward the human, were
nipped short off and perished down by the roaring surf where
the river entered the sea. Of course, in such an eventuality, I
remain to be accounted for; but I outrun my story, and such
accounting will be made before I am done.





First, after we left the river, we worked toward the west
till we came to a small stream that flowed through marshlands.
Here we turned away toward the north, skirting the marshes and
after several days arriving at what I have called Long Lake. We
spent some time around its upper end, where we found food in
plenty; and then, one day, in the forest, we ran foul of the
Tree People. These creatures were ferocious apes, nothing more.
And yet they were not so different from us. They were more
hairy, it is true; their legs were a trifle more twisted and
gnarly, their eyes a bit smaller, their necks a bit thicker and
shorter, and their nostrils slightly more like orifices in a