THE STONE AGE by H.G. Wells ep1
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From H. G. Wells - 1897
The story is set during the Stone Age, and tells of a caveman named Ugh-lomi, who bonds with the young woman Eudena and kills his rival, the de facto tribal leader Uya. Whilst in exile, Ugh-lomi becomes the first man to ride a horse, and to combine stone and wood to fashion an axe. He uses this weapon, along with his wits, to survive encounters with cave bears, hyenas and rhinos, and ultimately claim the position of tribal leader for himself.
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A Story of the Stone Age - part one
by H. G. Wells
UGH-LOMI AND UYA
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 the
better part of the year. The cores 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 estimates of the geologists are 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 south-west 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
marshmallow 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 tie 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 in a rutting fight; 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 greener as they passed up out of the light into the
shade of the young chestnut trees. 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 trees
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 the
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 down.
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, 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 also running. 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 world as the
world went then.
As he ran he made a
continuous growling rumble. “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 about her, and things
that had gone into hiding for fear of her movements crept out . . .
After a time the
blue overhead deepened, and 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,” said
Ugh-lomi, and she glanced back again at the screaming curve of figures, and
dimly 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.
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 splashing 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 down to the water, where Wau
had come to the surface struggling weakly. They gibbered at him without any
sane attempt to help, and presently he went under again. Two others threatened
Ugh-lomi from the bank.
He answered back,
shouts, vague insults, gestures. Then Uya, who had been standing hesitating,
roared with rage, and whirling his fists came plunging through the water. His
followers came splashing 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 he held 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 chalk land, 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 dimly 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 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. 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,
although it has little to do with this story, Ugh-lomi dropped a chunk of flint
on 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 cliff brow. 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
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.
THE CAVE BEAR
In the days when Eudena and Ugh-lomi fled from the people of Uya towards the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet chestnut and the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the tribe, a full day’s journey down the river, and up the mountains there were none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that ancient time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after generation, from one squatting-place to another, from the south-westward. And the animals that held the land, the hippopotami and rhinoceros of the river valleys, the horses of the grass plains, the deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in the branches, the cattle of the uplands, feared him but little — let alone the mammoths in the mountains and the elephants that came through the land in the summer-time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but the rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all his weapons against hoof and horn, tooth and claw?
Andoo, the huge
cave bear, who lived in the cave up the gorge, had never even seen a man in all
his wise and respectable life, until midway through one night, as he was
prowling down the gorge along the cliff edge, he saw the glare of Eudena’s fire
upon the ledge, and Eudena red and shining, and Ugh-lomi, with a gigantic
shadow mocking him upon the white cliff, going to and fro, shaking his mane of
hair, and waving the axe of stone — the first axe of stone — while he chanted
of the killing of Uya. The cave bear was far up the gorge, and he saw the thing
slanting-ways and far off. He was so surprised he stood quite still upon the
edge, sniffing the novel odour of burning bracken, and wondering whether the
dawn was coming up in the wrong place.
He was the lord of
the rocks and caves, was the cave bear, as his slighter brother, the grizzly,
was lord of the thick woods below, and as the dappled lion — the lion of those
days was dappled — was lord of the thorn-thickets, reed-beds, and open plains.
He was the greatest of all meat-eaters; he knew no fear, none preyed on him,
and none gave him battle; only the rhinoceros was beyond his strength. Even the
mammoth shunned his country. This invasion perplexed him. He noticed these new
beasts were shaped like monkeys, and sparsely hairy like young pigs. “Monkey
and young pig,” said the cave bear. “It might not be so bad. But that red thing
that jumps, and the black thing jumping with it yonder! Never in my life have I
seen such things before.”
He came slowly
along the brow of the cliff towards them, stopping thrice to sniff and peer,
and the reek of the fire grew stronger. A couple of hyaenas also were so intent
upon the thing below that Andoo, coming soft and easy, was close upon them
before they knew of him or he of them. They started guiltily and went lurching
off. Coming round in a wheel, a hundred yards off, they began yelling and
calling him names for the start they had had. “Ya-ha!” they cried. “Who can’t
grub his own burrow? Who eats roots like a pig . . .? Ya-ha!” For
even in those days the hyaena’s manners were just as offensive as they are now.
“Who answers the
hyaena?” growled Andoo, peering through the midnight dimness at them, and then
going to look at the cliff edge.
There was Ugh-lomi
still telling his story, and the fire getting low, and the scent of the burning
hot and strong.
Andoo stood on the
edge of the chalk cliff for some time, shifting his vast weight from foot to
foot, and swaying his head to and fro, with his mouth open, his ears erect and
twitching, and the nostrils of his big, black muzzle sniffing. He was very
curious, was the cave bear, more curious than any of the bears that live now,
and the flickering fire and the incomprehensible movements of the man, let
alone the intrusion into his indisputable province, stirred him with a sense of
strange new happenings. He had been after red deer fawn that night, for the
cave bear was a miscellaneous hunter, but this quite turned him from that
enterprise.
“Ya-ha!” yelled the
hyaenas behind. “Ya-ha-ha!”
Peering through the
starlight, Andoo saw there were now three or four going to and fro against the
grey hillside. “They will hang about me now all the night until I kill,” said
Andoo. “Filth of the world!” And mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the
red flicker in the gorge until the dawn came to drive the hyaena scum home. And
after a time they vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney
bean-feasters, away in the beech-woods. Then they came slinking near again.
Andoo yawned and went on along the cliff, and they followed. Then he stopped
and went back.
It was a splendid
night, beset with shining constellations, the same stars, but not the same
constellations we know, for since those days all the stars have had time to
move into new places. Far away across the open space beyond where the
heavy-shouldered, lean-bodied hyaenas blundered and howled, was a beech-wood,
and the mountain slopes rose beyond, a dim mystery, until their snow-capped
summits came out white and cold and clear, touched by the first rays of the yet
unseen moon. It was a vast silence, save when the yell of the hyaenas flung a vanishing
discordance across its peace, or when from down the hills the trumpeting of the
new-come elephants came faintly on the faint breeze. And below now, the red
flicker had dwindled and was steady, and shone a deeper red, and Ugh-lomi had
finished his story and was preparing to sleep, and Eudena sat and listened to
the strange voices of unknown beasts, and watched the dark eastern sky growing
deeply luminous at the advent of the moon. Down below, the river talked to
itself, and things unseen went to and fro.
After a time the
bear went away, but in an hour he was back again. Then, as if struck by a
thought, he turned, and went up the gorge . . .
The night passed,
and Ugh-lomi slept on. The waning moon rose and lit the gaunt white cliff
overhead with a light that was pale and vague. The gorge remained in a deeper
shadow, and seemed all the darker. Then by imperceptible degrees the day came
stealing in the wake of the moonlight. Eudena’s eyes wandered to the cliff brow
overhead once, and then again. Each time the line was sharp and clear against
the sky, and yet she had a dim perception of something lurking there. The red
of the fire grew deeper and deeper, grey scales spread upon it, its vertical
column of smoke became more and more visible, and up and down the gorge, things
that had been unseen grew clear in a colourless illumination. She may have
dozed.
Suddenly she
started up from her squatting position, erect and alert, scrutinising the cliff
up and down.
She made the
faintest sound, and Ugh-lomi too, light sleeping like an animal, was instantly
awake. He caught up his axe and came noiselessly to her side.
The light was still
dim, the world now all in black and dark grey, and one sickly star still
lingered overhead. The ledge they were on was a little grassy space, six feet
wide perhaps, and twenty feet long, sloping outwardly, and with a handful of
St. John’s wort growing near the edge. Below it, the soft white rock fell away
in a steep slope of nearly fifty feet to the thick bush of hazel that fringed the
river. Down the river this slope increased, until some way off a thin grass
held its own right up to the crest of the cliff. Overhead, forty or fifty feet
of rock bulged into the great masses characteristic of chalk, but at the end of
the ledge a gully, a precipitous groove of discoloured chalk, slashed the face
of the cliff, and gave a footing to a scrubby growth, by which Eudena and
Ugh-lomi went up and down.
They stood as
noiseless as startled deer, with every sense expectant. For a minute they heard
nothing, and then came a faint rattling of dust down the gully, and the
creaking of twigs.
Ugh-lomi gripped
his axe, and went to the edge of the ledge, for the bulge of the chalk overhead
had hidden the upper part of the gully. And forthwith, with a sudden contraction
of the heart, he saw the cave bear halfway down from the brow, and making a
gingerly backward step with his flat hind-foot. His hind-quarters were towards
Ugh-lomi, and he clawed at the rocks and bushes so that he seemed flattened
against the cliff. He looked none the less for that. From his shining snout to
his stumpy tail he was a lion and a half, the length of two tall men. He looked
over his shoulder, and his huge mouth was open with the exertion of holding up
his great carcase, and his tongue lay out . . .
He got his footing,
and came down slowly, a yard nearer.
“Bear,” said
Ugh-lomi, looking round with his face white.
But Eudena, with
terror in her eyes, was pointing down the cliff.
Ugh-lomi’s mouth
fell open. For down below, with her big fore-feet against the rock, stood
another big brown-grey bulk — the she-bear. She was not so big as Andoo, but
she was big enough for all that.
Then suddenly
Ugh-lomi gave a cry, and catching up a handful of the litter of ferns that lay
scattered on the ledge, he thrust it into the pallid ash of the fire. “Brother
Fire!” he cried, “Brother Fire!” And Eudena, starting into activity, did
likewise. “Brother Fire! Help, help! Brother Fire!”
Brother Fire was
still red in his heart, but he turned to grey as they scattered him. “Brother
Fire!” They screamed. But he whispered and passed, and there was nothing but
ashes. Then Ugh-lomi danced with anger and struck the ashes with his fist. But
Eudena began to hammer the firestone against a flint. And the eyes of each were
turning ever and again towards the gully by which Andoo was climbing down.
Brother Fire!
Suddenly the huge
furry hind-quarters of the bear came into view, beneath the bulge of the chalk
that had hidden him. He was still clambering gingerly down the nearly vertical
surface. His head was yet out of sight, but they could hear him talking to
himself. “Pig and monkey,” said the cave bear. “It ought to be good.”
Eudena struck a
spark and blew at it; it twinkled brighter and then — went out. At that she
cast down flint and firestone and began wringing her hands. Her face was wet
with tears. Then she sprang to her feet and scrambled a dozen feet up the cliff
above the ledge. How she hung on even for a moment I do not know, for the chalk
was vertical and without grip for a monkey. In a couple of seconds she had slid
back to the ledge again with bleeding hands.
Ugh-lomi was making
frantic rushes about the ledge — now he would go to the edge, now to the gully.
He did not know what to do, he could not think. The she-bear looked smaller
than her mate — much. If they rushed down on her together, one might live.
“Eigh?” said the cave bear, and Ugh-lomi turned again and saw his little eyes
peering under the bulge of the chalk. “Stand away!” said the bear; “I’m going
to jump down.”
Eudena, cowering at
the end of the ledge, began to scream like a gripped rabbit.
At that a sort of
madness came upon Ugh-lomi. With a mighty cry, he caught up his axe and began
to clamber up the gully to the bear. He uttered neither word nor cry. The
monster gave a grunt of surprise. In a moment Ugh-lomi was clinging to a bush
right underneath the bear, and in another he was hanging to its back half
buried in fur, with one fist clutched in the hair under its jaw. The bear was
too astonished at this fantastic attack to do more than cling passive. And then
the axe, the first of all axes, rang in its skull.
The bear’s head
twisted from side to side, and he began a petulant scolding growl. The axe bit
within an inch of the left eye, and the hot blood blinded that side. At that
the brute roared with surprise and anger, and his teeth gnashed six inches from
Ugh-lomi’s face. Then the axe, clubbed close, came down heavily on the corner
of the jaw.
The next blow
blinded the right side and called forth a roar, this time of pain. Eudena saw
the huge, flat feet slipping and sliding, and suddenly the bear gave a clumsy
leap sideways, as if for the ledge. Then everything vanished, and the hazels
smashed, and a roar of pain and a tumult of shouts and growls came up from far
below.
Eudena screamed and
ran to the edge and peered over. For a moment, man and bears were a heap
together, Ugh-lomi uppermost; and then he had sprung clear and was scaling the
gully again, with the bears rolling and striking at one another among the
hazels. But he had left his axe below, and three knob-ended streaks of carmine
were shooting down his thigh. “Up!” he cried, and in a moment Eudena was
preceding him to the top of the cliff.
In half a minute
they were at the crest, their hearts pumping noisily, with Andoo and his wife
far and safe below them. Andoo was sitting on his haunches, both paws at work,
trying with quick exasperated movements to wipe the blindness out of his eyes,
and the she-bear stood on all-fours a little way off, ruffled in appearance and
growling angrily. Ugh-lomi flung himself flat on the grass, and lay panting and
bleeding with his face on his arms.
For a second Eudena
regarded the bears, then she came and sat beside him, looking at him
. . .
Presently she put
forth her hand timidly and touched him, and made the guttural sound that was
his name. He turned over and raised himself on his arm. His face was pale, like
the face of one who is afraid. He looked at her steadfastly for a moment, and
then suddenly he laughed. “Waugh!” he said exultantly.
“Waugh!” said she —
a simple but expressive conversation.
Then Ugh-lomi came
and knelt beside her, and on hands and knees peered over the brow and examined
the gorge. His breath was steady now, and the blood on his leg had ceased to
flow, though the scratches the she-bear had made were open and wide. He
squatted up and sat staring at the footmarks of the great bear as they came to
the gully — they were as wide as his head and twice as long. Then he jumped up
and went along the cliff face until the ledge was visible. Here he sat down for
some time thinking, while Eudena watched him.
At last Ugh-lomi
rose, as one whose mind is made up. He returned towards the gully, Eudena
keeping close by him, and together they clambered to the ledge. They took the
firestone and a flint, and then Ugh-lomi went down to the foot of the cliff
very cautiously, and found his axe. They returned to the cliff now as quietly
as they could, and turning their faces resolutely up-stream set off at a brisk
walk. The ledge was a home no longer, with such callers in the neighbourhood.
Ugh-lomi carried the axe and Eudena the firestone. So simple was a Palaeolithic
removal.
They went
up-stream, although it might lead to the very lair of the cave bear, because
there was no other way to go. Down the stream was the tribe, and had not
Ugh-lomi killed Uya and Wau? By the stream they had to keep — because of
drinking.
So they marched,
through beech trees, with the gorge deepening until the river flowed, a
frothing rapid, five hundred feet below them. And of all the changeful things
in this world of change, the courses of rivers, in deep valleys change least.
It was the river Wey, the river we know today, and they marched over the very
spots where nowadays stand little Guildford and Godalming — the first human
beings to come into the land. Once a grey ape chattered and vanished, and all
along the cliff edge, vast and even, ran the spoor of the great cave bear.
And then the spoor
of the bear fell away from the cliff, showing, Ugh-lomi thought, that he came
from some place to the left, and keeping to the cliff’s edge, they presently
came to an end. They found themselves looking down on a great semi-circular
space caused by the collapse of the cliff. It had smashed right across the
gorge, banking the up-stream water back in a pool which overflowed in a rapid.
The slip had happened long ago. It was grassed over, but the face of the cliffs
that stood about the semi-circle was still almost fresh-looking and white as on
the day when the rock must have broken and slid down. Starkly exposed and black
under the foot of these cliffs were the mouths of several caves. And as they
stood there, looking at the space, and disinclined to skirt it, because they
thought the bears’ lair lay somewhere on the left in the direction they must
needs take, they saw suddenly first one bear and then two coming up the grass
slope to the right and going across the amphitheatre towards the caves. Andoo
was first, and he dropped a little on his fore-foot, and his mien was
despondent, and the she-bear came shuffling behind.
Eudena and Ugh-lomi
stepped quite noiselessly back from the cliff until they could just see the
bears over the verge. Then Ugh-lomi stopped. Eudena pulled his arm, but he
turned with a forbidding gesture, and her hand dropped. Ugh-lomi stood watching
the bears, with his axe in his hand, until they had vanished into the cave. He
growled softly, and shook the axe at the she-bear’s receding quarters. Then to
Eudena’s terror, instead of creeping off with her, he lay flat down and crawled
forward into such a position that he could just see the cave. It was bears —
and he did it as calmly as if it had been rabbits he was watching!
He lay still, like
a barked log, sun-dappled, in the shadow of the trees. He was thinking. And
Eudena had learnt, even when a little girl, that when Ugh-lomi became still
like that, jaw-bone on fist, novel things presently began to happen.
It was an hour
before the thinking was over; it was noon when the two little savages had found
their way to the cliff brow that overhung the bears’ cave. And all the long
afternoon they fought desperately with a great boulder of chalk; trundling it,
with nothing but their unaided sturdy muscles, from the gully where it had hung
like a loose tooth, towards the cliff top. It was full two yards about, it
stood as high as Eudena’s waist, it was obtuse-angled and toothed with flints.
And when the sun set it was poised, three inches from the edge, above the cave
of the great cave bear.
In the cave,
conversation languished during the afternoon. The she-bear snoozed sulkily in
her corner — for she was fond of pig and monkey — and Andoo was busy licking
the side of his paw and smearing his face to cool the smart and inflammation of
his wounds. Afterwards he went and sat just within the mouth of the cave,
blinking out at the afternoon sun with his uninjured eye, and thinking.
“I never was so
startled in my life,” he said at last. “They are the most extraordinary beasts.
Attacking me!”
“I don’t like
them,” said the she-bear, out of the darkness behind.
“A feebler sort of
beast I never saw. I can’t think what the world is coming to. Scraggy, weedy
legs . . . Wonder how they keep warm in winter?”
“Very likely they don’t,”
said the she-bear.
“I suppose it’s a
sort of monkey gone wrong.”
“It’s a change,”
said the she-bear.
A pause.
“The advantage he
had was merely accidental,” said Andoo. “These things will happen at times.”
“I can’t understand
why you let go,” said the she-bear.
That matter had
been discussed before, and settled. So Andoo, being a bear of experience,
remained silent for a space. Then he resumed upon a different aspect of the
matter. “He has a sort of claw — a long claw that he seemed to have first on one
paw and then on the other. Just one claw. They’re very odd things. The bright
thing too, they seemed to have — like that glare that comes in the sky in
daytime — only it jumps about — it’s really worth seeing. It’s a thing with a
root, too — like grass when it is windy.”
“Does it bite?”
asked the she-bear. “If it bites it can’t be a plant.”
“No — I don’t
know,” said Andoo. “But it’s curious, anyhow.”
“I wonder if they
are good eating?” said the she-bear.
“They look it,”
said Andoo, with appetite — for the cave bear, like the polar bear, was an
incurable carnivore — no roots or honey for him.
The two bears fell
into a meditation for a space. Then Andoo resumed his simple attentions to his
eye. The sunlight up the green slope before the cave mouth grew warmer in tone
and warmer, until it was a ruddy amber.
“Curious sort of
thing — day,” said the cave bear. “Lot too much of it, I think. Quite
unsuitable for hunting. Dazzles me always. I can’t smell nearly so well by
day.”
The she-bear did
not answer, but there came a measured crunching sound out of the darkness. She
had turned up a bone. Andoo yawned. “Well,” he said. He strolled to the cave
mouth and stood with his head projecting, surveying the amphitheatre. He found
he had to turn his head completely round to see objects on his right-hand side.
No doubt that eye would be all right tomorrow.
He yawned again.
There was a tap overhead, and a big mass of chalk flew out from the cliff face,
dropped a yard in front of his nose, and starred into a dozen unequal fragments.
It startled him extremely.
When he had
recovered a little from his shock, he went and sniffed curiously at the
representative pieces of the fallen projectile. They had a distinctive flavour,
oddly reminiscent of the two drab animals of the ledge. He sat up and pawed the
larger lump, and walked round it several times trying to find a man about it
somewhere . . .
When night had come
he went off down the river gorge to see if he could cut off either of the
ledge’s occupants. The ledge was empty, there were no signs of the red thing,
but as he was rather hungry he did not loiter long that night, but pushed on to
pick up a red deer fawn. He forgot about the drab animals. He found a fawn, but
the doe was close by and made an ugly fight for her young. Andoo had to leave
the fawn, but as her blood was up she stuck to the attack, and at last he got
in a blow of his paw at her nose, and so got hold of her. More meat but less
delicacy, and the she-bear, following, had her share. The next afternoon,
curiously enough, the very fellow of the first white rock fell, and smashed
precisely according to precedent.
The aim of the
third, that fell the night after however, was better. It hit Andoo’s
unspeculative skull with a crack that echoed up the cliff, and the white fragments
went dancing to all the points of the compass. The she-bear coming after him
and sniffing curiously at him, found him lying in an odd sort of attitude, with
his head wet and all out of shape. She was a young she-bear, and inexperienced,
and having sniffed about him for some time and licked him a little, and so
forth, she decided to leave him until the odd mood had passed, and went on her
hunting alone.
She looked up the
fawn of the red doe they had killed two nights ago, and found it. But it was lonely
hunting without Andoo, and she returned caveward before dawn. The sky was grey
and overcast, the trees up the gorge were black and unfamiliar, and into her
ursine mind came a dim sense of strange and dreary happenings. She lifted up
her voice and called Andoo by name. The sides of the gorge re-echoed her.
As she approached
the caves she saw in the half light, and heard, a couple of jackals scuttle
off, and immediately after a hyaena howled and a dozen clumsy bulks went
lumbering up the slope, and stopped and yelled derision. “Lord of the rocks and
caves — ya-ha!” Came down the wind. The dismal feeling in the she-bear’s mind
became suddenly acute. She shuffled across the amphitheatre.
“Ya-ha!” said the
hyaenas, retreating. “Ya-ha!”
The cave bear was
not lying quite in the same attitude, because the hyaenas had been busy, and in
one place his ribs showed white. Dotted over the turf about him lay the smashed
fragments of the three great lumps of chalk. And the air was full of the scent
of death.
The she-bear
stopped dead. Even now, that the great and wonderful Andoo was killed was
beyond her believing. Then she heard far overhead a sound, a queer sound, a
little like the shout of a hyaena but fuller and lower in pitch. She looked up,
with her little dawn-blinded eyes, seeing little, her nostrils quivering. And
there, on the cliff edge, far above her against the bright pink of dawn, were
two little shaggy round dark things, the heads of Eudena and Ugh-lomi, as they
shouted derision at her. But though she could not see them very distinctly she
could hear, and dimly she began to apprehend. A novel feeling as of imminent
strange evils came into her heart.
She began to
examine the smashed fragments of chalk that lay about Andoo. For a space she
stood still, looking about her and making a low continuous sound that was
almost a moan. Then she went back incredulously to Andoo to make one last
effort to rouse him.
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