The World of the Variants

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “No,” I said. “A race of men that I discovered en route.”

  The Americans did not hide their surprise, which increased the more they studied the prehistoric man.

  “Awful!” muttered the Irishman.

  “What equipment!” said the half-caste.

  The Anglo-Saxon limited himself to shaking his head.

  During this brief palaver we had installed ourselves in the sleds; they set off again at top speed. The Irishman, whose name was Murtagh, continued to question me. My intention being to keep a part of my discoveries secret, I only replied with respect to matters whose disclosure did not seem to me to be compromising. Reduced to the discovery of an unknown land full of vestiges of lost times and inhabited by a group of humans with violet-tinted skins, they already seemed sufficiently marvelous to my interlocutor, who deigned to set aside his authoritative phlegm and utter exclamations of surprise.

  The fair-haired man—James Warman—listened with equal curiosity but more discreetly.

  Meanwhile, we made rapid progress. The Sun sank to the horizon, within an hour, dusk would commence to sow its grayness. The sleds had to make a detour because of the hill, which was inaccessible to them. When we arrived at the bottom of the north-west slope, we tried to see the tent, but a certain unevenness in the terrain rendered it invisible. Even when we reached the uniform plain we could not make it out at first, for the daylight had become feeble. Awah finally discovered it, with the aid of the telescope, but we had to go a further half-kilometer before he could make out the red flag. Soon, the tent became visible to the naked eye, and the slight anxiety that had crept up on me dissipated.

  “We’ll be there in a quarter of an hour,” the Irishman affirmed.

  Suddenly, the ground became difficult. Crevasses and holes hindered our progress. It was necessary to make another detour, longer than we had anticipated, and when we arrived in the vicinity of the tent the scarlet Sun was disappearing over the horizon.

  Oudalano, who had remained impassive until then, said: “Is there a dog in the tent?”

  “Yes,” I said, with a slight pang of anxiety.

  “It’s odd that it hasn’t made its presence known,” Murtagh put in.

  It was also odd that Touanhô and Namhâ had given no sign of life. Awah, who evidently thought so, had straightened up and was looking avidly at the tent.

  Our dogs hurled themselves forward, growling.

  When we reached the tent, the Sun was hidden. A long coppery light spread over the pale solitude. I was now very anxious, and when the sleds stopped, I ran forward, followed by Awah.

  We lifted the tent-flap that served as a doorway.

  There was no one inside.

  XVI.

  Awah uttered an exclamation of rage, while I remained momentarily dumbfounded. Then we tried to figure out what might have happened. It was possible that Touanhô and Namhâ, having become anxious, had set out to look for us—but the removal of pieces of quartz, prehistoric necklaces, axes and staffs of authority quickly convinced us that marauders had arrived during our absence. The ground bore traces of footprints.

  “It could only have been Eskimos!” Murtagh remarked.

  Oudalano search passionately; by taking the quartz, the necklaces and the staffs of authority, the unknown raiders had stolen part of his wages. Aided by his dogs he searched for the trail. It did not take him long to find that it headed eastwards. In spite of the late hour, the Americans consented to a pursuit, which was facilitated by a full moon.

  “On condition that there are not too many of them!” Warman objected, however.

  “There are only two sleds,” said Oudalano, swiftly. He understood a little English.

  Within a few minutes, we were on the track of the abductors. We advanced rapidly, thanks to the two lead dogs; they were unharnessed and followed the trail without difficulty.

  “The thieves can’t have got far!” observed the half-caste. “It’s a matter of catching up with them before they rejoin their fellows.”

  Oudalano, when questioned, did not think that there was any encampment in the neighborhood, but he could not be sure; it was the season when the Arctic tribes wandered.

  “We’ll soon see!” said Murtagh.

  Warman checked his rifle, a repeater, which I knew that he could use as well as a Boer. The twilight reddened further in the far west; an enormous sulfurous moon rose in the east. The cold was intense.

  An hour went by. Our animals, although fatigued by a long run, maintained a good speed. The lead dogs showed an increasing ardor, proof that we were gaining ground. Warman noticed that, and said: “It’s quite plausible that these brutes have dog-teams as tired as ours. They’ve obviously come a long way, since you had no inkling of their approach.”

  A second hour went by. The teams were showing signs of exhaustion.

  “They’ve had a long day!” Murtagh muttered. “It’s time we got there.”

  “We’re nearly there!” said the half-caste.

  For ten minutes, Awah had been straining his savage senses; the fixity of his eyes and the flaring of his nostrils were evident. He ended up saying to me: “There they are!”

  His hand was pointing eastwards. Warman adjusted his telescope; I did likewise. A confused group of men and dogs was moving in the lunar light. Our approach occasioned an attempt at flight, which was abandoned almost immediately. Barking sounds and howls went up on the plain, uttered by the marauders’ dogs and ours. In a short time, we arrived in proximity to the group. We stopped about 200 meters away. Our weapons were ready, and victory certain; the number of our antagonists was no greater than six.

  It was Oudalano who called out to them, ordering them to surrender the women and the booty.

  There was a brief attempt at resistance; one of the abductors had a rifle—but on seeing Murtagh, Warman, the half-caste and I raising our weapons he understood that the contest was too unequal.

  Five minutes later, we had recovered possession of the women and the booty.

  Epilogue

  “The remainder of our adventure is of no interest,” Alglave went on, after a pause, “for we were not subject to any further ordeals of consequence. “I returned to the United States, and then to Europe, where I succeeded in exchanging my diamonds for a sum of 6,000,000 francs, after which I came to take up residence in Kabylie17 with my prehistoric people. For a few hundred thousand francs, I bought these forests, pasturelands and fields, where numerous humans could live by hunting and fishing. Awah set up home in a cave, with Namhâ, while Touanhô has adapted herself very well to a more comfortable life in my house. She had become my companion, while Namhâ is more Awah’s—although he shows no sentiment of ownership except in autumn.

  “My life is simple and beautiful; it’s the life of our Magdalenian ancestors, save for the luxury of a constructed dwelling, a few items of furniture and a few choice aliments, including coffee and wine. We have a great many children. Awah’s are now numerous enough to perpetuate the ancient Tourassian race…”

  While Alglave was talking, I saw a young woman coming toward us. She had an exotic complexion and large sparkling eyes.

  “This is Touanhô!” Alglave said.

  She was obviously not pretty in the sense that we understand, but she had a good deal of charm—a mysterious, distant, very youthful charm. I understood perfectly why the explorer had made her his companion.

  She pronounced a few words, in an extremely guttural accent, which did not seem to me to be unpleasant.

  “I didn’t want her to learn any other language than her own,” Alglave said. “My dream would then appear less captivating. But here’s Awah!”

  A tall man with a flexible gait appeared around the corner of the oak-plantation; I was surprised to see that he was followed by an elephant.

  Alglave was smiling. “Yes, I had that elephant brought here to make life pleasant for my prehistoric friend. Awah’s iron-hard belief is that it’s a mammoth, so his totemism is satisfied; he’
s convinced that he is communing with his ancestors, and renders the same worship to the innocent pachyderm that the ancient Tourassian rendered to the last remaining mammoths.”

  He fell silent. Touanhô, leaning on his shoulder in a familiar fashion, looked at me with her blazing eyes.

  “Now I’ll introduce you to our little miracle,” my host went on, after a pause. He whistled briefly, and a 12 year old child appeared in the doorway. “That’s Raouham, Awah’s son.”

  Alglave caressed the boy’s black hair; the latter was smiling softly. Raouham was pleasant to behold; his eyes seemed to devour the form of living beings and things.

  “He’s an artist…an artist far superior to Awah, who is nevertheless skilful at reproducing the structure of animals. I’ve encouraged his work, and I’ve helped him; I’ve introduced some discipline into it. I ended up enabling him to produce works which demonstrate that the sculptural genius of prehistoric people was equal to that of the Greeks—they didn’t have the means to develop it, that’s all! Would you like to see?”

  Alglave took me into a large studio, with whitewashed walls, where an entire menagerie of plaster castings was on display, along with carved antlers and sculpted bones. There were deer, jackals, hyenas, oxen, dogs and panthers, imbued with a gripping and perfect life.

  I looked at them in amazement—and then I remembered something. I remembered a corner of the Autumn Salon where I had seen Rodin and Bourdelle in ecstasy. Rodin had said: “He will be the great sculptor of the next generation.”

  They had been the same deer, the same jackals and the same panthers that I was now admiring in the savage studio. They bore the same signature: Ram.

  THE BOAR MEN

  The caravan went into the forest, which became more ferocious and treacherous by the hour. The tree people moved thus in the times when humans were beasts like other beasts, because they had no weapons and had no other foresight than ancient instinct. As the caravan passed by, the predatory beasts immersed themselves in thickets or huddled in their lairs.

  Occasionally, a deer ran under distant branches, a monkey showed a sly head or parrots raised their insolent voices, but there was a suggestion of a mysterious and innumerable life; it revealed itself in subtle traces, fugitive effluvia or light rustlings. Infinite mistrust, cunning ever on the alert and inexhaustible patience equilibrated the drama of beasts that devour and beasts that are devoured.

  Night fell; the caravan camped in a clearing in the Blue Forest, which was separated from the Red Forest by a river. Fires projected their coppery light, mingling in fugitive waters with the tremulous image of the Moon and the primitive palpitations of the trees. Crocodiles were glimpsed lying dormant on islets, crafty monkeys in the forks of branches—and the senile voices of frogs, croaking among the water-lilies, punctuated the enchanted murmur of the waves.

  Suzanne Dejongh was no longer surprised to be on this island, almost at the antipodes of her native land, which was ruled by her people. The death of her parents, the difficult voyage, the new stars, and also her youth, had accustomed her to adventure. She sometimes looked at her brother Lodewyk, full of insouciance, and sometimes at the giant who was in command of the caravan, and in whose house she was going to live; then she meditated on the twists of fate. She was an innocent creature, a passive soul varied along by circumstance as the river carried along blades of grass. She scarcely wondered how she would withstand her new life.

  The giant leader, Karel van den Bosch, was descended unblemished from the great Nordic dolicocephali, with bright eyes, a rounded skull and blond hair; he conducted himself with earnest good will, obstinate in his projects and energetic in their execution. His florid beard was reminiscent of the beard of the benevolent emperor Charlemagne. In times of peril, he could as easily recall the King of the Sea that Jean Revel described as “Athlete of life, gladiator of the Ocean, that magnificent adventurer, familiar of the swell, braves the elements and says of the tempest: ‘It will take me where I want to go.’”18

  His voice was as gigantic as his stature, and his Soldanella eyes had a marvelously young gaze. “My house will be your house,” he had said to Suzanne and Lodewyk.

  She believed him, blindly.

  His son Hendrik was there, who no longer had the linen-white skin of the mists of the low countries; there was Lodewyk, on whose face was inscribed the tranquil boldness of sea-rovers. The others, the vanquished, belonged to the ambiguous race of Sumatra, apart from one Mongol-Hindu and a stray Chinaman.

  In the middle of the night, two men, whose approach had been signaled by the dogs, emerged from the woods. The sentries recognized the explorers of the wilderness sent forth by van den Bosch.

  The giant watched the two men approach: one indigene and one half-breed. The former said: “Master, Bandits19 are in the Vlugt Gorge. I counted 50 of them.”

  The giant shook his head. “Will they dare to attack us?”

  “They are getting bolder every day, Master.”

  The half-breed reported: “Boar Men have penetrated into the Red Forest, two leagues from here.”

  “That’s not possible!” muttered van den Bosch. “During the great invasion they scarcely got past Wittenberg. You must have made a mistake.”

  A disdainful indignation lit up in the half-breed’s eyes. “Matzal’s eyes are equal to an eagle’s! They do not confuse the tapir and the buffalo, nor fireflies with the stars. Are not the heads of the Boar Men covered in fawn and gray hair? Do they not have pointed ears, fingers shorter than the fingers of other men and the legs of an orangutan?”

  “One can’t doubt you!” said the planter. “Were there many of them?”

  “I counted more than ten—but our forefathers have told us that when they leave the marsh, they march in bands.”

  “That’s true,” van den Bosch agreed.

  “They have the noses of wolves,” the scout added. “Whoever gets too close to them will not see the morning!”

  “Matzal is always skillful and always vigilant!”

  Astonished by these unforeseeable perils that were gathering around him, the giant remained pensive. There were only two routes: the Vlugt Gorge or the Red Forest. Thirty men could fight, of which only 20 were reliable; van den Bosch’s rifle alone could do the work of ten. Because he was feared in the forest and the mountains, although the indigenes did not hate him, they might escape attack in the Vlugt—but they would not know until they had passed through it.

  Everything about the Boar Men was mysterious; there was no way of knowing whether they would fight or disappear—and it was possible that they would attack the camp that very night.

  To ward off an assault it would have been necessary to fell trees; the carts did not form a long enough barrier; only the river, as tumultuous as a torrent, was effective. Full of anxiety, the planter turned toward Suzanne, who was asleep on a mat, and Lodewyk, a little further away. The idea that his guests might be in terrible danger while under his protection was painful to a man in whom the primitive soul and the disciplined soul were in harmony.

  As he was meditating, Suzanne opened her eyes. She saw the giant, who was looking at her, the fires that lit the vegetation strangely, and the profound Sky, across which the stars of the Southern Cross were moving in the direction of the pole.

  “Is it necessary to get up?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” said the big Dutchman. Because he did not like indirection, he added: “We’ll probably camp in the Infernal Rocks.”

  “Are we under threat, then?”

  “Not yet, niece. We might be. The Infernal Rocks are a hard camping-ground—that’s why I avoided them—but it would take 100 men to force a way in!

  Sitting up, she scanned the edge of the Red Forest on the far bank, listening to the moaning of the river, the lamentation of the batrachians and, in the distance, an obscure plaint—perhaps the plaint of an animal being eaten alive. “Is it Boar Men?” she asked.

  Van den Bosch did not know how to lie or be evasive. “Boa
r Men have been sighted in the Red Forest, and a band of half-breeds near the Vlugt Pass. The latter undoubtedly won’t attack us, and won’t be able to for several hours, but we must be wary. I shall, therefore, set up camp in the Infernal Rocks.

  The murmur of speech had woken up Lodewyk; other men were sitting up within the flaming circle.

  “Should we get up?” the young man asked.

  “That would be best. I’ll give the order.”

  Half an hour later, the man and animals were ready to leave.

  The Infernal Rocks formed a redoubtable fortress: four masses of granite separated by three narrow defiles, the largest of which overhung the river. Rapids rendered any disembarkation impracticable for 2000 meters upstream and down. The tallest of the rocks loomed up 400 meters; they all had sheer sides and the defiles permitted defenders to fire on aggressors without exposing themselves. To storm the redoubt would require an assault so murderous that only a numerous company would run the risk.

  It was a rough spot, the ground bristling with sharp stones and split by ravines. When the carts had been unhitched, they served to render the defiles even more impenetrable. The horses were sheltered in a large excavation, which formed an embryonic cavern, and the men were distributed on three sides.

  “It would need 200 men to mount an effective assault,” the giant remarked, “and it would cost them dear! Those in the Vlugt Gorge can’t amount to more than 150 men, and no one has ever seen a company of 100 Boar Men.” He shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Four more hours of darkness—let’s get some sleep.”

  With the fires lit and the sentries posted, the caravan took its rest—but neither Suzanne nor Lodewyk went to sleep.

  Toward dawn, the track-beaters reappeared. The news was bad. The Bandits, having left the Vlugt Gorge, were advancing through the Blue Forest.

  “They’ve become very bold!” the planter growled. “What are they hoping to do?”