CHAPTER XIV
THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP
Driven from their home beside the Bitter Water by the greatmigration of the beasts, the Tribe of the Cave Folk, diminished innumbers and stricken in spirit, had escaped on rafts across thebroad river-estuary which washed the northern border of theirdomain. There they had found a breathing-space, but it had proved aperilous one. The whole region north of the estuary was littlebetter than a steaming swamp, infested with poisonous snakes andinsects, and with strange monsters, survivals from a still earlierage, whose ferocity drove the Cave Folk back to their ancestral lifein the tree-tops. Under these conditions it was all but impossibleto keep alight the sacred fires--as precious to the tribe as lifeitself--which they had brought with them in their flight upon therafts. And Grom, the Chief, saw his harassed people in danger ofsinking back into the degradation from which his discovery andconquest of fire had so wonderfully uplifted them.
From the top of a solitary jobo tree, which towered above the ranksurrounding jungle, Grom could make out what looked like a low bank ofpurple cloud along the western and north-western horizon. As it wasalways there, whenever he climbed to look at it, he concluded that itwas not a cloud-bank, but a line of hills. Where there were hillsthere might be caves. In any case, the People must have some betterplace to inhabit than this region of swamps and monsters. The way tothat blue line of promise lay across what would surely be the path ofthe migrating beasts, if they should take it into their heads to swimacross the river. The possibility was one from which even his resolutespirit shrank. But he felt that he must face any risk in the hope ofwinning his way to those cloudy hills. Within an hour of his reachingthis decision the Tribe of the Cave Folk was once more on the march.
The first few days of the march were like a nightmare. Grom led theway along the shore of the river, both because that seemed theshortest way to the hills, and because, in case of emergency, the openwater afforded a door of escape by raft. Had it been possible to makethe journey by raft matters would have been simplified; but Grom hadalready proved by experience that his heavy unwieldy rafts could notbe forced upwards against the mighty current of the river. At the lastpoint to which the flood-tides would carry them the rafts had beenabandoned--herded together into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shoreby twisted vine-ropes against some possible future need.
At the head of the dismal march went Grom, with his mate A-ya, and hertwo children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were asquick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were asuntiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind these came themain body of the warriors, on a wide line so as to guard againstsurprise on the flank. Then followed the women and children, bunchedas closely as possible behind the center of the line; and a knot ofpicked warriors, under young Mo, the brother of A-ya, guarded therear. There were no old men and women, all these having gone down inthe last great battle at the Caves, selling their lives as dearly aspossible to cover the retreat. Such of the young women as had no smallchildren to carry bore the heavy burdens of the fire-baskets, orbundles of smoke-dried meat, leaving the warriors free to use theirbows and spears.
In traversing the swamp the march was sometimes at ground-level,sometimes high in the tree-tops. In the tree-tops it was safer, butthe progress was slow and laborious. At ground-level the swarms ofstinging insects were always with them, till Grom invented the use ofsmudges. When every alternate member of the tribe carried a torch ofdry grass and half-green bark, the march was enveloped in a cloud ofacrid smoke, which the insects found more or less disconcerting.
Of the grave perils of this weary march to the hills a single instancemay suffice. The nights, as a rule, were passed by the whole tribe inthe tree-tops, both for the greater security, and because there wasseldom enough dry ground to sleep upon. But one evening, towardsunset, they came upon a sort of little island in the reeking jungle.Its surface was four or five feet above the level of the swamp. Thetrees which dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with widefans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between theseclean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with arich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Suchan opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, andGrom ordered an immediate halt.
A fat, pig-like water beast, of the nature of the dugong, had beenspeared that day in a bayou beside the line of march, and with greatcontentment the tribe settled themselves down to such a comfortablefeasting as they had not known for many days. While the fat dugong wasbeing hacked to pieces and divided under the astute direction of A-ya,Grom made haste to establish the camp-fires in a chain completelyencircling the encampment, as a protection against night-prowlers fromthe surrounding jungle. As darkness fell the flames lit up the soaringtrunks, but the roof of the over-arching foliage was so high that thesmoky illumination was lost in it.
While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the feasting, Grom andLoob, and half a dozen of the other warriors, kept vigilant watchwhilst they ate, distrusting the black depths of jungle and the deep,reed-fringed pools beyond the circle of light. Suddenly, all along oneside of the island there arose a sound of heavy splashing, and out ofthe darkness came a row of small, malignant eyes, all fixed upon thefeasters. Then into the circle of light swam the masks of giantalligators and strange, tusked caymans. Quite unawed by the fires theycame ashore with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed.
While the clamoring women snatched the children away to the other sideof the encampment, Grom and the other warriors hurled themselves uponthe hideous invaders as they came waddling with amazing nimbleness inbetween the fires. But these were no assailants to be met with bow andspear. At Grom's sharp orders each warrior snatched a blazing brandfrom the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearestassailant. In their stupid ferocity the monsters invariably bit uponthe brand before they realized its nature. Then, bellowing with pain,they wheeled about and scrambled back toward the water, lashing outwith their gigantic tails, so that three of the warriors were knockedover and half a dozen of the fires were scattered.
The feasters had hardly more than settled down after this startlingvisitation, when from the darkness inland came a hoarse, hooting cry,followed by a succession of crashing thuds, as if a pair of mammothswere playing leap-frog in the jungle. All the men sprang again totheir weapons, and stood waiting, in a sudden hush, straining theireyes into the perilous dark. Some of the women herded the childreninto the very center of the island, while others fed the fires withfeverish haste. The hooting call, and the heavy, leaping thuds, camenearer and nearer at a terrifying speed; and suddenly, amid thefar-off, vaguely-lighted tangle of the tree-trunks appeared a giantform, seven or eight times the height of Grom himself. Leaping uponits mighty hind-legs, and holding its mailed fore-paws before itschest, it came bounding like a colossal kangaroo through the jungle,smashing down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancingitself at each spring with its massive, reptilian tail. Its vast head,something like a cross between that of a monstrous horse and that ofan alligator, was upborne upon a long, snaky neck, and its eyes, hugeand round and lidless, were like two discs of shining and enamelledmetal where they caught the flash of the camp-fires.
This appalling shape had apparently no dread whatever of the flames.When it was within some thirty or forty yards of the line of fire,Grom yelled an order and a swarm of arrows darted from the bows tomeet it. But they fell futile from its armored hide, which gleamedlike dull bronze in the fire-light. Grom shouted again, and this timethe warriors hurled their spears--and they, too, fell harmless fromthe monster's armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster tothe edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feetobliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head itseized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, highinto the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the sameinstant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly anarrow which pierced full half its length int
o the center of one ofthose horrifying enamelled eyes; while Grom, who alone, of all thewarriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving a speardeep into the unarmored inner side of the monster's thigh. But boththese wounds, dreadful though they were, failed to make the colossusdrop its prey. With mighty, braying noises through its nostrils itbrushed the spear shaft from its hold like a straw, flopped about, andwith the arrow still sticking in its eye, went leaping off again intothe darkness to devour its victim.
For several hours, with the fires trebled in number and stirred tofiercer heat, the tribe waited for the monster to return and claimanother victim. But it did not return. At length Grom concluded thathis spear-head in its groin and A-ya's arrow in its eye had given itsomething else to think of. Once more he set the guards, and graduallythe tribe, inured to horrors, settled itself down to sleep. It sleptout the rest of the night without disturbance--but the followingnight, and the next two nights thereafter, were spent in thetree-tops. Then, on the fourth day, the harassed travelers emergedfrom the swamp into a pleasant region of grassy, mimosa-dotted,gently-rolling plain. The hills, now showing green and richly wooded,were not more than a day's march ahead.
And just here, as the Fates which had of late been pursuing them wouldhave it, the worn travelers found themselves once more in the line ofthe hordes of migrating beasts.
Grom's heart sank. To reach the refuge of the hills across the marchof those maddened hordes was obviously impossible. Were his people tobe forced back into the swamp, to resume the cramped and ape-like lifeamong the branches? Having ordered the building of a half-circle offire around a spur of the jungle, he climbed a tree to reconnoiter.
The river ran but a mile or two distant upon his left. Immediatelybefore him the fleeing beasts were not numerous, consisting merely ofsmall herds and terrified stragglers. Further out, however, toward thehills, the plain was blackened by the fugitives, who were thrust on bythe myriads swimming the river behind them. Assuredly, it was not tobe thought of that he should attempt to lead his people across thepath of that desperate flight. But a point that Grom noted with reliefwas that only certain kinds of beasts had ventured the crossing of theriver. He saw no bears, lions or saber-tooths among those streaminghordes. He saw deer of every kind--good swimmers all of them--withimmense, rolling herds of buffalo and aurochs, and scattered companiesof the terrible siva moose, and some bands of the giant elk, theirantlers topping the mimosa thickets. Here and there, lumbering alongsullenly as if reluctant to retreat before any peril, journeyed a hugerhinoceros, stopping from time to time for a few hurried mouthfuls ofthe rich plains grass. But as yet there was not a mammoth insight--whereat Grom wondered, as he thought they would have been amongthe first to dare the crossing of the river. Had they kept on up theother shore, hesitating to trust their colossal bulks to the current,or had they turned at bay, at last, in uncontrollable indignation, andgone down before the countless hordes of their ignoble assailants?
The absence of the mammoths, which he dreaded more than all the otherbeasts because of the fierce intelligence that gleamed in their eyes,decided Grom. He would lead his people along to the right, skirtingthe swamp and marching parallel to the flight of the beasts,calculating thus to have the jungle always for a refuge, though notfor a dwelling, until they should come to a region of hills and cavestoo difficult for the migrating beasts to traverse.
For several days this plan answered to a marvel. The fugitives nearestto the swamp-edge were mostly deer of various species, which swervedaway nervously from the line of march, but at the same time affordedsuch good hunting that the travelers revelled in abundance and rapidlyrecovered their spirits. Once, when a great wave of maddened buffalosurged over upon them, the whole tribe fled back into the jungle,clambering into the trees, and stabbing down, with angry shouts, atthe nearest of their assailants. But the assault was a blind one. Thebuffalo, a black mass that seemed to foam with tossing horns androlling eyes, soon passed on to their unknown destination. And thetribe, dropping down from the branches, quite cheerfully resumed itsmarch.
On the fifth day of the march they saw the jungle on their right cometo an end. It was succeeded by a vast expanse of shallow mere dottedwith half-drowned, rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles. Aftersome hesitation, Grom decided to go on, though he was uneasy aboutforsaking the refuge of the trees. Some leagues ahead, however, and alittle toward the left, he could see a low, thick-wooded hill, whichhe thought might serve the tribe for a shelter. With many misgivings,he led the way directly towards it, swerving out across the path of avast but straggling horde of sambur deer which seemed almostexhausted.
To Grom's surprise these stately and beautiful animals showed neitherhostility nor fear toward human beings. According to all his previousexperience, the attitude of every beast toward man was one of fear orfierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcomethe companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for someprotection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacityperceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against thecontact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none ofthese beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not withoutapprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army oftall, high-antlered beasts which stared at them with mild eyes ofinquiry and appeal.
Marching at their best speed, the Tribe kept easily in the van of thedistressed sambur, and more than once in the next few hours, Grom hadreason to congratulate himself upon his venture into this strangefellowship. First, for instance, he saw a herd of black buffaloovertake the sambur host and dash heavily into its rear ranks. Thefrightened sambur closed up, instead of scattering, and the impetus ofthe buffalo presently spent itself upon the unresisting mass. Theyedged their way through to the left leaving swathes of gored andtrodden sambur in their wake, and went thundering off on another lineof retreat, caroming into a herd of aurochs, which fought them off andpunished them murderously. It was obvious to Grom, as he studied thedust-clouds of this last encounter, that the buffalo herd, here in theopen, would have rolled over the tribe irresistibly, and trampled itflat.
Journeying thus at top speed toward that hill of promise before them,the travelers came at length to a wide space of absolutely levelground which presented a most curious appearance. It was as level as awindless lake, and almost without vegetation. The naked surface was ofa sort of indeterminate dust-color, but dotted here and there withtiny patches of vegetation so stunted that it was little more thanmoss. Grom, with his inquiring mind, would have liked to stop toinvestigate this curious surface, unlike anything he had ever seenbefore. But the hordes of the sambur were behind, pressing the tribeonwards, and straight ahead was the wooded hill, dense with foliage,luring with its promise of safe and convenient shelter. He led theway, therefore, without hesitation, out across the baked and barrenwaste, sniffing curiously, as he went, at a strange smell, pungent butnot unpleasant, which steamed up from the dry, hot surface all abouthim.
The first peculiarity that he noticed was a remarkable springiness inthe surface upon which he trod. Then he was struck by the fact thatthe dust-brown surface was seamed and criss-crossed in many places bysmall cracks--like those in sun-scorched mud, except that the crackswere almost black in color. These things caused him no misgivings. Butpresently, to his consternation, he detected a slight but amazingundulation, an immensely long, immensely slow wave rolling across thedry surface before him. He could hardly believe his eyes--forassuredly nothing could look more like good solid land than thatstretch of barren plain. He stopped short, rubbing his eyes in wonder.A-ya grabbed him by the arm.
"What is it?" she whispered, staring at the unstable surface in a kindof horror.
Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among the tribe behindhim, and they all rushed forward, almost sweeping Grom and A-ya fromtheir feet.
The surface of the barren, all along the edge of the grass land,had given way beneath the weight of the sambur herds, and the frontranks were being engulfed with
frantic snortings and awful groans,in what looked like a dense, blackish, glistening ooze. The ranksbehind were being forced forward to this awful doom, in spite oftheir panic-stricken struggles to hold back; and it was thepressure of this battling mass that was creating the horrible,bulging undulation on the plain.
Grom's quick intelligence took in the situation on the instant.The naked brown surface beneath the feet of the tribe was nothingmore than a thin crust overlying a lake of some dense, dark,strange-smelling liquid.
His first impulse, naturally, was to turn back--and A-ya, with wideeyes of terror, was already dragging fiercely at his elbow. But toturn back was utterly impossible. That way lay the long strip ofengulfing pitch, swallowing up insatiably the ranks of the groaningand kicking sambur. There was but one possible way of escape leftopen, and that was straight ahead.
But would the crust continue to uphold them? Already, under the weightof the whole tribe pressing together, it was beginning to saghideously. With furious words and blows he tried to make the tribescatter to right and left, so as to spread the pressure as widely aspossible. Perceiving his purpose, A-ya and Loob, and several of theleading warriors, seconded his efforts with frantic vehemence; till ina few minutes the whole tribe, amazed and quaking with awe, wasextended like a fan over a front of three or four hundred yards.Seeing that the perilous sagging of the crust was at once relieved,Grom then ordered the tribe to advance cautiously, keeping the samewide-open formation, while he himself brought up the rear.
But in a few minutes every one, from Grom downwards, came to a haltirresistibly, in order to watch the monstrous drama unfolding behindthem.
For nearly half a mile to either side of their immediate rear, betweenthe still unbroken surface of the dust-brown expanse and the edge ofthe trampled grassy plain, stretched a sort of canal, perhaps tenpaces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thrashingantlers, and tossing heads that whistled despairingly through widenostrils, and heaving, agonizing bulks that went down slowly to theirdoom. After several ranks of the herd had been engulfed those nextbehind turned about in terror and fought madly to force their way backfrom the fatal brink. But the inexorable masses behind them rolledthem on backwards, and slowly they too were thrust down into thepitch, till the canal was filled to the brink, and writhed horriblyalong its whole length. By this time, however, the alarm had spreadthrough the rest of the sambur ranks. By a desperate effort they gotthemselves turned, and went surging off to the left in a directionparallel to the edge of the plain of death.
Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Grom drew a deep breathand relaxed the tension of his watching. He was just about to turn andorder the tribe forward again, when he was arrested by the sight of avast cloud of dust rolling up swiftly upon the left flank of theretreating sambur.
A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching tribe, as they saw aforest of waving trunks appear in the front of the dust-cloud. Asecond or two more and a long array of mammoths emerged along the pathof the cloud. Among the mammoths, here and there, raced a black or awhite rhinoceros, or a towering, spotted giraffe. Behind this frontrank, vague and portentous through the veiling cloud, came furthercolossal hordes, filling the distance as far as eye could see.
This advance looked as if nothing on earth, not even the lake ofpitch, could ever stop it, and certain of the tribe started to flee.But Grom, after a moment of misgiving and hasty calculation, checkedthe flight sternly. He must, at all risks see the incredible thingthat was about to happen. And he felt certain that, at this distanceout upon the crust of the gulf, the tribe would be secure.
The stupendous wave of dust and waving trunks and galloping blackbulks thundered up at a terrific pace, and fell with irresistibleimpact upon the flank of the marching sambur. These unhappy beastswent down like grass before it. They were rolled flat, trodden outlike a fire in thin grass, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpetingmonsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path,arrived at the edge of the canal.
Here and there an old bull, leading, took alarm, trumpeted wildly, andstrove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with thepacked bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very seriousbarrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it. Moreover, the panic ofa long flight was upon them, and the rear ranks were thrusting themon. The trumpeting leaders were overborne in a twinkling. Theponderous feet of the front rank sank into the mass of bodies andhorns and pitch, stumbled forward, belly deep, and strove to clamberout upon the solid-looking further edge. With trunks eagerlyoutstretched as if seeking to grip something, the huge, bat-earedheads heaved themselves up. The next moment the treacherous crustcrumbled away beneath them like an eggshell, and with screams thattore the heavens they sank into the gulfs of pitch. The next two orthree ranks went over on them, trod them deeper down, heaved andsurged and battled for some moments along the edge of the crumblingcrust. With mad trumpetings, they were themselves swallowed up in thatsluggish, implacable flood. Here and there a black trunk, twisting inagony, lingered long, awful moments above the pitch. Here and therethe pallid head of a giraffe, tongue protruding and eyes bursting fromtheir sockets, stood up rigid on its long neck and screamedhideously.
As the thick tide closed slowly, slowly over its prey, the hosts inthe rear, having taken alarm at the agonized trumpetings, succeeded bya gigantic effort in checking their career. Those nearest the edge ofdoom reared up and fell back upon those next behind, to be ripped withfrantic tusks in the mad confusion. But presently the whole colossalarray brought itself to a halt, got itself turned to the left, andwent thundering off on the trail of the sambur remnants.
Grom stood staring for a long time, with wide, brooding eyes, at thestill-bubbling and heaving breadths of dark pitch. He was stunned bythe sudden engulfing and utter disappearance of such a monstroushorde. He seemed to see the countless gigantic shapes heaped one uponthe other, laid to their long sleep there in the deeps of the pitch.At last he shook himself, passed his shaggy hand over his eyes, andshouted to the tribe that all was well. Then he set himself once moreat their head, and led them, slowly and cautiously, onward across thedreadful level, till they gained the shelter of that sweetly woodedand rivulet-watered hill.
THE END
In the Morning of Time Page 14
