Darwin's World: An Epic of Survival (The Darwin's World Series Book 1)

by Jack L Knapp

  Lee led the way back to the cabin. I licked my fingers clean as I went. He would just have to wait until we got home, but the honey tasted wonderful.

  The women had been busy.

  The scraped camel skin was now stretched across a frame outside the cabin. Two slender trees formed the main supports; the trees had been bent toward each other and were held in place with a crossbar.

  The skin had been tied to the crossbar, then allowed to hang down. Cord loops tied it there and to the trees on each side. A piece of heavier wood hung from the bottom of the skin, keeping tension on the skin while it dried.

  Elegant and simple, more of Lilia’s work.

  I could smell fresh bread baking and the thought of bread and honey had me salivating. I took my pack inside, removed the basket and pots, and soon we were all eating honey with our still-warm bread.

  The squeezed-out honeycomb would be melted to purify it, wax for my longbow, maybe even candles. It could also be used to waterproof baskets for storage.

  #

  Arrangements changed again that night. We finished off our meal with cooked rabbit and roasted tubers, then Lee and Lilia got up and left.

  Sandra barred the door and I washed my sticky fingers. Maybe the women wanted to reassure me, maybe they wanted to reassure each other that I would stick around.

  I didn’t get to sleep immediately.

  The two were quite active, taking turns according to some schedule that only they understood. Sex is a drive, like hunger or thirst, but in the end survival is paramount; maybe sex is part of the urge to survive.

  I made a decision sometime during the night. I knew we would need to abandon the cabin.

  It was barely suitable for three, let alone five. We also couldn’t store enough food or supplies inside for five people.

  Another consideration: remaining here without information was to wait for the axe to fall. Predators, some of them human, knew where we were. They could attack whenever they decided, giving them the element of surprise. It was a tactical advantage I didn’t want to concede.

  #

  Over breakfast I told the others of my decision.

  “I’m going to take a couple of days to work on a new spear-shaft, and I’ll try chipping the stone cores I’ve made. One of the shafts I’ve been drying will do for the spear, the others will be made into longbows. We’ve got meat for now and I can show Lee how to run my trap-lines while I’m getting ready. In a week or so I’m going on a scout. I’m not sure how long it will take, but I’ve got to know what’s out there.

  “Lilia’s husband is dead, killed during a raid. There’s also an abandoned house about half a day’s travel from here, and no indication what happened to the people. Two raiders came here with weapons I doubt they made themselves. Conclusion, we can't be safe as long as we stay here.

  “We don’t know where the raiders came from or who made those short swords. I’m wondering now if the Futurist told me the truth. That hut had been there a very long time, people had lived there for years, then they disappeared. And Lilia and her husband had lived where they were for a long time too.”

  Lilia, still not wasting of words, spoke. “Lee was born on this world. It was fifteen years now. My man, husband, was here when I came and he had been here two years. He helped me. We lived for long time before raiders killed him.”

  “That settles it, then. I have to go. Other raiders will probably find us and we can’t defend the cabin.”

  “Lee will go with you. He can help.”

  Surprise. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I still had the loner mindset I’d developed before finding Millie and Sandra.

  “What about the three of you?”

  “I have bow and arrows, I can make more. Sandra and Millie have crossbow and swords. We will be safe.”

  I still wondered, but if Lee was fifteen he was a little older than I’d thought, adult enough to take the trip I had in mind. He wasn’t inexperienced, because he’d been living in the wild with his mother. I’d also seen for myself how confident he was, how easily he moved.

  “We’ll get everything together, and as soon as that’s done, we’ll go. We will be back when we know what’s out there. But we’ll need to move somewhere safer, so I’ll be looking for a route while I’m scouting.

  “If I can find a cliff, something like what the Anasazi used, we can build a place we can defend. They built cliff dwellings and we could too. We could take up farming below the cliff, do some hunting, trapping, and fishing just as they did.

  “But we don’t advertise for more people. We should find them before they find us and if we decide we want them to join us, we can make them an offer.

  “If the Futurist lied to me, maybe to all of us, then I think we need to go somewhere they don’t know about. They may be able to follow but maybe not. I just don’t trust them, they have their aims and we have ours, and since they aren’t providing assistance, we don’t need to stay where they put us.”

  We left it at that. Lee and I had work to do, and so did the three women.

  Lee was fifteen, man grown. I decided I liked the idea of taking him with me.

  I wasn’t certain of what the women might think of him, but I didn’t want to leave a young rooster in the hen-house in case I wanted to work on developing a permanent relationship later. Yes indeed, it would be best if he went with me.

  There was safety in numbers too, and with two of us to forage for food, we could travel longer before making camp.

  Chapter 11

  We breakfasted on fresh camel meat the next morning.

  After eating, I went back to the kill site and recovered the hooves. Hair, scraps of rawhide, and chopped-up bits of hoof, boiled down, would make the glue.

  Lilia had collected camel hair for my experiment; it was useless for any anything other than making rope, and there wasn’t enough for that. We had plenty of rabbit fur, but it was better saved for padding and making into felt boots for winter.

  A clay pot, crafted specifically for the purpose, held the ingredients. Thinner than other pieces and with a separate lid, it had been slow-fired in the oven to convert the earthenware into true pottery. The lid would help keep the mess hot while it cooked down to glue.

  I heated water in the pot, added the hoof bits, hair, and rawhide, then let them boil. I stirred the mess from time to time, trying not to breathe in the smell. Water and more scraps went in as the mix boiled down to a brown, semi-liquid mass.

  Coals covered the pot sides and kept the mix hot. I added more water and raked in fresh coals when needed, remaining upwind as I did so. Even so, it was an unpleasant job.

  #

  Between tending the cooking glue, I shaped blanks for a spear and three bows.

  The staves came from a hickory tree, selected for its desirable size and knot-free trunk. I carefully split the tree into halves, then split the halves into quarters. I dried the quarters near the fire, being careful to keep the wood from drying too rapidly; warping or cracks would ruin my work.

  One of the captured swords worked well as a makeshift froe. I laid the edge on top of the trunk and tapped the exposed end with a billet of firewood, forcing the blade lengthwise down the bole.

  The blades would need sharpening occasionally; stones would do the trick if carefully selected. Coarse stones work fast, fine-grained stones are slow but better for smoothing cutting edges.

  The swords had been intended as stabbing weapons, but that wasn’t the best use I could make of them. One would make a froe for splitting wood, or after sharpening and reshaping, a drawknife. The other would make an excellent spear blade. The metal was superior to anything I could craft from stone.

  Each hickory quarter formed a right angle with the sides joined by an arc where the bark had been. The semicircle would be the bow’s back, shaving down the sharp angle formed the belly. The three best staves would be bows, the fourth would be my new metal-bladed spear. Shaving the quarter round to make the shaft wouldn’t be difficult.r />
  Chipping and slicing with my axe rough-shaped the staves. People had used axes for a long time to make boards before saws became commonplace; I could do the same. Drawknives are precise, but the added precision brings loss of speed. That's what I did, chip gently with the axe, then shave with the knife.

  Smoothing the spear-shaft allowed me to practice draw-cutting before I worked on the more-demanding task of shaping bow staves.

  I used a thick fold of rabbit skin to cover the sword’s blade, providing a safe place to grip. One hand on the knife’s hilt, one on the rabbit skin, I shaved off thin slices of wood by drawing the blade toward me. I worked from the center toward the ends.

  Tend the fire, add water, shave the spear-staff to shape. I rotated the blank periodically and continued. My imitation drawknife was crude, but it worked well and was easy to control.

  Axe and drawknife, chip, chip, slice, tend the fire. The work went slowly, but I had time. By the end of the day I had three bow staves roughed in, ready for tillering and sanding. I also had a spear-shaft that only needed a socket or steel blade to be better than the one I’d found.

  A stick with a chip of flint glued to the end would do for drilling the socket hole. It would be slow work, but in the end I would have a weapon I could throw as well as a spear for thrusting. It had the advantage of reusability, but once I had a working bow and arrows, I wouldn't need that. For now, it was the best option I had; there would be things to learn while making the bows and I needed a weapon now.

  My hide glue had boiled into an evil-smelling brown mass that wasn’t quite solid. It would require reheating before every use and the surfaces I used it on had to be clean and dry. I stirred the hot mess to make sure it was thoroughly mixed.

  It was not the same as the hide glue used downtime, but it would work better than the milky sap I’d used. Even if it wasn’t as strong as I hoped, it might kill an animal by smell alone! Best of all, I could make more by using animal scraps that otherwise would be thrown away.

  #

  The camel’s tendons, after separation, yielded sinews. Lilia twisted them into long, thin cords that I could make into a bowstring by twisting two or three of the cords opposite to the direction Lilia had used. The counter-twisting would prevent the bowstring from unwinding.

  The final string was long, but could be shortened by more twisting. In this way I could adjust the string’s length if it stretched during use. The finished string would have a spliced loop at each end and a coating of beeswax.

  Arrow shafts came from small sapling trees. As the shafts dried, they tended to warp, so I steamed and straightened them. Lee and Lilia helped. Her husband had made their bows and arrows, but they knew the basic techniques.

  I had a bow and a dozen shafts by the third day. Not yet arrows, they had no flight feathers or points and only notches for nocks; even so, I could kill a bird or rabbit with one. For that matter, any small game could be killed if I could hit it.

  Stringing the bow, I adjusted the limbs to curve equally by careful scraping and smoothing, a process called tillering. This was likely a memory implanted by the Futurist. The only part of bow-making I didn’t remember was how to make the string, and fortunately Lilia knew how that was done.

  I wrapped the middle of the stave with a long strip of wetted rawhide, double-wrapping one end for an arrow rest. This was the grip. The rawhide shrank as it dried, and as a final step, I rubbed beeswax over everything.

  The bow wasn’t as powerful as I’d hoped, but it would do. Lee advised me to begin with a lighter bow; it would be easier to use while learning and if I liked the feel of this particular bow, I could always add more draw weight by gluing sinew to the back.

  While I’d been working on weapons, Lilia had shown the others how to stitch smoked and greased skin into a quiver. It had a strap for my shoulder and a loop to hold it to my belt.

  The quiver had a sewn-in divider so that I could carry different types of arrows. Arrows for large game aren’t suitable for small animals or birds, so having different types made sense.

  Along with the quiver, the women had made a forearm guard for my arm. Bowstrings, especially when used by novices, leave bruises from the elbow to the wrist. I would appreciate the forearm guard when I began practicing.

  And practice I did. I strung the bow, working to gain speed without losing precision. String in the right hand, held just below the loop, lower arm of the bow braced on the instep of my right foot; put my left leg between the bow and the string. Then bend the bow, using the muscles of my trunk. Stringing the bow using arm muscle alone wasn’t possible.

  After stringing the bow, I practiced pulling the string to full draw. Draw, anchor the hand along my jaw, slowly let off on the string. Draw, imagine aiming, let off, relax. Releasing the string would only be done when I had a shaft in place.

  Unfamiliar muscle use left my back and arms sore for the first few days. Fortunately, this time there was none of the cramping I'd experienced before.

  During pauses, I made more arrow blanks. The task was now routine; straighten the shaft, carefully notch the end, adjust the notch's fit on the string.

  I reinforced each shaft by wrapping thin string from the bottom of the notch down the shaft, extending the wrapping for an inch. More wrapping would be used later to support the flight feathers as soon as I had them. Once the feathers were glued in place and wrapped, the missiles would need only points to be complete.

  Finally, I had twenty shafts that I considered acceptable and a dozen I’d rejected. The rejects could still be used; they wouldn’t be accurate, but I could draw, aim, and release the string to propel them until they broke. Present the bow, remove an arrow and lay it above the rawhide ‘grip’, nock it on the string, draw, aim and release. Then do it again. And again.

  I taught myself flint knapping in the afternoons.

  Percussion, striking, was how I split blanks away from the stone core. Pressure-flaking the blanks followed, no easy task; it was accomplished by pressing a tool against the blank, hard, until a chip popped free.

  Estimating the ‘grain’ of the blank, learning to vary the pressure to make the flakes larger or smaller, took longer. My points got better. By the end of the week I was flaking points and short knife blades that were functional if not aesthetic. Knapping was a craft I could improve over the course of a lifetime.

  I picked up techniques from Lee, who had learned them from his father. Perhaps his father had arrived with the knowledge implanted. I had only a vague idea that one should begin with a larger stone and crack off medium-sized chunks which could be slowly worked down to shape. Longer pieces could be knives or spear-points, shorter ones arrowheads or scrapers.

  My metal knife wouldn’t last forever, and the ability to smelt iron would be necessary before making steel. In the meantime, the ability to knap a flint knife would be very useful.

  Small flakes could also be used. A single large stone might yield several large blanks for blades plus smaller pieces for arrowheads, dart points, or drill tips.

  The chips were sharp! Where two flaked surfaces met, a razor-like cutting edge resulted.

  My routine was simple; leave the chips where they fell, continue flaking the blank, then salvage what was usable the next time I paused. Mistakes I fixed by making an intended knife into a spear-point. The final core, too small to flake smaller, would become a scraper. I picked up the remaining pieces, selected the ones that could be used, while the rest went into a small leather bag Lilia made. Very little waste remained after I finished.

  My darts were thicker and longer than those I’d salvaged from the hut, so I used larger points. This wasn’t a redesign so much as the result of my limited technique. I couldn’t drill a small enough hole in the end of the spear, nor could I yet produce finely-flaked points such as the ones I’d found. As a result, my spear, while it outwardly resembled that earlier one, was crude and heavy by contrast. On the plus side, it was stronger than the original.

  The new sp
ear was more usable for thrusting than casting with the atlatl, but I intended to use the bow for longer-range killing anyway.

  The socket would accept the salvaged darts, although they were a loose fit; I wrapped a layer of string around the end of each and glued it into place. The salvaged darts were my reserve, I would use my own darts as long as they lasted. The wrapped darts would work if necessary.

  A flint-tipped stick was my bit, a bow-drill spun it in the hole, and I used a dart as the template, enlarging and deepening the socket until half the dart was inserted. It had to bottom-out in the hole or it would split the shaft during use. For insurance, I reinforced the outside of the socket end. The wrapping material this time was rawhide, soaked, stretched, and wrapped so that the loose ends could be pulled underneath. I trimmed what remained and let the rawhide dry and shrink. A final thin coat of hide glue finished the job and I sealed it with beeswax to make it water-resistant.

  I added a sling, but the spear was not a serious burden. Still, it retained enough heft to be lethal.

  #

  I found it best to work on a project, then lay it aside while I worked on something else. This allowed the wood to dry; if it was going to curve while shrinking, I wanted it to happen before I put too much work in.

  My flaked points were soon fitted to spear-darts and the twenty arrow shafts I’d made. Notch the ends, insert an arrowhead coated with glue where it joined the shaft, then wrap the joint with string. Coat the assembly with more glue, then put it aside to dry. This took only minutes, but I allowed a half hour just to be sure.

  I had no feathers yet, but there were turkeys and there might be other large birds too; I’d heard them but hadn’t yet seen any. Still, the noise and the tracks we’d seen were promising.

  Lee hunted and ran our trap-line while I worked. He usually brought back something small, but near the end of the week he killed a deer.