Tales of Space and Time
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 rock, 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
half-way 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 stared
blankly. Then she sprang to her feet and scrambled a yard or so 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. "Ugh?" said the cave bear, and
Ugh-lomi turned again and saw his little eyes peering under the bulge of
the chalk.
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 ran towards Andoo. 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 on 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 leading the way 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. Presently she saw the bears had
gone.
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 as quietly as they could, and 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. 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 to-day,
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 semicircle 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; 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 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 that 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.