Tales of Space and Time
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 to-morrow.
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 on 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, 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.
III--THE FIRST HORSEMAN
In the days before Ugh-lomi there was little trouble between the horses
and men. They lived apart--the men in the river swamps and thickets, the
horses on the wide grassy uplands between the chestnuts and the pines.
Sometimes a pony would come straying into the clogging marshes to make a
flint-hacked meal, and sometimes the tribe would find one, the kill of a
lion, and drive off the jackals, and feast heartily while the sun was
high. These horses of the old time were clumsy at the fetlock and
dun-coloured, with a rough tail and big head. They came every
spring-time north-westward into the country, after the swallows and
before the hippopotami, as the grass on the wide downland stretches
grew long. They came only in small bodies thus far, each herd, a
stallion and two or three mares and a foal or so, having its own stretch
of country, and they went again when the chestnut-trees were yellow and
the wolves came down the Wealden mountains.
It was their custom to graze right out in the open, going into cover
only in the heat of the day. They avoided the long stretches of thorn
and beechwood, preferring an isolated group of trees void of ambuscade,
so that it was hard to come upon them. They were never fighters; their
heels and teeth were for one another, but in the clear country, once
they were started, no living thing came near them, though perhaps the
elephant might have done so had he felt the need. And in those days man
seemed a harmless thing enough. No whisper of prophetic intelligence
told the species of the terrible slavery that was to come, of the whip
and spur and bearing-rein, the clumsy load and the slippery street, the
insufficient food, and the knacker's yard, that was to replace the wide
grass-land and the freedom of the earth.
Down in the Wey marshes Ugh-lomi and Eudena had never seen the horses
closely, but now they saw them every day as the two of them raided out
from their lair on the ledge in the gorge, raiding together in search of
food. They had returned to the ledge after the killing of Andoo; for of
the she-bear they were not afraid. The she-bear had become afraid of
them, and when she winded them she went aside. The two went together
everywhere; for since they had left the tribe Eudena was not so much
Ugh-lomi's woman as his mate; she learnt to hunt even--as much, that is,
as any woman could. She was indeed a marvellous woman. He would lie for
hours watching a beast, or planning catches in that shock head of his,
and she would stay beside him, with her bright eyes upon him, offering
no irritating suggestions--as still as any man. A wonderful woman!
At the top of the cliff was an open grassy lawn and then beechwoods, and
going through the beechwoods one came to the edge of the rolling grassy
expanse, and in sight of the horses. Here, on the edge of the wood and
bracken, were the rabbit-burrows, and here among the fronds Eudena and
Ugh-lomi would lie with their throwing-stones ready, until the little
people came out to nibble and play in the sunset. And while Eudena would
sit, a silent figure of watchfulness, regarding the burrows, Ugh-lomi's
eyes were ever away across the greensward at those wonderful grazing
strangers.
In a dim way he appreciated their grace and their supple nimbleness. As
the sun declined in the evening-time, and the heat of the day passed,
they would become active, would start chasing one another, neighing,
dodging, shaking their manes, coming round in great curves, sometimes so
close that the pounding of the turf sounded like hurried thunder. It
looked so fine that Ugh-lomi wanted to join in badly. And sometimes one
would roll over on the turf, kicking four hoofs heavenward, which seemed
formidable and was certainly much less alluring.
Dim imaginings ran through Ugh-lomi's mind as he watched--by virtue of
which two rabbits lived the longer. And sleeping, his brains were
clearer and bolder--for that was the way in those days. He came near the
horses, he dreamt, and fought, smiting-stone against hoof, but then the
horses changed to men, or, at least, to men with horses' heads, and he
awoke in a cold sweat of terror.
Yet the next day in the morning, as the horses were grazing, one of the
mares whinnied, and they saw Ugh-lomi coming up the wind. They all
stopped their eating and watched him. Ugh-lomi was not coming towards
them, but strolling obliquely across the open, looking at anything in
the world but horses. He had stuck three fern-fronds into the mat of his
hair, giving him a remarkable appearance, and he walked very slowly.
"What's up now?" said the Master Horse, who was capable, but
inexperienced.
"It looks more like the first half of an animal than anything else in
the world," he said. "Fore-legs and no hind."
"It's only one of those pink monkey things," said the Eldest Mare.
"They're a sort of river monkey. They're quite common on the plains."
Ugh-lomi continued his oblique advance. The Eldest Mare was struck with
the want of motive in his proceedings.
"Fool!" said the Eldest Mare, in a quick conclusive way she had. She
resumed her grazing. The Master Horse and the Second Mare followed suit.
"Look! he's nearer," said the Foal with a stripe.
One of the younger foals made uneasy movements. Ugh-lomi squatted down,
and sat regarding the horses fixedly. In a little while he was
satisfied that they meant neither flight nor hostilities. He began to
consider his next procedure. He did not feel anxious to kill, but he had
his axe with him, and the spirit of sport was upon him. How would one
kill one of these creatures?--these great beautiful creatures!
Eudena, watching him with a fearful admiration from the cover of the
bracken, saw him presently go on all fours, and so proceed again. But
the horses preferred him a biped to a quadruped, and the Master Horse
threw up his head and gave the word to move. Ugh-lomi thought they were
off for good, but after a minute's gallop they came round in a wide
curve, and stood winding him. Then, as a rise in the ground hid him,
they tailed out, the Master Horse leading, and approached him spirally.
He was as ignorant of the possibilities of a horse as they were of his.