Tales of Space and Time
"Uya has called the death word," said Ugh-lomi, and she glanced back at
the screaming curve of figures, and understood.
Wau and all the women and children were coming towards them, a scattered
array of buff shock-headed figures, howling, leaping, and crying. Over
the knoll two youths hurried. Down among the ferns to the right came a
man, heading them off from the wood. Ugh-lomi left her arm, and the two
began running side by side, leaping the bracken and stepping clear and
wide. Eudena, knowing her fleetness and the fleetness of Ugh-lomi,
laughed aloud at the unequal chase. They were an exceptionally
straight-limbed couple for those days.
They soon cleared the open, and drew near the wood of chestnut-trees
again--neither afraid now because neither was alone. They slackened
their pace, already not excessive. And suddenly Eudena cried and swerved
aside, pointing, and looking up through the tree-stems. Ugh-lomi saw
the feet and legs of men running towards him. Eudena was already running
off at a tangent. And as he too turned to follow her they heard the
voice of Uya coming through the trees, and roaring out his rage at them.
Then terror came in their hearts, not the terror that numbs, but the
terror that makes one silent and swift. They were cut off now on two
sides. They were in a sort of corner of pursuit. On the right hand, and
near by them, came the men swift and heavy, with bearded Uya, antler in
hand, leading them; and on the left, scattered as one scatters corn,
yellow dashes among the fern and grass, ran Wau and the women; and even
the little children from the shallow had joined the chase. The two
parties converged upon them. Off they went, with Eudena ahead.
They knew there was no mercy for them. There was no hunting so sweet to
these ancient men as the hunting of men. Once the fierce passion of the
chase was lit, the feeble beginnings of humanity in them were thrown to
the winds. And Uya in the night had marked Ugh-lomi with the death word.
Ugh-lomi was the day's quarry, the appointed feast.
They ran straight--it was their only chance--taking whatever ground came
in the way--a spread of stinging nettles, an open glade, a clump of
grass out of which a hyaena fled snarling. Then woods again, long
stretches of shady leaf-mould and moss under the green trunks. Then a
stiff slope, tree-clad, and long vistas of trees, a glade, a succulent
green area of black mud, a wide open space again, and then a clump of
lacerating brambles, with beast tracks through it. Behind them the chase
trailed out and scattered, with Uya ever at their heels. Eudena kept the
first place, running light and with her breath easy, for Ugh-lomi
carried the Fire Stone in his hand.
It told on his pace--not at first, but after a time. His footsteps
behind her suddenly grew remote. Glancing over her shoulder as they
crossed another open space, Eudena saw that Ugh-lomi was many yards
behind her, and Uya close upon him, with antler already raised in the
air to strike him down. Wau and the others were but just emerging from
the shadow of the woods.
Seeing Ugh-lomi in peril, Eudena ran sideways, looking back, threw up
her arms and cried aloud, just as the antler flew. And young Ugh-lomi,
expecting this and understanding her cry, ducked his head, so that the
missile merely struck his scalp lightly, making but a trivial wound, and
flew over him. He turned forthwith, the quartzite Fire Stone in both
hands, and hurled it straight at Uya's body as he ran loose from the
throw. Uya shouted, but could not dodge it. It took him under the ribs,
heavy and flat, and he reeled and went down without a cry. Ugh-lomi
caught up the antler--one tine of it was tipped with his own blood--and
came running on again with a red trickle just coming out of his hair.
Uya rolled over twice, and lay a moment before he got up, and then he
did not run fast. The colour of his face was changed. Wau overtook him,
and then others, and he coughed and laboured in his breath. But he kept
on.
At last the two fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream
ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the
foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a
large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a
chisel edge, in either hand.
They sprang down the steep bank into the stream, rushed through the
water, swam the deep current in two or three strokes, and came out
wading again, dripping and refreshed, to clamber up the farther bank.
It was undermined, and with willows growing thickly therefrom, so that
it needed clambering. And while Eudena was still among the silvery
branches and Ugh-lomi still in the water--for the antler had encumbered
him--Wau came up against the sky on the opposite bank, and the
smiting-stone, thrown cunningly, took the side of Eudena's knee. She
struggled to the top and fell.
They heard the pursuers shout to one another, and Ugh-lomi climbing to
her and moving jerkily to mar Wau's aim, felt the second smiting-stone
graze his ear, and heard the water splash below him.
Then it was Ugh-lomi, the stripling, proved himself to have come to
man's estate. For running on, he found Eudena fell behind, limping, and
at that he turned, and crying savagely and with a face terrible with
sudden wrath and trickling blood, ran swiftly past her back to the bank,
whirling the antler round his head. And Eudena kept on, running stoutly
still, though she must needs limp at every step, and the pain was
already sharp.
So that Wau, rising over the edge and clutching the straight willow
branches, saw Ugh-lomi towering over him, gigantic against the blue;
saw his whole body swing round, and the grip of his hands upon the
antler. The edge of the antler came sweeping through the air, and he saw
no more. The water under the osiers whirled and eddied and went crimson
six feet down the stream. Uya following stopped knee-high across the
stream, and the man who was swimming turned about.
The other men who trailed after--they were none of them very mighty men
(for Uya was more cunning than strong, brooking no sturdy
rivals)--slackened momentarily at the sight of Ugh-lomi standing there
above the willows, bloody and terrible, between them and the halting
girl, with the huge antler waving in his hand. It seemed as though he
had gone into the water a youth, and come out of it a man full grown.
He knew what there was behind him. A broad stretch of grass, and then a
thicket, and in that Eudena could hide. That was clear in his mind,
though his thinking powers were too feeble to see what should happen
thereafter. Uya stood knee-deep, undecided and unarmed. His heavy mouth
hung open, showing his canine teeth, and he panted heavily. His side was
flushed and bruised under the hair. The other man beside him carried a
sharpened stick. The rest of the hunters came up one by one to the top
of the bank, hairy, long-armed men clutching flints and sticks. Two ran
off along the bank down stream, and then clambered to the water, where
Wau had come to the surface struggling weakly. Before they could reach
him he went under again. Two others threatened Ugh-lomi from the bank.
He answered back, shouts, vague insults, gestures. Then Uya, who had
been hesitating, roared with rage, and whirling his fists plunged into
the water. His followers splashed after him.
Ugh-lomi glanced over his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished
into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya
preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside
him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the
tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and
rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the rush coming, and hurling the antler at Uya,
turned about and fled.
When he halted to look back from the shadow of the thicket, he found
only three of his pursuers had followed him across the river, and they
were going back again. Uya, with a bleeding mouth, was on the farther
side of the stream again, but lower down, and holding his hand to his
side. The others were in the river dragging something to shore. For a
time at least the chase was intermitted.
Ugh-lomi stood watching for a space, and snarled at the sight of Uya.
Then he turned and plunged into the thicket.
In a minute, Eudena came hastening to join him, and they went on hand in
hand. He dimly perceived the pain she suffered from the cut and bruised
knee, and chose the easier ways. But they went on all that day, mile
after mile, through wood and thicket, until at last they came to the
chalkland, open grass with rare woods of beech, and the birch growing
near water, and they saw the Wealden mountains nearer, and groups of
horses grazing together. They went circumspectly, keeping always near
thicket and cover, for this was a strange region--even its ways were
strange. Steadily the ground rose, until the chestnut forests spread
wide and blue below them, and the Thames marshes shone silvery, high and
far. They saw no men, for in those days men were still only just come
into this part of the world, and were moving but slowly along the
river-ways. Towards evening they came on the river again, but now it ran
in a gorge, between high cliffs of white chalk that sometimes overhung
it. Down the cliffs was a scrub of birches and there were many birds
there. And high up the cliff was a little shelf by a tree, whereon they
clambered to pass the night.
They had had scarcely any food; it was not the time of year for berries,
and they had no time to go aside to snare or waylay. They tramped in a
hungry weary silence, gnawing at twigs and leaves. But over the surface
of the cliffs were a multitude of snails, and in a bush were the freshly
laid eggs of a little bird, and then Ugh-lomi threw at and killed a
squirrel in a beech-tree, so that at last they fed well. Ugh-lomi
watched during the night, his chin on his knees; and he heard young
foxes crying hard by, and the noise of mammoths down the gorge, and the
hyaenas yelling and laughing far away. It was chilly, but they dared not
light a fire. Whenever he dozed, his spirit went abroad, and straightway
met with the spirit of Uya, and they fought. And always Ugh-lomi was
paralysed so that he could not smite nor run, and then he would awake
suddenly. Eudena, too, dreamt evil things of Uya, so that they both
awoke with the fear of him in their hearts, and by the light of the dawn
they saw a woolly rhinoceros go blundering down the valley.
During the day they caressed one another and were glad of the sunshine,
and Eudena's leg was so stiff she sat on the ledge all day. Ugh-lomi
found great flints sticking out of the cliff face, greater than any he
had seen, and he dragged some to the ledge and began chipping, so as to
be armed against Uya when he came again. And at one he laughed heartily,
and Eudena laughed, and they threw it about in derision. It had a hole
in it. They stuck their fingers through it, it was very funny indeed.
Then they peeped at one another through it. Afterwards, Ugh-lomi got
himself a stick, and thrusting by chance at this foolish flint, the
stick went in and stuck there. He had rammed it in too tightly to
withdraw it. That was still stranger--scarcely funny, terrible almost,
and for a time Ugh-lomi did not greatly care to touch the thing. It was
as if the flint had bit and held with its teeth. But then he got
familiar with the odd combination. He swung it about, and perceived that
the stick with the heavy stone on the end struck a better blow than
anything he knew. He went to and fro swinging it, and striking with it;
but later he tired of it and threw it aside. In the afternoon he went
up over the brow of the white cliff, and lay watching by a rabbit-warren