In the Morning of Time Part 20

It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time would come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till the rabble went by, then fall to work again.

Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossing their wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled the whole s.p.a.ce so that the men had to plunge out into deep water to escape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish which infested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in sh.o.r.e, and paid for their irresolution by being gored savagely.

It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days, and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. By sunrise Bawr and Grom estimated that there were rafts enough to carry the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided, however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less buoyant than they hoped.

But for this most wise provision Fate refused to grant the time.

A naked slip of a girl, her one scant garment of leopard skin caught upon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeing down the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air.

Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old women carrying babies or bundles of dried meat.

"They must not come yet. They'll be in the way!" cried Bawr angrily, waving them back. But they paid no attention--which showed that there was something they feared more even than the iron-fisted Chief.

"There are none of the young women or the old men, who can fight, among them," said Grom. "A-ya must have sent them, because the time has come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a message."

Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one hand, the girl fell at Bawr's feet.

"A-ya says, 'Come quick!'" she gasped. "They are too many. They run over the fires and trample us."

Grom sprang forward with a cry, then stopped and looked at his Chief.

"Go, you," said Bawr, "and bring them to us. I will stay here and look to the rafts."

Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with him, Grom raced up the steep, torn with anxiety for the fate of A-ya and the children.

It was now about three-quarters tide, and the flood rising strongly.

By way of precaution some of the rafts had been kept afloat, let down with ropes of vine to follow the last ebb, and guided carefully back on the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it.

For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges in place that they might not be swept away by the incoming tide.

When Grom and his eager handful, pa.s.sing a stream of trembling fugitives on the way, reached the level ground before the Caves, the sight that greeted them was tremendous and appalling. It looked as if some great country to the southward had gathered together all its beasts and then vomited them forth in one vast torrent, confused and irresistible, to the north. It was a wholesale migration, on such a scale as the modern world has never even dreamed of, but suggested in a feeble way by the torrential drift of the bison across the North American plains half a century ago, or the sudden, inexplicable marches of the lemming myriads out of the Scandinavian barrens that give them birth.

The shrill cries of the women, fighting like she-wolves in defense of the children and the home-caves, the hoa.r.s.e shouts of the old men, weak but indomitable, were mingled with an indescribable medley of noises--gruntings, bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings and brayings--from the dreadful mob of beasts which besieged the open s.p.a.ce behind the fires. Some of the beasts were maddened with their terror, some were in a fighting rage, some only wanted to escape the throng behind them. But all seemed bent upon pa.s.sing the fires and getting into the Caves, as if they thought there to find refuge from the unknown fear.

At the extreme right of the line the two farthest fires were already overwhelmed, trodden out by frantic hooves, and three or four old men, with a couple of desperate young women, behind a barrier of slain elk and stags were fighting like furies to hold back the victorious onrush. Two of the old men were down, trodden out between the fires by blind hooves, and a third, jammed limply against the rocky wall beside the furthest cave, was being worried by a bear--hideously but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heeded what it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying in the animal's preoccupation.

At the center of the line, immediately before the main Cave-mouth--whose yawning entrance seemed to be the objective of the swarming beasts--A-ya was heading the battle, with the lame slave, Ook-ootsk, crouched fighting at her side like a colossal frog gone mad. Here the fires were almost extinguished--but the line of slain beasts formed a tolerable barricade, upon the top of which the women leapt, stabbing with their spears and screeching shrill taunts, while the old men leaned upon the gory pile to save their strength with frugal precision. Here and there among the carcases was the body of a woman or an old man, impaled on the horn of a bull or ripped open by the rending antler of an elk. As Grom and his men came shouting across the level a huge woolly rhinoceros plunged over the barrier, his b.l.o.o.d.y horn ploughing the carcases, trod down a couple of the defenders without appearing to see them, dashed through the nearest fire, and charged blindly into the Cave-mouth with his matted coat all ablaze. The children and old women who had not already fled down to the beach shrieked in horror. The frantic monster heeded them not at all, but went thundering on into the bowels of the cavern.

"Go back, all you women!" yelled Grom above the tumult, as he and his men raced to the barrier. "Get down to the beach with the children.

We'll hold the rush back till you get down. Run! Run!"

Sobbing with the fury of the struggle, the women obeyed, darting back and pouncing upon their own little ones--all but A-ya, who remained doggedly at Grom's side.

"Go," ordered Grom fiercely. "The children need you. Get them all down."

Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still l.u.s.ting for the fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than lift the spear.

Under the shock of these fresh fighters, with lionlike heads, masterful eyes, and smas.h.i.+ng, irresistible weapons, the front ranks of the animals recoiled, trampling those behind them; and for a few minutes the pressure was relieved. Grom turned to the old men.

"You go now," he ordered.

But they refused.

"We stay here," cried one, breathless, but with fire in his ancient eyes. "None too much room on the rafts." And they fell again grimly to the fight.

Grom laughed proudly. With such mettle even in withered veins, the Tribe, he thought, was destined to great things. He turned to the lame slave, whom he had ever favored for his faithfulness.

"You go! You are lame and cannot run."

The crouching giant looked up at him with a widemouthed grin.

"I am no woman," said he. "I stay and hold them back when you all go.

I kill, and kill. And then I go very far."

He waved one great gnarled hand, dripping with blood, toward the sun and the high s.p.a.ces of air.

Before Grom could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateau there came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice in that pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble of beasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs and spears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forest of waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads.

"The Two-Tails are upon us!" cried Grom, in a voice of awe. And his followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full view.

Grom looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children, shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the b.u.t.t of her spear, vanis.h.i.+ng down the steep toward the beach.

"It is time for us to go too," shouted Grom, clutching the lame slave by the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free.

"I'll hold them back till you get away," he growled, and drove his great spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier at that instant. Grom saw it would be useless now to try and save him.

With the rest of his band he ran for paths leading down to the beach.

It was well, he thought, that the valiant slave should die for the Tribe.

The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood.

But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flood divided upon the ma.s.sive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon a black rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surging pell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker and lighter were savagely torn and trampled underfoot.

Then the Mammoths came thundering and trumpeting across the plateau, going through and over the lesser beasts like a tidal wave. Grom, having seen the last of his warriors pa.s.s down the beach paths, turned for one more glimpse of the monstrous and incredible scene. He had a swift vision of the squatting form of Ook-ootsk thrusting upward with reddened spear at the breast of a black monster which hung over him like a mountain. Then the mountain rolled forward upon him, blotting him out, and Grom slipped hurriedly over the brink and down the path.

At the rafts it was bedlam. A score or more of the women and children, as they were crossing to the water's edge, had been wiped out of existence by the rush of maddened bison along the beach, and the keenings of their relatives rose above the shouts and cries of embarkation. Fully half the rafts were afloat, with their loads, by now, and men grunted heavily in the effort to pry the others free, while women and children crowded into the water around them, waiting to struggle aboard as soon as the men would let them.

As Grom and his panting band, covered with blood from head to foot, reached the waterside and flung their dripping weapons upon the rafts, a fringe of animals came over the edge of the steep, crowded aside from the caves. Some, being sure-footed, like the lions and bears, made their way with care down the paths. Others, pushed over and struggling frantically, came rolling downward, bouncing from rock and ledge, and landing on the beach a ma.s.s of broken bones. Then behind them, along the brink, black and gigantic against the blue sky-line, appeared a group of the Mammoths. They waved their long trunks, and trumpeted piercingly, but hesitated to try the descent.

"Hurry! hurry!" thundered Bawr, straining at the stranded timbers till the great veins stood out on neck and forehead as if they would burst.

Under the added efforts of Grom and his band the last of the rafts floated. The children were thrown aboard, the women clambered after them, and the men, wading and guiding, lest the rafts should ground again, began to follow cautiously.

At this moment, along the beach came a new rush of animals--chiefly buffalo, headed by three huge white rhinoceros. These all seemed quite blind with panic. They dashed on straight ahead, paying no heed whatever either to the people on the rafts or to the other beasts coming down the steep. On their heels thundered a second herd of Mammoths, their trunks held high in the air, the red caverns of their mouths wide open.

As these colossal, rolling bulks came abreast of the rafts, a child shrieked at the terrifying sight. The leader of the herd turned his malignant little eye upon the rafts, seeming to perceive them for the first time. Without pausing in his huge stride he reached down his trunk, whipped it about the waist of Bawr, and swung him aloft, crus.h.i.+ng in his ribs with the terrific pressure, and carried him along high in the air above the trumpeting ranks.

A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya, whose bow was quick as thought, let fly an arrow before Grom could stay her hand. The shaft struck deep in the monster's trunk. Das.h.i.+ng down its lifeless victim among the feet of the herd, the monster tried to turn back to take vengeance for the strange wound. But unable to stem the avalanche behind, it was borne up the beach, screaming with rage.

Grom, who was now sole chief and master of the tribe, signed every raft to push out into deep water, beyond reach of further attack. With all responsibility now upon his shoulders, he had little time to grieve for the death of Bawr, who, after all, had died greatly, as a Chief should. The rafts were now traveling inland at a fair rate, on the last half-hour of the flood; and, as the estuary narrowed rapidly above their starting-place, he hoped to be able, during the slack of tide, to work the clumsy rafts well over towards the northern sh.o.r.e before getting caught in the full strength of the ebb. As he studied out this problem, and urged the warriors to their utmost effort on the heavy and awkward pole-paddles, he kept puzzling all the time over the great mystery. What was it that swept even the mighty mammoths before its face? How should he name the Fear?