Before Adam ........................................................................................................................................................1

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that

thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wakeaday life. They

tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me

In my days only did I attain any measure of happiness. My nights marked the reign of fearand such fear! I

make bold to state that no man of all the men who walk the earth with me ever suffer fear of like kind and

degree. For my fear is the fear of long ago, the fear that was rampant in the Younger World, and in the youth

of the Younger World. In short, the fear that reigned supreme in that period known as the MidPleistocene.

What do I mean? I see explanation is necessary before I can tell you of the substance of my dreams.

Otherwise, little could you know of the meaning of the things I know so well. As I write this, all the beings

and happenings of that other world rise up before me in vast phantasmagoria, and I know that to you they

What to you the friendship of LopEar, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of RedEye?

A screaming incoherence and no more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire People

and the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of the horde. For you know not the peace of the cool caves in

the cliffs, the circus of the drinkingplaces at the end of the day. You have never felt the bite of the morning

It would be better, I dare say, for you to make your approach, as I made mine, through my childhood. As a

boy I was very like other boysin my waking hours. It was in my sleep that I was different. From my

earliest recollection my sleep was a period of terror. Rarely were my dreams tinctured with happiness. As a

rule, they were stuffed with fearand with a fear so strange and alien that it had no ponderable quality. No

fear that I experienced in my waking life resembled the fear that possessed me in my sleep. It was of a quality

For instance, I was a city boy, a city child, rather, to whom the country was an unexplored domain. Yet I

never dreamed of cities; nor did a house ever occur in any of my dreams. Nor, for that matter, did any of my

human kind ever break through the wall of my sleep. I, who had seen trees only in parks and illustrated

books, wandered in my sleep through interminable forests. And further, these dream trees were not a mere

blur on my vision. They were sharp and distinct. I was on terms of practised intimacy with them. I saw every

Well do I remember the first time in my waking life that I saw an oak tree. As I looked at the leaves and

branches and gnarls, it came to me with distressing vividness that I had seen that same kind of tree many and

countless times n my sleep. So I was not surprised, still later on in my life, to recognize instantly, the first

time I saw them, trees such as the spruce, the yew, the birch, and the laurel. I had seen them all before, and

This, as you have already discerned, violates the first law of dreaming, namely, that in one's dreams one sees

only what he has seen in his waking life, or combinations of the things he has seen in his waking life. But all

my dreams violated this law. In my dreams I never saw ANYTHING of which I had knowledge in my

waking life. My dream life and my waking life were lives apart, with not one thing in common save myself. I

Early in my childhood I learned that nuts came from the grocer, berries from the fruit man; but before ever

that knowledge was mine, in my dreams I picked nuts from trees, or gathered them and ate them from the

ground underneath trees, and in the same way I ate berries from vines and bushes. This was beyond any

I shall never forget the first time I saw blueberries served on the table. I had never seen blueberries before,

and yet, at the sight of them, there leaped up in my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered

through swampy land eating my fill of them. My mother set before me a dish of the berries. I filled my spoon,

but before I raised it to my mouth I knew just how they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It was the same

Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence of snakes, I was tormented by them in my sleep. They

lurked for me in the forest glades; leaped up, striking, under my feet; squirmed off through the dry grass or

across naked patches of rock; or pursued me into the treetops, encircling the trunks with their great shining

bodies, driving me higher and higher or farther and farther out on swaying and crackling branches, the ground

a dizzy distance beneath me. Snakes!with their forked tongues, their beady eyes and glittering scales, their

hissing and their rattlingdid I not already know them far too well on that day of my first circus when I saw

They were old friends of mine, enemies rather, that peopled my nights with fear.

Ah, those endless forests, and their horrorhaunted gloom! For what eternities have I wandered through

them, a timid, hunted creature, starting at the least sound, frightened of my own shadow, keyedup, ever alert

and vigilant, ready on the instant to dash away in mad flight for my life. For I was the prey of all manner of

fierce life that dwelt in the forest, and it was in ecstasies of fear that I fled before the hunting monsters.

When I was five years old I went to my first circus. I came home from it sickbut not from peanuts and pink

lemonade. Let me tell you. As we entered the animal tent, a hoarse roaring shook the air. I tore my hand loose

from my father's and dashed wildly back through the entrance. I collided with people, fell down; and all the

time I was screaming with terror. My father caught me and soothed me. He pointed to the crowd of people,

Nevertheless, it was in fear and trembling, and with much encouragement on his part, that I at last approached

the lion's cage. Ah, I knew him on the instant. The beast! The terrible one! And on my inner vision flashed

the memories of my dreams,the midday sun shining on tall grass, the wild bull grazing quietly, the sudden

parting of the grass before the swift rush of the tawny one, his leap to the bull's back, the crashing and the

bellowing, and the crunch crunch of bones; or again, the cool quiet of the waterhole, the wild horse up to his

knees and drinking softly, and then the tawny onealways the tawny one! the leap, the screaming and the

splashing of the horse, and the crunch crunch of bones; and yet again, the sombre twilight and the sad silence

of the end of day, and then the great fullthroated roar, sudden, like a trump of doom, and swift upon it the

insane shrieking and chattering among the trees, and I, too, am trembling with fear and am one of the many

At the sight of him, helpless, within the bars of his cage, I became enraged. I gritted my teeth at him, danced

up and down, screaming an incoherent mockery and making antic faces. He responded, rushing against the

bars and roaring back at me his impotent wrath. Ah, he knew me, too, and the sounds I made were the sounds

My parents were frightened. "The child is ill," said my mother. "He is hysterical," said my father. I never told

them, and they never knew. Already had I developed reticence concerning this quality of mine, this

I saw the snakecharmer, and no more of the circus did I see that night. I was taken home, nervous and

overwrought, sick with the invasion of my real life by that other life of my dreams.

I have mentioned my reticence. Only once did I confide the strangeness of it all to another. He was a

boymy chum; and we were eight years old. From my dreams I reconstructed for him pictures of that

vanished world in which I do believe I once lived. I told him of the terrors of that early time, of LopEar and

the pranks we played, of the gibbering councils, and of the Fire People and their squatting places.

He laughed at me, and jeered, and told me tales of ghosts and of the dead that walk at night. But mostly did

he laugh at my feeble fancy. I told him more, and he laughed the harder. I swore in all earnestness that these

things were so, and he began to look upon me queerly. Also, he gave amazing garblings of my tales to our

It was a bitter experience, but I learned my lesson. I was different from my kind. I was abnormal with

something they could not understand, and the telling of which would cause only misunderstanding. When the

stories of ghosts and goblins went around, I kept quiet. I smiled grimly to myself. I thought of my nights of

fear, and knew that mine were the real thingsreal as life itself, not attenuated vapors and surmised

For me no terrors resided in the thought of bugaboos and wicked ogres. The fall through leafy branches and

the dizzy heights; the snakes that struck at me as I dodged and leaped away in chattering flight; the wild dogs

that hunted me across the open spaces to the timberthese were terrors concrete and actual, happenings and

not imaginings, things of the living flesh and of sweat and blood. Ogres and bugaboos and I had been happy

bedfellows, compared with these terrors that made their bed with me throughout my childhood, and that still

I have said that in my dreams I never saw a human being. Of this fact I became aware very early, and felt

poignantly the lack of my own kind. As a very little child, even, I had a feeling, in the midst of the horror of

my dreaming, that if I could find but one man, only one human, I should be saved from my dreaming, that I

should be surrounded no more by haunting terrors. This thought obsessed me every night of my life for

I must iterate that I had this thought in the midst of my dreaming, and I take it as an evidence of the merging

of my two personalities, as evidence of a point of contact between the two disassociated parts of me. My

dream personality lived in the long ago, before ever man, as we know him, came to be; and my other and

wakeaday personality projected itself, to the extent of the knowledge of man's existence, into the substance

Perhaps the psychologists of the book will find fault with my way of using the phrase, "disassociation of

personality." I know their use of it, yet am compelled to use it in my own way in default of a better phrase. I

take shelter behind the inadequacy of the English language. And now to the explanation of my use, or misuse,

It was not till I was a young man, at college, that I got any clew to the significance of my dreams, and to the

cause of them. Up to that time they had been meaningless and without apparent causation. But at college I

discovered evolution and psychology, and learned the explanation of various strange mental states and

experiences. For instance, there was the fallingthroughspace dreamthe commonest dream experience,

This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees.

With them, being treedwellers, the liability of falling was an everpresent menace. Many lost their lives that

way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the

Now a terrible fall, averted in such fashion, was productive of shock. Such shock was productive of

molecular changes in the cerebral cells. These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of

progeny, became, in short, racial memories. Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing off to sleep, fall through

space and awake to sickening consciousness just before we strike, we are merely remembering what

happened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the

There is nothing strange in this, any more than there is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely a

habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing, that in this falling

dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be

destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. True, the shock of their fall

was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they could have progeny. You and

I are descended from those that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in our dreams, never strike

And now we come to disassociation of personality. We never have this sense of falling when we are wide

awake. Our wakeaday personality has no experience of it. Thenand here the argument is irresistibleit

must be another and distinct personality that falls when we are asleep, and that has had experience of such

fallingthat has, in short, a memory of pastday race experiences, just as our wakeaday personality has a

It was at this stage in my reasoning that I began to see the light. And quickly the light burst upon me with

dazzling brightness, illuminating and explaining all that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturally

impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it was not my wakeaday personality that took charge of

me; it was another and distinct personality, possessing a new and totally different fund of experiences, and, to

the point of my dreaming, possessing memories of those totally different experiences.

What was this personality? When had it itself lived a wakeaday life on this planet in order to collect this

fund of strange experiences? These were questions that my dreams themselves answered. He lived in the long

ago, when the world was young, in that period that we call the MidPleistocene. He fell from the trees but

did not strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at the roaring of the lions. He was pursued by beasts of prey,

struck at by deadly snakes. He chattered with his kind in council, and he received rough usage at the hands of

But, I hear you objecting, why is it that these racial memories are not ours as well, seeing that we have a

And I may answer with another question. Why is a twoheaded calf? And my own answer to this is that it is

a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this otherpersonality and these complete racial memories

The commonest race memory we have is the fallingthroughspace dream. This otherpersonality is very

vague. About the only memory it has is that of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct

otherpersonalities. Many of us have the flying dream, the pursuingmonster dream, color dreams,

suffocation dreams, and the reptile and vermin dreams. In short, while this otherpersonality is vestigial in all

of us, in some of us it is almost obliterated, while in others of us it is more pronounced. Some of us have

It is all a question of varying degree of possession of the otherpersonality. In myself, the degree of

possession is enormous. My otherpersonality is almost equal in power with my own personality. And in this

I do believe that it is the possession of this otherpersonalitybut not so strong a one as minethat has in

some few others given rise to belief in personal reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible to such people,

a most convincing hypothesis. When they have visions of scenes they have never seen in the flesh, memories

of acts and events dating back in time, the simplest explanation is that they have lived before.

But they make the mistake of ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their otherpersonality. They

think it is their own personality, that they have only one personality; and from such a premise they can

But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of myself roaming through the forests of the

Younger World; and yet it is not myself that I see but one that is only remotely a part of me, as my father and

my grandfather are parts of me less remote. This otherself of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor of my

progenitors in the early line of my race, himself the progeny of a line that long before his time developed

I must again, at the risk of boring, repeat that I am, in this one thing, to be considered a freak. Not alone do I

possess racial memory to an enormous extent, but I possess the memories of one particular and farremoved

progenitor. And yet, while this is most unusual, there is nothing overremarkable about it.

Follow my reasoning. An instinct is a racial memory. Very good. Then you and I and all of us receive these

memories from our fathers and mothers, as they received them from their fathers and mothers. Therefore

there must be a medium whereby these memories are transmitted from generation to generation. This medium

is what Weismann terms the "germplasm." It carries the memories of the whole evolution of the race. These

memories are dim and confused, and many of them are lost. But some strains of germplasm carry an

excessive freightage of memoriesare, to be scientific, more atavistic than other strains; and such a strain is

mine. I am a freak of heredity, an atavistic nightmarecall me what you will; but here I am, real and alive,

And now, before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone

to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the

subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a

zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more for athletics, andthere is no reason I should not

Further, I had no knowledge of evolution until I was at college, whereas in my childhood and youth I had

already lived in my dreams all the details of that other, longago life. I will say, however, that these details

were mixed and incoherent until I came to know the science of evolution. Evolution was the key. It gave the

explanation, gave sanity to the pranks of this atavistic brain of mine that, modern and normal, harked back to

For in this past I know of, man, as we today know him, did not exist. It was in the period of his becoming

The commonest dream of my early childhood was something like this: It seemed that I was very small and

that I lay curled up in a sort of nest of twigs and boughs. Sometimes I was lying on my back. In this position

it seemed that I spent many hours, watching the play of sunlight on the foliage and the stirring of the leaves

by the wind. Often the nest itself moved back and forth when the wind was strong.

But always, while so lying in the nest, I was mastered as of tremendous space beneath me. I never saw it, I

never peered over the edge of the nest to see; but I KNEW and feared that space that lurked just beneath me

This dream, in which I was quiescent and which was more like a condition than an experience of action, I

dreamed very often in my early childhood. But suddenly, there would rush into the very midst of it strange

forms and ferocious happenings, the thunder and crashing of storm, or unfamiliar landscapes such as in my

wakeaday life I had never seen. The result was confusion and nightmare. I could comprehend nothing of it.

You see, I did not dream consecutively. One moment I was a wee babe of the Younger World lying in my

tree nest; the next moment I was a grown man of the Younger World locked in combat with the hideous

RedEye; and the next moment I was creeping carefully down to the waterhole in the heat of the day.

Events, years apart in their occurrence in the Younger World, occurred with me within the space of several

It was all a jumble, but this jumble I shall not inflict upon you. It was not until I was a young man and had

dreamed many thousand times, that everything straightened out and became clear and plain. Then it was that I

got the clew of time, and was able to piece together events and actions in their proper order. Thus was I able

to reconstruct the vanished Younger World as it was at the time I lived in itor at the time my otherself

lived in it. The distinction does not matter; for I, too, the modern man, have gone back and lived that early

For your convenience, since this is to be no sociological screed, I shall frame together the different events

into a comprehensive story. For there is a certain thread of continuity and happening that runs through all the

dreams. There is my friendship with LopEar, for instance. Also, there is the enmity of RedEye, and the

love of the Swift One. Taking it all in all, a fairly coherent and interesting story I am sure you will agree.

I do not remember much of my mother. Possibly the earliest recollection I have of herand certainly the

sharpestis the following: It seemed I was lying on the ground. I was somewhat older than during the nest

days, but still helpless. I rolled about in the dry leaves, playing with them and making crooning, rasping

noises in my throat. The sun shone warmly and I was happy, and comfortable. I was in a little open space.

Around me, on all sides, were bushes and fernlike growths, and overhead and all about were the trunks and

Suddenly I heard a sound. I sat upright and listened. I made no movement. The little noises died down in my

throat, and I sat as one petrified. The sound drew closer. It was like the grunt of a pig. Then I began to hear

the sounds caused by the moving of a body through the brush. Next I saw the ferns agitated by the passage of

the body. Then the ferns parted, and I saw gleaming eyes, a long snout, and white tusks.

It was a wild boar. He peered at me curiously. He grunted once or twice and shifted his weight from one

foreleg to the other, at the same time moving his head from side to side and swaying the ferns. Still I sat as

It seemed that this movelessness and silence on my part was what was expected of me. I was not to cry out in

the face of fear. It was a dictate of instinct. And so I sat there and waited for I knew not what. The boar thrust

the ferns aside and stepped into the open. The curiosity went out of his eyes, and they gleamed cruelly. He

tossed his head at me threateningly and advanced a step. This he did again, and yet again.

Then I screamed...or shriekedI cannot describe it, but it was a shrill and terrible cry. And it seems that it,

too, at this stage of the proceedings, was the thing expected of me. From not far away came an answering cry.

My sounds seemed momentarily to disconcert the boar, and while he halted and shifted his weight with

She was like a large orangutan, my mother, or like a chimpanzee, and yet, in sharp and definite ways, quite

different. She was heavier of build than they, and had less hair. Her arms were not so long, and her legs were

stouter. She wore no clothesonly her natural hair. And I can tell you she was a fury when she was excited.

And like a fury she dashed upon the scene. She was gritting her teeth, making frightful grimaces, snarling,

uttering sharp and continuous cries that sounded like "khah! khah!" So sudden and formidable was her

appearance that the boar involuntarily bunched himself together on the defensive and bristled as she swerved

toward him. Then she swerved toward me. She had quite taken the breath out of him. I knew just what to do

in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching her about the waist and holding on hand

and footyes, by my feet; I could hold on by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel in my tense grip

the pull of the hair as her skin and her muscles moved beneath with her efforts.

As I say, I leaped to meet her, and on the instant she leaped straight up into the air, catching an overhanging

branch with her hands. The next instant, with clashing tusks, the boar drove past underneath. He had

recovered from his surprise and sprung forward, emitting a squeal that was almost a trumpeting. At any rate it

was a call, for it was followed by the rushing of bodies through the ferns and brush from all directions.

From every side wild hogs dashed into the open spacea score of them. But my mother swung over the top

of a thick limb, a dozen feet from the ground, and, still holding on to her, we perched there in safety. She was

very excited. She chattered and screamed, and scolded down at the bristling, toothgnashing circle that had

gathered beneath. I, too, trembling, peered down at the angry beasts and did my best to imitate my mother's

From the distance came similar cries, only pitched deeper, into a sort of roaring bass. These grew

momentarily louder, and soon I saw him approaching, my fatherat least, by all the evidence of the times, I

He was not an extremely prepossessing father, as fathers go. He seemed half man, and half ape, and yet not

ape, and not yet man. I fail to describe him. There is nothing like him today on the earth, under the earth,

nor in the earth. He was a large man in his day, and he must have weighed all of a hundred and thirty pounds.

His face was broad and flat, and the eyebrows overhung the eyes. The eyes themselves were small,

deepset, and close together. He had practically no nose at all. It was squat and broad, apparently without

any bridge, while the nostrils were like two holes in the face, opening outward instead of down.

The forehead slanted back from the eyes, and the hair began right at the eyes and ran up over the head. The

head itself was preposterously small and was supported on an equally preposterous, thick, short neck.

There was an elemental economy about his bodyas was there about all our bodies. The chest was deep, it is

true, cavernously deep; but there were no fullswelling muscles, no widespreading shoulders, no

cleanlimbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father's,

strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe and rend and destroy.

His hips were thin; and the legs, lean and hairy, were crooked and stringymuscled. In fact, my father's legs

were more like arms. They were twisted and gnarly, and with scarcely the semblance of the full meaty calf

such as graces your leg and mine. I remember he could not walk on the flat of his foot. This was because it

was a prehensile foot, more like a hand than a foot. The great toe, instead of being in line with the other toes,

opposed them, like a thumb, and its opposition to the other toes was what enabled him to get a grip with his

But his appearance was no more unusual than the manner of his coming, there to my mother and me as we

perched above the angry wild pigs. He came through the trees, leaping from limb to limb and from tree to

tree; and he came swiftly. I can see him now, in my wakeaday life, as I write this, swinging along through

the trees, a fourhanded, hairy creature, howling with rage, pausing now and again to beat his chest with his

clenched fist, leaping tenandfifteenfoot gaps, catching a branch with one hand and swinging on across

another gap to catch with his other hand and go on, never hesitating, never at a loss as to how to proceed on

And as I watched him I felt in my own being, in my very muscles themselves, the surge and thrill of desire to

go leaping from bough to bough; and I felt also the guarantee of the latent power in that being and in those

muscles of mine. And why not? Little boys watch their fathers swing axes and fell trees, and feel in

themselves that some day they, too, will swing axes and fell trees. And so with me. The life that was in me

was constituted to do what my father did, and it whispered to me secretly and ambitiously of aerial paths and

At last my father joined us. He was extremely angry. I remember the outthrust of his protruding underlip as

he glared down at the wild pigs. He snarled something like a dog, and I remember that his eyeteeth were

His conduct served only the more to infuriate the pigs. He broke off twigs and small branches and flung them

down upon our enemies. He even hung by one hand, tantalizingly just beyond reach, and mocked them as

they gnashed their tusks with impotent rage. Not content with this, he broke off a stout branch, and, holding

on with one hand and foot, jabbed the infuriated beasts in the sides and whacked them across their noses.

But one tires of all good things, and in the end, my father, chuckling maliciously the while, led the way

across the trees. Now it was that my ambitions ebbed away, and I became timid, holding tightly to my mother

as she climbed and swung through space. I remember when the branch broke with her weight. She had made

a wide leap, and with the snap of the wood I was overwhelmed with the sickening consciousness of falling

through space, the pair of us. The forest and the sunshine on the rustling leaves vanished from my eyes. I had

a fading glimpse of my father abruptly arresting his progress to look, and then all was blackness.

The next moment I was awake, in my sheeted bed, sweating, trembling, nauseated. The window was up, and

a cool air was blowing through the room. The nightlamp was burning calmly. And because of this I take it

that the wild pigs did not get us, that we never fetched bottom; else I should not be here now, a thousand

And now put yourself in my place for a moment. Walk with me a bit in my tender childhood, bed with me a

night and imagine yourself dreaming such incomprehensible horrors. Remember I was an inexperienced

child. I had never seen a wild boar in my life. For that matter I had never seen a domesticated pig. The nearest

approach to one that I had seen was breakfast bacon sizzling in its fat. And yet here, real as life, wild boars

dashed through my dreams, and I, with fantastic parents, swung through the lofty treespaces.

Do you wonder that I was frightened and oppressed by my nightmareridden nights? I was accursed. And,

worst of all, I was afraid to tell. I do not know why, except that I had a feeling of guilt, though I knew no

better of what I was guilty. So it was, through long years, that I suffered in silence, until I came to man's

There is one puzzling thing about these prehistoric memories of mine. It is the vagueness of the time element.

I lo not always know the order of events;or can I tell, between some events, whether one, two, or four or

five years have elapsed. I can only roughly tell the passage of time by judging the changes in the appearance

Also, I can apply the logic of events to the various happenings. For instance, there is no doubt whatever that

my mother and I were treed by the wild pigs and fled and fell in the days before I made the acquaintance of

LopEar, who became what I may call my boyhood chum. And it is just as conclusive that between these two

I have no memory of my father than the one I have given. Never, in the years that followed, did he reappear.

And from my knowledge of the times, the only explanation possible lies in that he perished shortly after the

adventure with the wild pigs. That it must have been an untimely end, there is no discussion. He was in full

vigor, and only sudden and violent death could have taken him off. But I know not the manner of his

goingwhether he was drowned in the river, or was swallowed by a snake, or went into the stomach of old

For know that I remember only the things I saw myself, with my own eyes, in those prehistoric days. If my

mother knew my father's end, she never told me. For that matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary adequate to

convey such information. Perhaps, all told, the Folk in that day had a vocabulary of thirty or forty sounds.

I call them SOUNDS, rather than WORDS, because sounds they were primarily. They had no fixed values, to

be altered by adjectives and adverbs. These latter were tools of speech not yet invented. Instead of qualifying

nouns or verbs by the use of adjectives and adverbs, we qualified sounds by intonation, by changes in

quantity and pitch, by retarding and by accelerating. The length of time employed in the utterance of a

We had no conjugation. One judged the tense by the context. We talked only concrete things because we

thought only concrete things. Also, we depended largely on pantomime. The simplest abstraction was

practically beyond our thinking; and when one did happen to think one, he was hard put to communicate it to

his fellows. There were no sounds for it. He was pressing beyond the limits of his vocabulary. If he invented

sounds for it, his fellows did not understand the sounds. Then it was that he fell back on pantomime,

illustrating the thought wherever possible and at the same time repeating the new sound over and over again.

Thus language grew. By the few sounds we possessed we were enabled to think a short distance beyond those

sounds; then came the need for new sounds wherewith to express the new thought. Sometimes, however, we

thought too long a distance in advance of our sounds, managed to achieve abstractions (dim ones I grant),

which we failed utterly to make known to other folk. After all, language did not grow fast in that day.

Oh, believe me, we were amazingly simple. But we did know a lot that is not known today. We could twitch

our ears, prick them up and flatten them down at will. And we could scratch between our shoulders with ease.

We could throw stones with our feet. I have done it many a time. And for that matter, I could keep my knees

straight, bend forward from the hips, and touch, not the tips of my fingers, but the points of my elbows, to the

ground. And as for birdnestingwell, I only wish the twentiethcentury boy could see us. But we made no

I rememberbut I outrun my story. First let me tell of LopEar and our friendship. Very early in my life, I

separated from my mother. Possibly this was because, after the death of my father, she took to herself a

second husband. I have few recollections of him, and they are not of the best. He was a light fellow. There

was no solidity to him. He was too voluble. His infernal chattering worries me even now as I think of it. His

mind was too inconsequential to permit him to possess purpose. Monkeys in their cages always remind me of

He hated me from the first. And I quickly learned to be afraid of him and his malicious pranks. Whenever he

came in sight I crept close to my mother and clung to her. But I was growing older all the time, and it was

inevitable that I should from time to time stray from her, and stray farther and farther. And these were the

opportunities that the Chatterer waited for. (I may as well explain that we bore no names in those days; were

not known by any name. For the sake of convenience I have myself given names to the various Folk I was

more closely in contact with, and the "Chatterer" is the most fitting description I can find for that precious

stepfather of mine. As for me, I have named myself "BigTooth." My eyeteeth were pronouncedly large.)

But to return to the Chatterer. He persistently terrorized me. He was always pinching me and cuffing me, and

on occasion he was not above biting me. Often my mother interfered, and the way she made his fur fly was a

joy to see. But the result of all this was a beautiful and unending family quarrel, in which I was the bone of

No, my homelife was not happy. I smile to myself as I write the phrase. Homelife! Home! I had no home

in the modern sense of the term. My home was an association, not a habitation. I lived in my mother's care,

not in a house. And my mother lived anywhere, so long as when night came she was above the ground.

My mother was oldfashioned. She still clung to her trees. It is true, the more progressive members of our

horde lived in the caves above the river. But my mother was suspicious and unprogressive. The trees were

good enough for her. Of course, we had one particular tree in which we usually roosted, though we often

roosted in other trees when nightfall caught us. In a convenient fork was a sort of rude platform of twigs and

branches and creeping things. It was more like a huge birdnest than anything else, though it was a thousand

times cruder in the weaving than any birdnest. But it had one feature that I have never seen attached to any

Oh, not a roof such as modern man makes! Nor a roof such as is made by the lowest aborigines of today. It

was infinitely more clumsy than the clumsiest handiwork of manof man as we know him. It was put

together in a casual, helterskelter sort of way. Above the fork of the tree whereon we rested was a pile of

dead branches and brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridgepoles. These

were merely stout sticks an inch or so in diameter. On them rested the brush and branches. These seemed to

have been tossed on almost aimlessly. There was no attempt at thatching. And I must confess that the roof

But the Chatterer. He made homelife a burden for both my mother and meand by homelife I mean, not

the leaky nest in the tree, but the grouplife of the three of us. He was most malicious in his persecution of

me. That was the one purpose to which he held steadfastly for longer than five minutes. Also, as time went

by, my mother was less eager in her defence of me. I think, what of the continuous rows raised by the

Chatterer, that I must have become a nuisance to her. At any rate, the situation went from bad to worse so

rapidly that I should soon, of my own volition, have left home. But the satisfaction of performing so

independent an act was denied me. Before I was ready to go, I was thrown out. And I mean this literally.

The opportunity came to the Chatterer one day when I was alone in the nest. My mother and the Chatterer

had gone away together toward the blueberry swamp. He must have planned the whole thing, for I heard him

returning alone through the forest, roaring with selfinduced rage as he came. Like all the men of our horde,

when they were angry or were trying to make themselves angry, he stopped now and again to hammer on his

I realized the helplessness of my situation, and crouched trembling in the nest. The Chatterer came directly to

the treeI remember it was an oak treeand began to climb up. And he never ceased for a moment from

his infernal row. As I have said, our language was extremely meagre, and he must have strained it by the

variety of ways in which he informed me of his undying hatred of me and of his intention there and then to

As he climbed to the fork, I fled out the great horizontal limb. He followed me, and out I went, farther and

farther. At last I was out amongst the small twigs and leaves. The Chatterer was ever a coward, and greater

always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution. He was afraid to follow me out amongst the leaves

and twigs. For that matter, his greater weight would have crashed him through the foliage before he could

But it was not necessary for him to reach me, and well he knew it, the scoundrel! With a malevolent

expression on his face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence, he began teetering. Teetering!and

with me out on the very edge of the bough, clutching at the twigs that broke continually with my weight.

Wildly and morewildly he teetered, grinning at me his gloating hatred. Then came the end. All four holds

broke at the same time, and I fell, backdownward, looking up at him, my hands and feet still clutching the

broken twigs. Luckily, there were no wild pigs under me, and my fall was broken by the tough and springy

Usually, my falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shock being sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in

an instant and hurl me wide awake into my little bed, where, perchance, I lie sweating and trembling and hear

the cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall. But this dream of my leaving home I have had many times, and

never yet have I been awakened by it. Always do I crash, shrieking, down through the brush and fetch up

Scratched and bruised and whimpering, I lay where I had fallen. Peering up through the bushes, I could see

the Chatterer. He had set up a demoniacal chant of joy and was keeping time to it with his teetering. I quickly

hushed my whimpering. I was no longer in the safety of the trees, and I knew the danger I ran of bringing

I remember, as my sobs died down, that I became interested in watching the strange lighteffects produced

by partially opening and closing my tearwet eyelids. Then I began to investigate, and found that I was not so

very badly damaged by my fall. I had lost some hair and hide, here and there; the sharp and jagged end of a

broken branch had thrust fully an inch into my forearm; and my right hip, which had borne the brunt of my

contact with the ground, was aching intolerably. But these, after all, were only petty hurts. No bones were

broken, and in those days the flesh of man had finer healing qualities than it has today. Yet it was a severe

Next, as I lay in the bushes, there came upon me a feeling of desolation, a consciousness that I was homeless.

I made up my mind never to return to my mother and the Chatterer. I would go far away through the terrible

forest, and find some tree for myself in which to roost. As for food, I knew where to find it. For the last year

at least I had not been beholden to my mother for food. All she had furnished me was protection and

I crawled softly out through the bushes. Once I looked back and saw the Chatterer still chanting and teetering.

It was not a pleasant sight. I knew pretty well how to be cautious, and I was exceedingly careful on this my

I gave no thought as to where I was going. I had but one purpose, and that was to go away beyond the reach

of the Chatterer. I climbed into the trees and wandered on amongst them for hours, passing from tree to tree

and never touching the ground. But I did not go in any particular direction, nor did I travel steadily. It was my

nature, as it was the nature of all my folk, to be inconsequential. Besides, I was a mere child, and I stopped a

The events that befell me on my leaving home are very vague in my mind. My dreams do not cover them.

Much has my otherself forgotten, and particularly at this very period. Nor have I been able to frame up the

various dreams so as to bridge the gap between my leaving the hometree and my arrival at the caves.

I remember that several times I came to open spaces. These I crossed in great trepidation, descending to the

ground and running at the top of my speed. I remember that there were days of rain and days of sunshine, so

that I must have wandered alone for quite a time. I especially dream of my misery in the rain, and of my

sufferings from hunger and how I appeased it. One very strong impression is of hunting little lizards on the

rocky top of an open knoll. They ran under the rocks, and most of them escaped; but occasionally I turned

over a stone and caught one. I was frightened away from this knoll by snakes. They did not pursue me. They

were merely basking on flat rocks in the sun. But such was my inherited fear of them that I fled as fast as if

Then I gnawed bitter bark from young trees. I remember vaguely the eating of many green nuts, with soft

shells and milky kernels. And I remember most distinctly suffering from a stomachache. It may have been

caused by the green nuts, and maybe by the lizards. I do not know. But I do know that I was fortunate in not

being devoured during the several hours I was knotted up on the ground with the colic.

My vision of the scene came abruptly, as I emerged from the forest. I found myself on the edge of a large

clear space. On one side of this space rose up high bluffs. On the other side was the river. The earth bank ran

steeply down to the water, but here and there, in several places, where at some time slides of earth had

occurred, there were runways. These were the drinkingplaces of the Folk that lived in the caves.

And this was the main abidingplace of the Folk that I had chanced upon. This was, I may say, by stretching

the word, the village. My mother and the Chatterer and I, and a few other simple bodies, were what might be

termed suburban residents. We were part of the horde, though we lived a distance away from it. It was only a

short distance, though it had taken me, what of my wandering, all of a week to arrive. Had I come directly, I

But to return. From the edge of the forest I saw the caves in the bluff, the open space, and the runways to the

drinkingplaces. And in the open space I saw many of the Folk. I had been straying, alone and a child, for a

week. During that time I had seen not one of my kind. I had lived in terror and desolation. And now, at the

Then it was that a strange thing happened. Some one of the Folk saw me and uttered a warning cry. On the

instant, crying out with fear and panic, the Folk fled away. Leaping and scrambling over the rocks, they

plunged into the mouths of the caves and disappeared...all but one, a little baby, that had been dropped in the

excitement close to the base of the bluff. He was wailing dolefully. His mother dashed out; he sprang to meet

I was all alone. The populous open space had of a sudden become deserted. I sat down forlornly and

whimpered. I could not understand. Why had the Folk run away from me? In later time, when I came to know

their ways, I was to learn. When they saw me dashing out of the forest at top speed they concluded that I was

being pursued by some hunting animal. By my unceremonious approach I had stampeded them.

As I sat and watched the cavemouths I became aware that the Folk were watching me. Soon they were

thrusting their heads out. A little later they were calling back and forth to one another. In the hurry and

confusion it had happened that all had not gained their own caves. Some of the young ones had sought refuge

in other caves. The mothers did not call for them by name, because that was an invention we had not yet

made. All were nameless. The mothers uttered querulous, anxious cries, which were recognized by the young

ones. Thus, had my mother been there calling to me, I should have recognized her voice amongst the voices

of a thousand mothers, and in the same way would she have recognized mine amongst a thousand.

This calling back and forth continued for some time, but they were too cautious to come out of their caves

and descend to the ground. Finally one did come. He was destined to play a large part in my life, and for that

matter he already played a large part in the lives of all the members of the horde. He it was whom I shall call

RedEye in the pages of this historyso called because of his inflamed eyes, the lids being always red, and,

by the peculiar effect they produced, seeming to advertise the terrible savagery of him. The color of his soul

He was a monster in all ways. Physically he was a giant. He must have weighed one hundred and seventy

pounds. He was the largest one of our kind I ever saw. Nor did I ever see one of the Fire People so large as

he, nor one of the Tree People. Sometimes, when in the newspapers I happen upon descriptions of our

modern bruisers and prizefighters, I wonder what chance the best of them would have had against him.

I am afraid not much of a chance. With one grip of his iron fingers and a pull, he could have plucked a

muscle, say a biceps, by the roots, clear out of their bodies. A backhanded, loose blow of his fist could have

smashed their skulls like eggshells. With a sweep of his wicked feet (or hindhands) he could have

disembowelled them. A twist could have broken their necks, and I know that with a single crunch of his jaws

he could have pierced, at the same moment, the great vein of the throat in front and the spinal marrow at the

He could spring twenty feet horizontally from a sitting position. He was abominably hairy. It was a matter of

pride with us to be not very hairy. But he was covered with hair all over, on the inside of the arms as well as

the outside, and even the ears themselves. The only places on him where the hair did not grow were the soles

of his hands and feet and beneath his eyes. He was frightfully ugly, his ferocious grinning mouth and huge

This was RedEye. And right gingerly he crept out or his cave and descended to the ground. Ignoring me, he

proceeded to reconnoitre. He bent forward from the hips as he walked; and so far forward did he bend, and so

long were his arms, that with every step he touched the knuckles of his hands to the ground on either side of

him. He was awkward in the semierect position of walking that he assumed, and he really touched his

knuckles to the ground in order to balance himself. But oh, I tell you he could run on allfours! Now this was

something at which we were particularly awkward. Furthermore, it was a rare individual among us who

balanced himself with his knuckles when walking. Such an individual was an atavism, and RedEye was an

That is what he wasan atavism. We were in the process of changing our treelife to life on the ground. For

many generations we had been going through this change, and our bodies and carriage had likewise changed.

But RedEye had reverted to the more primitive treedwelling type. Perforce, because he was born in our

horde he stayed with us; but in actuality he was an atavism and his place was elsewhere.

Very circumspect and very alert, he moved here and there about the open space, peering through the vistas

among the trees and trying to catch a glimpse of the hunting animal that all suspected had pursued me. And

while he did this, taking no notice of me, the Folk crowded at the cavemouths and watched.

At last he evidently decided that there was no danger lurking about. He was returning from the head of the

runway, from where he had taken a peep down at the drinkingplace. His course brought him near, but still

he did not notice me. He proceeded casually on his way until abreast of me, and then, without warning and

with incredible swiftness, he smote me a buffet on the head. I was knocked backward fully a dozen feet

before I fetched up against the ground, and I remember, halfstunned, even as the blow was struck, hearing

the wild uproar of clucking and shrieking laughter that arose from the caves. It was a great jokeat least in

Thus was I received into the horde. RedEye paid no further attention to me, and I was at liberty to whimper

and sob to my heart's content. Several of the women gathered curiously about me, and I recognized them. I

had encountered them the preceding year when my mother had taken me to the hazelnut canyons.

But they quickly left me alone, being replaced by a dozen curious and teasing youngsters. They formed a

circle around me, pointing their fingers, making faces, and poking and pinching me. I was frightened, and for

a time I endured them, then anger got the best of me and I sprang tooth and nail upon the most audacious one

of themnone other than LopEar himself. I have so named him because he could prick up only one of his

ears. The other ear always hung limp and without movement. Some accident had injured the muscles and

He closed with me, and we went at it for all the world like a couple of small boys fighting. We scratched and

bit, pulled hair, clinched, and threw each other down. I remember I succeeded in getting on him what in my

college days I learned was called a halfNelson. This hold gave me the decided advantage. But I did not

enjoy it long. He twisted up one leg, and with the foot (or hindhand) made so savage an onslaught upon my

abdomen as to threaten to disembowel me. I had to release him in order to save myself, and then we went at it

LopEar was a year older than I, but I was several times angrier than he, and in the end he took to his heels. I

chased him across the open and down a runway to the river. But he was better acquainted with the locality

and ran along the edge of the water and up another runway. He cut diagonally across the open space and

Before I knew it, I had plunged after him into the darkness. The next moment I was badly frightened. I had

never been in a cave before. I began to whimper and cry out. LopEar chattered mockingly at me, and,

springing upon me unseen, tumbled me over. He did not risk a second encounter, however, and took himself

off. I was between him and the entrance, and he did not pass me; yet he seemed to have gone away. I listened,

but could get no clew as to where he was. This puzzled me, and when I regained the outside I sat down to

He never came out of the entrance, of that I was certain; yet at the end of several minutes he chuckled at my

elbow. Again I ran after him, and again he ran into the cave; but this time I stopped at the mouth. I dropped

back a short distance and watched. He did not come out, yet, as before, he chuckled at my elbow and was

This performance was repeated several times. Then I followed him into the cave, where I searched vainly for

him. I was curious. I could not understand how he eluded me. Always he went into the cave, never did he

come out of it, yet always did he arrive there at my elbow and mock me. Thus did our fight transform itself

All afternoon, with occasional intervals, we kept it up, and a playful, friendly spirit arose between us. In the

end, he did not run away from me, and we sat together with our arms around each other. A little later he

disclosed the mystery of the widemouthed cave. Holding me by the hand he led me inside. It connected by a

narrow crevice with another cave, and it was through this that we regained the open air.

We were now good friends. When the other young ones gathered around to tease, he joined with me in

attacking them; and so viciously did we behave that before long I was let alone. LopEar made me

acquainted with the village. There was little that he could tell me of conditions and customshe had not the

necessary vocabulary; but by observing his actions I learned much, and also he showed me places and things.

He took me up the open space, between the caves and the river, and into the forest beyond, where, in a grassy

place among the trees, we made a meal of stringyrooted carrots. After that we had a good drink at the river

It was in the runway that we came upon RedEye again. The first I knew, LopEar had shrunk away to one

side and was crouching low against the bank. Naturally and involuntarily, I imitated him. Then it was that I

looked to see the cause of his fear. It was RedEye, swaggering down the centre of the runway and

scowling fiercely with his inflamed eyes. I noticed that all the youngsters shrank away from him as we had

done, while the grownups regarded him with wary eyes when he drew near, and stepped aside to give him

As twilight came on, the open space was deserted. The Folk were seeking the safety of the caves. LopEar

led the way to bed. High up the bluff we climbed, higher than all the other caves, to a tiny crevice that could

not be seen from the ground. Into this LopEar squeezed. I followed with difficulty, so narrow was the

entrance, and found myself in a small rockchamber. It was very lownot more than a couple of feet in

height, and possibly three feet by four in width and length. Here, cuddled together in each other's arms, we

While the more courageous of the youngsters played in and out of the largemouthed caves, I early learned

that such caves were unoccupied. No one slept in them at night. Only the crevicemouthed caves were used,

the narrower the mouth the better. This was from fear of the preying animals that made life a burden to us in

The first morning, after my night's sleep with LopEar, I learned the advantage of the narrowmouthed

caves. It was just daylight when old SaberTooth, the tiger, walked into the open space. Two of the Folk

were already up. They made a rush for it. Whether they were panicstricken, or whether he was too close on

their heels for them to attempt to scramble up the bluff to the crevices, I do not know; but at any rate they

dashed into the widemouthed cave wherein LopEar and I had played the afternoon before.

What happened inside there was no way of telling, but it is fair to conclude that the two Folk slipped through

the connecting crevice into the other cave. This crevice was too small to allow for the passage of

SaberTooth, and he came out the way he had gone in, unsatisfied and angry. It was evident that his night's

hunting had been unsuccessful and that he had expected to make a meal off of us. He caught sight of the two

Folk at the other cavemouth and sprang for them. Of course, they darted through the passageway into the

Pandemonium broke loose amongst the rest of us. All up and down the great bluff, we crowded the crevices

and outside ledges, and we were all chattering and shrieking in a thousand keys. And we were all making

facessnarling faces; this was an instinct with us. We were as angry as SaberTooth, though our anger was

allied with fear. I remember that I shrieked and made faces with the best of them. Not only did they set the

example, but I felt the urge from within me to do the same things they were doing. My hair was bristling, and

For some time old SaberTooth continued dashing in and out of first the one cave and then the other. But the

two Folk merely slipped back and forth through the connecting crevice and eluded him. In the meantime the

rest of us up the bluff had proceeded to action. Every time he appeared outside we pelted him with rocks. At

first we merely dropped them on him, but we soon began to whiz them down with the added force of our

This bombardment drew SaberTooth's attention to us and made him angrier than ever. He abandoned his

pursuit of the two Folk and sprang up the bluff toward the rest of us, clawing at the crumbling rock and

snarling as he clawed his upward way. At this awful sight, the last one of us sought refuge inside our caves. I

know this, because I peeped out and saw the whole bluffside deserted, save for SaberTooth, who had lost

I called out the cry of encouragement, and again the bluff was covered by the screaming horde and the stones

were falling faster than ever. SaberTooth was frantic with rage. Time and again he assaulted the bluff. Once

he even gained the first creviceentrances before he fell back, but was unable to force his way inside. With

each upward rush he made, waves of fear surged over us. At first, at such times, most of us dashed inside; but

some remained outside to hammer him with stones, and soon all of us remained outside and kept up the

Never was so masterly a creature so completely baffled. It hurt his pride terribly, thus to be outwitted by the

small and tender Folk. He stood on the ground and looked up at us, snarling, lashing his tail, snapping at the

stones that fell near to him. Once I whizzed down a stone, and just at the right moment he looked up. It

caught him full on the end of his nose, and he went straight up in the air, all four feet of him, roaring and

He was beaten and he knew it. Recovering his dignity, he stalked out solemnly from under the rain of stones.

He stopped in the middle of the open space and looked wistfully and hungrily back at us. He hated to forego

the meal, and we were just so much meat, cornered but inaccessible. This sight of him started us to laughing.

We laughed derisively and uproariously, all of us. Now animals do not like mockery. To be laughed at makes

them angry. And in such fashion our laughter affected SaberTooth. He turned with a roar and charged the

bluff again. This was what we wanted. The fight had become a game, and we took huge delight in pelting

But this attack did not last long. He quickly recovered his common sense, and besides, our missiles were

shrewd to hurt. Vividly do I recollect the vision of one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut by one of the

stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retain the picture of him as he stood on the edge of the forest whither

he had finally retreated. He was looking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clear of the very roots of his huge

fangs, his hair bristling and his tail lashing. He gave one last snarl and slid from view among the trees.

And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed out of our holes, examining the marks his claws had

made on the crumbling rock of the bluff, all of us talking at once. One of the two Folk who had been caught

in the double cave was partgrown, half child and half youth. They had come out proudly from their refuge,

and we surrounded them in an admiring crowd. Then the young fellow's mother broke through and fell upon

him in a tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, and shrieking like a demon. She was a strapping

big woman, very hairy, and the thrashing she gave him was a delight to the horde. We roared with laughter,

In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the Folk were always great laughers. We had the sense of

humor. Our merriment was Gargantuan. It was never restrained. There was nothing half way about it. When a

thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation of it, and the simplest, crudest things were funny to us.

The way we had treated SaberTooth was the way we treated all animals that invaded the village. We kept

our runways and drinkingplaces to ourselves by making life miserable for the animals that trespassed or

strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest hunting animals we so bedevilled that they learned to

leave our places alone. We were not fighters like them; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was because of

our cunning and cowardice, and our inordinate capacity for fear, that we survived in that frightfully hostile

LopEar, I figure, was a year older than I. What his past history was he had no way of telling me, but as I

never saw anything of his mother I believed him to be an orphan. After all, fathers did not count in our horde.

Marriage was as yet in a rude state, and couples had a way of quarrelling and separating. Modern man, what

of his divorce institution, does the same thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom was all we went by, and

Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, we betrayed glimmering adumbrations of the monogamy

that was later to give power to, and make mighty, such tribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at the time I

was born, there were several faithful couples that lived in the trees in the neighborhood of my mother. Living

in the thick of the horde did not conduce to monogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly, that the faithful

couples went away and lived by themselves. Through many years these couples stayed together, though when

There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during the first days of my residence in the horde. There was a

nameless and incommunicable fear that rested upon all. At first it appeared to be connected wholly with

direction. The horde feared the northeast. It lived in perpetual apprehension of that quarter of the compass.

And every individual gazed more frequently and with greater alarm in that direction than in any other.

When LopEar and I went toward the northeast to eat the stringyrooted carrots that at that season were at

their best, he became unusually timid. He was content to eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and the little

ropy ones, rather than to venture a short distance farther on to where the carrots were as yet untouched. When

I so ventured, he scolded me and quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in that direction was

some horrible danger, but just what the horrible danger was his paucity of language would not permit him to

Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while he scolded and chattered vainly at me. I could not understand. I

kept very alert, but I could see no danger. I calculated always the distance between myself and the nearest

tree, and knew that to that haven of refuge I could outfoot the Tawny One, or old SaberTooth, did one or

One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproar arose. The horde was animated with a single emotion, that of

fear. The bluffside swarmed with the Folk, all gazing and pointing into the northeast. I did not know what it

was, but I scrambled all the way up to the safety of my own high little cave before ever I turned around to

And then, across the river, away into the northeast, I saw for the first time the mystery of smoke. It was the

biggest animal I had ever seen. I thought it was a monster snake, upended, rearing its head high above the

trees and swaying back and forth. And yet, somehow, I seemed to gather from the conduct of the Folk that the

smoke itself was not the danger. They appeared to fear it as the token of something else. What this something

else was I was unable to guess. Nor could they tell me. Yet I was soon to know, and I was to know it as a

thing more terrible than the Tawny One, than old SaberTooth, than the snakes themselves, than which it

BrokenTooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His mother lived in the caves, but two more

children had come after him and he had been thrust out to shift for himself. We had witnessed the

performance during the several preceding days, and it had given us no little glee. BrokenTooth did not want

to go, and every time his mother left the cave he sneaked back into it. When she returned and found him there

her rages were delightful. Half the horde made a practice of watching for these moments. First, from within

the cave, would come her scolding and shrieking. Then we could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling

of BrokenTooth. About this time the two younger children joined in. And finally, like the eruption of a

At the end of several days his leaving home was accomplished. He wailed his grief, unheeded, from the

centre of the open space, for at least half an hour, and then came to live with LopEar and me. Our cave was

small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I have no recollection of BrokenTooth spending more

It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we had eaten our fill of the carrots, and then, made heedless

by play, we had ventured on to the big trees just beyond. I cannot understand how LopEar got over his

habitual caution, but it must have been the play. We were having a great time playing tree tag. And such tag!

We leaped ten or fifteenfoot gaps as a matter of course. And a twenty or twentyfive foot deliberate drop

clear down to the ground was nothing to us. In fact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances we dropped.

As we grew older and heavier we found we had to be more cautious in dropping, but at that age our bodies

BrokenTooth displayed remarkable agility in the game. He was "It" less frequently than any of us, and in

the course of the game he discovered one difficult "slip" that neither LopEar nor I was able to accomplish.

When we were "It," BrokenTooth always ran out to the end of a lofty branch in a certain tree. From the end

of the branch to the ground it must have been seventy feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall. But about

twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet out from the perpendicular, was the thick branch of another

As we ran out the limb, BrokenTooth, facing us, would begin teetering. This naturally impeded our

progress; but there was more in the teetering than that. He teetered with his back to the jump he was to make.

Just as we nearly reached him he would let go. The teetering branch was like a springboard. It threw him far

out, backward, as he fell. And as he fell he turned around sidewise in the air so as to face the other branch

into which he was falling. This branch bent far down under the impact, and sometimes there was an ominous

crackling; but it never broke, and out of the leaves was always to be seen the face of BrokenTooth grinning

I was "It" the last time BrokenTooth tried this. He had gained the end of the branch and begun his teetering,

and I was creeping out after him, when suddenly there came a low warning cry from LopEar. I looked down

and saw him in the main fork of the tree crouching close against the trunk. Instinctively I crouched down

upon the thick limb. BrokenTooth stopped teetering, but the branch would not stop, and his body continued

I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down saw my first FireMan. He was creeping stealthily along

on the ground and peering up into the tree. At first I thought he was a wild animal, because he wore around

his waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece of bearskin. And then I saw his hands and feet, and more

clearly his features. He was very much like my kind, except that he was less hairy and that his feet were less

like hands than ours. In fact, he and his people, as I was later to know, were far less hairy than we, though we,

It came to me instantly, as I looked at him. This was the terror of the northeast, of which the mystery of

smoke was a token. Yet I was puzzled. Certainly he was nothing; of which to be afraid. RedEye or any of

our strong men would have been more than a match for him. He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hair

on his face was gray. Also, he limped badly with one leg. There was no doubt at all that we could outrun

But he carried something in his hand that I had never seen before. It was a bow and arrow. But at that time a

bow and arrow had no meaning for me. How was I to know that death lurked in that bent piece of wood? But

LopEar knew. He had evidently seen the Fire People before and knew something of their ways. The

FireMan peered up at him and circled around the tree. And around the main trunk above the fork LopEar

The latter abruptly reversed his circling. LopEar, caught unawares, also hastily reversed, but did not win the

I saw the arrow leap up, miss LopEar, glance against a limb, and fall back to the ground. I danced up and

down on my lofty perch with delight. It was a game! The FireMan was throwing things at LopEar as we

The game continued a little longer, but LopEar did not expose himself a second time. Then the FireMan

gave it up. I leaned far out over my horizontal limb and chattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wanted to

have him try to hit me with the thing. He saw me, but ignored me, turning his attention to BrokenTooth,

The first arrow leaped upward. BrokenTooth yelled with fright and pain. It had reached its mark. This put a

new complexion on the matter. I no longer cared to play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. A second

arrow and a third soared up, missing BrokenTooth, rustling the leaves as they passed through, arching in

The FireMan stretched his bow again. He shifted his position, walking away several steps, then shifted it a

second time. The bowstring twanged, the arrow leaped upward, and BrokenTooth, uttering a terrible

scream, fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down, turning over and over, all arms and legs it seemed,

the shaft of the arrow projecting from his chest and appearing and disappearing with each revolution of his

Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing to the earth with an audible thud and crunch, his body

rebounding slightly and settling down again. Still he lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his

hands and feet. I remember the FireMan running forward with a stone and hammering him on the head...and

Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the dream, did I wake up screaming with frightto find, often,

my mother or nurse, anxious and startled, by my bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair and telling

My next dream, in the order of succession, begins always with the flight of LopEar and myself through the

forest. The FireMan and BrokenTooth and the tree of the tragedy are gone. LopEar and I, in a cautious

panic, are fleeing through the trees. In my right leg is a burning pain; and from the flesh, protruding head and

shaft from either side, is an arrow of the FireMan. Not only did the pull and strain of it pain me severely, but

At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a tree. LopEar went right on. I called to himmost

plaintively, I remember; and he stopped and looked back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork and

examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but one way the flesh resisted the barbed lead, and the other way

For some time we crouched there, LopEar nervous and anxious to be gone, perpetually and apprehensively

peering this way and that, and myself whimpering softly and sobbing. LopEar was plainly in a funk, and yet

his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I take as a foreshadowing of the altruism and

Once again LopEar tried to drag the arrow through the flesh, and I angrily stopped him. Then he bent down

and began gnawing the shaft of the arrow with his teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both hands

so that it would not play about in the wound, and at the same time I held on to him. I often meditate upon this

scenethe two of us, halfgrown cubs, in the childhood of the race, and the one mastering his fear, beating

down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand by and succor the other. And there rises up before me all

that was there foreshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias, of lifesaving crews and Red Cross

nurses, of martyrs and leaders of forlorn hopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, and of all the

men of earth, mighty of stature, whose strength may trace back to the elemental loins of LopEar and

When LopEar had chewed off the head of the arrow, the shaft was withdrawn easily enough. I started to go

on, but this time it was he that stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely. Some of the smaller veins had

doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a branch, LopEar gathered a handful of green leaves.

These he stuffed into the wound. They accomplished the purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped. Then we

Well do I remember that first winter after I left home. I have long dreams of sitting shivering in the cold.

LopEar and I sit close together, with our arms and legs about each other, bluefaced and with chattering

teeth. It got particularly crisp along toward morning. In those chill early hours we slept little, huddling

When we went outside there was a crackle of frost under foot. One morning we discovered ice on the surface

of the quiet water in the eddy where was the drinkingplace, and there was a great Howdoyoudo about it.

Old MarrowBone was the oldest member of the horde, and he had never seen anything like it before. I

remember the worried, plaintive look that came into his eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive look

always came into our eyes when we did not understand a thing, or when we felt the prod of some vague and

inexpressible desire.) RedEye, too, when he investigated the ice, looked bleak and plaintive, and stared

across the river into the northeast, as though in some way he connected the Fire People with this latest

But we found ice only on that one morning, and that was the coldest winter we experienced. I have no

memory of other winters when it was so cold. I have often thought that that cold winter was a forerunner of

the countless cold winters to come, as the icesheet from farther north crept down over the face of the land.

But we never saw that icesheet. Many generations must have passed away before the descendants of the

horde migrated south, or remained and adapted themselves to the changed conditions.

Life was hit or miss and happygolucky with us. Little was ever planned, and less was executed. We ate

when we were hungry, drank when we were thirsty, avoided our carnivorous enemies, took shelter in the

We were very curious, easily amused, and full of tricks and pranks. There was no seriousness about us,

except when we were in danger or were angry, in which cases the one was quickly forgotten and the other as

We were inconsecutive, illogical, and inconsequential. We had no steadfastness of purpose, and it was here

that the Fire People were ahead of us. They possessed all these things of which we possessed so little.

Occasionally, however, especially in the realm of the emotions, we were capable of longcherished purpose.

The faithfulness of the monogamic couples I have referred to may be explained as a matter of habit; but my

long desire for the Swift One cannot be so explained, any more than can be explained the undying enmity

But it was our inconsequentiality and stupidity that especially distresses me when I look back upon that life in

the long ago. Once I found a broken gourd which happened to lie right side up and which had been filled with

the rain. The water was sweet, and I drank it. I even took the gourd down to the stream and filled it with more

water, some of which I drank and some of which I poured over LopEar. And then I threw the gourd away. It

never entered my head to fill the gourd with water and carry it into my cave. Yet often I was thirsty at night,

especially after eating wild onions and watercress, and no one ever dared leave the caves at night for a drink.

Another time I found a dry; gourd, inside of which the seeds rattled. I had fun with it for a while. But it was a

play thing, nothing more. And yet, it was not long after this that the using of gourds for storing water became

the general practice of the horde. But I was not the inventor. The honor was due to old MarrowBone, and it

is fair to assume that it was the necessity of his great age that brought about the innovation.

At any rate, the first member of the horde to use gourds was MarrowBone. He kept a supply of

drinkingwater in his cave, which cave belonged to his son, the Hairless One, who permitted him to occupy a

corner of it. We used to see MarrowBone filling his gourd at the drinkingplace and carrying it carefully up

to his cave. Imitation was strong in the Folk, and first one, and then another and another, procured a gourd

and used it in similar fashion, until it was a general practice with all of us so to store water.

Sometimes old MarrowBone had sick spells and was unable to leave the cave. Then it was that the Hairless

One filled the gourd for him. A little later, the Hairless One deputed the task to LongLip, his son. And after

that, even when MarrowBone was well again, LongLip continued carrying water for him. By and by,

except on unusual occasions, the men never carried any water at all, leaving the task to the women and larger

children. LopEar and I were independent. We carried water only for ourselves, and we often mocked the

Progress was slow with us. We played through life, even the adults, much in the same way that children play,

and we played as none of the other animals played. What little we learned, was usually in the course of play,

and was due to our curiosity and keenness of appreciation. For that matter, the one big invention of the horde,

during the time I lived with it, was the use of gourds. At first we stored only water in the gourdsin

But one day some one of the womenI do not know which onefilled a gourd with blackberries and

carried it to her cave. In no time all the women were carrying berries and nuts and roots in the gourds. The

idea, once started, had to go on. Another evolution of the carryingreceptacle was due to the women. Without

doubt, some woman's gourd was too small, or else she had forgotten her gourd; but be that as it may, she bent

two great leaves together, pinning the seams with twigs, and carried home a bigger quantity of berries than

So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation of supplies during the years I lived with the Folk. It never

entered anybody's head to weave a basket out of willowwithes. Sometimes the men and women tied tough

vines about the bundles of ferns and branches that they carried to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten or

twenty generations we might have worked up to the weaving of baskets. And of this, one thing is sure: if once

we wove withes into baskets, the next and inevitable step would have been the weaving of cloth. Clothes

Thus was momentum gained in the Younger World. But we were without this momentum. We were just

getting started, and we could not go far in a single generation. We were without weapons, without fire, and in

the raw beginnings of speech. The device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled when I think of

Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To show you how fortuitous was development in those

days let me state that had it not been for the gluttony of LopEar I might have brought about the

domestication of the dog. And this was something that the Fire People who lived to the northeast had not yet

achieved. They were without dogs; this I knew from observation. But let me tell you how LopEar's gluttony

Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to the south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. These were

little frequented for two reasons. First of all, there was no food there of the kind we ate; and next, those rocky

But LopEar and I strayed over to the hills one day. We would not have strayed had we not been teasing a

tiger. Please do not laugh. It was old SaberTooth himself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon him in

the forest, early in the morning, and from the safety of the branches overhead we chattered down at him our

dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an

We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his

tail, and sometimes he paused and stared up at us quietly for a long time, as if debating in his mind some way

by which he could get hold of us. But we only laughed and pelted him with twigs and the ends of branches.

This tigerbaiting was common sport among the folk. Sometimes half the horde would follow from overhead

a tiger or lion that had ventured out in the daytime. It was our revenge; for more than one member of the

horde, caught unexpectedly, had gone the way of the tiger's belly or the lion's. Also, by such ordeals of

helplessness and shame, we taught the hunting animals to some extent to keep out of our territory. And then it

And so LopEar and I had chased SaberTooth across three miles of forest. Toward the last he put his tail

between his legs and fled from our gibing like a beaten cur. We did our best to keep up with him; but when

I don't know what prompted us, unless it was curiosity; but after playing around awhile, LopEar and I

ventured across the open ground to the edge of the rocky hills. We did not go far. Possibly at no time were we

more than a hundred yards from the trees. Coming around a sharp corner of rock (we went very carefully,

because we did not know what we might encounter), we came upon three puppies playing in the sun.

They did not see us, and we watched them for some time. They were wild dogs. In the rockwall was a

horizontal fissureevidently the lair where their mother had left them, and where they should have remained

had they been obedient. But the growing life, that in LopEar and me had impelled us to venture away from

the forest, had driven the puppies out of the cave to frolic. I know how their mother would have punished

But it was LopEar and I who caught them. He looked at me, and then we made a dash for it. The puppies

knew no place to run except into the lair, and we headed them off. One rushed between my legs. I squatted

and grabbed him. He sank his sharp little teeth into my arm, and I dropped him in the suddenness of the hurt

LopEar, struggling with the second puppy, scowled at me and intimated by a variety of sounds the different

kinds of a fool and a bungler that I was. This made me ashamed and spurred me to valor. I grabbed the

remaining puppy by the tail. He got his teeth into me once, and then I got him by the nape of the neck.

LopEar and I sat down, and held the puppies up, and looked at them, and laughed.

They were snarling and yelping and crying. LopEar started suddenly. He thought he had heard something.

We looked at each other in fear, realizing the danger of our position. The one thing that made animals raging

demons was tampering with their young. And these puppies that made such a racket belonged to the wild

dogs. Well we knew them, running in packs, the terror of the grasseating animals. We had watched them

following the herds of cattle and bison and dragging down the calves, the aged, and the sick. We had been

chased by them ourselves, more than once. I had seen one of the Folk, a woman, run down by them and

caught just as she reached the shelter of the woods. Had she not been tired out by the run, she might have

made it into a tree. She tried, and slipped, and fell back. They made short work of her.

We did not stare at each other longer than a moment. Keeping tight hold of our prizes, we ran for the woods.

Once in the security of a tall tree, we held up the puppies and laughed again. You see, we had to have our

And then began one of the hardest tasks I ever attempted. We started to carry the puppies to our cave. Instead

of using our hands for climbing, most of the time they were occupied with holding our squirming captives.

Once we tried to walk on the ground, but were treed by a miserable hyena, who followed along underneath.

LopEar got an idea. He remembered how we tied up bundles of leaves to carry home for beds. Breaking off

some tough vines, he tied his puppy's legs together, and then, with another piece of vine passed around his

neck, slung the puppy on his back. This left him with hands and feet free to climb. He was jubilant, and did

not wait for me to finish tying my puppy's legs, but started on. There was one difficulty, however. The puppy

wouldn't stay slung on LopEar's back. It swung around to the side and then on in front. Its teeth were not

tied, and the next thing it did was to sink its teeth into LopEar's soft and unprotected stomach. He let out a

scream, nearly fell, and clutched a branch violently with both hands to save himself. The vine around his neck

broke, and the puppy, its four legs still tied, dropped to the ground. The hyena proceeded to dine.

LopEar was disgusted and angry. He abused the hyena, and then went off alone through the trees. I had no

reason that I knew for wanting to carry the puppy to the cave, except that I WANTED to; and I stayed by my

task. I made the work a great deal easier by elaborating on LopEar's idea. Not only did I tie the puppy's legs,

At last I got the puppy home. I imagine I had more pertinacity than the average Folk, or else I should not

have succeeded. They laughed at me when they saw me lugging the puppy up to my high little cave, but I did

not mind. Success crowned my efforts, and there was the puppy. He was a plaything such as none of the Folk

possessed. He learned rapidly. When I played with him and he bit me, I boxed his ears, and then he did not

I was quite taken up with him. He was something new, and it was a characteristic of the Folk to like new

things. When I saw that he refused fruits and vegetables, I caught birds for him and squirrels and young

rabbits. (We Folk were meateaters, as well as vegetarians, and we were adept at catching small game.) The

puppy ate the meat and thrived. As well as I can estimate, I must have had him over a week. And then,

coming back to the cave one day with a nestful of younghatched pheasants, I found LopEar had killed the

puppy and was just beginning to eat him. I sprang for LopEar,the cave was small,and we went at it

And thus, in a fight, ended one of the earliest attempts to domesticate the dog. We pulled hair out in handfuls,

and scratched and bit and gouged. Then we sulked and made up. After that we ate the puppy. Raw? Yes. We

had not yet discovered fire. Our evolution into cooking animals lay in the tightrolled scroll of the future.

RedEye was an atavism. He was the great discordant element in our horde. He was more primitive than any

of us. He did not belong with us, yet we were still so primitive ourselves that we were incapable of a

cooperative effort strong enough to kill him or cast him out. Rude as was our social organization, he was,

nevertheless, too rude to live in it. He tended always to destroy the horde by his unsocial acts. He was really a

reversion to an earlier type, and his place was with the Tree People rather than with us who were in the

He was a monster of cruelty, which is saying a great deal in that day. He beat his wivesnot that he ever had

more than one wife at a time, but that he was married many times. It was impossible for any woman to live

with him, and yet they did live with him, out of compulsion. There was no gainsaying him.

Often do I have visions of the quiet hour before the twilight. From drinkingplace and carrot patch and berry

swamp the Folk are trooping into the open space before the caves. They dare linger no later than this, for the

dreadful darkness is approaching, in which the world is given over to the carnage of the hunting animals,

There yet remain to us a few minutes before we climb to our caves. We are tired from the play of the day, and

the sounds we make are subdued. Even the cubs, still greedy for fun and antics, play with restraint. The wind

from the sea has died down, and the shadows are lengthening with the last of the sun's descent. And then,

suddenly, from RedEye's cave, breaks a wild screaming and the sound of blows. He is beating his wife.

At first an awed silence comes upon us. But as the blows and screams continue we break out into an insane

gibbering of helpless rage. It is plain that the men resent RedEye's actions, but they are too afraid of him.

The blows cease, and a low groaning dies away, while we chatter among ourselves and the sad twilight

We, to whom most happenings were jokes, never laughed during RedEye's wifebeatings. We knew too

well the tragedy of them. On more than one morning, at the base of the cliff, did we find the body of his latest

wife. He had tossed her there, after she had died, from his cavemouth. He never buried his dead. The task of

carrying away the bodies, that else would have polluted our abidingplace, he left to the horde. We usually

Not alone did RedEye murder his wives, but he also murdered for his wives, in order to get them. When he

wanted a new wife and selected the wife of another man, he promptly killed that man. Two of these murders I

saw myself. The whole horde knew, but could do nothing. We had not yet developed any government, to

speak of, inside the horde. We had certain customs and visited our wrath upon the unlucky ones who violated

those customs. Thus, for example, the individual who defiled a drinkingplace would be attacked by every

onlooker, while one who deliberately gave a false alarm was the recipient of much rough usage at our hands.

But RedEye walked roughshod over all our customs, and we so feared him that we were incapable of the

It was during the sixth winter in our cave that LopEar and I discovered that we were really growing up.

From the first it had been a squeeze to get in through the entrancecrevice. This had had its advantages,

however. It had prevented the larger Folk from taking our cave away from us. And it was a most desirable

cave, the highest on the bluff, the safest, and in winter the smallest and warmest.

To show the stage of the mental development of the Folk, I may state that it would have been a simple thing

for some of them to have driven us out and enlarged the creviceopening. But they never thought of it.

LopEar and I did not think of it either until our increasing size compelled us to make an enlargement. This

occurred when summer was well along and we were fat with better forage. We worked at the crevice in

At first we dug the crumbling rocks away with our fingers, until our nails got sore, when I accidentally

stumbled upon the idea of using a piece of wood on the rock. This worked well. Also it worked woe. One

morning early, we had scratched out of the wall quite a heap of fragments. I gave the heap a shove over the

lip of the entrance. The next moment there came up from below a howl of rage. There was no need to look.

We crouched down in the cave in consternation. A minute later he was at the entrance, peering in at us with

his inflamed eyes and raging like a demon. But he was too large. He could not get in to us. Suddenly he went

away. This was suspicious. By all we knew of Folk nature he should have remained and had out his rage. I

crept to the entrance and peeped down. I could see him just beginning to mount the bluff again. In one hand

he carried a long stick. Before I could divine his plan, he was back at the entrance and savagely jabbing the

His thrusts were prodigious. They could have disembowelled us. We shrank back against the sidewalls,

where we were almost out of range. But by industrious poking he got us now and againcruel, scraping jabs

with the end of the stick that raked off the hide and hair. When we screamed with the hurt, he roared his

I began to grow angry. I had a temper of my own in those days, and pretty considerable courage, too, albeit it

was largely the courage of the cornered rat. I caught hold of the stick with my hands, but such was his

strength that he jerked me into the crevice. He reached for me with his long arm, and his nails tore my flesh

as I leaped back from the clutch and gained the comparative safety of the sidewall.

He began poking again, and caught me a painful blow on the shoulder. Beyond shivering with fright and

yelling when he was hit, LopEar did nothing. I looked for a stick with which to jab back, but found only the

end of a branch, an inch through and a foot long. I threw this at RedEye. It did no damage, though he

howled with a sudden increase of rage at my daring to strike back. He began jabbing furiously. I found a

This emboldened me, and, besides, I was now as angry as he, and had lost all fear. I ripped fragment of rock

from the wall. The piece must have weighed two or three pounds. With my strength I slammed it full into

RedEye's face. It nearly finished him. He staggered backward, dropping his stick, and almost fell off the

He was a ferocious sight. His face was covered with blood, and he was snarling and gnashing his fangs like a

wild boar. He wiped the blood from his eyes, caught sight of me, and roared with fury. His stick was gone, so

he began ripping out chunks of crumbling rock and throwing them in at me. This supplied me with

ammunition. I gave him as good as he sent, and better; for he presented a good target, while he caught only

Suddenly he disappeared again. From the lip of the cave I saw him descending. All the horde had gathered

outside and in awed silence was looking on. As he descended, the more timid ones scurried for their caves. I

could see old MarrowBone tottering along as fast as he could. RedEye sprang out from the wall and

finished the last twenty feet through the air. He landed alongside a mother who was just beginning the ascent.

She screamed with fear, and the twoyearold child that was clinging to her released its grip and rolled at

RedEye's feet. Both he and the mother reached for it, and he got it. The next moment the frail little body had

whirled through the air and shattered against the wall. The mother ran to it, caught it up in her arms, and

RedEye started over to pick up the stick. Old MarrowBone had tottered into his way. RedEye's great

hand shot out and clutched the old man by the back of the neck. I looked to see his neck broken. His body

went limp as he surrendered himself to his fate. RedEye hesitated a moment, and MarrowBone, shivering

terribly, bowed his head and covered his face with his crossed arms. Then RedEye slammed him

facedownward to the ground. Old MarrowBone did not struggle. He lay there crying with the fear of death.

I saw the Hairless One, out in the open space, beating his chest and bristling, but afraid to come forward. And

then, in obedience to some whim of his erratic spirit, RedEye let the old man alone and passed on and

He returned to the wall and began to climb up. LopEar, who was shivering and peeping alongside of me,

scrambled back into the cave. It was plain that RedEye was bent upon murder. I was desperate and angry

and fairly cool. Running back and forth along the neighboring ledges, I gathered a heap of rocks at the

caveentrance. RedEye was now several yards beneath me, concealed for the moment by an outjut of the

cliff. As he climbed, his head came into view, and I banged a rock down. It missed, striking the wall and

shattering; but the flying dust and grit filled his eyes and he drew back out of view.

A chuckling and chattering arose from the horde, that played the part of audience. At last there was one of the

Folk who dared to face RedEye. As their approval and acclamation arose on the air, RedEye snarled down

at them, and on the instant they were subdued to silence. Encouraged by this evidence of his power, he thrust

his head into view, and by scowling and snarling and gnashing his fangs tried to intimidate me. He scowled

horribly, contracting the scalp strongly over the brows and bringing the hair down from the top of the head

The sight chilled me, but I mastered my fear, and, with a stone poised in my hand, threatened him back. He

still tried to advance. I drove the stone down at him and made a sheer miss. The next shot was a success. The

stone struck him on the neck. He slipped back out of sight, but as he disappeared I could see him clutching

for a grip on the wall with one hand, and with the other clutching at his throat. The stick fell clattering to the

I could not see him any more, though I could hear him choking and strangling and coughing. The audience

kept a deathlike silence. I crouched on the lip of the entrance and waited. The strangling and coughing died

down, and I could hear him now and again clearing his throat. A little later he began to climb down. He went

very quietly, pausing every moment or so to stretch his neck or to feel it with his hand.

At the sight of him descending, the whole horde, with wild screams and yells, stampeded for the woods. Old

MarrowBone, hobbling and tottering, followed behind. RedEye took no notice of the flight. When he

reached the ground he skirted the base of the bluff and climbed up and into his own cave. He did not look

I stared at LopEar, and he stared back. We understood each other. Immediately, and with great caution and

quietness, we began climbing up the cliff. When we reached the top we looked back. The abidingplace was

deserted, RedEye remained in his cave, and the horde had disappeared in the depths of the forest.

We turned and ran. We dashed across the open spaces and down the slopes unmindful of possible snakes in

the grass, until we reached the woods. Up into the trees we went, and on and on, swinging our arboreal flight

until we had put miles between us and the caves. And then, and not till then, in the security of a great fork, we

paused, looked at each other, and began to laugh. We held on to each other, arms and legs, our eyes streaming

After we had had out our laugh, LopEar and I curved back in our flight and got breakfast in the blueberry

swamp. It was the same swamp to which I had made my first journeys in the world, years before,

accompanied by my mother. I had seen little of her in the intervening time. Usually, when she visited the

horde at the caves, I was away in the forest. I had once or twice caught glimpses of the Chatterer in the open

space, and had had the pleasure of making faces at him and angering him from the mouth of my cave.

Beyond such amenities I had left my family severely alone. I was not much interested in it, and anyway I was

After eating our fill of berries, with two nestfuls of partly hatched quaileggs for dessert, LopEar and I

wandered circumspectly into the woods toward the river. Here was where stood my old hometree, out of

which I had been thrown by the Chatterer. It was still occupied. There had been increase in the family.

Clinging tight to my mother was a little baby. Also, there was a girl, partly grown, who cautiously regarded

us from one of the lower branches. She was evidently my sister, or halfsister, rather.

My mother recognized me, but she warned me away when I started to climb into the tree. LopEar, who was

more cautious by far than I, beat a retreat, nor could I persuade him to return. Later in the day, however, my

sister came down to the ground, and there and in neighboring trees we romped and played all afternoon. And

then came trouble. She was my sister, but that did not prevent her from treating me abominably, for she had

inherited all the viciousness of the Chatterer. She turned upon me suddenly, in a petty rage, and scratched me,

tore my hair, and sank her sharp little teeth deep into my forearm. I lost my temper. I did not injure her, but it

How she yelled and squalled. The Chatterer, who had been away all day and who was only then returning,

heard the noise and rushed for the spot. My mother also rushed, but he got there first. LopEar and I did not

wait his coming. We were off and away, and the Chatterer gave us the chase of our lives through the trees.

After the chase was over, and LopEar and I had had out our laugh, we discovered that twilight was falling.

Here was night with all its terrors upon us, and to return to the caves was out of the question. RedEye made

that impossible. We took refuge in a tree that stood apart from other trees, and high up in a fork we passed the

night. It was a miserable night. For the first few hours it rained heavily, then it turned cold and a chill wind

blew upon us. Soaked through, with shivering bodies and chattering teeth, we huddled in each other's arms.

We missed the snug, dry cave that so quickly warmed with the heat of our bodies.

Morning found us wretched and resolved. We would not spend another such night. Remembering the

treeshelters of our elders, we set to work to make one for ourselves. We built the framework of a rough nest,

and on higher forks overhead even got in several ridgepoles for the roof. Then the sun came out, and under

its benign influence we forgot the hardships of the night and went off in search of breakfast. After that, to

show the inconsequentiality of life in those days, we fell to playing. It must have taken us all of a month,

working intermittently, to make our treehouse; and then, when it was completed, we never used it again.

But I run ahead of my story. When we fell to playing, after breakfast, on the second day away from the caves,

LopEar led me a chase through the trees and down to the river. We came out upon it where a large slough

entered from the blueberry swamp. The mouth of this slough was wide, while the slough itself was practically

without a current. In the dead water, just inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks. Some of these,

what of the wear and tear of freshets and of being stranded long summers on sandbars, were seasoned and

dry and without branches. They floated high in the water, and bobbed up and down or rolled over when we

Here and there between the trunks were watercracks, and through them we could see schools of small fish,

like minnows, darting back and forth. LopEar and I became fishermen at once. Lying flat on the logs,

keeping perfectly quiet, waiting till the minnows came close, we would make swift passes with our hands.

Our prizes we ate on the spot, wriggling and moist. We did not notice the lack of salt.

The mouth of the slough became our favorite playground. Here we spent many hours each day, catching fish

and playing on the logs, and here, one day, we learned our first lessons in navigation. The log on which

LopEar was lying got adrift. He was curled up on his side, asleep. A light fan of air slowly drifted the log

away from the shore, and when I noticed his predicament the distance was already too great for him to leap.

At first the episode seemed merely funny to me. But when one of the vagrant impulses of fear, common in

that age of perpetual insecurity, moved within me, I was struck with my own loneliness. I was made suddenly

aware of LopEar's remoteness out there on that alien element a few feet away. I called loudly to him a

warning cry. He awoke frightened, and shifted his weight rashly on the log. It turned over, sousing him under.

Three times again it soused him under as he tried to climb out upon it. Then he succeeded, crouching upon it

I could do nothing. Nor could he. Swimming was something of which we knew nothing. We were already too

far removed from the lower lifeforms to have the instinct for swimming, and we had not yet become

sufficiently manlike to undertake it as the working out of a problem. I roamed disconsolately up and down

the bank, keeping as close to him in his involuntary travels as I could, while he wailed and cried till it was a

The hours passed. The sun climbed overhead and began its descent to the west. The light wind died down and

left LopEar on his log floating around a hundred feet away. And then, somehow, I know not how, LopEar

made the great discovery. He began paddling with his hands. At first his progress was slow and erratic. Then

he straightened out and began laboriously to paddle nearer and nearer. I could not understand. I sat down and

But he had learned something, which was more than I had done. Later in the afternoon, he deliberately

launched out from shore on the log. Still later he persuaded me to join him, and I, too, learned the trick of

paddling. For the next several days we could not tear ourselves away from the slough. So absorbed were we

in our new game that we almost neglected to eat. We even roosted in a nearby tree at night. And we forgot

We were always trying new logs, and we learned that the smaller the log the faster we could make it go. Also,

we learned that the smaller the log the more liable it was to roll over and give us a ducking. Still another

thing about small logs we learned. One day we paddled our individual logs alongside each other. And then,

quite by accident, in the course of play, we discovered that when each, with one hand and foot, held on to the

other's log, the logs were steadied and did not turn over. Lying side by side in this position, our outside hands

and feet were left free for paddling. Our final discovery was that this arrangement enabled us to use still

smaller logs and thereby gain greater speed. And there our discoveries ended. We had invented the most

primitive catamaran, and we did not have sense enough to know it. It never entered our heads to lash the logs

together with tough vines or stringy roots. We were content to hold the logs together with our hands and feet.

It was not until we got over our first enthusiasm for navigation and had begun to return to our treeshelter to

sleep at night, that we found the Swift One. I saw her first, gathering young acorns from the branches of a

large oak near our tree. She was very timid. At first, she kept very still; but when she saw that she was

discovered she dropped to the ground and dashed wildly away. We caught occasional glimpses of her from

day to day, and came to look for her when we travelled back and forth between our tree and the mouth of the

And then, one day, she did not run away. She waited our coming, and made soft peacesounds. We could not

get very near, however. When we seemed to approach too close, she darted suddenly away and from a safe

distance uttered the soft sounds again. This continued for some days. It took a long while to get acquainted

with her, but finally it was accomplished and she joined us sometimes in our play.

I liked her from the first. She was of most pleasing appearance. She was very mild. Her eyes were the mildest

I had ever seen. In this she was quite unlike the rest of the girls and women of the Folk, who were born

viragos. She never made harsh, angry cries, and it seemed to be her nature to flee away from trouble rather

The mildness I have mentioned seemed to emanate from her whole being. Her bodily as well as facial

appearance was the cause of this. Her eyes were larger than most of her kind, and they were not so deepset,

while the lashes were longer and more regular. Nor was her nose so thick and squat. It had quite a bridge, and

the nostrils opened downward. Her incisors were not large, nor was her upper lip long and downhanging,

nor her lower lip protruding. She was not very hairy, except on the outsides of arms and legs and across the

shoulders; and while she was thinhipped, her calves were not twisted and gnarly.

I have often wondered, looking back upon her from the twentieth century through the medium of my dreams,

and it has always occurred to me that possibly she may have been related to the Fire People. Her father, or

mother, might well have come from that higher stock. While such things were not common, still they did

occur, and I have seen the proof of them with my own eyes, even to the extent of members of the horde

All of which is neither here nor there. The Swift One was radically different from any of the females of the

horde, and I had a liking for her from the first. Her mildness and gentleness attracted me. She was never

rough, and she never fought. She always ran away, and right here may be noted the significance of the

naming of her. She was a better climber than LopEar or I. When we played tag we could never catch her

except by accident, while she could catch us at will. She was remarkably swift in all her movements, and she

had a genius for judging distances that was equalled only by her daring. Excessively timid in all other

matters, she was without fear when it came to climbing or running through the trees, and LopEar and I were

She was an orphan. We never saw her with any one, and there was no telling how long she had lived alone in

the world. She must have learned early in her helpless childhood that safety lay only in flight. She was very

wise and very discreet. It became a sort of game with LopEar and me to try to find where she lived. It was

certain that she had a treeshelter somewhere, and not very far away; but trail her as we would, we could

never find it. She was willing enough to join with us at play in the daytime, but the secret of her

It must be remembered that the description I have just given of the Swift One is not the description that

would have been given by BigTooth, my other self of my dreams, my prehistoric ancestor. It is by the

medium of my dreams that I, the modern man, look through the eyes of BigTooth and see.

And so it is with much that I narrate of the events of that faroff time. There is a duality about my

impressions that is too confusing to inflict upon my readers. I shall merely pause here in my narrative to

indicate this duality, this perplexing mixing of personality. It is I, the modern, who look back across the

centuries and weigh and analyze the emotions and motives of BigTooth, my other self. He did not bother to

weigh and analyze. He was simplicity itself. He just lived events, without ever pondering why he lived them

As I, my real self, grew older, I entered more and more into the substance of my dreams. One may dream,

and even in the midst of the dream be aware that he is dreaming, and if the dream be bad, comfort himself

with the thought that it is only a dream. This is a common experience with all of us. And so it was that I, the

modern, often entered into my dreaming, and in the consequent strange dual personality was both actor and

spectator. And right often have I, the modern, been perturbed and vexed by the foolishness, illogic,

And one thing more, before I end this digression. Have you ever dreamed that you dreamed? Dogs dream,

horses dream, all animals dream. In BigTooth's day the halfmen dreamed, and when the dreams were bad

they howled in their sleep. Now I, the modern, have lain down with BigTooth and dreamed his dreams.

This is getting almost beyond the grip of the intellect, I know; but I do know that I have done this thing. And

let me tell you that the flying and crawling dreams of BigTooth were as vivid to him as the

For BigTooth also had an otherself, and when he slept that otherself dreamed back into the past, back to

the winged reptiles and the clash and the onset of dragons, and beyond that to the scurrying, rodentlike life

of the tiny mammals, and far remoter still, to the shoreslime of the primeval sea. I cannot, I dare not, say

more. It is all too vague and complicated and awful. I can only hint of those vast and terrific vistas through

which I have peered hazily at the progression of life, not upward from the ape to man, but upward from the

And now to return to my tale. I, BigTooth, knew not the Swift One as a creature of finer facial and bodily

symmetry, with longlashed eyes and a bridge to her nose and downopening nostrils that made toward

beauty. I knew her only as the mildeyed young female who made soft sounds and did not fight. I liked to

play with her, I knew not why, to seek food in her company, and to go birdnesting with her. And I must

confess she taught me things about treeclimbing. She was very wise, very strong, and no clinging skirts

It was about this time that a slight defection arose on the part of LopEar. He got into the habit of wandering

off in the direction of the tree where my mother lived. He had taken a liking to my vicious sister, and the

Chatterer had come to tolerate him. Also, there were several other young people, progeny of the monogamic

couples that lived in the neighborhood, and LopEar played with these young people.

I could never get the Swift One to join with them. Whenever I visited them she dropped behind and

disappeared. I remember once making a strong effort to persuade her. But she cast backward, anxious

glances, then retreated, calling to me from a tree. So it was that I did not make a practice of accompanying

LopEar when he went to visit his new friends. The Swift One and I were good comrades, but, try as I would,

I could never find her treeshelter. Undoubtedly, had nothing happened, we would have soon mated, for our

One morning, the Swift One not having put in an appearance, LopEar and I were down at the mouth of the

slough playing on the logs. We had scarcely got out on the water, when we were startled by a roar of rage. It

was RedEye. He was crouching on the edge of the timber jam and glowering his hatred at us. We were

badly frightened, for here was no narrowmouthed cave for refuge. But the twenty feet of water that

RedEye stood up erect and began beating his hairy chest with his fist. Our two logs were side by side, and

we sat on them and laughed at him. At first our laughter was halfhearted, tinged with fear, but as we became

convinced of his impotence we waxed uproarious. He raged and raged at us, and ground his teeth in helpless

fury. And in our fancied security we mocked and mocked him. We were ever shortsighted, we Folk.

RedEye abruptly ceased his breastbeating and toothgrinding, and ran across the timberjam to the shore.

And just as abruptly our merriment gave way to consternation. It was not RedEye's way to forego revenge

so easily. We waited in fear and trembling for whatever was to happen. It never struck us to paddle away. He

came back with great leaps across the jam, one huge hand filled with round, waterwashed pebbles. I am glad

that he was unable to find larger missiles, say stones weighing two or three pounds, for we were no more than

As it was, we were in no small danger. Zip! A tiny pebble whirred past with the force almost of a bullet.

LopEar and I began paddling frantically. Whizzipbang ! LopEar screamed with sudden anguish. The

pebble had struck him between the shoulders. Then I got one and yelled. The only thing that saved us was the

exhausting of RedEye's ammunition. He dashed back to the gravelbed for more, while LopEar and I

Gradually we drew out of range, though RedEye continued making trips for more ammunition and the

pebbles continued to whiz about us. Out in the centre of the slough there was a slight current, and in our

excitement we failed to notice that it was drifting us into the river. We paddled, and RedEye kept as close as

he could to us by following along the shore. Then he discovered larger rocks. Such ammunition increased his

range. One fragment, fully five pounds in weight, crashed on the log alongside of me, and such was its impact

that it drove a score of splinters, like fiery needles, into my leg. Had it struck me it would have killed me.

And then the river current caught us. So wildly were we paddling that RedEye was the first to notice it, and

our first warning was his yell of triumph. Where the edge of the current struck the sloughwater was a series

of eddies or small whirlpools. These caught our clumsy logs and whirled them end for end, back and forth

and around. We quit paddling and devoted our whole energy to holding the logs together alongside each

other. In the meanwhile RedEye continued to bombard us, the rock fragments falling about us, splashing

water on us, and menacing our lives. At the same time he gloated over us, wildly and vociferously.

It happened that there was a sharp turn in the river at the point where the slough entered, and the whole main

current of the river was deflected to the other bank. And toward that bank, which was the north bank, we

drifted rapidly, at the same time going downstream. This quickly took us out of range of RedEye, and the

last we saw of him was far out on a point of land, where he was jumping up and down and chanting a paean

Beyond holding the two logs together, LopEar and I did nothing. We were resigned to our fate, and we

remained resigned until we aroused to the fact that we were drifting along the north shore not a hundred feet

away. We began to paddle for it. Here the main force of the current was flung back toward the south shore,

and the result of our paddling was that we crossed the current where it was swiftest and narrowest. Before we

Our logs drifted slowly and at last grounded gently on the bank. LopEar and I crept ashore. The logs drifted

on out of the eddy and swept away down the stream. We looked at each other, but we did not laugh. We were

in a strange land, and it did not enter our minds that we could return to our own land in the same manner that

We had learned how to cross a river, though we did not know it. And this was something that no one else of

the Folk had ever done. We were the first of the Folk to set foot on the north bank of the river, and, for that

matter, I believe the last. That they would have done so in the time to come is undoubted; but the migration

of the Fire People, and the consequent migration of the survivors of the Folk, set back our evolution for

Indeed, there is no telling how disastrous was to be the outcome of the Fire People's migration. Personally, I

am prone to believe that it brought about the destruction of the Folk; that we, a branch of lower life budding

toward the human, were nipped short off and perished down by the roaring surf where the river entered the

sea. Of course, in such an eventuality, I remain to be accounted for; but I outrun my story, and such

I have no idea how long LopEar and I wandered in the land north of the river. We were like mariners

wrecked on a desert isle, so far as concerned the likelihood of our getting home again. We turned our backs

upon the river, and for weeks and months adventured in that wilderness where there were no Folk. It is very

difficult for me to reconstruct our journeying, and impossible to do it from day to day. Most of it is hazy and

indistinct, though here and there I have vivid recollections of things that happened.

Especially do I remember the hunger we endured on the mountains between Long Lake and Far Lake, and the

calf we caught sleeping in the thicket. Also, there are the Tree People who dwelt in the forest between Long

Lake and the mountains. It was they who chased us into the mountains and compelled us to travel on to Far

First, after we left the river, we worked toward the west till we came to a small stream that flowed through

marshlands. Here we turned away toward the north, skirting the marshes and after several days arriving at

what I have called Long Lake. We spent some time around its upper end, where we found food in plenty; and

then, one day, in the forest, we ran foul of the Tree People. These creatures were ferocious apes, nothing

more. And yet they were not so different from us. They were more hairy, it is true; their legs were a trifle

more twisted and gnarly, their eyes a bit smaller, their necks a bit thicker and shorter, and their nostrils

slightly more like orifices in a sunken surface; but they had no hair on their faces and on the palms of their

hands and the soles of their feet, and they made sounds similar to ours with somewhat similar meanings.

I found him first, a little withered, driedup old fellow, wrinkledfaced and blearyeyed and tottery. He was

legitimate prey. In our world there was no sympathy between the kinds, and he was not our kind. He was a

TreeMan, and he was very old. He was sitting at the foot of a treeevidently his tree, for we could see the

I pointed him out to LopEar, and we made a rush for him. He started to climb, but was too slow. I caught

him by the leg and dragged him back. Then we had fun. We pinched him, pulled his hair, tweaked his ears,

and poked twigs into him, and all the while we laughed with streaming eyes. His futile anger was most

absurd. He was a comical sight, striving to fan into flame the cold ashes of his youth, to resurrect his strength

dead and gone through the oozing of the yearsmaking woful faces in place of the ferocious ones he

intended, grinding his worn teeth together, beating his meagre chest with feeble fists.

Also, he had a cough, and he gasped and hacked and spluttered prodigiously. Every time he tried to climb the

tree we pulled him back, until at last he surrendered to his weakness and did no more than sit and weep. And

LopEar and I sat with him, our arms around each other, and laughed at his wretchedness.

From weeping he went to whining, and from whining to wailing, until at last he achieved a scream. This

alarmed us, but the more we tried to make him cease, the louder he screamed. And then, from not far away in

the forest, came a "Goek! Goek!" to our ears. To this there were answering cries, several of them, and from

very far off we could hear a big, bass "Goek! Goek! Goek!" Also, the "Whoowhoo !" call was rising in the

Then came the chase. It seemed it never would end. They raced us through the trees, the whole tribe of them,

and nearly caught us. We were forced to take to the ground, and here we had the advantage, for they were

truly the Tree People, and while they outclimbed us we outfooted them on the ground. We broke away

toward the north, the tribe howling on our track. Across the open spaces we gained, and in the brush they

caught up with us, and more than once it was nip and tuck. And as the chase continued, we realized that we

were not their kind, either, and that the bonds between us were anything but sympathetic.

They ran us for hours. The forest seemed interminable. We kept to the glades as much as possible, but they

always ended in more thick forest. Sometimes we thought we had escaped, and sat down to rest; but always,

before we could recover our breath, we would hear the hateful "Whoowhoo!" cries and the terrible "Goek!

Goek! Goek!" This latter sometimes terminated in a savage "Ha ha ha ha haaaaa!!!"

And in this fashion were we hunted through the forest by the exasperated Tree People. At last, by

midafternoon, the slopes began rising higher and higher and the trees were becoming smaller. Then we

came out on the grassy flanks of the mountains. Here was where we could make time, and here the Tree

The mountains were bleak and inhospitable, and three times that afternoon we tried to regain the woods. But

the Tree People were lying in wait, and they drove us back. LopEar and I slept that night in a dwarf tree, no

larger than a bush. Here was no security, and we would have been easy prey for any hunting animal that

In the morning, what of our newgained respect for the Tree People, we faced into the mountains. That we

had no definite plan, or even idea, I am confident. We were merely driven on by the danger we had escaped.

Of our wanderings through the mountains I have only misty memories. We were in that bleak region many

days, and we suffered much, especially from fear, it was all so new and strange. Also, we suffered from the

Itwas a desolate land of rocks and foaming streams and clattering cataracts. We climbed and descended

mighty canyons and gorges; and ever, from every view point, there spread out before us, in all directions,

range upon range, the unceasing mountains. We slept at night in holes and crevices, and on one cold night we

And then, at last, one hot midday, dizzy with hunger, we gained the divide. From this high backbone of earth,

to the north, across the diminishing, downfalling ranges, we caught a glimpse of a far lake. The sun shone

upon it, and about it were open, level grasslands, while to the eastward we saw the dark line of a

We were two days in gaining the lake, and we were weak with hunger; but on its shore, sleeping snugly in a

thicket, we found a partgrown calf. It gave us much trouble, for we knew no other way to kill than with our

hands. When we had gorged our fill, we carried the remainder of the meat to the eastward forest and hid it in

a tree. We never returned to that tree, for the shore of the stream that drained Far Lake was packed thick with

Westward from the lake stretched the grasslands, and here were multitudes of bison and wild cattle. Also

were there many packs of wild dogs, and as there were no trees it was not a safe place for us. We followed

north along the stream for days. Then, and for what reason I do not know, we abruptly left the stream and

swung to the east, and then to the southeast, through a great forest. I shall not bore you with our journey. I but

We came out upon the river, but we did not know it for our river. We had been lost so long that we had come

to accept the condition of being lost as habitual. As I look back I see clearly how our lives and destinies are

shaped by the merest chance. We did not know it was our riverthere was no way of telling; and if we had

never crossed it we would most probably have never returned to the horde; and I, the modern, the thousand

And yet LopEar and I wanted greatly to return. We had experienced homesickness on our journey, the

yearning for our own kind and land; and often had I had recollections of the Swift One, the young female

who made soft sounds, whom it was good to be with, and who lived by herself nobody knew where. My

recollections of her were accompanied by sensations of hunger, and these I felt when I was not hungry and

But to come back to the river. Food was plentiful, principally berries and succulent roots, and on the river

bank we played and lingered for days. And then the idea came to LopEar. It was a visible process, the

coming of the idea. I saw it. The expression in his eyes became plaintive and querulous, and he was greatly

perturbed. Then his eyes went muddy, as if he had lost his grip on the inchoate thought. This was followed by

the plaintive, querulous expression as the idea persisted and he clutched it anew. He looked at me, and at the

river and the far shore. He tried to speak, but had no sounds with which to express the idea. The result was a

gibberish that made me laugh. This angered him, and he grabbed me suddenly and threw me on my back. Of

course we fought, and in the end I chased him up a tree, where he secured a long branch and poked me every

And the idea had gone glimmering. I did not know, and he had forgotten. But the next morning it awoke in

him again. Perhaps it was the homing instinct in him asserting itself that made the idea persist. At any rate it

was there, and clearer than before. He led me down to the water, where a log had grounded in an eddy. I

thought he was minded to play, as we had played in the mouth of the slough. Nor did I change my mind as I

It was not until we were on the logs, side by side and holding them together, and had paddled out into the

current, that I learned his intention. He paused to point at the far shore, and resumed his paddling, at the same

time uttering loud and encouraging cries. I understood, and we paddled energetically. The swift current

caught us, flung us toward the south shore, but before we could make a landing flung us back toward the

Here arose dissension. Seeing the north shore so near, I began to paddle for it. LopEar tried to paddle for the

south shore. The logs swung around in circles, and we got nowhere, and all the time the forest was flashing

past as we drifted down the stream. We could not fight. We knew better than to let go the grips of hands and

feet that held the logs together. But we chattered and abused each other with our tongues until the current

flung us toward the south bank again. That was now the nearest goal, and together and amicably we paddled

for it. We landed in an eddy, and climbed directly into the trees to reconnoitre.

It was not until the night of our first day on the south bank of the river that we discovered the Fire People.

What must have been a band of wandering hunters went into camp not far from the tree in which LopEar

and I had elected to roost for the night. The voices of the Fire People at first alarmed us, but later, when

darkness had come, we were attracted by the fire. We crept cautiously and silently from tree to tree till we got

In an open space among the trees, near to the river, the fire was burning. About it were half a dozen

FireMen. LopEar clutched me suddenly, and I could feel him tremble. I looked more closely, and saw the

wizened little old hunter who had shot BrokenTooth out of the tree years before. When he got up and

walked about, throwing fresh wood upon the fire, I saw that he limped with his crippled leg. Whatever it was,

it was a permanent injury. He seemed more dried up and wizened than ever, and the hair on his face was quite

The other hunters were young men. I noted, lying near them on the ground, their bows and arrows, and I

knew the weapons for what they were. The FireMen wore animal skins around their waists and across their

shoulders. Their arms and legs, however, were bare, and they wore no footgear. As I have said before, they

were not quite so hairy as we of the Folk. They did not have large heads, and between them and the Folk

there was very little difference in the degree of the slant of the head back from the eyes.

They were less stooped than we, less springy in their movements. Their backbones and hips and kneejoints

seemed more rigid. Their arms were not so long as ours either, and I did not notice that they ever balanced

themselves when they walked, by touching the ground on either side with their hands. Also, their muscles

were more rounded and symmetrical than ours, and their faces were more pleasing. Their nose orifices

opened downward; likewise the bridges of their noses were more developed, did not look so squat nor

crushed as ours. Their lips were less flabby and pendent, and their eyeteeth did not look so much like fangs.

However, they were quite as thinhipped as we, and did not weigh much more. Take it all in all, they were

less different from us than were we from the Tree People. Certainly, all three kinds were related, and not so

The fire around which they sat was especially attractive. LopEar and I sat for hours, watching the flames

and smoke. It was most fascinating when fresh fuel was thrown on and showers of sparks went flying

upward. I wanted to come closer and look at the fire, but there was no way. We were crouching in the forks

of a tree on the edge of the open space, and we did not dare run the risk of being discovered.

The FireMen squatted around the fire and slept with their heads bowed forward on their knees. They did not

sleep soundly. Their ears twitched in their sleep, and they were restless. Every little while one or another got

up and threw more wood upon the fire. About the circle of light in the forest, in the darkness beyond, roamed

hunting animals. LopEar and I could tell them by their sounds. There were wild dogs and a hyena, and for a

time there was a great yelping and snarling that awakened on the instant the whole circle of sleeping

Once a lion and a lioness stood beneath our tree and gazed out with bristling hair and blinking eyes. The lion

licked his chops and was nervous with eagerness, as if he wanted to go forward and make a meal. But the

lioness was more cautious. It was she that discovered us, and the pair stood and looked up at us, silently, with

twitching, scenting nostrils. Then they growled, looked once again at the fire, and turned away into the forest.

For a much longer time LopEar and I remained and watched. Now and again we could hear the crashing of

heavy bodies in the thickets and underbrush, and from the darkness of the other side, across the circle, we

could see eyes gleaming in the firelight. In the distance we heard a lion roar, and from far off came the

scream of some stricken animal, splashing and floundering in a drinkingplace. Also, from the river, came a

In the morning, after having had our sleep, we crept back to the fire. It was still smouldering, and the

FireMen were gone. We made a circle through the forest to make sure, and then we ran to the fire. I wanted

to see what it was like, and between thumb and finger I picked up a glowing coal. My cry of pain and fear, as

I dropped it, stampeded LopEar into the trees, and his flight frightened me after him.

The next time we came back more cautiously, and we avoided the glowing coals. We fell to imitating the

FireMen. We squatted down by the fire, and with heads bent forward on our knees, made believe to sleep.

Then we mimicked their speech, talking to each other in their fashion and making a great gibberish. I

remembered seeing the wizened old hunter poke the fire with a stick. I poked the fire with a stick, turning up

masses of live coals and clouds of white ashes. This was great sport, and soon we were coated white with the

It was inevitable that we should imitate the FireMen in replenishing the fire. We tried it first with small

pieces of wood. It was a success. The wood flamed up and crackled, and we danced and gibbered with

delight. Then we began to throw on larger pieces of wood. We put on more and more, until we had a mighty

fire. We dashed excitedly back and forth, dragging dead limbs and branches from out the forest. The flames

soared higher and higher, and the smokecolumn outtowered the trees. There was a tremendous snapping

and crackling and roaring. It was the most monumental work we had ever effected with our hands, and we

were proud of it. We, too, were FireMen, we thought, as we danced there, white gnomes in the

The dried grass and underbrush caught fire, but we did not notice it. Suddenly a great tree on the edge of the

We looked at it with startled eyes. The heat of it drove us back. Another tree caught, and another, and then

half a dozen. We were frightened. The monster had broken loose. We crouched down in fear, while the fire

ate around the circle and hemmed us in. Into LopEar's eyes came the plaintive look that always

accompanied incomprehension, and I know that in my eyes must have been the same look. We huddled, with

our arms around each other, until the heat began to reach us and the odor of burning hair was in our nostrils.

Then we made a dash of it, and fled away westward through the forest, looking back and laughing as we ran.

By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land, made, as we afterward discovered, by a great curve of

the river that almost completed a circle. Right across the neck lay bunched several low and partly wooded

hills. Over these we climbed, looking backward at the forest which had become a sea of flame that swept

eastward before a rising wind. We continued to the west, following the river bank, and before we knew it we

This abidingplace was a splendid strategic selection. It was a peninsula, protected on three sides by the

curving river. On only one side was it accessible by land. This was the narrow neck of the peninsula, and here

the several low hills were a natural obstacle. Practically isolated from the rest of the world, the Fire People

must have here lived and prospered for a long time. In fact, I think it was their prosperity that was responsible

for the subsequent migration that worked such calamity upon the Folk. The Fire People must have increased

in numbers until they pressed uncomfortably against the bounds of their habitat. They were expanding, and in

the course of their expanding they drove the Folk before them, and settled down themselves in the caves and

But LopEar and I little dreamed of all this when we found ourselves in the Fire People's stronghold. We had

but one idea, and that was to get away, though we could not forbear humoring our curiosity by peeping out

upon the village. For the first time we saw the women and children of the Fire People. The latter ran for the

The Fire People, like ourselves, lived in caves. The open space in front of the caves sloped down to the river,

and in the open space burned many small fires. But whether or not the Fire People cooked their food, I do not

know. LopEar and I did not see them cook. Yet it is my opinion that they surely must have performed some

sort of rude cookery. Like us, they carried water in gourds from the river. There was much coming and going,

and loud cries made by the women and children. The latter played about and cut up antics quite in the same

way as did the children of the Folk, and they more nearly resembled the children of the Folk than did the

LopEar and I did not linger long. We saw some of the partgrown boys shooting with bow and arrow, and

we sneaked back into the thicker forest and made our way to the river. And there we found a catamaran, a

real catamaran, one evidently made by some FireMan. The two logs were small and straight, and were

This time the idea occurred simultaneously to us. We were trying to escape out of the Fire People's territory.

What better way than by crossing the river on these logs? We climbed on board and shoved off. A sudden

something gripped the catamaran and flung it downstream violently against the bank. The abrupt stoppage

almost whipped us off into the water. The catamaran was tied to a tree by a rope of twisted roots. This we

By the time we had paddled well out into the current, we had drifted so far downstream that we were in full

view of the Fire People's abidingplace. So occupied were we with our paddling, our eyes fixed upon the

other bank, that we knew nothing until aroused by a yell from the shore. We looked around. There were the

Fire People, many of them, looking at us and pointing at us, and more were crawling out of the caves. We sat

up to watch, and forgot all about paddling. There was a great hullabaloo on the shore. Some of the FireMen

discharged their bows at us, and a few of the arrows fell near us, but the range was too great.

It was a great day for LopEar and me. To the east the conflagration we had started was filling half the sky

with smoke. And here we were, perfectly safe in the middle of the river, encircling the Fire People's

stronghold. We sat and laughed at them as we dashed by, swinging south, and southeast to east, and even to

northeast, and then east again, southeast and south and on around to the west, a great double curve where the

As we swept on to the west, the Fire People far behind, a familiar scene flashed upon our eyes.

It was the great drinkingplace, where we had wandered once or twice to watch the circus of the animals

when they came down to drink. Beyond it, we knew, was the carrot patch, and beyond that the caves and the

abidingplace of the horde. We began to paddle for the bank that slid swiftly past, and before we knew it we

were down upon the drinkingplaces used by the horde. There were the women and children, the water

carriers, a number of them, filling their gourds. At sight of us they stampeded madly up the runways,

We landed, and of course we neglected to tie up the catamaran, which floated off down the river. Right

cautiously we crept up a runway. The Folk had all disappeared into their holes, though here and there we

could see a face peering out at us. There was no sign of RedEye. We were home again. And that night we

slept in our own little cave high up on the cliff, though first we had to evict a couple of pugnacious

The months came and went. The drama and tragedy of the future were yet to come upon the stage, and in the

meantime we pounded nuts and lived. Itvas a good year, I remember, for nuts. We used to fill gourds with

nuts and carry them to the poundingplaces. We placed them in depressions in the rock, and, with a piece of

It was the fall of the year when LopEar and I returned from our long adventurejourney, and the winter that

followed was mild. I made frequent trips to the neighborhood of my old hometree, and frequently I searched

the whole territory that lay between the blueberry swamp and the mouth of the slough where LopEar and I

had learned navigation, but no clew could I get of the Swift One. She had disappeared. And I wanted her. I

was impelled by that hunger which I have mentioned, and which was akin to physical hunger, albeit it came

Life was not monotonous at the caves, however. There was RedEye to be considered. LopEar and I never

knew a moment's peace except when we were in our own little cave. In spite of the enlargement of the

entrance we had made, it was still a tight squeeze for us to get in. And though from time to time we continued

to enlarge, it was still too small for RedEye's monstrous body. But he never stormed our cave again. He had

learned the lesson well, and he carried on his neck a bulging lump to show where I had hit him with the rock.

This lump never went away, and it was prominent enough to be seen at a distance. I often took great delight

in watching that evidence of my handiwork; and sometimes, when I was myself assuredly safe, the sight of it

While the other Folk would not have come to our rescue had RedEye proceeded to tear LopEar and me to

pieces before their eyes, nevertheless they sympathized with us. Possibly it was not sympathy but the way

they expressed their hatred for RedEye; at any rate they always warned us of his approach. Whether in the

forest, at the drinkingplaces, or in the open space before the caves, they were always quick to warn us. Thus

Once he nearly got me. It was early in the morning, and the Folk were not yet up. The surprise was complete.

I was cut off from the way up the cliff to my cave. Before I knew it I had dashed into the doublecave,the

cave where LopEar had first eluded me long years before, and where old SaberTooth had come to

discomfiture when he pursued the two Folk. By the time I had got through the connecting passage between

the two caves, I discovered that RedEye was not following me. The next moment he charged into the cave

from the outside. I slipped back through the passage, and he charged out and around and in upon me again. I

He kept me there half a day before he gave up. After that, when LopEar and I were reasonably sure of

gaining the doublecave, we did not retreat up the cliff to our own cave when RedEye came upon the scene.

All we did was to keep an eye on him and see that he did not cut across our line of retreat.

It was during this winter that RedEye killed his latest wife with abuse and repeated beatings. I have called

him an atavism, but in this he was worse than an atavism, for the males of the lower animals do not maltreat

and murder their mates. In this I take it that RedEye, in spite of his tremendous atavistic tendencies,

foreshadowed the coming of man, for it is the males of the human species only that murder their mates.

As was to be expected, with the doing away of one wife RedEye proceeded to get another. He decided upon

the Singing One. She was the granddaughter of old MarrowBone, and the daughter of the Hairless One. She

was a young thing, greatly given to singing at the mouth of her cave in the twilight, and she had but recently

mated with CrookedLeg. He was a quiet individual, molesting no one and not given to bickering with his

fellows. He was no fighter anyway. He was small and lean, and not so active on his legs as the rest of us.

RedEye never committed a more outrageous deed. It was in the quiet at the end of the day, when we began

to congregate in the open space before climbing into our caves. Suddenly the Singing One dashed up a

runway from a drinkingplace, pursued by RedEye. She ran to her husband. Poor little CrookedLeg was

terribly scared. But he was a hero. He knew that death was upon him, yet he did not run away. He stood up,

RedEye roared with rage. It was an offence to him that any of the Folk should dare to withstand him. His

hand shot out and clutched CrookedLeg by the neck. The latter sank his teeth into RedEye's arm; but the

next moment, with a broken neck, CrookedLeg was floundering and squirming on the ground. The Singing

One screeched and gibbered. RedEye seized her by the hair of her head and dragged her toward his cave. He

handled her roughly when the climb began, and he dragged and hauled her up into the cave.

We were very angry, insanely, vociferously angry. Beating our chests, bristling, and gnashing our teeth, we

gathered together in our rage. We felt the prod of gregarious instinct, the drawing together as though for

united action, the impulse toward cooperation. In dim ways this need for united action was impressed upon

us. But there was no way to achieve it because there was no way to express it. We did not turn to, all of us,

and destroy RedEye, because we lacked a vocabulary. We were vaguely thinking thoughts for which there

were no thoughtsymbols. These thoughtsymbols were yet to be slowly and painfully invented.

We tried to freight sound with the vague thoughts that flitted like shadows through our consciousness. The

Hairless One began to chatter loudly. By his noises he expressed anger against RedEye and desire to hurt

RedEye. Thus far he got, and thus far we understood. But when he tried to express the cooperative impulse

that stirred within him, his noises became gibberish. Then BigFace, with browbristling and

chestpounding, began to chatter. One after another of us joined in the orgy of rage, until even old

MarrowBone was mumbling and spluttering with his cracked voice and withered lips. Some one seized a

stick and began pounding a log. In a moment he had struck a rhythm. Unconsciously, our yells and

exclamations yielded to this rhythm. It had a soothing effect upon us; and before we knew it, our rage

These heehee councils splendidly illustrate the inconsecutiveness and inconsequentiality of the Folk. Here

were we, drawn together by mutual rage and the impulse toward cooperation, led off into forgetfulness by the

establishment of a rude rhythm. We were sociable and gregarious, and these singing and laughing councils

satisfied us. In ways the heehee council was an adumbration of the councils of primitive man, and of the

great national assemblies and international conventions of latterday man. But we Folk of the Younger

World lacked speech, and whenever we were so drawn together we precipitated babel, out of which arose a

unanimity of rhythm that contained within itself the essentials of art yet to come. It was art nascent.

There was nothing longcontinued about these rhythms that we struck. A rhythm was soon lost, and

pandemonium reigned until we could find the rhythm again or start a new one. Sometimes half a dozen

rhythms would be swinging simultaneously, each rhythm backed by a group that strove ardently to drown out

In the intervals of pandemonium, each chattered, cut up, hooted, screeched, and danced, himself sufficient

unto himself, filled with his own ideas and volitions to the exclusion of all others, a veritable centre of the

universe, divorced for the time being from any unanimity with the other universecentres leaping and yelling

around him. Then would come the rhythma clapping of hands; the beating of a stick upon a log; the

example of one that leaped with repetitions; or the chanting of one that uttered, explosively and regularly,

with inflection that rose and fell, "Abang, abang! Abang, abang!" One after another of the selfcentred

Folk would yield to it, and soon all would be dancing or chanting in chorus. "Haah, haah, haahha!" was

And so, with mad antics, leaping, reeling, and overbalancing, we danced and sang in the sombre twilight of

the primeval world, inducing forgetfulness, achieving unanimity, and working ourselves up into sensuous

frenzy. And so it was that our rage against RedEye was soothed away by art, and we screamed the wild

choruses of the heehee council until the night warned us of its terrors, and we crept away to our holes in the

rocks, calling softly to one another, while the stars came out and darkness settled down.

We were afraid only of the dark. We had no germs of religion, no conceptions of an unseen world. We knew

only the real world, and the things we feared were the real things, the concrete dangers, the fleshandblood

animals that preyed. It was they that made us afraid of the dark, for darkness was the time of the hunting

animals. It was then that they came out of their lairs and pounced upon one from the dark wherein they lurked

Possibly it was out of this fear of the real denizens of the dark that the fear of the unreal denizens was later to

develop and to culminate in a whole and mighty unseen world. As imagination grew it is likely that the fear

of death increased until the Folk that were to come projected this fear into the dark and peopled it with spirits.

I think the Fire People had already begun to be afraid of the dark in this fashion; but the reasons we Folk had

for breaking up our heehee councils and fleeing to our holes were old SaberTooth, the lions and the

LopEar got married. It was the second winter after our adventurejourney, and it was most unexpected. He

gave me no warning. The first I knew was one twilight when I climbed the cliff to our cave. I squeezed into

the entrance and there I stopped. There was no room for me. LopEar and his mate were in possession, and

she was none other than my sister, the daughter of my stepfather, the Chatterer.

I tried to force my way in. There was space only for two, and that space was already occupied. Also, they had

me at a disadvantage, and, what of the scratching and hairpulling I received, I was glad to retreat. I slept that

night, and for many nights, in the connecting passage of the doublecave. From my experience it seemed

reasonably safe. As the two Folk had dodged old SaberTooth, and as I had dodged RedEye, so it seemed to

me that I could dodge the hunting animals by going back and forth between the two caves.

I had forgotten the wild dogs. They were small enough to go through any passage that I could squeeze

through. One night they nosed me out. Had they entered both caves at the same time they would have got me.

As it was, followed by some of them through the passage, I dashed out the mouth of the other cave. Outside

were the rest of the wild dogs. They sprang for me as I sprang for the cliffwall and began to climb. One of

them, a lean and hungry brute, caught me in midleap. His teeth sank into my thighmuscles, and he nearly

dragged me back. He held on, but I made no effort to dislodge him, devoting my whole effort to climbing out

Not until I was safe from them did I turn my attention to that live agony on my thigh. And then, a dozen feet

above the snapping pack that leaped and scrambled against the wall and fell back, I got the dog by the throat

and slowly throttled him. I was a long time doing it. He clawed and ripped my hair and hide with his

hindpaws, and ever he jerked and lunged with his weight to drag me from the wall.

At last his teeth opened and released my torn flesh. I carried his body up the cliff with me, and perched out

the night in the entrance of my old cave, wherein were LopEar and my sister. But first I had to endure a

storm of abuse from the aroused horde for being the cause of the disturbance. I had my revenge. From time to

time, as the noise of the pack below eased down, I dropped a rock and started it up again. Whereupon, from

all around, the abuse of the exasperated Folk began afresh. In the morning I shared the dog with LopEar and

his wife, and for several days the three of us were neither vegetarians nor fruitarians.

LopEar's marriage was not a happy one, and the consolation about it is that it did not last very long. Neither

he nor I was happy during that period. I was lonely. I suffered the inconvenience of being cast out of my safe

little cave, and somehow I did not make it up with any other of the young males. I suppose my

I might have married, it is true; and most likely I should have married had it not been for the dearth of

females in the horde. This dearth, it is fair to assume, was caused by the exorbitance of RedEye, and it

illustrates the menace he was to the existence of the horde. Then there was the Swift One, whom I had not

At any rate, during the period of LopEar's marriage I knocked about from pillar to post, in danger every

night that I slept, and never comfortable. One of the Folk died, and his widow was taken into the cave of

another one of the Folk. I took possession of the abandoned cave, but it was widemouthed, and after

RedEye nearly trapped me in it one day, I returned to sleeping in the passage of the doublecave. During

the summer, however, I used to stay away from the caves for weeks, sleeping in a treeshelter I made near

I have said that LopEar was not happy. My sister was the daughter of the Chatterer, and she made

LopEar's life miserable for him. In no other cave was there so much squabbling and bickering. If RedEye

was a Bluebeard, LopEar was henpecked; and I imagine that RedEye was too shrewd ever to covet

Fortunately for LopEar, she died. An unusual thing happened that summer. Late, almost at the end of it, a

second crop of the stringyrooted carrots sprang up. These unexpected secondcrop roots were young and

juicy and tender, and for some time the carrotpatch was the favorite feedingplace of the horde. One

morning, early, several score of us were there making our breakfast. On one side of me was the Hairless One.

Beyond him were his father and son, old MarrowBone and LongLip. On the other side of me were my

There was no warning. On the sudden, both the Hairless One and my sister sprang and screamed. At the same

instant I heard the thud of the arrows that transfixed them. The next instant they were down on the ground,

floundering and gasping, and the rest of us were stampeding for the trees. An arrow drove past me and

entered the ground, its feathered shaft vibrating and oscillating from the impact of its arrested flight. I

remember clearly how I swerved as I ran, to go past it, and that I gave it a needlessly wide berth. I must have

LopEar took a smashing fall as he ran beside me. An arrow had driven through the calf of his leg and

tripped him. He tried to run, but was tripped and thrown by it a second time. He sat up, crouching, trembling

with fear, and called to me pleadingly. I dashed back. He showed me the arrow. I caught hold of it to pull it

out, but the consequent hurt made him seize my hand and stop me. A flying arrow passed between us.

Another struck a rock, splintered, and fell to the ground. This was too much. I pulled, suddenly, with all my

might. LopEar screamed as the arrow came out, and struck at me angrily. But the next moment we were in

I looked back. Old MarrowBone, deserted and far behind, was tottering silently along in his handicapped

race with death. Sometimes he almost fell, and once he did fall; but no more arrows were coming. He

scrambled weakly to his feet. Age burdened him heavily, but he did not want to die. The three FireMen,

who were now running forward from their forest ambush, could easily have got him, but they did not try.

Perhaps he was too old and tough. But they did want the Hairless One and my sister, for as I looked back

from the trees I could see the FireMen beating in their heads with rocks. One of the FireMen was the

We went on through the trees toward the cavesan excited and disorderly mob that drove before it to their

holes all the small life of the forest, and that set the bluejays screaming impudently. Now that there was no

immediate danger, LongLip waited for his grandfather, MarrowBone; and with the gap of a generation

And so it was that LopEar became a bachelor once more. That night I slept with him in the old cave, and our

old life of chumming began again. The loss of his mate seemed to cause him no grief. At least he showed no

signs of it, nor of need for her. It was the wound in his leg that seemed to bother him, and it was all of a week

MarrowBone was the only old member in the horde. Sometimes, on looking back upon him, when the

vision of him is most clear, I note a striking resemblance between him and the father of my father's gardener.

The gardener's father was very old, very wrinkled and withered; and for all the world, when he peered

through his tiny, bleary eyes and mumbled with his toothless gums, he looked and acted like old

MarrowBone. This resemblance, as a child, used to frighten me. I always ran when I saw the old man

tottering along on his two canes. Old MarrowBone even had a bit of sparse and straggly white beard that

As I have said, MarrowBone was the only old member of the horde. He was an exception. The Folk never

lived to old age. Middle age was fairly rare. Death by violence was the common way of death. They died as

my father had died, as BrokenTooth had died, as my sister and the Hairless One had just diedabruptly and

brutally, in the full possession of their faculties, in the full swing and rush of life. Natural death? To die

No one died of old age among the Folk. I never knew of a case. Even MarrowBone did not die that way, and

he was the only one in my generation who had the chance. A bad rippling, any serious accidental or

temporary impairment of the faculties, meant swift death. As a rule, these deaths were not witnessed.

Members of the horde simply dropped out of sight. They left the caves in the morning, and they never came

This inroad of the Fire People on the carrotpatch was the beginning of the end, though we did not know it.

The hunters of the Fire People began to appear more frequently as the time went by. They came in twos and

threes, creeping silently through the forest, with their flying arrows able to annihilate distance and bring

down prey from the top of the loftiest tree without themselves climbing into it. The bow and arrow was like

an enormous extension of their leaping and striking muscles, so that, virtually, they could leap and kill at a

hundred feet and more. This made them far more terrible than SaberTooth himself. And then they were very

wise. They had speech that enabled them more effectively to reason, and in addition they understood

We Folk came to be very circumspect when we were in the forest. We were more alert and vigilant and timid.

No longer were the trees a protection to be relied upon. No longer could we perch on a branch and laugh

down at our carnivorous enemies on the ground. The Fire People were carnivorous, with claws and fangs a

hundred feet long, the most terrible of all the hunting animals that ranged the primeval world.

One morning, before the Folk had dispersed to the forest, there was a panic among the watercarriers and

those who had gone down to the river to drink. The whole horde fled to the caves. It was our habit, at such

times, to flee first and investigate afterward. We waited in the mouths of our caves and watched. After some

time a FireMan stepped cautiously into the open space. It was the little wizened old hunter. He stood for a

long time and watched us, looking our caves and the cliffwall up and down. He descended one of the

runways to a drinkingplace, returning a few minutes later by another runway. Again he stood and

watched us carefully, for a long time. Then he turned on his heel and limped into the forest, leaving us calling

I found her down in the old neighborhood near the blueberry swamp, where my mother lived and where

LopEar and I had built our first treeshelter. It was unexpected. As I came under the tree I heard the familiar

soft sound and looked up. There she was, the Swift One, sitting on a limb and swinging her legs back and

I stood still for some time. The sight of her had made me very happy. And then an unrest and a pain began to

creep in on this happiness. I started to climb the tree after her, and she retreated slowly out the limb. Just as I

reached for her, she sprang through the air and landed in the branches of the next tree. From amid the rustling

leaves she peeped out at me and made soft sounds. I leaped straight for her, and after an exciting chase the

situation was duplicated, for there she was, making soft sounds and peeping out from the leaves of a third

It was borne in upon me that somehow it was different now from the old days before LopEar and I had gone

on our adventurejourney. I wanted her, and I knew that I wanted her. And she knew it, too. That was why

she would not let me come near her. I forgot that she was truly the Swift One, and that in the art of climbing

she had been my teacher. I pursued her from tree to tree, and ever she eluded me, peeping back at me with

kindly eyes, making soft sounds, and dancing and leaping and teetering before me just out of reach. The more

she eluded me, the more I wanted to catch her, and the lengthening shadows of the afternoon bore witness to

As I pursued her, or sometimes rested in an adjoining tree and watched her, I noticed the change in her. She

was larger, heavier, more grownup. Her lines were rounder, her muscles fuller, and there was about her that

indefinite something of maturity that was new to her and that incited me on. Three years she had been

gonethree years at the very least, and the change in her was marked. I say three years; it is as near as I can

measure the time. A fourth year may have elapsed, which I have confused with the happenings of the other

three years. The more I think of it, the more confident I am that it must be four years that she was away.

Where she went, why she went, and what happened to her during that time, I do not know. There was no way

for her to tell me, any more than there was a way for LopEar and me to tell the Folk what we had seen when

we were away. Like us, the chance is she had gone off on an adventurejourney, and by herself. On the other

hand, it is possible that RedEye may have been the cause of her going. It is quite certain that he must have

come upon her from time to time, wandering in the woods; and if he had pursued her there is no question but

that it would have been sufficient to drive her away. From subsequent events, I am led to believe that she

must have travelled far to the south, across a range of mountains and down to the banks of a strange river,

away from any of her kind. Many Tree People lived down there, and I think it must have been they who

finally drove her back to the horde and to me. My reasons for this I shall explain later.

The shadows grew longer, and I pursued more ardently than ever, and still I could not catch her. She made

believe that she was trying desperately to escape me, and all the time she managed to keep just beyond reach.

I forgot everythingtime, the oncoming of night, and my meateating enemies. I was insane with love of

her, and withanger, too, because she would not let me come up with her. It was strange how this anger

As I have said, I forgot everything. In racing across an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes. They

did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me, but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a python

that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to a treetop. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift One was

going out of sight, and I sprang back to the ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there was my old

enemy, the hyena. From my conduct he was sure something was going to happen, and he followed me for an

hour. Once we exasperated a band of wild pigs, and they took after us. The Swift One dared a wide leap

between trees that was too much for me. I had to take to the ground. There were the pigs. I didn't care. I

struck the earth within a yard of the nearest one. They flanked me as I ran, and chased me into two different

trees out of the line of my pursuit of the Swift One. I ventured the ground again, doubled back, and crossed a

wide open space, with the whole band grunting, bristling, and tuskgnashing at my heels.

If I had tripped or stumbled in that open space, there would have been no chance for me. But I didn't. And I

didn't care whether I did or not. I was in such mood that I would have faced old SaberTooth himself, or a

score of arrowshooting Fire People. Such was the madness of love...with me. With the Swift One it was

different. She was very wise. She did not take any real risks, and I remember, on looking back across the

centuries to that wild lovechase, that when the pigs delayed me she did not run away very fast, but waited,

rather, for me to take up the pursuit again. Also, she directed her retreat before me, going always in the

At last came the dark. She led me around the mossy shoulder of a canyon wall that outjutted among the

trees. After that we penetrated a dense mass of underbrush that scraped and ripped me in passing. But she

never ruffled a hair. She knew the way. In the midst of the thicket was a large oak. I was very close to her

when she climbed it; and in the forks, in the nestshelter I had sought so long and vainly, I caught her.

The hyena had taken our trail again, and he now sat down on the ground and made hungry noises. But we did

not mind, and we laughed at him when he snarled and went away through the thicket. It was the springtime,

and the night noises were many and varied. As was the custom at that time of the year, there was much

fighting among the animals. From the nest we could hear the squealing and neighing of wild horses, the

trumpeting of elephants, and the roaring of lions. But the moon came out, and the air was warm, and we

I remember, next morning, that we came upon two ruffled cockbirds that fought so ardently that I went right

up to them and caught them by their necks. Thus did the Swift One and I get our wedding breakfast. They

were delicious. It was easy to catch birds in the spring of the year. There was one night that year when two

elk fought in the moonlight, while the Swift One and I watched from the trees; and we saw a lion and lioness

There is no telling how long we might have lived in the Swift One's treeshelter. But one day, while we were

away, the tree was struck by lightning. Great limbs were riven, and the nest was demolished. I started to

rebuild, but the Swift One would have nothing to do with it. As I was to learn, she was greatly afraid of

lightning, and I could not persuade her back into the tree. So it came about, our honeymoon over, that we

went to the caves to live. As LopEar had evicted me from the cave when he got married, I now evicted him;

and the Swift One and I settled down in it, while he slept at night in the connecting passage of the double

And with our coming to live with the horde came trouble. RedEye had had I don't know how many wives

since the Singing One. She had gone the way of the rest. At present he had a little, soft, spiritless thing that

whimpered and wept all the time, whether he beat her or not; and her passing was a question of very little

time. Before she passed, even, RedEye set his eyes on the Swift One; and when she passed, the persecution

Well for her that she was the Swift One, that she had that amazing aptitude for swift flight through the trees.

She needed all her wisdom and daring in order to keep out of the clutches of RedEye. I could not help her.

He was so powerful a monster that he could have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I carried an

injured shoulder that ached and went lame in rainy weather and that was a mark of is handiwork.

The Swift One was sick at the time I received this injury. It must have been a touch of the malaria from which

we sometimes suffered; but whatever it was, it made her dull and heavy. She did not have the accustomed

spring to her muscles, and was indeed in poor shape for flight when RedEye cornered her near the lair of the

wild dogs, several miles south from the caves. Usually, she would have circled around him, beaten him in the

straightaway, and gained the protection of our smallmouthed cave. But she could not circle him. She was

too dull and slow. Each time he headed her off, until she gave over the attempt and devoted her energies

Had she not been sick it would have been child's play for her to elude him; but as it was, it required all her

caution and cunning. It was to her advantage that she could travel on thinner branches than he, and make

wider leaps. Also, she was an unerring judge of distance, and she had an instinct for knowing the strength of

It was an interminable chase. Round and round and back and forth for long stretches through the forest they

dashed. There was great excitement among the other Folk. They set up a wild chattering, that was loudest

when RedEye was at a distance, and that hushed when the chase led him near. They were impotent

onlookers. The females screeched and gibbered, and the males beat their chests in helpless rage. Big Face

was especially angry, and though he hushed his racket when RedEye drew near, he did not hush it to the

As for me, I played no brave part. I know I was anything but a hero. Besides, of what use would it have been

for me to encounter RedEye? He was the mighty monster, the abysmal brute, and there was no hope for me

in a conflict of strength. He would have killed me, and the situation would have remained unchanged. He

would have caught the Swift One before she could have gained the cave. As it was, I could only look on in

helpless fury, and dodge out of the way and cease my raging when he came too near.

The hours passed. It was late afternoon. And still the chase went on. RedEye was bent upon exhausting the

Swift One. He deliberately ran her down. After a long time she began to tire and could no longer maintain her

headlong flight. Then it was that she began going far out on the thinnest branches, where he could not follow.

Thus she might have got a breathing spell, but RedEye was fiendish. Unable to follow her, he dislodged her

by shaking her off. With all his strength and weight, he would shake the branch back and forth until he

snapped her off as one would snap a fly from a whiplash. The first time, she saved herself by falling into

branches lower down. Another time, though they did not save her from the ground, they broke her fall. Still

another time, so fiercely did he snap her from the branch, she was flung clear across a gap into another tree. It

was remarkable, the way she gripped and saved herself. Only when driven to it did she seek the temporary

safety of the thin branches. But she was so tired that she could not otherwise avoid him, and time after time

Still the chase went on, and still the Folk screeched, beat their chests, and gnashed their teeth. Then came the

end. It was almost twilight. Trembling, panting, struggling for breath, the Swift One clung pitiably to a high

thin branch. It was thirty feet to the ground, and nothing intervened. RedEye swung back and forth on the

branch farther down. It became a pendulum, swinging wider and wider with every lunge of his weight. Then

he reversed suddenly, just before the downward swing was completed. Her grips were torn loose, and,

But she righted herself in midair and descended feet first. Ordinarily, from such a height, the spring in her

legs would have eased the shock of impact with the ground. But she was exhausted. She could not exercise

this spring. Her legs gave under her, having only partly met the shock, and she crashed on over on her side.

This, as it turned out, did not injure her, but it did knock the breath from her lungs. She lay helpless and

RedEye rushed upon her and seized her. With his gnarly fingers twisted into the hair of her head, he stood

up and roared in triumph and defiance at the awed Folk that watched from the trees. Then it was that I went

mad. Caution was thrown to the winds; forgotten was the will to live of my flesh. Even as RedEye roared,

from behind I dashed upon him. So unexpected was my charge that I knocked him off his feet. I twined my

arms and legs around him and strove to hold him down. This would have been impossible to accomplish had

Encouraged by my conduct, BigFace became a sudden ally. He charged in, sank his teeth in RedEye's arm,

and ripped and tore at his face. This was the time for the rest of the Folk to have joined in. It was the chance

It was inevitable that RedEye should win in the struggle against the two of us. The reason he did not finish

us off immediately was that the Swift One clogged his movements. She had regained her breath and was

beginning to resist. He would not release his clutch on her hair, and this handicapped him. He got a grip on

my arm. It was the beginning of the end for me. He began to draw me toward him into a position where he

could sink his teeth into my throat. His mouth was open, and he was grinning. And yet, though he had just

begun to exert his strength, in that moment he wrenched my shoulder so that I suffered from it for the

And in that moment something happened. There was no warning. A great body smashed down upon the four

of us locked together. We were driven violently apart and rolled over and over, and in the suddenness of

surprise we released our holds on one another. At the moment of the shock, BigFace screamed terribly. I did

not know what had happened, though I smelled tiger and caught a glimpse of striped fur as I sprang for a tree.

It was old SaberTooth. Aroused in his lair by the noise we had made, he had crept upon us unnoticed. The

Swift One gained the next tree to mine, and I immediately joined her. I put my arms around her and held her

close to me while she whimpered and cried softly. From the ground came a snarling, and crunching of bones.

It was SaberTooth making his supper off of what had been BigFace. From beyond, with inflamed rims and

eyes, RedEye peered down. Here was a monster mightier than he. The Swift One and I turned and went

away quietly through the trees toward the cave, while the Folk gathered overhead and showered down abuse

and twigs and branches upon their ancient enemy. He lashed his tail and snarled, but went on eating.

And in such fashion were we saved. It was a mere accidentthe sheerest accident. Else would I have died,

there in RedEye's clutch, and there would have been no bridging of time to the tune of a thousand centuries

down to a progeny that reads newspapers and rides on electric carsay, and that writes narratives of bygone

It was in the early fall of the following year that it happened. After his failure to get the Swift One, RedEye

had taken another wife; and, strange to relate, she was still alive. Stranger still, they had a baby several

months oldRedEye's first child. His previous wives had never lived long enough to bear him children.

The year had gone well for all of us. The weather had been exceptionally mild and food plentiful. I remember

especially the turnips of that year. The nut crop was also very heavy, and the wild plums were larger and

In short, it was a golden year. And then it happened. It was in the early morning, and we were surprised in

our caves. In the chill gray light we awoke from sleep, most of us, to encounter death. The Swift One and I

were aroused by a pandemonium of screeching and gibbering. Our cave was the highest of all on the cliff,

and we crept to the mouth and peered down. The open space was filled with the Fire People. Their cries and

yells were added to the clamor, but they had order and plan, while we Folk had none. Each one of us fought

and acted for himself, and no one of us knew the extent of the calamity that was befalling us.

By the time we got to stonethrowing, the Fire People had massed thick at the base of the cliff. Our first

volley must have mashed some heads, for when they swerved back from the cliff three of their number were

left upon the ground. These were struggling and floundering, and one was trying to crawl away. But we fixed

them. By this time we males were roaring with rage, and we rained rocks upon the three men that were down.

Several of the FireMen returned to drag them into safety, but our rocks drove the rescuers back.

The Fire People became enraged. Also, they became cautious. In spite of their angry yells, they kept at a

distance and sent flights of arrows against us. This put an end to the rockthrowing. By the time half a dozen

of us had been killed and a score injured, the rest of us retreated inside our caves. I was not out of range in

my lofty cave, but the distance was great enough to spoil effective shooting, and the Fire People did not waste

many arrows on me. Furthermore, I was curious. I wanted to see. While the Swift One remained well inside

the cave, trembling with fear and making low wailing sounds because I would not come in, I crouched at the

The fighting had now become intermittent. It was a sort of deadlock. We were in the caves, and the question

with the Fire People was how to get us out. They did not dare come in after us, and in general we would not

expose ourselves to their arrows. Occasionally, when one of them drew in close to the base of the cliff, one or

another of the Folk would smash a rock down. In return, he would be transfixed by half a dozen arrows. This

ruse worked well for some time, but finally the Folk no longer were inveigled into showing themselves. The

Behind the Fire People I could see the little wizened old hunter directing it all. They obeyed him, and went

here and there at his commands. Some of them went into the forest and returned with loads of dry wood,

leaves, and grass. All the Fire People drew in closer. While most of them stood by with bows and arrows,

ready to shoot any of the Folk that exposed themselves, several of the FireMen heaped the dry grass and

wood at the mouths of the lower tier of caves. Out of these heaps they conjured the monster we

fearedFIRE. At first, wisps of smoke arose and curled up the cliff. Then I could see the redtongued

flames darting in and out through the wood like tiny snakes. The smoke grew thicker and thicker, at times

shrouding the whole face of the cliff. But I was high up and it did not bother me much, though it stung my

Old MarrowBone was the first to be smoked out. A light fan of air drifted the smoke away at the time so

that I saw clearly. He broke out through the smoke, stepping on a burning coal and screaming with the sudden

hurt of it, and essayed to climb up the cliff. The arrows showered about him. He came to a pause on a ledge,

clutching a knob of rock for support, gasping and sneezing and shaking his head. He swayed back and forth.

The feathered ends of a dozen arrows were sticking out of him. He was an old man, and he did not want to

die. He swayed wider and wider, his knees giving under him, and as he swayed he wailed most plaintively.

His hand released its grip and he lurched outward to the fall. His old bones must have been sadly broken. He

groaned and strove feebly to rise, but a FireMan rushed in upon him and brained him with a club.

And as it happened with MarrowBone, so it happened with many of the Folk. Unable to endure the

smokesuffocation, they rushed out to fall beneath the arrows. Some of the women and children remained in

When the FireMen had in this fashion cleared the first tier of caves, they began making arrangements to

duplicate the operation on the second tier of caves. It was while they were climbing up with their grass and

wood, that RedEye, followed by his wife, with the baby holding to her tightly, made a successful flight up

the cliff. The FireMen must have concluded that in the interval between the smokingout operations we

would remain in our caves; so that they were unprepared, and their arrows did not begin to fly till RedEye

and his wife were well up the wall. When he reached the top, he turned about and glared down at them,

roaring and beating his chest. They arched their arrows at him, and though he was untouched he fled on.

I watched a third tier smoked out, and a fourth. A few of the Folk escaped up the cliff, but most of them were

shot off the face of it as they strove to climb. I remember LongLip. He got as far as my ledge, crying

piteously, an arrow clear through his chest, the feathered shaft sticking out behind, the bone head sticking out

before, shot through the back as he climbed. He sank down on my ledge bleeding profusely at the mouth.

It was about this time that the upper tiers seemed to empty themselves spontaneously. Nearly all the Folk not

yet smoked out stampeded up the cliff at the same time. This was the saving of many. The Fire People could

not shoot arrows fast enough. They filled the air with arrows, and scores of the stricken Folk came tumbling

The impulse of flight was now stronger in me than curiosity. The arrows had ceased flying. The last of the

Folk seemed gone, though there may have been a few still hiding in the upper caves. The Swift One and I

started to make a scramble for the clifftop. At sight of us a great cry went up from the Fire People. This was

not caused by me, but by the Swift One. They were chattering excitedly and pointing her out to one another.

They did not try to shoot her. Not an arrow was discharged. They began calling softly and coaxingly. I

stopped and looked down. She was afraid, and whimpered and urged me on. So we went up over the top and

This event has often caused me to wonder and speculate. If she were really of their kind, she must have been

lost from them at a time when she was too young to remember, else would she not have been afraid of them.

On the other hand, it may well have been that while she was their kind she had never been lost from them;

that she had been born in the wild forest far from their haunts, her father maybe a renegade FireMan, her

mother maybe one of my own kind, one of the Folk. But who shall say? These things are beyond me, and the

We lived through a day of terror. Most of the survivors fled toward the blueberry swamp and took refuge in

the forest in that neighborhood. And all day hunting parties of the Fire People ranged the forest, killing us

wherever they found us. It must have been a deliberately executed plan. Increasing beyond the limits of their

own territory, they had decided on making a conquest of ours. Sorry the conquest! We had no chance against

them. It was slaughter, indiscriminate slaughter, for they spared none, killing old and young, effectively

It was like the end of the world to us. We fled to the trees as a last refuge, only to be surrounded and killed,

family by family. We saw much of this during that day, and besides, I wanted to see. The Swift One and I

never remained long in one tree, and so escaped being surrounded. But there seemed no place to go. The

FireMen were everywhere, bent on their task of extermination. Every way we turned we encountered them,

I did not see what became of my mother, but I did see the Chatterer shot down out of the old hometree. And

I am afraid that at the sight I did a bit of joyous teetering. Before I leave this portion of my narrative, I must

tell of RedEye. He was caught with his wife in a tree down by the blueberry swamp. The Swift One and I

stopped long enough in our flight to see. The FireMen were too intent upon their work to notice us, and,

Fully a score of the hunters were under the tree, discharging arrows into it. They always picked up their

arrows when they fell back to earth. I could not see RedEye, but I could hear him howling from somewhere

After a short interval his howling grew muffled. He must have crawled into a hollow in the trunk. But his

wife did not win this shelter. An arrow brought her to the ground. She was severely hurt, for she made no

effort to get away. She crouched in a sheltering way over her baby (which clung tightly to her), and made

pleading signs and sounds to the FireMen. They gathered about her and laughed at hereven as LopEar

and I had laughed at the old TreeMan. And even as we had poked him with twigs and sticks, so did the

FireMen with RedEye's wife. They poked her with the ends of their bows, and prodded her in the ribs. But

she was poor fun. She would not fight. Nor, for that matter, would she get angry. She continued to crouch

over her baby and to plead. One of the FireMen stepped close to her. In his hand was a club. She saw and

RedEye, in the hollow of the trunk, was safe from their arrows. They stood together and debated for a while,

then one of them climbed into the tree. What happened up there I could not tell, but I heard him yell and saw

the excitement of those that remained beneath. After several minutes his body crashed down to the ground.

He did not move. They looked at him and raised his head, but it fell back limply when they let go. RedEye

They were very angry. There was an opening into the trunk close to the ground. They gathered wood and

grass and built a fire. The Swift One and I, our arms around each other, waited and watched in the thicket.

Sometimes they threw upon the fire green branches with many leaves, whereupon the smoke became very

We saw them suddenly swerve back from the tree. They were not quick enough. RedEye's flying body

He was in a frightful rage, smashing about with his long arms right and left. He pulled the face off one of

them, literally pulled it off with those gnarly fingers of his and those tremendous muscles. He bit another

through the neck. The FireMen fell back with wild fierce yells, then rushed upon him. He managed to get

hold of a club and began crushing heads like eggshells. He was too much for them, and they were compelled

to fall back again. This was his chance, and he turned his back upon them and ran for it, still howling

wrathfully. A few arrows sped after him, but he plunged into a thicket and was gone.

The Swift One and I crept quietly away, only to run foul of another party of FireMen. They chased us into

the blueberry swamp, but we knew the treepaths across the farther morasses where they could not follow on

the ground, and so we escaped. We came out on the other side into a narrow strip of forest that separated the

blueberry swamp from the great swamp that extended westward. Here we met LopEar. How he had escaped

Here, in the strip of forest, we might have built treeshelters and settled down; but the Fire People were

performing their work of extermination thoroughly. In the afternoon, HairFace and his wife fled out from

among the trees to the east, passed us, and were gone. They fled silently and swiftly, with alarm in their faces.

In the direction from which they had come we heard the cries and yells of the hunters, and the screeching of

The Swift One, LopEar, and I followed on the heels of HairFace and his wife. When we came to the edge

of the great swamp, we stopped. We did not know its paths. It was outside our territory, and it had been

always avoided by the Folk. None had ever gone into itat least, to return. In our minds it represented

mystery and fear, the terrible unknown. As I say, we stopped at the edge of it. We were afraid. The cries of

the FireMen were drawing nearer. We looked at one another. HairFace ran out on the quaking morass and

gained the firmer footing of a grasshummock a dozen yards away. His wife did not follow. She tried to, but

The Swift One did not wait for me, nor did she pause till she had passed beyond HairFace a hundred yards

and gained a much larger hummock. By the time LopEar and I had caught up with her, the FireMen

appeared among the trees. HairFace's wife, driven by them into panic terror, dashed after us. But she ran

blindly, without caution, and broke through the crust. We turned and watched, and saw them shoot her with

arrows as she sank down in the mud. The arrows began falling about us. HairFace had now joined us, and

the four of us plunged on, we knew not whither, deeper and deeper into the swamp.

Of our wanderings in the great swamp I have no clear knowledge. When I strive to remember, I have a riot of

unrelated impressions and a loss of timevalue. I have no idea of how long we were in that vast everglade,

but it must have been for weeks. My memories of what occurred invariably take the form of nightmare. For

untold ages, oppressed by protean fear, I am aware of wandering, endlessly wandering, through a dank and

soggy wilderness, where poisonous snakes struck at us, and animals roared around us, and the mud quaked

I know that we were turned from our course countless times by streams and lakes and slimy seas. Then there

were storms and risings of the water over great areas of the lowlying lands; and there were periods of

hunger and misery when we were kept prisoners in the trees for days and days by these transient floods.

Very strong upon me is one picture. Large trees are about us, and from their branches hang gray filaments of

moss, while great creepers, like monstrous serpents, curl around the trunks and writhe in tangles through the

air. And all about is the mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth gases, and that heaves and sighs with internal

agitations. And in the midst of all this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our bones show

through our tightstretched skins. We do not sing and chatter and laugh. We play no pranks. For once our

volatile and exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued. We make plaintive, querulous noises, look at one

another, and cluster close together. It is like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the end of

This event is without connection with the other events in the swamp. How we ever managed to cross it, I do

not know, but at last we came out where a low range of hills ran down to the bank of the river. It was our

river emerging like ourselves from the great swamp. On the south bank, where the river had broken its way

through the hills, we found many sandstone caves. Beyond, toward the west, the ocean boomed on the bar

that lay across the river's mouth. And here, in the caves, we settled down in our abidingplace by the sea.

There were not many of us. From time to time, as the days went by, more of the Folk appeared. They dragged

themselves from the swamp singly, and in twos and threes, more dead than alive, mere perambulating

skeletons, until at last there were thirty of us. Then no more came from the swamp, and RedEye was not

among us. It was noticeable that no children had survived the frightful journey.

I shall not tell in detail of the years we lived by the sea. It was not a happy abidingplace. The air was raw

and chill, and we suffered continually from coughing and colds. We could not survive in such an

environment. True, we had children; but they had little hold on life and died early, while we died faster than

Then the radical change in our diet was not good for us. We got few vegetables and fruits, and became

fisheaters. There were mussels and abalones and clams and rockoysters, and great oceancrabs that were

thrown upon the beaches in stormy weather. Also, we found several kinds of seaweed that were good to eat.

But the change in diet caused us stomach troubles, and none of us ever waxed fat. We were all lean and

dyspepticlooking. It was in getting the big abalones that LopEar was lost. One of them closed upon his

fingers at lowtide, and then the floodtide came in and drowned him. We found his body the next day, and

it was a lesson to us. Not another one of us was ever caught in the closing shell of an abalone.

The Swift One and I managed to bring up one child, a boyat least we managed to bring him along for

several years. But I am quite confident he could never have survived that terrible climate. And then, one day,

the Fire People appeared again. They had come down the river, not on a catamaran, but in a rude dugout.

There were three of them that paddled in it, and one of them was the little wizened old hunter. They landed

They went away in a few minutes, but the Swift One was badly scared. We were all frightened, but none of

us to the extent that she was. She whimpered and cried and was restless all that night. In the morning she took

the child in her arms, and by sharp cries, gestures, and example, started me on our second long flight. There

were eight of the Folk (all that was left of the horde) that remained behind in the caves. There was no hope

for them. Without doubt, even if the Fire People did not return, they must soon have perished. It was a bad

climate down there by the sea. The Folk were not constituted for the coastdwelling life.

We travelled south, for days skirting the great swamp but never venturing into it. Once we broke back to the

westward, crossing a range of mountains and coming down to the coast. But it was no place for us. There

were no treesonly bleak headlands, a thundering surf, and strong winds that seemed never to cease from

blowing. We turned back across the mountains, travelling east and south, until we came in touch with the

Soon we gained the southern extremity of the swamp, and we continued our course south and east. It was a

pleasant land. The air was warm, and we were again in the forest. Later on we crossed a lowlying range of

hills and found ourselves in an even better forest country. The farther we penetrated from the coast the

warmer we found it, and we went on and on until we came to a large river that seemed familiar to the Swift

One. It was where she must have come during the four years' absence from the harde. This river we crossed

on logs, landing on side at the large bluff. High up on the bluff we found our new home most difficult of

There is little more of my tale to tell. Here the Swift One and I lived and reared our family. And here my

memories end. We never made another migration. I never dream beyond our high, inaccessible cave. And

here must have been born the child that inherited the stuff of my dreams, that had moulded into its being all

the impressions of my lifeor of the life of BigTooth, rather, who is my otherself, and not my real self,

but who is so real to me that often I am unable to tell what age I am living in.

I often wonder about this line of descent. I, the modern, am incontestably a man; yet I, BigTooth, the

primitive, am not a man. Somewhere, and by straight line of descent, these two parties to my dual personality

were connected. Were the Folk, before their destruction, in the process of becoming men? And did I and mine

carry through this process? On the other hand, may not some descendant of mine have gone in to the Fire

People and become one of them? I do not know. There is no way of learning. One thing only is certain, and

that is that BigTooth did stamp into the cerebral constitution of one of his progeny all the impressions of his

life, and stamped them in so indelibly that the hosts of intervening generations have failed to obliterate them.

There is one other thing of which I must speak before I close. It is a dream that I dream often, and in point of

time the real event must have occurred during the period of my living in the high, inaccessible cave. I

remember that I wandered far in the forest toward the east. There I came upon a tribe of Tree People. I

crouched in a thicket and watched them at play. They were holding a laughing council, jumping up and down

Suddenly they hushed their noise and ceased their capering. They shrank down in fear, and quested anxiously

about with their eyes for a way of retreat. Then RedEye walked in among them. They cowered away from

him. All were frightened. But he made no attempt to hurt them. He was one of them. At his heels, on stringy

bended legs, supporting herself with knuckles to the ground on either side, walked an old female of the Tree

People, his latest wife. He sat down in the midst of the circle. I can see him now, as I write this, scowling, his

eyes inflamed, as he peers about him at the circle of the Tree People. And as he peers he crooks one

monstrous leg and with his gnarly toes scratches himself on the stomach. He is RedEye, the atavism.