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diff --git a/old/55949-0.txt b/old/55949-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2b13d11..0000000 --- a/old/55949-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5823 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's A Woman of the Ice Age, by L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: A Woman of the Ice Age - -Author: L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap - -Release Date: November 12, 2017 [EBook #55949] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THE ICE AGE *** - - - - -Produced by MFR, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - -A WOMAN OF THE ICE AGE - - - - - A WOMAN OF THE - ICE AGE - - BY - - L. P. GRATACAP - - Author of “The Certainty of a - Future Life in Mars.” - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - BRENTANO’S - 1906 - - - Copyright, 1906, by - L. P. GRATACAP - - - - -[Illustration] - - -A WOMAN OF THE ICE AGE - - - - -APOLOGY - - -The _Prehistoric Man_ needs rehabilitation. At least it can be urged -that there are possible phases of the prehistoric man that can be -elevated into emotional dignity, not unworthy of romance and heroics. -It has been too commonly assumed, under the omnipresent pressure of -scientific generalizations, that the _prehistoric_ was a semi-feral -type of human animal, squalid, distorted, simian-faced, thin-thighed -and adumbrant, without speech, perchance groping his blind and -biological course upward, by some sort of evolution, into a reasoning, -talking, purposive and spiritual creature; that he was a faunal -expression simply, like a _triceratops_ in the Upper Cretaceous, or a -_mud-buffalo_ in the Philippines. - -But there is some sense in claiming for him the possibilities of -dramatic action and feeling, assuring to him the restitution of poetic -feeling, religious designs, and emotional episodes. It is sensible, -for if we place the _prehistoric_ anywhere before the advent of human -annals, the length in time of his existence is so enormous that it is -inconceivable that he could not have evolved speech, and if speech -then the retinue of feelings and ideas which arise with speech, just -as speech itself is the index of a cerebral cortex that has become -elaborately modified. Let us look at this claim more closely; let us -even affectionately increase, intensify and adorn it. - -This story has been written under the influence of a melodramatic -assumption, hostile, it will be said, to probability, and essentially -fanciful, chimerical and fabulous. It cannot be denied that it departs, -perhaps summarily, from the postulates of archæology, as to the life -and demeanor and mental compass, or, more particularly, emotional -resources of that necessary object who must, to relieve anthropology of -its lugubrious alarm over accepting a quicker entrance into the world -of our race, have lived in the great Prehistoric Day of Geology. - -In the day which saw the passage into sedimentary records of the last -of the Tertiaries, and carried on its calendars the rise, amplitude and -disappearance of the Ice Age, in that day Man lived, and he lived all -through it, and it was a long day, measured by thousands of years. But -why must it be predicated that man could not have reached in that day -such a range of feelings as are involved in the rise and refinement of -love? It is perfectly true, as it is entirely permissible so to choose, -that this tale of the Woman of the Ice Age, has to do with the advanced -types of prehistoric man, and that thus typified the author has reason -to insist that Lhatto and Ogga are just creations. - -The physical perfection of Lhatto and Ogga cannot be wisely disputed. -The _prehistoric_ is usually thought of as a half-emancipated ape, -shaggy with hair, protuberant in eye-brows and mouth, shuffling, -chattering his uncouth experiments in speech or conveying his desires -by grimaces, shrugs, gestures and contortions. But when we realize, -that however explained, evolution does not present us with abundant -intermediate forms in its processes of improvement, but rather -offers us a range of ascending steps, or positions, with the blended -connexions removed, it is quite unlikely that in the evolution of man -there was any hesitancy in passing from the monkey state to the rights -of primogeniture as God’s image. - -And the prehistoric must have done so. The requirements of his life, -the need of strength and agility, of ingenuity, of muscular resources -coupled with the fruitfulness of improving forms, as from century to -century reproduction placed him farther and farther in the void and -waste of a world, inarticulate and unbridled, these things made him, -where environment was favorable, sinuous, forceful, tall, harmonious in -physique. And these things, besides putting upon the body the abiding -beauty of form, through allied avenues of change would have placed upon -his face the stamp of beauty in expression. At least with some. And of -these were Lhatto and Ogga. It is not obligatory to be too precise. The -romance bends to no sterile laws of ratiocination and logic. It may, -for an instant, supercede the harshest negations of science. It does so -in this book, but not too carelessly. - -For as to environment, it cannot be too sharply noted that it adapts -and modifies its organic contents. The plant, the animal, the Man, are -bent and made according to the emotional plan it permits. - -Buckle has shown how the physical features of a land have been -profoundly active in shaping the racial temperaments of the contrasted -populations of India and Greece. In India nature is dominating; the -lofty mountains, the torrential and wide rivers, the tyrannous climate, -form so severe and overpowering a restraint upon human activity -that man becomes dwarfed and insignificant. In Greece, nature, less -oppressively developed, has induced the growth of a radiant and high -and forceful type of man. - -Prof. Keane has said of the Hebrew intellect that it is “less varied, -but more intense, a contrast due to the monotonous and almost -changeless environment of yellow sands, blue skies, flora and fauna -limited to a few species, and mainly confined to oases and plains, -reclaimed by irrigation from the desert, everywhere presenting -the same uniform aspect.” Prof. Gregory has also pointed out the -decisive influence of physical environment on the East African races. -He summarizes the aspects of these under the general heading of -“instability,” as the variable rainfall, earth movements, etc. He says -these “keep alive a disposition toward nomad life, alien alike to the -growth of either a fatalism like that of India, or culture like that -of Greece. All the tribes, however, cannot become nomadic. Some of -them are physically and mentally incompetent for the strains of such a -life, and must be content with servitude, or else submit to the ever -recurring raids of the more powerful tribes. The physical conditions of -the country therefore help to divide the people into two classes: one -consists of warlike, conquering nomads; the other of feebler races, who -either eke out a precarious existence on mountain summits, in forest -clearings, and on islands in the vast malarial swamp, or else live as -serfs and helots in subjection to the dominant tribes.” - -The intensive influence of nature upon man is deeply hidden in the -response Man makes to his physical surroundings, which response in some -way grows from the attributes of his mind, as that he loves beauty, -that he is stimulated to action by desire, that he feels the subtlety -of contrast and color, and living wonders and natural splendor. - -And that we may extract from this truth the last possible quantity of -justification, the story here places Lhatto and Ogga in the midst of -a great diversity and extension of natural features. It assumes that -long before their time man had eventuated. Not a shadow and mask and -caricature, but man in the possession of a mental character that was -responsive to all these wonders about him. It assumes that whereas men -living near or in glaciated and cold countries were still immersed in a -sort of moral hebitude; those men, as Ogga and Lhatto, who by a sudden -juxtaposition of the cold and the hot, were swayed by the contrasted -marvels of the glacier and semi-tropic forest, had felt the excitation -of their sense of beauty and wonder and worship. It assumes for them at -least a psychological stage. It assumes that such a region of contrasts -could have existed along our western coasts, where the great terminal -moraine, the limital outline of the glacier, bends northward. Here was -a southern section, warm and prolific and luxuriant, and here was a -northern section, as described in the story, lingering under the malign -torpor of ice and snow. - -It assumes that the period of time chosen, when the Ice was itself -surrendering its strongholds and in stubborn despair relinquishing its -conquests, was not so far distant from the historic or semi-historic -period, not so far distant from this present period of emotional -complexity. - -Nor is this last assumption unreasonable. The views as to the distance -of the Ice Age in time from our own geological day have undergone some -marked changes. It is no longer a requisite of geological orthodoxy to -place that period in a chronological perspective diminishing to a point -of time which may be sixty thousand years away. - -Sir Henry H. Howorth, Prof. Bonney, Matthieu Williams, Pettersen, -Kjerulf have promulgated their views as to the necessary assumptions -of the Glacialists. Howorth, indeed, says (_Glacial Nightmare and -the Flood_) of the tremendous conception of a continental ice-sheet -sweeping over the Northern Sea from Norway into Great Britain, that -it was “the invention of Croll, who, sitting in his armchair, and -endowed with a brilliant imagination, imposed upon sober science this -extraordinary postulate.” - -The recentness,--and we may here quote acceptably from the Rev. H. N. -Hutchinson--“of the Glacial period, is becoming much more generally -recognized, and many geologists failed to see how the striations, -moraines and _roches moutonnées_ could have lasted for anything like -the periods required by the Astronomical theory. One is inclined to -think that delicate striations and polishings would have been destroyed -by atmospheric influences within the space of twenty thousand years.” - -Lhatto and Ogga were indeed placed at a great distance from us, but -they are not therefore utterly lost in the shadows or clouds of -antiquity, of myth and fable, or somnambulous reverie, as to be alien -to our hearts and sympathies. - -Lhatto and Ogga were the heirs to a vast amount of temperamental -evolution. If they were elevated in feeling, adroit and sensitive in -thought, there had been enough time expended in developing men to -bestow upon them these virtues of the head and heart. - -Has not Prof. A. H. Keane, in his authoritative Compendium of Geography -and Travel of South America, said that, “it is beyond reasonable doubt -that man had spread in _early Pleistocene_ times from his eastern -cradle to the New World, probably by two routes: from Europe by the -still persisting land connexion with Greenland and Labrador, and from -Asia by the narrow Behring Sea?” - -He says “the inference seems inevitable that South America was already -in _Pleistocene_ time peopled to its utmost (?) limits by two primitive -races, that still persist in the same region”; and if South America _a -fortiori_ North America. - -It is here assumed, and with reason, that Lhatto and Ogga and -Lagk talked, and Prof. Cunningham has pointed out that speech has -necessitated structural modifications in the human brain _totally -absent_ from the brain of the Anthropoid Ape, and of the speechless -microcephalic idiot. - -These waifs of reconstruction dwelling in the dark backward of time, -from whom, as from others, the motions of the heart and head were -to start the wide ethnic impulses which have moved to and fro, like -luminous and refluent waves, over the sad face of savage life, these -waifs deny no natural assumptions. They lead us only into a new zone of -imaginative work, and we are bidden to weave fabrics of design which -carry on them the pictures of a lost past, when strange creatures, long -extinct, were known to men, themselves extinct, when a strange epoch -was placing its landmarks over a world, upon which the dawn of Mind had -opened, when the _Prehistoric_ somehow extricated from an inheritance -of claws and hair and carnivorous ferocity, felt the mystery of the -earth, looked with question upon the unrolled skies, and began the long -drama of human love and hate. - -Let it be so. Let us not be overscrupulous in the dogmas of our -literary faith, nor too inquisitive as to the realism of a resurrected -day. Were we always too cautious, our religion--which furnishes -you, reader, with the balm and fortitude of your existence--would -decrepitate and pass away into smoke and dust. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER I. - -PRELUDE. - - -The existence of Man in the geological period that preceded the -one we live in, in his full anthropoid reality, possessing a mind, -self conscious, radiant with powers of creation, of language, of -inquisition, has been established. Man, vested with his essential -attributes and physiologically and psychologically erect, as a peculiar -dissonant and discrete living thing lived and died in the Quarternary -Day of this Earth. The proof is incontestible. The fact is fixed to-day -in the records of scientific assertion and discovery. - -Doubtfully realized at first, it has been slowly established through -the heaping up of successive proofs, that in the waning years of that -geological section of time called the Ice Age, man had begun this slow -conquest of the earth. - -All geological periods are text book accidents, or professional -conveniences. The diorama of geological change was a continuous -evolution of physics and topography, the rolling ages did not halt at -sectional points, the mechanism of Creation did not stop at intervals -to permit the introduction of a new set of designs and preparations, a -new web of structural fancies and ideas, a new _modus operandi_ and a -new _modus vivendi_. - -Neither can we contend for moments of catastrophic intervention and -the sudden release of Omnipotent mandates, sweeping away what had -previously lived, and inundating the regions of life with irruptions of -new forms. - -The movement of life beginning within the recesses of Archæan time -went on in its progress from a few centres of creation, until as age -succeeded age, and the first utterances of life began to fill the voids -of ocean and land, the kingdoms of animal being slowly possessed the -earth. - -And yet it is also true that the course of organic evolution in the -records of palæontology expresses an Intention accomplishing its -purpose under resistance. It conforms in the phenomena it presents to -the conception of a Mind pursuing a purpose with an accelerated motion -as that purpose was approached. For what is that record of extinct life? - -From the first scintillations of life in the Cambrian era to the last -contributions of Zoic energy in the Tertiaries, we see a succession -of ascending stages of life, a series of zoological platforms which -are linked together by a stairway of organisms passing from one to the -next, and separated by a disappearance of forms which never reappear. -Resistance is periodically overcome, but by it the intention of a -Supreme Mind to produce the highest and widest and deepest life is -forced into a display of creative energy. - -In the earlier ages--the Palæozoic--the invertebrates appear in greater -numbers, and the lower orders of plants, and only the preparatory -groups of the vertebrates force their prophetic outlines in view, the -invertebrates and plants begin in more generalized forms, and advance -to the more specialized, which are the higher. - -As the intention is to embrace higher zoological and structural ideas, -this again awakens resistance, and we see its gradual repulse. These -periodic floodings or gushes of forms of life, as the brachiopods in -the Silurian, the trilobites in the upper Potsdam, and crustacea in -modern seas, the bivalves in the Devonian, the crinoids in the Lower -Carboniferous, the echinoids in the Cretaceous, the cephalopods and -reptiles in the Jurassic, the gastropods and mammals in the Tertiaries, -are the wide escape of a propulsive intention as it overcomes -resistance, which it has undermined or repelled by processes of -development, slowly and unintermittently inaugurated long before. - -Premonitions of these outbursts are found before they come, in the -genera and orders of the preceding era. So striking is this that it -has led M. Naudin, a French naturalist, with no theological hobbies -or convictions, to propound, on the evidence, the analogous idea, that -a force of variation or origination of forms has acted rhythmically -or unintermittently, because each movement was the result of the -rupture of an equilibrium, the liberation of a force which till then -was retained in a potential state, by some opposing force or obstacle, -overcoming which, it passes to a new equilibrium, and so on. - -Hence stages of dynamic activity and static repose, of origination of -species and types, alternated with periods of stability or fixity. -The time-piece does not run down regularly, but “la force procede par -saccades; et par pulsation d’autant plus energiques que la nature etait -plus près de son commencement.” - -Now, it is a remarkable circumstance, strengthening the Doctrine of -Intention, that the vast length of time involved in the progress -of the Palæozoic Ages was employed in establishing the kingdoms of -invertebrate life, and that as at its close, the vertebrate type -was reached (in which resided the potential power of the highest -development) the Supreme Will rose swiftly to its object--Man, his -powers and destiny! - -Resistance accumulated against the flow of that intention, and by -obstruction attempted to close its exit into the pregnant channel of -vertebrate forms. This resistance was slowly dissipated through the -prolific avenues of invertebrate life. And the Intending Mind, having -ushered in the vertebrates, thence proceeds with rapidity through its -evolving phases to complete its organic purpose, creating Man, and -pushing in upon the world’s stage the vast psychic consequences of this -supreme result. - -And Man is reached--When! How! Where! The figures of men are observed -stealing along the banks of the swollen Somme, in northern France, in -the twilight of an Arctic day. The river, exasperated by the continuous -contributions of cold streams rushing from distant summits that still -retain the remnants of the shrinking burden of the northern ice sheet, -washes the high levels with its turbid waves. Squalid shelters hide the -rude domesticities of these skin-coated and tangle-haired aborigines of -the earth, these mysterious tenants of the unconquered virgin world in -whose crania lies the potency of art and science. Through the long mist -of time they move like spectral groups presented to us, as dumb figures -mechanically manipulated upon a distant stage. They use the motions -of men engaged in play, in fishing, in mending nets, in repelling -enemies, in rude wrestling, in working points of stone, or carving -ivory, in erecting low-roofed houses, in cleaning skins, in felling -trees and engaging in rapid navigation on the calamitous and groaning -stream before them. Women are seen here and there amongst them, and -children; faces stir with laughter, gesticulation accompanies the -dumb motion of their lips. It is an imaginative kinetoscope wherein -sound has vanished, and motion only, articulate throughout with human -adaptibility, remains before our eyes. We are watching the pre-Adamites. - -Again we see men moving in scattered bands along the banks of the -Delaware, in New Jersey. The river, widely extended, has invaded the -outlying country in broad, lake-like arms, and only at narrowing -throats between cliffs and resistant ledges does the confined flood -raise a murmur of expostulation as it churns in flying spray against -its gneissoid barriers. Ice, in broad, deep cakes, or low piled up -hummocks, or occasional castellated ice hills carrying stones upon -their surface, appear over the wave-scurried waters, and now and then -from some concealed inlet, a rude dug-out moves cautiously, piloted -by strong arms, crossing between the struggling fragments of ice to -gain, in a series of hesitating advances, the opposite shore. Human -figures disembark, they climb up the bank by a half-worn escalade of -steps rudely dug into the frozen gravel and sand, and disappear in the -black opening of a cave excavated in the cliff faces, and overhung by -the projecting angles of an irregular boulder of rock, half imbedded -and half exposed, in the morainal mass of earth and pebbles, sand and -stone. - -The country for leagues about is desolate; in its denuded state it -exposes to the scowling sky its torn areas, furrowed with gulches, -heaped up cairns, plains strewn with loosened stones, while stranded -along a distant coast line and gleaming in titanic splendor, far beyond -on remote terraces, are icebergs. They are tumbling in decay before -a sun more southern than their origin, and contributing a hundred -rivulets, spreading fan-like in lines of silver over the flat declines -about them, meandering to the gray shores, deserted by an ebbing tide. - -The rigors of the Ice Age in its extremest form have passed, and here, -in its lingering epoch of control, man, inventive, apt, procreative and -vocal, holding the augury of the civilized ages advancing towards him, -is seen. - -Seen amid a waste of which he is a part, but from which by no -conceivable dream of transformation was he evolved. The moment of -his birth on earth was more propitious. Nature cradled him somewhere -beneath other skies, warmer suns and blossoming life. He has survived -the Ice Age. His adaptive nature has met it, as it crept like some -continental torpor over the fair world it supplanted. He has lived -through and out of it. He has kept alive on earth in the awful -desolation of this menace and assassination, his inherited flame of -intelligence, and the primal instincts of man. Before the Ice Age, man -was. - -Again in the broad savannahs of the Mississippi Valley man is -discovered, where its waters, confluent with the broad streams flowing -from Missouri and Ohio, spread in sluggish lake-like expanses, stirred -by the river flow into movement, around archipelagoes of low islands. -The waves of this water met the retreating frontier of the ice-cap, -vociferous with the fall of shivered icebergs, and washed on one hand -the lowlands of Appalachia, yet glistening from snow-buried crests, and -the emergent domes of the Rocky Mountains, on the other, yet flecked -with scattered citadels of ice, resisting extermination in valley-bowls -and precipice-lined declivities. - -The scene wears a softened aspect. The low islands have retained a -cheerful growth of trees, and amongst them flowering bushes and patches -of keen-colored flowers invite rest and dreams. Glades pass across the -larger domains of insulated land; white beeches shine beneath trees, -whose shadows are thrown in meshes of crossing lines and figures upon -them, and a blazing sun, set in the zenith, administers to the wide -expanse a temperate splendor. And here man again moves across the -foreground of our vision. He is less weirdly strange and aboriginal, -less dumb and impenetrable, and, as he stands alone upon a projecting -tip of sand, with an erect beauty, a touch of decoration in his dress -shows he has outgrown the dogged stupor of animal life. The charms -of emotion have also awakened him; we hear, over the waters, the long -musical halloo of a calling voice, and somewhere rising from the tufted -wilderness answering voices in sweet sopranos return the salutation. - -He turns to the meridian sun, and fear clouds his face. Across the -sunlight a darkening blot has arisen. Its whirling and tempestuous -shapes change from second to second--a murmur in the air, made visible -by a thousand increasing ripples on the blinded water, tells of some -approaching storm. The man has dropped upon his knees, the struggling -lines of his face, as he watches the black cloud, deepen into a rigid -expression of terror. Now the waves roll heavily upon the beach, the -light is extinguished, and there descends a rain of dust. It thickens -until the air is impenetrable, the man, prostrate upon his face, is -lost to sight. The verdurous islands disappear, and the descending -_Loess_ dust extinguishes the sun. - -It is another phase of human life in the vast backward of time, when -the dust and dirt deposits of the Mississippi, and its tributary -valleys, were accumulating as the ice fled northward. Again Man comes -into our view, the same identity of thought and form, which makes the -hero and the lover, the fundamental consciousness developed, as in you -and me. - -We move westward to where the Sierra Nevada Valley Mountains breast -the Sacramento Valley, and nod to the answering summons of the Coast -Range, where the rays that empurple the sawed edges of the Sierras dip -the peaks of the coast in roseate halos. - -A sunburst from the gathered edges of a thunderstorm reveals upon a -platform of rock, that sticks out from the mountain side like a lozenge -from a cake, a group of sunburnt men and women. Somewhat higher up -and behind them a circle of low covers made of boughs, woven together -and rudely thatched, indicates their simple homes. The place of their -sojourn has been propitiously, even tastefully chosen. It is a somewhat -scattered woodland, made up of colossal cone-bearing trees, that -seem located at such even distances apart that their contact creates -over the ground beneath them a softened twilight, though the sun at -its zenith pours over their motionless and dependent boughs its full -effulgence. The spot forms a terrace upon the ascending areas of a -great mountain chain whose highest and peaked ridges glisten from -distant snowfields. - -Before this group of silent people, far below them in the broad valley -of the present Sacramento, a scene of incomparable interest and beauty -is displayed. They seem absorbed in its contemplation, and to their -eyes perchance its varied features appeal with a force symptomatic -of all the intense delight the poet or the artist would to-day feel -before the return of its exciting and marvellous incidents. - -It is a critical moment in the vast drama of orogenic change, which has -built the continent; one act in that procession of acts, which moulded -the surface of the earth into habitable forms, and etched its surface -with the beauty of design. - -The broad physiographic trough upon which these mountain denizens are -gazing has become an area of conflict. The volcanic forces of the -earth are even now engaged in making monumental deformations, and here -below them they watch the splendid crisis of an engagement between the -lava-rock welling from the furnaces of the earth’s interior, and the -flashing currents of foam-filled water. Let us trace the picture. - -On one side of the broad depression, filled to its farthest marge with -intermittent forest-land, broad backs of alluvial sand, and seamed with -sparkling rivers, rise the myriad summits of a long range of mountains -torn by time and deeply bitten into picturesque contrasts of ravine, -gorge, canyon, buttes and facetted pinnacles of stone. Far over the -wide valley, scarcely seen, but still like a shadow upon the horizon, -is the western limit of this quarternary basin, another line of hills, -less wonderful, younger, and rather monotonously low. - -The landscape disappears northward in bare regions that are hidden in -clouds of mist, and far southward, and to the west, spectators just -discern the limits of the Salt Sea. But it is upon the marvels beneath -them that their eyes are fixed, eyes that are yet more quickly arrested -by sensation, by the brusque struggles of natural forces, than by the -alluring distance, shimmering hot beneath the noon-day sun. - -Almost immediately beneath their feet, though on the level of the -general valley, is a river bed, which, deserted by its former tenant, -still holds dwindling lakes of water, somewhat connected, like a string -of opal dishes, by filaments of thin and feeble rivulets. At a point -north of them and fixed to their attention upon the mountain side by -a dull murmurous succession of detonations, and splintering gashes in -the rock, a pasty exudation of molten rock slips down in black lines -or faintly rubescent streaks, and, uniting in an invading tongue of -slaggy fusion, has entered the river valley, which is now, at its first -courses, filled from rim to rim with half liquid scoria. - -The lithic tide is carried on in a sluggish simulation of water -currents, rolling over in its advance, or spurting in sudden liquid -torrents from swelling concretions; now caught by the asperities of -the channel, and now flowing faster at its unimpeded centre, dragged -out in liguous coils and ropes of lava, and again, down some steeper -declivity, tumbling in a shaggy cataract of braids, tortuous links, -and vermiculate confusion. Beneath the mute group the igneous outburst -has reached a pond, one of the derelict lakes along the river’s -deserted way, and it is the fierce conflict thus begun which holds -them in a rapt posture, like modelled images. As the flowing rock -enters the lake with slow and even step, or spills into it, in flocks -of bubbling slag, from its higher decrepitating surfaces, explosion -follows explosion; the water is ejected in spurts of spray, and falling -backward over the hot and half consolidated magma, flashes into steam. -Rising clouds of vapor conceal the exact limits of the invasion, and -points of contact, but the coarse rumble, the intermittent gushes of -water upward, the far away reverberations of the earth’s opening crust, -and the quivering pulsations that shake the table rock on which our -spectators are standing, announce the new geological chapter in the -world’s making, the last catastrophe before the earth lies quiet and -smiling at the feet of men. - -As they turn away in frightened dismay, the sunlight flashes from -their tawny necks, their girdled arms and ankles, and from the bunched -tresses of their dark hair, flashes from gold. They are the gold -ornaments formed in naive and curious ways which these early children -of the earth filched from the stream beds, that soon, before their -gaze, from shore to shore, will be wedged tight with black dikes of -rock, holding down the sealed bonanzas, until in Time’s own time the -life of a later day shall search the primeval sands again, and dress -its beauty too with the same entrancing glitter. - -The picture disappears, but we are standing where the Calaveras -Skull, the discovery of human implements beneath the Table Mountains -of California have proven that Man was a witness of these geognostic -changes in the great internal valley of that state. - -Shall we pursue the western trail of men’s birth, bending our eyes -upon the mysterious regions of southeastern Asia, where perhaps a too -inquisitive scrutiny will reveal the very beginnings of the human tribe? - -We have no reason to go further. We have observed the changing aspect -of man from the edges of the ice sheet in western Europe and eastern -North America, his ameliorated habits in the loess valley of the -Mississippi and Missouri. In the far west where the contemporaneous -climatic conditions were milder, or even conjoined with phases that -were semi-tropic we have found him, at the same time that farther -north, and pervasively to the east, frigid or boreal aspects prevailed. - -It is with the story of Love, told of these strange and remote periods -of Time, that we are now concerned, and we place the Woman of the Ice -Age far in the West, somewhere not exposed to the extreme arctic -vicissitudes of a glacial imprisonment, although not quite beyond -the rumors and tokens of its partial survival, nor quite within the -lassitudes of a southern and perennial summer, but at a possible -point of such picturesque contrasts, of such organic fascination, of -such compromises in physical expression, that we may discern in her -the elements of poetry, elements born of her response to Nature’s -vitality and variousness, and with them elements of passion born of -her inheritance of blood instincts, which had formed in her ancestors, -under the same diversity of natural features. In Her, prehistoric -and primal, the type of all women since, we shall find the instinct -of love, evincing its supremacy over her nature, holding her before -the mirror of her own vanity, rousing her to the extremest verge of -her emotional design and activity, nursing her on the breast of its -satisfaction, and filling her life with the currents of its amorous -expectations. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER II. - -THE PLACE. - - -It was a region of splendid contrasts. A continental zone which -presented in the wide range of its mere longitudinal extent a -succession of physical features that were opposite and embraced a -variety of climate, that by reason of meteorological diversity had -carved and dressed those physical features into a series of natural -wonders. - -Far to the north rose a group of mountain peaks, so arranged that -they appeared like successive steps of ascent to the swelling dome, -central and dominant, over its gathered satellites, each of which -was marvellous alone, but in this association seemed forgotten or -remembered only as it increased by contrast the majesty of the great -mountain mass it attended. - -This superb elevation was itself broken up into radiating chasms, whose -rocky sides rose in black keels of relief above the snow filled gorges -they defined, while surmounting them all a keen shaft of granite, -roseate in a hundred lights, or wrapped in pendulous and waving veils -of mist, climbed steeply to the clouds. - -The crowded and crushed snow masses, nevé-like emerged upon all the -lower shoulders of the huge crest in glacial fields of ice. Here their -Arctic currents, sweeping around the lower summits, were reinforced -by new accessions, springing from these lesser altitudes, which in -confusion poured upon them, and by many avenues of obstruction and -accidents of interference, repulse and rupture, converted the great -multiplied ice zone, encircling the whole congery of peaks, and -plunging outward over vertical escarpments to lower levels, into a -stupendous spectacle of chaos. Icebergs crossed their pinnacles in the -descent, the riven ice stream ejected blocks of ice hundreds of feet -in length, and the split glacier, seamed by colossal cleavages to the -abysses of its rocky floor, displayed its green depths. Detonations -rose upon the air, caught by the waiting winds and drifted southward -over the wild plains, the long indented coast and the far interior -canons; south to forest lands and waving grass savannahs, while near at -hand its rough roar startled the sleeping mastodon and brought terror -to men. - -From this glory, which in the Sun of that strange day shone like -a titanic crown of jewels, the land areas fell suddenly away, and -expanded southward into a long sea margin on the west, and arid and -rocky wildernesses on the east, where deep canyons with vertical walls, -a thousand feet high, held in their dark bosoms the frigid waters from -the northern glaciers. An intermediate region, between the palisaded -or tenuous coast-line and these mysterious untenanted rents and time, -wind and water worn ravines, revealed scenes more mild and radiant, -wherein the apparel of nature was more colored, and where she bore -those features of appropriate beauty where river and lake, forest land -and flowered field unite in their abundance to appeal to the hearts of -men. - -This hospitable land was varied. It slowly liberated itself, like an -escaping captive, from the desolation of the East, where the plains -were broken with chilled lava beds, jagged peaks, asperities of -stone, standing like geologic spectres, canyons holding emprisoned -and viewless rivers, wide and gloomy lakes around whose margins the -struggling relics of an extinct flora seemed slowly confessing their -defeat before phases of climate less lenient than their predecessors. -It freed itself from broad depressions, the beds of ancient lakes swept -by freezing winds from the northern ice country, and bare and empty, -exposing to the sky their orb-like circumference, ghastly with white -alkaline encrustation, like the pallid optic of a great leviathan, -whitened with the films of decomposition. - -From all this area, rigid with the articulate expression of Death, a -land to the West began its fertile margins, tentatively uttering a new -design, with grass grown hills, low vegetation, and modest, scarcely -obvious brooks, loosening themselves in placid currents from the -highlands. Then, as if it felt the assurance of an improving destiny, -woods rose over ranges of increasing altitude, rivers swept in circling -glory through narrow and alluvial valleys, and groves of great trees -clustered over mountain terraces, defiled in green seas of leafy glory -to the lowlands, where the rhythm of verdurous beauty was resumed in -more open country, the reincarnated spirit of Nature loosened its power -upon a coast line, washed by the restless ocean. - -The coast was strangely beautiful. Wide coves paved with argent or -golden sands opened the straight lines of its rocky and lofty shores -with broad emarginations. These inviting bays, defended by crowning -capes or jutting and attenuated peninsulas of dethroned basaltic -columns, formed peaceful harbors wherein the fleeing surges of the -sea often came to rest in limpid pulsations; or else, with diminished -power, but greater speed and imposing crescent beauty, rolled upon -them in avalanches of spray. The land came down to these charming -regions in undulating surfaces, sometimes deeply wooded, though -often more artificially indented with scattered or solitary trees. -Not infrequently it accompanied, in its descent, the devious flow of -rivers, expanding into estuaries of such proportions that the fleet of -a modern nation might have floated safely within their borders. - -The smaller coves furnished a more minute and exquisite interest. Here -partially degraded escarpments of stone walled them in with steep -ascents of talus, over which ambitious vegetation, almost baffled in -its encounter with sea fogs and saline breezes, produced an irregular -covering of green, and displayed the ample ingenuity of its struggle. -This ingenuity was shown in the twisted roots of trees holding, like -closed fists enwrapped boulders, by roots penetrating at obtuse -angles the split surfaces of the palisades, or, entangled in a knot -of mutually helpful buttresses, suspending some adventurous pine at -a sharp angle above the splashing and murmurous tides below it. The -dazzlingly clear water in these darkened and umbrageous coves, revealed -with every shaft of light, the broad fronds of algae, floating like -aprons in green sheets, rising upon dark stem-like roots from the -cold waters. Here, upon the sides of detached masses of rock, sported -companies of sea lions, their gleaming and undulated flanks formed for -an instant into motionless groups of beauty, to be dissolved the next -moment in revels of wreathed confusion. Far out beyond the shore, domes -of rock, just covered by each swelling wave, broke the surface with -areas of foam, and again beyond these stood, as the last vestige of the -eroded coast frontier, some needle of stone, in whose fugitive and -vanishing shadows sea-gulls rested, that again, by a sudden access of -volition, swept over it in clouds of ascending and descending plumes. - -The coast-line was itself the index of a varied origin. For miles the -palisades of dark or frowning trap dikes rose precipitously above the -tide, their columnar formation yielding only a stubborn concession to -the incessant labors of air and ocean, though the scenic marvel of -cathedral spires and excavated reverberating sea caves, left by their -retreat, excused the tardy surrender to decay. - -Wherever the sedimentary strata of slate or limestone, frequently but -half consolidated, and therefore more easily attacked, formed the land -surfaces, the country descended gently to the sea, and swept backward -with dissected features to the coast ranges, gleaming distantly. -Through these tracts the beds of rivers were formed, and their -currents, under two contrasted phases, appeared upon the coast-line. -They either flowed through degraded valleys, slowly expanding into the -broad estuarine coves mentioned before, or, unable to reach the easily -attacked mineral beds, and forced to flow outward upon the surface of -dense igneous rocks, leaped into the sea by cascades walled in somber -gorges, or broke with sudden splendor over precipices of unchanged -basalt. - -In that pleistocene day the region, now summoned before the eye by -the familiar process of adaptive reconstruction, shrunk far northward -into low lying and frigid plains, narrowly escaping, by their slight -differential elevation, submergence from the western ocean. In this -uninviting northland, which lay like a neck of transition between the -ice mountains and their glacial precincts still farther north, and the -southern country, scattered forests of scrub willow, beech and spruces, -alternated with sand flats, cold bogs, and cairn-like moraines of stone -and gravel. The latter, swept by ice winds, drenched in snow and rains, -darkened by thunder clouds or lit by momentary blazes of the sun, held -the resistant remnants of the ice sheet, as tottering and stranded -fractions perched upon their harsh shoulders. They exposed gulches, -radiating from their summits, each occupied by momentary torrents of -water, from the melting ice cap, which, often collecting in lower -basins, formed extended semi-glacial lakes, hesitatingly bordered by a -thin growth of herbs, and in sections connected by narrow straits into -chains of untenanted and gloomy pools. - -Through the monotony of this wilderness wandered herds of the mastodon, -and here on the edges of the frosted lakes stood the primeval elephant, -the mammoth of those swiftly receding days now scarcely penetrated by -the vision of science and imagination. - -These faunal restorations were yet further extended. To the east of -this inhospitable and terrible zone, in cold and almost treeless -sections scarred by ravine and canon, and trending upward into the -abyssal recesses of the mountains, the cave bear secured an abiding -home. - -South over the edges of that sweeter land in which the crowded life of -plants and animals, evicted from its northern habitat by the exactions -of the cold, now strained its activity and device to maintain a -simultaneous existence, in this prolific country, the pleistocene horse -ranged in thronging bands. He scarcely impinged on the high terrains -where the sabre-toothed tiger dwelt, but by preference traversed the -grassy campus, following the streams, where their widened valleys, -recently formed, were uninvaded by the forests, and sometimes forced an -inquisitive path over the high country to the margins of the ocean. - -A meteorological complexity reflected and rivalled all of these -contrasts of position and occupation, and from within the sealed -envelope of the earth’s crust, also, movements and voices responded -to the ceaseless alternations of heat and cold, tempest and silence, -serene and raging hours. - -The warm southern winds sweeping from the broad Carribean Continent, -gathering moisture from the wide gulf of the Mississippi, reached -these more northern regions dense with saturation, and were suddenly -chilled by rarefaction as they were lifted into higher elevations -by the low lying flood of cold air, pouring in from the glaciated -poles. The contact zone between these displaced masses of hot and -moisture-laden air, and the underlying frosted and more slowly drifting -atmosphere precipitated a meteorological violence, an exorbitant vigor -of meteorological phenomena. Then ensued the tumult of storm and -electrical perturbation. - -The rivers rose upon their banks, the sinister and blackened skies -emptied their bosoms of their watery contents, avalanches rolled down -the mountain sides, the air smitten with a thousand forks of lightning -vibrated with the internal electric charges that evoked all the echoes -of canyon, peak and plain. Cyclonic winds tore through the forests and -bent the crowded heads of the trees. Then the marshalled clouds fled -in torrents of rain or were dissipated in the dazzling warfare, and -then turquoise skies bent over the washed lands, a summer sun opened -the petals of innumerable flowers, the cool air scarcely lifted from -the ground the scent of its warm palpitations, and, to the detonations -of the storm, succeeded the still unpacified but vanishing roar of the -overladen streams. - -In winter the petrifying touch of cold descended from the margins of -the glaciers, and the denuded trees, the snow blankets of the higher -land, the stilled streams and the pale skies imparted a sepulchral -stare to the shrunk soil that turned its dead face upward to its leaden -dome. - -To the excitement and changes of external nature the unadjusted -equilibria of the interior of the earth contributed new and dangerous -surprises--earthquakes threw down the cliffs into foaming rivers, -shook loose from their prehensile bases the towering pines upon the -hillsides, or started in repetition the sundered strata from the -mountains, and changed the face of nature with scarred exposures and -inundated valleys. The earth opened along shivering seams, and the -exuded lava rising from centres of stupendous pressure poured out in -belts its half consolidated magmas. - -Volcanic vents broke their seals and the uprushing tides of gas and -steam and cinders turned the day to night, and signalized the distant -craters with voluminous wreathes and columns and ash-filled whirlwinds; -sometimes in a fierce intoxication of chaotic incident, emptying upon -surrounding snowfields their hot and scorching rains. - -Thus nature wore all the wardrobe of her almost exhaustless store, -displayed all the properties of her acquisitions through ages of -geological change, and assembled the most startling devices for -awakening attention and vitalizing motion. - -She seemed at this point on the earth’s surface so to arrange and -direct her vast physical resources for rousing the mind, charging the -heart, and stiffening the will, that the new being, arising from -its cradle, and beginning the task of occupying the world, might be -suddenly endowed with mind and heart and will, so vigorously organized, -as to make that conquest easy. - -Amidst these wide contrasts of climate and scene, of internal and -external energy, of products and denizens, lived a race of prehistoric -men and women thinly scattered in villages over the shoulders, the -valleys and the alluvial terraces of the Sierra Nevadas in Central -California, at a point where a broad ingress of the sea swept past -the degraded and depressed Coast Ranges. Here, from the startling and -multiplied expressions of nature, the full influence of environment -encompassed at an impressionable instant the dawning powers, the -pulses of its primal heat, the mental movements, the suddenly erected -passions of this Glacial and Occidental Man, this strange and almost -silent creature, appearing from the unknown, and moving forward on the -listless feet of the centuries towards the powers and civilization of -the orient. - -Broadly reviewed, we have for the stage of this prehistoric drama, its -pictures and stirring scenes of adventure and haphazard perils, the -arctic glacial zone, the canyon country on the East, the Fair Land on -the West and South, and beyond the unchanging ocean, as primal then as -when it swept its fluctuating waves over Archaean ledges. - -The particular place where our eyes discover, in this vast area, the -movements of men, was situated in a grove of giant trees upon an upland -that formed a terrace on the sides of a mountain range almost wooded to -its summit, where the dwindling vegetation exposed the naked precipices -of an abrupt and overhanging crest. In front of the upland the ground -slipped suddenly down in slanting and again vertical faces of rock and -soil to a sort of bottom land, a long elliptical depression holding -at its lower end a basin of water, which, as it indicated no visible -source of supply, must have been fed from the streams formed in the -heavy rain-falls, or from the springs issuing over its hidden floor. -The land rose in a low swell beyond this, and upon the margin of the -latter elevation the possible inhabitant gazed upon the sea from the -edge of an intrusive dike of rock, which, wall-like, rose along the -edge of the western wave, its anterior face marked in most places by -rising piles of fragmental rock. - -Northward it rose to steeper heights whose unencumbered exposures made -sheer precipices above the frothing billows sweeping in at their feet. -The grass crept to the very verge of these dizzy elevations, the mist -rolled down upon them at moments, and again they described angular -apices of dark stone against the clear blue or cloud flecked zenith. -From these latter pinnacles of observation the Fair Land with its -mountains and rivers and valleys could be well discerned on the east, -and the glittering spire of the ice mountain with its wide skirts of -ice imperfectly descried northward. - -At the moment of time when the retrospective and imaginative eye of -this narrator fell upon the secluded upland, mentioned above, a path -led down to the valley and its lake, a path somewhat precariously -conducted over overhanging walls of rock. It crossed the valley almost -lost to sight in tall grass, rose upon the lower swell and seemed to -carry its adventuresome follower straight over the edge of the trap -dike into the sea. - -A little reckless exploration would have shown, however, that it led to -no such useless and careless termination. It became on the face of the -trap dike a very broken and disjointed path indeed, but still a path. - -It became a ladder of rocky steps, which, if successfully followed, -brought the traveller to a beach of water-worn and rounded pebbles, -which again southward disappeared into a more extended sand plain. -Behind this sand plain the dike precipice visibly dwindled, until it -too disappeared beneath the folds of a sparsely wooded shore. To any -human eye, perhaps unwontedly addicted to piercing the air with its -long vision, there would have been discerned far out to sea a line of -foaming breakers careering upon jagged backs of rock, and again even -beyond this, like ghosts, white ice-bergs, tilted or erect, following -each other in a spectral march. - -On the upland where the path we have thus traced to the shore, began, -somewhat withdrawn into the shadows of the colossal trunks of trees, -were a few covered spaces made habitable by skins and boughs of -trees. Their design, if design could be applicable to so undesigned -a structure, consisted in a few posts lightly driven in the soil, -connected at their upper ends by long sapling stems, which were again -connected by crossed boughs, on which the lesser twigs were left -undisturbed, and on this light webbing were piled more boughs and -leaves until the accumulation assumed a mounded shape. By the fertility -of nature, seeds, falling in this nidus of gradually accumulating -leaf mould, had started into life, and, augmented through the years, -had converted it into a sort of herbal patch, which in the season of -blossoming became gay and radiant with flowers. - -Beneath this ornamental roof the slender equipment of an aboriginal -camp was spread. A rude crane suspended from the roof, at a point where -a chimney-like opening had been made in the surplusage of leaves and -boughs, supported a stone vessel, pendent from it by cords of tree -fibre or coarse grass. The stone vessel was blackened by repeated -exposure to the dull fires made from leaves and peat moss, and -resembled the few others which, discarded and broken, seemed carefully -laid aside at one corner of this well ventilated apartment. The only -other noticeable furnishment of the room were the skins of foxes and -bears, rankly oleaginous and discolored, thrown down around the central -fire place, where were gathered in a disorderly pile a few stone axes -with wooden handles, some awkwardly made bows, and a few delicately -chipped blades of stone, neatly united to shafts of wood by means of a -black pitch. - -No walls enclosed this defective suggestion of a house, and only on -one side hung a woven mat of natural fibre hideously bedaubed with -red paint or iron ochre, most shockingly constrained to portray a -portentous animal rising hobby-horse like on its hind and abnormally -lengthened legs. - -It was thirty thousand years, more or less, before the birth of Christ -that a woman stood leaning against one of the four corner posts of this -simple habitation at the widened and worn opening of the highland path -described above, and gazed upward to the sky, in whose sapphire depths -the rising sun of day had begun to form clouds, sucked up from the -broad western ocean. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER III. - -LHATTO--THE WOMAN. - - -Ageless woman! The beckoning centuries seem to run before her tireless -energies, still stretching forward the span of her sublime motherhood, -still exacting the tribute of her sons and daughters to meet the needs -of History! - -She becomes in retrospect the origin of human life, the vast -procreative source of all civilization and all progress, and from her -bosoms, clutched by the fixed hand of infancy, flows the milk that has -formed the tissues of all known human annals. - -Prophecy dwells upon her head, for from her proceed the nations of -the earth. Poetry and Drama surround her, for she, in her evocative -charm, haunts the innermost chambers of Desire, and it is her touch -that lights the fires, else unseen, upon each altar of Passion, of -Aspiration, of Revelry, of Joy. - -Nature is her antitype, and in Nature as in a mirror she sees the -multiplied reflections of her own beneficence and her own fertility. -She rules in the vestiture of Man’s Empress, and the flood of time yet -bears upon its tides the meanings of her presence and her powers. - -Immortal Woman! in whose dowry Intention has placed all things -beautiful and tender, around whose neck hang the prayers of men, and -from whose eyes shine the rewards of men; she who by a welcome paradox -makes her weakness the unmastered ruler of men, and whose promises are -the last incentives to their ambition. - -In the metaphors of Revelation she stands revealed as the victim of -her own surrender to enjoyment, and through a miraculous genesis of -life she is enthroned upon the seat of Mercy, as the vehicle of Man’s -restoration. - -And this Primal Woman? Shall such panegyric belong to her? She stands -upon the threshold. Behind her the depths and mists of Oblivion--before -her Man’s Empire over Life. Let us see. - -As we watch her thus beaming and looking upward, she springs forward -into a patch of light made by the sun’s descending rays through some -aperture in the boughs of the high trees. Her beauty is revealed. -She is not tall, but the tense vigor of her muscles, all uncovered -and shining in the sun like a golden bronze, gives her superb frame, -modelled with a charm of outline born of exercise, an imposing -expression. She is not voluptuous, but the graded and blending -surfaces of her body--softly tinted with that indescribable color -that becomes an embrowned bronze, alive in the shadows, and a lustrous -metallic sheen in the high lights--form a picture of enticement. The -swollen excrescences of breast and hips, repulsive to all adroit and -delicate desire, are replaced by refined outlines, sexual in meaning, -but restrained to the limits of sculptural modesty. Her neck sweeps -deliciously upward from the bare shoulders, imprinted with the kisses -of the sun, bearing a head, perhaps small but exquisitely adjusted, -and displaying features puzzling in their type, and suggestive of the -subtle union of the American, the Negroid and the Malayan. - -The nose aquiline, but thinly ridged and faintly expanding into nervous -and sensitive nostrils, the lips full and pouting, yet short, the eyes -half limpid and dark, but carrying flashes of defiance, the forehead -low, the cheeks oval and delicately hollowed, the ears small and just -obviously inverted, and the chin abrupt and firmly built; the whole -composition lending itself to a range of expressions from languor to -anger and repudiation. Nor was it deprived of less extreme shades of -meaning. As she stood in the light, her eyebrows arched in attention, -the smooth skin between them disturbed by a few lines of indecision -and her lips parted in expectation, she leaned forward, and a look of -infinite interest, a strange pained thoughtfulness arose in her face. -She raised her hands as if in oblation to the light above her, her -tumultuous black hair streamed down her naked back, and she sighed. - -The poise was perfect, the aesthetic unity complete. Gold bands held -her ankles, gold links were upon her wrists and ears, a white shell -comb was inserted in her hair, and an apron of fox skin hung before -her. Such was Lhatto, the girl of the Sierras, before human history -began, the Woman of the Ice Age, living in the warm Fair Land in North -America. - -We are not concerned in proving the reasonableness of this fair -vision. Eve has been made beautiful by Art. Why not Lhatto by Fiction? -And why not beautiful indeed? Child of Nature, nurtured amidst its -beauties, trained in the many ways of earning life from its free gifts, -dispensing with all artifices of living, gathering strength, and color, -form, feeling and passion from the splendor of Nature’s panorama and -action. The wonderfulness of such panorama and action was in this -temperate and tropic and frigid zone unsurpassed. Why not find in these -first Earthlings some impassioned instance--accident it might be--of -Creation’s early effort to reflect,--as if in sportive prophecy of all -Woman should be thereafter,--the approaching terrors and glories of her -reign in history and story, in play and legend, poetry and music. - -Lhatto stood an instant longer in the sun. Then, as if regulating her -movements by some carefully conceived purpose, she turned back to the -sylvan camp and drew from a rude receptacle, fashioned from the trunk -of a tree, a more complete covering, seized a harpoon-like weapon -from the ground, crowded a pemmican mass of cooked grain and smoked -meat into a woven basket, rudely ornamented with figures, and turning -backward spoke to the moving figures of men and women far off in the -perspective of the forest. - -Her voice belonged to and fitted all her natural charm. It was musical -and jubilant with woody sweetness, and a lingering ring, like the -melting and penetrating calls of birds. It made her more beautiful. - -“To the water,” she cried, and the passive figures, scarcely arrested -in their toil, answered back with murmurs of assent. Lhatto turned -again, and Atalanta-like, sped down the path that started at the upland -and ended on the distant shore. - -She carried her clothing and the food basket, pressed in a bundle close -beneath her left arm, while her hand held the harpoon, her right hand -was raised before her and like a Grecian herald, “she ran swiftly.” -She soon reached the edge of the upland where the path descended to -the valley and the lake. Here her agility and sure footedness were -seriously tested. The broken descent was a series of intervals between -rough and angular blocks of stone, slippery with lichens or moss, and -now wet from some recent shower. The path with long interruptions where -no evidence of its direction could be seen, was detected by worn spots -or traces, upon the larger blocks. Lhatto seemed to exert no thought -upon the selection of her way. With light feet she sprang from point -to point, and running along the narrow edge of some decumbent mass of -rock, suddenly dropped from its side to a lower level without volition, -so vigorous and just was her instinct of place and action. - -She had reached the valley; the high grass nurtured by some favorable -influence reached half way up to her own height and pressed upon her. -Its swaying ran in radial waves outward from her vanishing figure, -as her laggard arm, now thrown behind her, swept its mobile crests. -Suddenly she emerged on the dome beyond, bare or scantily dressed in -verdure, and here her figure became instantly and superbly visible. - -A wind blowing freshly from the sea, and now chilling and raw, brushed -backward the glistening hair, color throbbed in her cheeks with a -deeper dye, her bosom pulsating with the efforts of her unusual -exertion rose and fell, and to her eyes had risen some suppressed -emotion that gave them brilliancy; her lips, after a moment’s pause -while her uplifted head, with a sort of statuesque elation, greeted -the blue sky, opened suddenly with song. - -Or was it but a cry, a weird inchoate yearning for music’s melody and -rhythm? - -It rose upon the air of that immeasurably distant day, and floated out -over the waves that were making their own rudimental symphonies on the -lonely shores. It rose upward and floated backward to the forests where -the birds in myriad ways were beating the same air, on which it came, -with song. It was part of the intuition of all feeling things to put -their feelings into the subtle measure of music. And she who sang had -come upon earth before civilization or science or art, in formal types, -had yet been dreamed of. It was the prototype of folk song, or nursery -croon, of legendary melodies, of national anthem, the song of Lhatto, -on the outskirts of all regulated thought and invention. - -Imagine--all you who behind foot-lights, and in front of crescent -platforms, hear the manifold choruses that shall in some way, sometimes -inscrutable, sometimes clear, interpret for you feeling or fancy, that -use all the sound resources of orchestras straining in all imaginable -ways to construct new fabrics of notes, building in echoes of old -tunes, forgotten lays, choral unions of tones, and hurrying from grave -to gay, from slow to quick, in the laborious compilation that rises -with elastic buoyancy, until the last chord crashes or sobs, and the -listener departs numbed and despairing--imagine Lhatto on the door -step of human time singing to the morning skies. - -Yes! it was a song. It was articulate. This earliest woman had wedded -music to words, and both, in her, perhaps from still more venerable -traditions, or from the creative genius of merely strong feeling, were -signals of man’s primal worship of the sea, and were intelligible. Thus -she sang:-- - -THE SONG OF LHATTO. - - Stay waves. Hold wind. Enough! - Enough! The fish swims on your face, - The fish swims in the deep water, - The clouds swim with the fish, - The sun buries his head there too. - My boat hurts your face, - Your face will eat my boat, - It will swim with the fish - And the clouds, and the sun. - Stop waves. Stop wind. Enough! - Enough! - Let me swim too with the fish, - And the clouds and the sun, - Hurry waves, hurry wind. - The boat I make wounds the - Face of the water. Enough! Enough! - -Perhaps it was not music, nor poetry, nor sense, but as the voice -shrilly mounted the sloping rocks and called from all their crannies, -their hiding nooks, their inviolate grottoes the--till then--unused -echoes, the Woman leaped and danced, her bundle dropped from her -arm, and with hands outstretched to the ocean, her face radiant and -laughing, she swung to and fro, pacing and stamping the ground in a -circle. - -Then a stranger thing happened, and something more grave and beautiful. - -Lhatto knelt and bowed to the far-away sea, and her voice became -silent. So the Woman there in the Earth’s Dawn begat music and -poetry and worship; the mists from the ocean spread about her, the -swarming voices of the day entered her ears, and perchance far down -in her perturbed soul, by some skill of the Great Intention, she saw -and heard the hurrying centuries rampant with life, pregnant with -passion, furious with ambition, prostrate--as she had been before the -sea--prostrate before a Woman’s form, and voice, and soul. - -Lhatto rose, resumed her burden and hastened to the edge of the cliff -where the path abruptly ended in a disjointed natural ladder of stone -leading aimlessly, and, as if by preference, dangerously down the -vertical face of the dike. - -Lhatto certainly felt no diffidence. From point to point she descended -with ease, leaping with careless accuracy, and scarcely pausing in her -rapid and twisting course. Suddenly her onward motion ceased. She had -reached the lowest step visible from the edge of the bluff; below was a -long interval, perhaps twenty feet to the rolled pebbles on the beach -now rapidly succumbing to the inundation of the inflowing tide. - -Her form bent forward. She was scanning the awkward gap, and some -exclamation of apparent wonder escaped her. The last step, a conical -and half sloping fragment of rock, which had usually afforded the final -element in the chain of precarious footholds, had disappeared. Some -dislocation had thrown it over, perhaps the assault of a heavy billow, -and the distance between her position and the shore was uninterrupted -by any intermediate break. - -The woman was disconcerted for an instant. But that intuitive response -of her muscular and trained body to each quick and adequate decision -of her mind was instantly displayed. She flung from her the bundle -of clothing, wrapped tightly around the basket of food, and shot -the harpoon far off, aiming at a flat exposure of fine sand between -the larger boulders. Both disappeared below her. She sank to the -narrow shelf on which she had been standing, and with the keenest -agility swung down below its edge, suspending her pendant body by -her outstretched arms, and then began slowly to sway, each flexure -of her back starting a wider amptitude of oscillation, until her -feet alternately rose so far as to bring the axis of her body almost -parallel with the edge of rock to which she tenaciously clung. - -Her design was evident. Immediately below her the fallen boulder -lying on its side thrust upward a comb of sharp edges treacherously -marked by braids of green sea-weed. To have dropped upon these flinty -serrations would have meant a serious injury. To escape it she now -essayed to give herself propulsive power sufficient to pass to one side -of this obstacle. - -In another second of time she had loosened one hand, continuing with -the other this supremely difficult exercise, which shot into her face -tides of color, and revealed the superb physique, texture and power -of her steel-like muscles. She suddenly released her hold when the -wide swing had become most extended, and shot, half turning backward, -far beyond the threatening boulder, falling with graceful recovery of -her inclined body, as the arrest on the shore brought her head upward -with the yet unexpended energy of translation. It was a skillful and -dexterous feat. - -For an instant she covered her face with her hands. The exertion had -been significant and unusual. The bundle and harpoon, the latter fixed -upright in the sand, were recovered, and with a relaxed, perhaps a -slightly halting step, Lhatto made her way over the sea wall of rolled -and polished pebbles to the less dismal and barren shores beyond, where -a long beach passed upward into dunes, drifted into hillocks, and -partially induced to support a scattered wood of dark, motionless, and -elongated cedars. - -The lonely woman, emblem and promise, stood a long time on that -untenanted shore looking outward, the encroaching tide slowly -encircling her feet with wavelets, while each advancing ripple bearing -some bubble of foam bound her ankles with a ring of airy beads. - -Before the ocean, whether in calm or in storm, youth feels the power of -its silence and its immensity. The wind that moved over its passionless -face when still, the wind that carries hurricanes over the same ocean -when convulsed and dangerous, solicit the recreant passions of youth, -aimless, boundless, and unfulfilled. - -Though speechless its murmurs are the voices of sirens luring him -with musical and seducing phrases to enter its green abyss and find -delight. The horizon, a merely necessary optical limit, a mathematical -certainty, a physical injunction upon eyesight, is to youth a line on -the threshold of New Worlds, a doorway to all the pleasures that the -leaping heart, with wise madness, craves incessantly. - -To the Woman of the Ice Age, to Lhatto, still struggling with the youth -of her own life, and struggling more profoundly but unconsciously, -and forever inexplicably, with the youth of the race, at the birth -of emotion, at the birth of thought, of worship, of sexual fruition, -competency, and desire, this remorseless inspiration of the ocean -smote upon her breast and mind like some vast magic magnetism, holding -her senses in its irresistible blissful power. And Nature was Lhatto’s -schoolhouse; perhaps more deeply than ever since amongst men she dwelt -in Nature, nursing at its breast, and yielding, as a child should -yield, terror to its imprecations, obedience to its prayers. - -But Lhatto, though thus imperiously influenced, had no introspections -in the matter. She simply turned her beautiful face to the sea, and -somehow a voice from that great deep said to her “Come!” - -The sun had reached the ninth hour of the day when Lhatto turned -backward to the shore, leaving the waves that were now lapping with -soft kisses her knees and thrusting out innumerable tongues upon her -smooth and sculptured thighs. She made her way unhesitatingly to a -thicket of cedars which, by some propulsion, and encouraged by a spring -of water welling upward near them, had advanced far beyond their -companions, and by reason of this temerity had become the target of -storms, which had broken their boughs, bent their growth, and thrust -them upon each other as if, in a last fraternal embrace, they had -concluded to die together. - -In the shadow of this thicket, and now evident, as the Woman advanced -toward it, lay a narrow keeled but somewhat well shaped and serviceable -boat. It was a tree trunk hollowed out with some precision, the method -being clearly indicated by the charred remnants of its roughened and -chipped interior surfaces. The original tree trunk had been hewn down, -its outer bark removed and one half of its circumference hacked away. -Upon the section of the tree thus exposed fires had been lighted, or -heated stones placed, and the incinerated wood loosened and excavated. -The process had been toilsome; but in the primitive occupations of that -prehistoric people, time or exertion counted for little, so free could -they then be in the expenditure of each. - -The boat had not been altogether carelessly conceived. A sort of prow, -a square stem, full sides and a flat bottom made it useful along the -shore fisheries, and a long paddle now lying at the bottom of the boat, -and bruised and indented by use, showed that its occurrence was not -accidental. - -Lhatto threw her food basket and harpoon into the boat and then -unwrapping the little bundle of clothes took out a pair of skin -breeches, a soft fabric shirt, and a seal-skin blouse or jacket. She -unloosened the fox skin apron about her loins. It dropped to the -ground, and the nude Eurydice, save for the glittering anklets and -wristlets and necklace, for an instant saw her beauty in the still -encroaching waters that may even have hastened their tardier approach -to indulge in the shadowy carresses of her reflection. - -It was only for an instant, for even then modesty--the primal -birthright and ornament of womanhood--in this wild child of nature, -this woman hidden in the nameless, dateless past, made clear its -claims. Lhatto, with a startled look, through which there also sprang -hints of a mischievous and tantalizing happiness in her own beauty, -half bent, half turned, though only the impersonal sky and rocks and -trees were there, and snatched the waiting garments. Quickly they were -drawn on over her warm bronzed skin, and then seizing the boat’s stern -and pushing outward, she drove it across the shallow tidal flood, its -harsh grating sounding strangely on that empty shore. - -It floated, and as Lhatto stepped upon it, the sides were half hidden -in the water. Her hand, with balanced rhythm, paddled the little -boat out from the shore, and the crude invention evinced some artful -adaptation for its purposes as it moved on an even and noiseless keel. - -She first propelled it beneath the highest sheer cliff of dark basalt, -whose pediments lay fathoms deep beneath the wave. The steep walls -resounded in hollow and reinforced echoes, as she worked her way -through gaunt spires of rock or looking upward caught the tiny rain -that shot from some narrow shelf of rock tufted with grass, drenched -with percolating waters. - -For a moment she rested, and then her wandering eye turned seaward. -Far out she saw the lifted ledges, remnants of the wasted dike, now -withdrawn through the age-long conflict with frost and wave, leaving -behind these rugged roots; and she saw too the glint of a seal’s gray -body on the rocks. Quickly she turned the careening canoe and shot -towards the distant spot where the white spray dashed upward. Perhaps -a mile’s distance would cover the breadth of water she crossed, -perhaps less. The ledges almost formed a low islet, and Lhatto still -noticing the unchanged location of the seal whose eyes arrested by her -approach now rested, half vagrantly turning from side to side, upon the -unexpected visitor, steered her boat to the opposite end of the little -patch of reef. It occupied her but a moment to slide the boat up upon a -convenient and smoothed edge, and then as quickly to seize her harpoon, -and hunter-like, creeping almost prostrate on the rocks, to reach a -point almost directly above her still undisturbed prey. - -Even as she raised in the air the sharp bone point of the harpoon -above it, its eyes turned half languidly upon her, but no sense of -alarm, scarcely an indolent effort to see her more clearly, interfered -with her design. Lhatto paused, and the poise and action of her body, -although hidden and disguised by her more cumbrous clothing, were -strikingly suggestive, and full of interest. The succeeding second, -and the harpoon, hurled with splendid precision, buried its murderous -point in the neck of the seal that tumbling from its perch struggled -momentarily in the water, pouring out a red stain upon the foam and -green blades of waves. Its efforts were soon over, and hauled back -and earned by Lhatto to the boat, its glazed eyes seemed to renew its -vacant inquisition of this cruel and unexplained intruder. - -Lhatto stood irresolute. Her minute scrutiny of the dead animal showed -an awakening repulsion, and to the first glance of satisfaction -succeeded an unsettled expression in which perchance regret fought with -wonder, and finally surrendered to the latter. For the woman kneeled -and pressed and smoothed the drenched skin, lifted up the disfigured -head, and holding it in both hands so that its shadowed orbs were in -the direct line of her vision, she sang again, and this time the song -was low and whispering and plaintive. - -THE SONG OF LHATTO. - - The eye has gone out, and the breath, - And the thing is still, broken. - Where is the eye-look and the breath-spirit? - In the water, in the air, nowhere. - Hit it, it does not move. - Warm it, it does not move. - The wind cannot make it move. - Nor the water, nor the Sun. - Has it gone away? Will it come back? - -And the primal woman leaned over the dead seal, and before the mystery -of death began the long interrogation which man has ever put to this -same wonder, running on past false prophets, ethnic faiths, revelation -and modern science. - -Lhatto disengaged the harpoon point which, as in the same instrument -of the Esquimaux to-day, was attached by a thong to the wooden shaft -that carried it, and washed it clean and replaced it in a socket in a -handle. She laid it in the boat and stood lingering over the spot where -the seal had been slain, perhaps with some propitiary thought, for the -life she had taken from the world. - -She turned to the boat that now with the receding tide had become half -elevated from the water on the widening surfaces of the bared rocks. A -light push, a leap and the rocking dug-out shot outward in a maze of -ripples, with its agile occupant still standing upright, a curious gaze -of interest rising in her face as she looked northward to the blanched -and drifting ice bergs, intermittently visible and absent on the far -horizon. - -The girl slowly resumed her paddling, and began, after some hesitation, -to row still further outward from the shore, that now seemed a long -way off, its details softened into confused blotches of color, and -its irregularities of outline merged into bold and simple shapes. The -strangeness of her position, the weird isolation of her voyage on -the Pacific, a human waif in the great void of expectancy of nature, -certainly carried no intimation of its poetic or dramatic interest to -her primitive experience, and feeling. She, the naive precursor of a -continent’s population! - -A fascination only drew her outward, the compelling curiosity of her -nature, that delicate and insistent inquisitiveness of woman, which in -more conventional forms is reduced and dissipated into the idle and -transitory whims of modern life. - -In Lhatto, this minimized attitude of interest in trifles, innuendos -and intrigues, was foreshadowed by a great yearning; the stalwart, -uninjured, bare response of her strong passionate heart to her own -questioning of nature, to the myriad strains of sympathy between her -and this chrysalis of mysteries into which she had been born. How shall -we justly realize the proportions or properties of the first full -formed human soul in a woman, standing somewhere near the marvellous -incident which evolved or made her; yet possessing an indescribable -heritage of half-animal instincts, transmuted let us hope, by the -benison of the Great Intention, into a labyrinth of longings, and -dreams, and hopes, and queries. - -She moved constantly outward on the waste of waters, and her face was -turned to the land looming up behind its first declivities in purple -mountain tops, here and there accentuated in sharp and sparkling -pinnacles. Still outward. And now so recklessly had she advanced that -the thronging fingers of a great oceanic current, sweeping northward, -like myriads of tiny tentacles, each the lapping summit of a drop -of water, had seized her boat and slowly swerved it from its path, -carrying it on the broad river of its eddying tides. - -Lhatto seemed to notice nothing at first, but suddenly she rose to -her feet. The receding land seemed miles away, the sun shone from the -zenith, the little groups of rocks on which she had landed were lost to -sight, a low creeping ripple made itself heard and the boat rose upon -the successive swelling convexities of larger and larger waves. The -realization of her position was acute. She worked vigorously to draw -her little vessel out of the hastening and now vociferous tide, but for -once her strong arm, nerved into desperation by a sense of impending -danger, was impotent. - -The struggle between the woman and the now exulting water, leaping and -splashing upon her terror-stricken face, was an unequal combat. The -insidious gliding wavelets, as if instinct with a hidden purpose, had -disguised their force until their softly augmented power had reached -the full measure of an irresistible purpose. Nothing now in that -woman--become frail before the strength of natural agencies--could save -her. - -She stood up, and dropping the useless paddle, between her scooped -hands shouted to the shore. The wild sad cry drifted lonely, shivering -unanswered, over the hopeless plain of water, and if it reached the -shore, died forgotten against the flinty barriers, or lost itself in -cranny, crevice, and defile. - -The tide grew stronger as if exultant in its remorseless purpose. The -boat swayed and swung like a chip upon a descending stream, the dancing -waters leaped about it, the long swells rose higher, and a growing cold -caused the young creature to draw her wisely designed clothing closer -to her form, while the unused paddle lay at her feet, and far beyond, -as her appealing eyes looked northward, the great icebergs drew nearer. - -Indeed the spectacle became each moment strangely beautiful and -stupendous, and the despairing woman, in whom the dawning responses to -beauty daily strengthened, forgot for a moment her extremity, in the -superb picture that grew and grew as the now shooting currents carried -her against its awful frigid majesty. - -The day was far spent, the sun’s red disk hung on the very edge of the -western horizon and the far away shores of the Fair Land, from which -Lhatto had drifted, seemed drenched in purple, though above their peaks -and domes of rock, a rosy light yet lingered. The sun, unattended by -clouds but veiled in some unapparent mist, glowed garnet red, and its -dissipated or obstructed rays dimly touched the ocean’s face with -molten glints and splashes of bronzy gold. - -North of the Fair Land, north of Lhatto lay the ice country, and it -was thither her eyes turned with wonderment. She had heard of the ice -country. Between it and her own Fair Land stretched the intermediate -morainal zone, already described, where the hairy mastodon roamed in -a dwindled but widely disseminated flora of low willows, birches, -beeches, and gnarled ashes and spruce, where, in sheltered places, -carpets of meadow sprinkled with color, spread between high beds of -naked gravel, boulder piles, and clay. Her people had hunted there. - -It was a strange climatic contiguity, the cold and ice-burdened north, -the temperate or semi-tropic region of the Fair Land south, the neck of -transition between. - -It was not an impossible condition. In Dr. J. W. Gregory’s _Great Rift -Valley of Africa_, a description is given of his ascending to the -snow fields and glaciers of Mt. Kenya, and the reader is introduced -to a succession of climates precisely such as prevailed in this -reconstructed area of North America where the Romance of Lhatto and of -Ogga was, as here described, evolved. - -Mt. Kenya itself, garlanded with glaciers and snow beds, rises some -16,000 feet in the air almost beneath the equator. - -The lowlands, miles away from its dark and arctic peaks, are tropical, -where at 2 degrees South Latitude, the Athi River pours into the -Indian Ocean. Nearer to the baffling peak, as the land rises, immense -and dense forests spread an almost impassible skirt about it, the -coniferous trees (_podocarpus_) and bamboo jungles indicate a cooler -atmosphere, and through them hustle the chattering monkies (_Colobus_). -Swamps, morainal hillocks succeed, the forests are replaced by herbs -and bushes and scattering groves, with interspersed peat bogs, and -then, beyond such a region of severer temperate conditions, rise the -arctic highlands of the central confluence of ridges, chasms, and -peaks, where a perpetual winter reigns. And all these progressive -alternations are encountered in a radial circumference of fifty miles. - -Already the hastening oceanic stream had carried Lhatto, as the night -fell, nearly a hundred miles from the morning’s shore. - -The night had indeed come; and Lhatto, who had long ago abandoned her -desperate struggles to escape from the pitiless tide, crawled to the -bottom of the boat, and crushing upon her head a cap of seal-skin, the -last item of clothing left in her bundle, and eating ravenously of the -meat and grain in her little basket, resigned herself to the strange -possibilities now close upon her. And resigned herself without fear! - -Fear indeed holds an awful sway in the primeval brain, stultified and -dizzy before the unaccountable events in nature, its life and death, -its storms and its silence, the stars, the depths of the earth, and -all moving things. But an exalted phantasy sways there too. A sudden -realization of fate and supernatural impulse, of swimming and winged -and footed destinies carrying one on to prejudged conclusions, premade -ends, prefixed disasters. - -So Lhatto sat and dreamed and waited, and the biting air sank into -her breast, and she fell asleep, almost undisturbed, acquiescent to -all that might happen. And the same stars in the moonless night shone -on her then, in the Ice Age, as they would shine on the same waters -to-day, in the Age of Knowledge. And so Lhatto glided on unconscious, -to the ice and the snow and the glaciers. - -As the sun broke over the eastern rims of land, as its rays fell upon -the half blinded eyes of the waking woman, a chill like a physical -impact shook her frame. It was a strange and picturesque scene, one of -unimaginable wonderfulness and beauty which met her eyes, and startled -her into the widest wakefulness by the piercing cold. And it also was a -scene of fantastic fearfulness and danger. The current had brought her -to the lips, to the opening mouths and throats, the manifold necks and -elongations, the waters fleeted with icebergs, the radiant cathedral -spires, the minaretted roofs, the spouting super or englacial rivers, -the dirt accumulations spilled from its lapsing morainal crusts; -at the beryl wall of the Great Glacier, covering the North country, -_where_ it slid from the distant plateaux, even from the ice encased -Mountain of Zit, rigid in frost, amid its dead and frozen hills, -_where_ it moved with breaks and bounds and dull detonations into the -sea. - -As the sun climbed the cloudless sky the immensity of this continental -ice sheet was revealed to Lhatto. The very centre and composed -inspiration of it all was the great towering mountain with its jutting -and defiant peak of rock, where, as was shown before, the superb -elevation was itself broken up into radiating chasms whose rocky -sides rose in black keels of relief above the snow-filled gorges they -defined, while surmounting them all, a keen shaft of granite, roseate -in a hundred lights, or wrapped in pendulous and waving veils of mist, -rose steeply to the clouds. - -The extreme velocity of the current had abated and the dug-out floated -slowly forward into this chaotic splendor of icy things. A vagary -of the tide branching sideways brought the boat and its bewildered -occupant into a sea of icebergs, ice-cakes, hummocks and toppling -mounds of ice, where before her rose the very front of the high glacial -stream pushing steadily into the water. In this amphitheatre of -wonders, the crystal prison of the Ice King, full of structure and full -of the most diffused and entrancing colors, here and there, in sockets -and rifts, acute with passionate intensity, the boat rested, bobbing on -the fluctuating waves. - -Lhatto stood up on the dancing raft. Her limbs cramped with cold and -the long stagnant sleep, seemed scarcely able to support her. But -stamping and rubbing brought the life back to them, and the blazing -sunlight brought back vitality to her body, even as it also started -the ice streams, and to each tension of the ice masses supplied the -loosening warmth that hastened their solution. - -Before Lhatto was a terrace of ice, its minor irregularities masked -by distance, with a height of many hundreds of feet, gashed, riven -and melting, running for miles and miles interminably backward and -sideward. At its feet, washed by the water, thousands of ice floats -rose idly, or were rocked with waves produced by the falling into the -sea of new additions to their number. Rivers were flowing in places -over the ice front, discolored with mud, while leaning boulders of -rocks at points were balanced on the edge of the glacier, or at other -points protruding from the midst of its face, waited momentarily their -own discharge into the ocean. - -Beautiful and sublime ships of ice seemed stationary about her with -their deep keels yet anchored to the sea bottom, sculptured and -dissected, with snow drifts piled high upon them or arching in white -cornices from the sides. An incessant murmur entered her ears, now and -then punctuated by a sharper note of cracking and splitting, while the -surges from the falling bodies, accompanied by most audible splashes, -kept her boat tipping and turning, and rendered each movement she -ventured to make, uncertain. - -It was the panorama unrolled before her eyes landward beyond the blue -and green precipices of the immediate glacier that drew her rapt -attention. The rocky signal surmounting Zit soared above the ice -fields, whose united surfaces, softened into an unbroken expanse, like -huge shields, encircled it with gleaming armor; its lower attendant -mountains secured a precarious freedom from the dominant oppression, -some raising their heads in dark crests, above the snows, and the -others banked over their highest reaches with fillets or reflecting -bombs of snow. Below all these elevations the universal ice, written -with a thousand details of serac, gorge, moraine, crevasse, and -noonituck swept its dazzling and incredible domain. - -Lhatto was beginning to feel a cruel hunger and she was very cold. The -warm shirt, the seal skin dress, protected her, and over her feet she -had also drawn a pair of sealskin boots, all so providently provided in -her bundle of clothes, that it was almost certain that she had not been -entirely without prevision of her coming necessity. But now it was -hunger, too, that added its terrors to her isolation. She suddenly cast -a satisfied glance upon the dead seal, already almost forgotten, lying -in the boat. Beneath its plush-like covering lay the rich nutritous fat -that feeds the fires of life beneath polar skies, with instantaneous -and adequate fuel. - -Her thoughts, now again wakeful and swarming upward with fresh hopes of -escape, as the tide had stopped, and land far south showed its varying -outlines, were suddenly interrupted. Although apparently arrested, her -boat had been drawing imperceptibly closer to an enormous berg which -lay, tilted sideways, from some dislocation of its centre of gravity, -its bottom immovable in the mud. A beetling wedge of ice formed its -apex. Beneath this impending block and straight against a shelf of ice -at its base, the exile had drifted. The dug-out struck the ice-cake -sharply and Lhatto was thrown forward upon the prow of the small boat. -Her fall was fortunate. The next instant, long enough for the slight -concussion to be communicated to the toppling summit, the great mass -fell, splintering like some colossal Rupert’s bubble into myriads -of fragments, indenting the water with a deep concavity upon whose -depression the refluent waves rolled in deafening disorder. Lhatto -lay just beyond--by the narrowest margin--the extreme verge of its -showering cleavages. The stern of the boat was hit by a big cake and -sank beneath the water. Lhatto leaped to her feet, sped forward upon -the ice shelf of the berg and falling flat, grasped the retreating -dug-out, which, sucked outward, almost pulled her after it. The strong -muscles and the roughened edges of the berg holding her back by their -asperities, catching in her loose and wrinkled dress, saved all. - -Another moment the stress of peril was past, and Lhatto drew over the -rim of the ice shelf the boat still containing the captured seal. A -stranger and larger craft was now the vehicle of her further adventures. - -Adventure was indeed certain, for relieved of its cumbrous and -dislodged pinnacle, the huge iceberg reeled slowly over and with a -pulsating boom that shook the gathered snows from its shoulders, in -storms of irridescent dust, it rose from its muddy fastenings and -floated; to follow perchance the spectral procession which in the -morning of the previous day Lhatto had seen far south, proceeding -outward on the trackless deep. - -But apprehensions were for the instant forgotten. The woman drew -from the pocket of her trousers a long thin blade, that shining from -its concave facets revealed the substance of obsidian, or volcanic -glass. She squeezed the plush-like skin of the seal, draining away the -absorbed water, and then cut deeply into its back, and dexterously -working the stone knife, dislodged the fat in lumps. And these she ate. - -The reassuring comfort of satiety, the new warmth bringing with it -courage, made Lhatto keen and anxious again. She reviewed the chances -of her escape. The berg was moving. That she could detect by watching -the sharp edges of its arête pass the features of the glacier beyond -it, and that it was likely to follow in the wake of the endless train -of emigrants whose majestic beauty was destined to vanish before -the tropic suns, dropping like despoiled queens their ornaments of -sparkling jewels in the hot waters of the south, was equally certain. -What means did she possess to effect her escape? The boat was intact, -food was there, the harpoon and paddle still remained, and her own -good heart and buoyant muscles, the quick concurrence of ardor and of -strength, were also hers. - -The berg moved steadily out to sea. No time was to be lost; the sea -was as yet undisturbed, save by its own unquiet breathing, and even -this perturbation, near the shore, and shielded as her position was by -fences of icy peninsulas and drifting ice, was now scarcely noticeable. -If she left the berg and trusted herself upon the water, could she shun -the tides which had brought her there? To answer this question it was -essential for Lhatto to find out exactly where she was. The body and -mass of the berg, in steps and colonnaded loveliness, was between her -and the distance, only the shelf on which she stood offered any room -for foothold or support. - -She looked intently upward. Above her she could see a shoulder of ice -projecting outward, and it seemed so disposed to the central trunk of -ice as to suggest that it surrounded it with a sort of lower platform. -If she could surmount this the wider circuit of vision would enable her -to form her plans. The task was not easy. The wall of ice at her very -face was steep and actually inclined outwards, and the nearest margin -of its pendent edges was thirty feet away. - -Lhatto studied the problem, but it was an impossible physical feat -to ascend the glassy slope. The iceberg, with occasional shuddering -thrills which broke the snow loose from its higher parts, sending down -white showers upon the startled woman, was slowly veering seaward. -The circling eddies around its edges betrayed its motion. It even -seemed that the shelf on which she stood was being invaded by the sea -water. Her boat, a few minutes ago dry on the ice, was now partially -surrounded by water. Her dismay increased. Running almost hopelessly to -and fro, a waif of humanity in the great arctic world, straining her -eyes from the extremities of the tipping shelf where she stood, to see -if possible what surmounted the platform above her, which she desired -to reach, her eye noted a horn-like projection of cylindrical ice, -suddenly revealed by one of the discharges of the powdery snow above. - -It was a stalactitic formation of ice extending outward like the round -limb of a tree. Lhatto’s eye detected here an opportunity. Wound around -the long harpoon she had brought, were many feet of strongly woven -cord, a provision made by her people in their hunting excursions, when -their prey dove or swam from them. It was attached to the harpoon -blade, and the device contemplated a separation of the blade from the -stock or handle which floated to the surface, though still united by -this long thong to the wounded animal, seeking escape below the water. - -Lhatto quickly unwound this cord, severed it from the stock and blade -and threw one end over the uprising and ringent projection. In another -instant she had looped the other end about her thighs, pulled the noose -tightly around her limbs, and then, seizing the disengaged end, drew -herself upward as a trapeze performer does to-day in a circus ring. - -When near the projection she caught it with one hand, let go of the -rope and flung her other hand upon it and then drew herself quickly -upward, flinging her legs upon the crust around her. She had gained an -ample space extending outward from the spire of the iceberg on all -sides. She could walk around the central mass and her eye traversed the -whole visible area of the shores. - -Instinctively she looked upward to Zit. Its granite obelisk still -gleamed amid the ice, and a rare splendor of unbroken sunshine flooded -the marvellous picture. A second time the Woman sank to her knees and -from her untrained lips, from the speechless impulse of her heart, -there rose a prayer for safety, and she stretched out her imploring -hands to the distant mountain. - -As she thus bowed to the sensible Deity before her, great wraiths and -swirling towers of snow seemed developed upon one edge of the vast -scene. They rose as colossal and advancing clouds, and closed with -immense strides the whole picture of the mountain. Cold winds descended -from their flanks, bearing a tornado of ice particles, whirring -snow-flakes and poignant sleet. Poor Lhatto! She trembled in the gale -and cold; the iceberg, pushed by the storm’s harsh hands, reeled -outward, and the descending blizzard rapidly hid the outlines of the -coast. The woman had caught the slightest glance eastward, but it was -enough to show her that the glaciated areas faded away somewhere south -into a barren region which seemed again succeeded by the Fair Country. - -There was no time to lose. Other bergs loosened from their moorings, -or started in more rapid motion, were crowding now upon the _massif_ -on which Lhatto stood, the water spaces about her were filled with -cakes and hummocks, the waters themselves, violently disturbed, were -forming into waves, the blinding snow crowded the air, and the dismal -frightening moment seemed to seal her fate. - -She turned anxiously and looked over the platform’s edge to see if her -one little hope, the small dug-out, was yet upon the lower shelf. To -her alarm, the greater part of this ledge had disappeared; a triangular -section still held the canoe, but the leaping waves were falling upon -it and it rocked upon the slippery floor, with every intimation of -quickly following the broken portions of the berg. Lhatto, stricken -with terror at the thought of her separation from the one link -connecting her with home and the sweet memories of the southern land, -looked hastily about her for some quick escape from the dilemma. She -had inadvertently approached the curling edge of the upper platform -and stood peering over it upon a bank of drifted snow. The plate of -ice beneath her broke with a sharp rattle, and Lhatto, buried in the -snow bank, was flung headlong upon the ice beneath. She emerged unhurt -from the protecting blankets of wet snow and leaped to the dug-out. -Another instant and she had coiled up the pendent strand from the ice -bough by which she had ascended, thrown it and the harpoon into the -boat, now slipping away with every new oscillation, and following both, -launched herself amid the wilderness of ice, in the bitter breath from -the frosty deserts of the glacier, in that desolate black moment when -the light of day seemed extinguished, and the power of night held her -prisoner in this sepulchre of death, with the shrill blasts whistling -about her, a thousand missiles of hail pelting her remorselessly, and -the inky waters, beaten into froth, curling their smitten crests about -her. - -Then the natal heroism emerged; her spirit met the unexpected and -monstrous demand, her muscles stiffened into sinews of iron, and the -prescience of her mind, educated by numberless adventures, directed her. - -The very proximity of the stalking bergs, somewhat aligned in rows, -protected Lhatto against the fiercer assaults of the wind, and -permitted her to secure shelter from the rising waters. She adroitly -directed her way between these stealthy and splendid argonauts, -shooting across open lanes of water between them, skirting cautiously -their quiet margins, even clinging to them, waiting for a propitious -moment to move safely onward in her course. - -The instinct of direction in wild men and women is acute and -infallible. The obstreperous confusion of warring details in natural -features becomes with them a completely composed picture with all the -details properly distributed, and the relations of parts all accurately -designed. Lhatto had seen but little from the iceberg, and distance had -veiled it, but some compass of direction set instantly in her bright -mind, and she knew, even in this labyrinth, the avenue of escape. It -lay to the south-east. - -The sudden tempest almost as suddenly abated, but all the startled -movements it had inaugurated continued its physical effects long after -its activity had ceased. The ice continued to pour outward from the -glacier, the water remained froward and dangerous. Lhatto, still aiming -to shield herself from the waves, had clung to the larger floats of ice -in such wise as to secure immunity from their attack, but she could not -much longer afford to drift with them too far to sea. She would have -again met that tide perchance which first brought her northward, and -besides she realized that, nearer in shore, a back setting tide might -help her on her difficult return. - -The moment had come for her to venture out upon the broken waves, and -auspiciously as she shot her canoe from behind a barrier of ice to -which she had tenaciously held, the sun again opened the canopy of the -sky, and a light shaft flung athwart her boat seemed propitious to her -animated fancy. - -She had already passed over miles of water from the glacier’s edge and -her encouraged heart grew hopeful. She left the friendly berg and -directed her boat eastward against the waves. She worked the sea-worthy -little dug-out with temerity and skill. She sat looking forward and -her keen eyes, helped now by the renewed sunlight, watched the crested -waves, their slanting or direct approach, and while she resisted -their tendency to carry her from the shore, she so far permitted them -to neutralize her advance, as was necessary to avert the danger of -upsetting. - -It was a clever and strong series of efforts, and to the sympathetic -spirits watching her from some asylum in the skies her success must -have elicited approving nods. - -Slowly as the night fell the lapsing wind faded away; the sun’s parting -rays piercing the higher atmosphere, left the cold world in darkness; -spectral and terrifying shadows stole over the ice fields and one -by one the stars in the firmament lit their everlasting vigils, and -Lhatto, still struggling with the waves, moved silently shoreward, -almost despairing with fatigue, but calling, in her brave primeval -heart, upon all the powers of the blue black dome above her to bring -her safely home. - -All that night the tireless arms worked, and the nursed boat overcame -the distance with increasing ease; the tide, mutable with new -affections, now helped the exhausted maiden in place of opposing her, -the wind, soothed into pity by the moving spectacle, brushed her -onward with alternating puffs, and the surges on the far away shore -made themselves heard so as to direct her path. Birds from the shore -piped above her head, and ever and anon an earthy odor swept over her -bowed head, to lure her hope with reviving thoughts of life and flowers. - -But Lhatto slept. Her prostrate form lay backwards in the boat, the -paddle had dropped from her nerveless hand, her seal skin cap had -slipped from the clustering hair, dark with moisture, that pressed down -upon her narrow and arched brow, the darting eyes were closed, and -as the sun again toiled upward in the east, his light, touching many -things with beauty, touched none more gently than the sleeping girl, -saved from the sea anemone, or the thronging fish or the myriad coral -beds, to be the mother of new men. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER IV. - -OGGA--THE MAN. - - -Where the opening valleys of the Fair Land turned northward into the -Dismal Country of heaped ridges, interminable peat hogs, low woods, -and scanty or puissant streams, upon an upland sparingly covered with -trees, and almost on its incline to the lowland beyond it, dwelt -Ogga--the mastodon hunter. - -His house, if house it could be called, was a sort of tent of bark -with skins placed upon an interior framework of sticks and so disposed -that its doorway closed by a broad slab of bark, torn from the great -Sequoia, looked over the Dismal Country to the northwest, and the -strong eyes of its occupant could see the great glacier, and, if the -air was clear, could always see the dark minaret of Zit above it. - -The spot was redolent with charm--a charm that gained in interest as -the eye turned to the ragged land north of it, where the dreary plain, -showing occasional interruptions of hillock and stream, formed a refuge -for its disappearing tenantry of mastodon and bear. By some accident -of vegetable distribution, or through some violence of weather, a -smooth clear space surrounded Ogga’s bark home. - -Behind this advancing table land, a dark block of lofty trees rose -with majestic forcefulness. They were the giant trees. Their tapering -summits with arrow-like precision melted into the blue sky like a -winged flight of birds, and far beneath, the broad trunks stood in dark -colonnades, a kind of architectural vestibule to the mantling woods, -hiding, with their deep umbrageous solidity, the retreating and rising -and falling mountains. - -When Ogga opened the door of his tent he could look over the steep -land ascending to the glacier, and not infrequently he watched the -mastodon moving in small herds, or a few individuals in pairs stirring -in dark patches among the low trees and bushes at the sides of rivers; -could even see their white tusks reflecting the light from the curved -ivory, could even hear their low trumpet calls increasing to brisk -short snorts, or the wash of the pond waters as their slouching bodies -entered some unfrequented pool to drink or bathe. - -The sides of his tepee were partially covered with mastodon hide, and -fragments of tusk and a few large molars of the prehistoric beast lay -on the ground near his door way. - -The mastodon was itself a proboscidian which had become widely -distributed through the northern half of the American Continent -at the close of the Great Glacial Day. It advanced southward and -retreated northward, if such expressions have a permissible use, with -the advance and retreat of the glacier, the great ice cap, which had -in an irregular manner, modified by position, topography and local -conditions, stretched from the highlands of Canada north and south. -Thus distended it had enveloped the present eastern, middle and western -states, withdrawing farther north as its edge extended to the West, -but in the West connected with outlying positions along the higher -altitudes of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, and pressing -to the borders of the ocean at every possible opportunity. - -The warm winds from the Pacific, a rise on the west coast, then as -now of the isothermal lines, contracted its western expansion. The -flora and silva of this section, thrust backward from the north by -the invasion of the ice, somewhat more encouraged here in their -resiliency against the cold, with intermittent daring stoutly defended -more advanced northern stations than did the floras and silva of the -East. In the East the long lip of the glacier hung, on the southern -boundaries of Pennsylvania, and its refrigerating influence was felt -many degrees further south. - -Along the fringes of local glaciers as that of the Mountain of Zit -in the abundant vegetation--the grasses, the bushes, the aspiring -woodland--which were fed by streams, percolating through the sands or -issuing in the clay basins and losing some of the extreme cold, in -these favorite spots the mastodon congregated. They moved through the -country in small herds, frequently in pairs. A certain caution had -become hereditary, for prowling sabre-toothed cats (_Smilodon_) were -lured from warmer regions to prey upon these boreal elephants. The -method of attack which the nature of the ground made most effective -was for the cat to crouch upon some table land or shelf overlooking a -defile leading to a pool or stream, or a meadow, and blurring itself -with the brown yellowish soil, await the approach of its cumbrous -antagonist. It invariably chose the last member of the procession, or -better, a belated straggler. Leaping from its high perch, executing -springs of surprising velocity and width, it landed on the back of its -terrified victim. A struggle ensued, which not infrequently resulted in -the discomfiture of the sanguinary bandit, for unless too much engaged -or too quickly disabled, the surprised mastodon trumpeted its distress, -and this often led to a return of the bulls of the herd, in which case, -as the odds became more formidable, the vicious tiger retreated, but -never without inflicting dangerous wounds. - -Its flight did not mean, however, permanent retreat. It dogged the -footsteps of the listless mastodons expecting that the wounded member -of the herd would drop behind and become an easy captive, or die -from some vital lesion. In either case the ferocious smilodon easily -completed its design. - -Ogga had indeed witnessed a strange reversal of parts in these combats. -The mastodons, if there were more than one bull in the herds, seemed to -become infuriated at times, and, encouraged by numbers, turn savagely -upon the snarling pleistocene lion and chase it for long distances. The -tiger, with tail withdrawn and seized with panic, would rush headlong -away, the bristling mastodon pursuing; the heavy trampling, the impetus -of their great bodies against interfering trees or shrubs, and their -encouraging calls making a weird tumult in those silent deserts. But -such a chase was quite usually or always unavailing. The cat, springing -sideways, would vanish from view up a tree, the slope of a bank, or -even in the long grass, and the disappointed or confused mastodons, -losing sight of their enemy, would suddenly collide in an animated -throng, and, still exasperated, turn with sudden vehemence upon each -other. - -The smilodon, the terrific tiger of those young years, voracious and -blood-thirsty, was not a natural occupant of this northern zone. It was -a rare animal, though almost constantly present in the warmer seasons, -in small numbers or perhaps in single pairs. It belonged to the regions -of South America, but at that time the Isthmus of Panama had a much -greater lateral extension, and the avenues of animal migration north or -south became greatly widened. A coastal platform, torrid and moist, and -the central ridges, flanks, and successional elevations of the Rocky -Mountains offered a contrasted range of conditions for the movement to -and fro of wild animals. - -Predatory animals, like the smilodon, made their way northward with -precarious and tentative advances. And the mastodon so far established -itself in South America, as to become under the modifying influences of -separation and environment the elephant of the Andes in Peru. - -As Dr. Von Schenck has recorded, the Bengal tiger ranges northward to -the latitude of 52 degrees or even 48 degrees in Asia, to which point -the Polar Bear in a reversed manner descends from the north. - -It is easy to conceive that contemporaneous possession of a common -ground by a hunter and carnivorous beast like the Sabre-toothed Tiger, -and the vegetable feeding elephants, would have acted as an inducement, -of varying intensity but always present, for the former to extend its -range and enter the grazing grounds, the formal metropolis of the -latter. - -Ogga was an ivory hunter and he had also encountered a few displaced -walrus coming down from the Behring Sea region. The occasional pursuit -of these visitors carried him to the shores of the ocean, and so in his -zestful and industrious quest for this precious material he had become -acquainted with the trails, passes, rivers, lakes and inhabitants -of this whole land. It was his domain. The fierce inclemency of its -winters, the terrors of its storms, the temperate luxuriance of -its summers, were all known to him, and in its long and vigorous -exploration by him he had passed almost into the arid canyon country on -the east. Amid so much varied activity, from this dependence upon skill -and strength and courage, the character of Ogga had grown upward into -a structure of available and solid qualities of heart and mind, and to -him, as to all these precursory denizens, an intimacy with nature, a -perpetual companionship with the air and the ground, and the beasts, -had woven a thread of sentiment not unreal, not unusual, in the strong -fibres of his being. - -It was the morning of the same day on which Lhatto hastened from the -highland to the shore, driven by an instinct or some suasion, knit in -with the destiny of races, that Ogga stood watching the chasing snow -wreaths upon the distant Zit, equipped for a new hunt for ivory amongst -the hidden mastodon in the low country before him. He was a picture of -aboriginal beauty. - -His stature was accentuated by the spareness of his frame, its -muscular precision, and the coppery swarthiness of its hue. He wore a -skin apron and at the moment when he emerged from his tent nothing else -hid the sinewy and blended outlines of the figure, incorporated with -suggestions of endurance, pliability and action. - -His face was youthful, in an Indian type, the cheek-bones high but not -relieved, the eyes set and scrutinizing, with that ineffable gaze of -mystery fitting his relations to an unborn world. His hair, black and -braided, hung about his head, and he had drawn into his wide mouth with -its thin lips a string upon which his teeth were fixed, gleaming above -a short chin carried backward into the mandibular processes of his jaw -by strong quadrangular lines. His beauty would have startled, by its -brusque combination of grace and poise and woodland variety, a drawing -room of exquisites but it would have also soon become repellent under -such artificial conditions, and would only have courted the admiration -of curiosity. Where he was, in the morning light, at the side of the -rough wigwam upon an upland on whose carpet of grass the sunlight lay -in patches, with the sombre and wonderful majesty of primeval forests, -themselves the type of an extinct time, behind him, and with that -lonely landscape of steppe and lake and river before him, its farthest -edges rising to the unmantled glory of the glacier, Ogga was superb -and invincible, and prophetic. He waved his hand significantly to the -distance and even as Lhatto had bowed and prayed to Zit, Ogga now -bent forward and with arms folded across his breast, littered some -incoherency of worship to the titular and tutelary genius of his world. - -For a few moments Ogga disappeared and when again he stood at the -doorway he was accoutred for the hunt which was to be the day’s -occupation. - -A long knife made of green nephritic stone hung by a twisted cord about -his neck, close fitting skin trousers of fox’s or wolf’s skin, the fur -cut or burnt off to the surface of the hide, covered his legs, a belt -of mastodon skin girded his waist, held in place by two pins of bone. -A sort of shawl or mantel tied at the cincture of his neck was thrown -backward behind his shoulders. This latter element of his attire was -the entire skin of a reindeer, curtailed of its tail and legs, and -forming a sort of peak or hood above his head. A basket, holding the -pemmican-like masses which Lhatto had taken with her to the shore, some -flint-stones, or “fire makers,” and scraps of dried and powdered wood, -were fastened to his belt, and in one hand he swung a formidable spear. - -This latter weapon, the insignia and instrument of his trade and -prowess, was an illustrious example of wild art. It was almost seven -feet long--the shaft made of a dense arbor-vitae wood much rubbed -and rudely ornamented with incised lines, herring bone patterns, and -circles; the shaft bore at its bifurcated or socketed extremity a -superb flat blade of walrus ivory, the tusk or canine of one of these -phocidean creatures, but despoiled of its cylindricity, and made into -an evenly tapering javelin of fatal power. Two rings of dark green -stone, cemented with pitch, held it firmly to the handle, and inscribed -upon it was a doubtful outline of a mastodon. One other implement -completed his equipment. It was a stone hammer of fair proportions, -withed tightly to a wooden handle which clasped it around its hollowed -sides, and came together beyond it. This was stuck, handle down, into -his belt. - -The hunter stood still, and shading his eyes, as if irresolute, -looked towards a remote oval of water which, suddenly illuminated -by the sun, threw its rays upward with the intensity of a spectrum. -His inspection of the distant spot was satisfactory. He grunted and -turned down the path. It led after a few premonitory winds straight -down the embankment, and after half a mile entered the seclusion of a -small cedar wood. The trees were not, however, in such proximity as to -preclude the sunlight. There were more or less open spaces, and here -in charming profusion grew clumps of wild anemone. Inside the wood, -the murmur of running water at a distance became quickly audible, its -faint vibrations failing to penetrate entirely the acoustic hedge of -trees. - -The man hurried along with great strides and soon emerged from the -wood, which a backward glance would have discovered occupied a thin -slip of arable soil at the edges of the stormy, boulder-covered plain, -through which our Nimrod was forcing his way with impatient haste. The -scene, except for the bright sky and the copious sunlight, would have -been disquieting and dreary. It was a sort of domed eskar or gravel -heap formed by glacial agencies which had vanished. Crossing its low -crest where the trains of boulders, fragments of rock, angular and -scored erratics imparted an unmistakable glacial expression to the -whole accumulation, Ogga found himself looking into a long depression -holding now a swiftly flowing river. The stream was quite unequal in -this respect. Broad pools expanded its course in places and here its -current became sluggish or imperceptible. Releasing itself from these, -temporary relaxations, it poured over low dams of clay and sand, and -spilled in foam and cataracts to lower levels, on its certain way to -the coast. - -One of these lakes was near at hand. It was the water Ogga had seen -from his tent reflecting the sun’s rays. Toward it, still following -the summit of the prolonged ridge, Ogga turned his steps. The violence -or power or duration of the former ice transportation was seen by the -monoliths amongst which he moved. Great cubes of stone thrown against -each other and surmounted by others, formed veritable observatories, -while approximate alignments of huge masses brought so closely together -that their opposed sides formed alleys and corridors, in which the sun -never penetrated; impregnable shelters for fugitive reserves of ice, or -snow still remaining from the winter’s storms. - -At times Ogga quite disappeared in these hidden streets, his -reappearance occurring after such an interval of time as had permitted -him to make considerable progress towards the lake. Finally, climbing -a long slope, over one aspect of which the escaping waters from above -emptied themselves in a noisy torrent, Ogga stood on the edge of a very -considerable basin. It was formed in a continuation, on a higher level, -of the eskar over which he had been moving. Receding around it were -terraces of gravel and sand and clay. The lake lay in this enclosed -pocket, a deep hole formed perchance by some torrential power of water, -or occupied at a former time by an enormous mass of ice, a fraction of -a great glacier which had become imbedded in the mud and stony debris, -and finally, succumbing to the increasing heat, had melted, discharging -its mineral burdens about it, heaping up the walls of its own prison, -until it itself vanished, its witness and transmuted form being the -lake that succeeded it. The terrace, or higher ground embracing it, -formed at points vertical escarpment, especially at its upper end, -where the river that fed it had worn down its bed through the centre of -such an embankment of wasted and foreign matter. - -The lake was not unattractive. It was a sort of Arctic mere. Vegetation -in low growths of willows or alders and ashes, emphasized in the most -surprising way by an aberrant pine or even cypress, sticking up its -tall spire, covered some of its sides. In patches of grass, the Arctic -scene displayed a vigor and brilliancy that brought even from the -apathetic Ogga exclamations of interest or delight. - -The hunter, emerging on this deep tarn, paused. His eyes rose above -the borders of the lake, crossed the empty plateau beyond it, and -met again far off Zit, with its iron crown, amid the discomfited and -baffled glaciers whose tardy defeat was already recorded in this vacant -ground. He seemed absorbed in contemplation when a brushing sound, the -sway of crushing branches, and a half suffocated sigh proceeding from a -bunch of birches at the head of the lake almost immediately bordering -the debouchement of the vociferous river, turned all his languor into -strained expectation. - -The next instant and the curving tusks of an immense mastodon sprang -into view from between the parting branches, and the uplifted trunk of -the proboscidean, lifted up between them, hurled outward in this arena -of devastation and utter solitude the same trumpeting note which from -its congeners in the tropics of India or Africa awoke the echoes of -the jungle and the bush. Ogga fell flat upon his chest, watching every -movement of his great quarry. The mastodon stopped at the water’s edge -and then with a renewed roar plunged into the lake. He was alone. Ogga -knew well the call. It was the cry of the desolation of loneliness. -The great beast had in some way lost his companions; diverted from -their _spoor_ or possibly attacked, it had wandered from the herd, and -with almost human desperation was struggling to regain them. The cry -was not the note of anger, its shrill vibrant hoarseness marked the -exacerbation of a sense of desertion and hopelessness. - -The place where the huge creature had entered the water was not deep -but thickly encumbered with silt and sediment brought by the stream, -loaded with the dust of the attrition of the ancient rocks. Into this -unconsolidated mud the unfortunate and disturbed animal sank deeply. -Its fore quarters sank first and as its body entered the pond its -entire bulk seemed suddenly swallowed up. Its head disappeared beneath -the water. The tips of the tusks and the exsert trunk, through which it -breathed, were yet above the surface. It was visibly fighting fiercely -against engulfment, and the agitated water broke in small waves at the -side of Ogga. - -The herculean strength of the mastodon won, and essaying still deeper -water, liberated from its treacherous footing, it reappeared, its head -half emergent, swimming to the opposite shore. Ogga arose on his knees, -his spear drawn tightly across his abdomen by both hands, and a smile -lurking in his face still wove its intangible tracery of pleasure about -his eyes. - -And now the dramatic movement increased in interest. As Ogga looked -the smile vanished from his eyes, a sudden keen excitement took its -place, he leaped to his feet, his mouth opened as if he were about to -speak, but no word or syllable or sound was heard. Moving stealthily, -crouching, belly flat, upon the ground, to which in color it offered a -deceptive resemblance, Ogga saw on the opposite bank towards which the -disconcerted mastodon was now strenuously swimming, the hateful form of -the tiger-cat, the smilodon, the sabre-toothed, the vagrant savage from -the south. - -Indeed the spectacle roused all the deeply seated, and through -practice, exercised instincts of the hunter. He watched, and the color -slowly ebbing from his cheeks again ebbed back, his hands clasping -the useless spear rose and fell, the surges of his emotion broke in -suspirations from his lips, the soul of the hunter realized the meaning -of that animal encounter beneath the glacial skies. - -The mastodon now clambered with frequent scrambles and awkward plunges -up the opposite bank. Its footing, uncertain on the rolling stones and -pebbles, dislodged from the terrace, hardly permitted it to make much -progress. Still immersed in the water, its broad back glistening with -drops of water enmeshed in its hairy hide, it stood still, rolling its -long trunk between its tusks and emitting harsh cries of distress and -recall. - -The brown heap upon the scantily clothed upland, on the very verge -of the incline up which the mastodon was endeavoring to rise, moved -cautiously forward, and Ogga could see rising and falling in the long -grass the sweeping tail of the cat; he could see the half opened jaws -of the beast of prey exposing the murderous canine that descended -from its upper jaw, curving backward, like a white stiletto; he could -even discern that masked movement of the muscles which the cat so -wonderfully controls and by which it slips along the ground with almost -imperceptible creeping of its hidden feet. Ogga saw the whitish fur of -its underside pressed out in thick folds as the animal hugged the earth -with furtive malice. - -And yet the mastodon was unconscious. Perhaps if he had seen the -ambush, it would not have diverted him from his purpose. Again he -forced his huge mass out of water up the bank. The water now rose -above his hind quarters, but his shoulders were fully exposed. Again -he trumpeted, turning his head slowly around. In another instant his -eyes would have detected the smilodon. The latter had now abandoned -concealment, it rose to its full height, then sank back upon its -haunches, its whole body disappeared. The succeeding moment, as Ogga -leaped to his feet, the body of the cat was launched into the air. -Ogga saw its outspread legs, the extended claws, the tail stiffened -outward in a line with its back; his ears caught the half stifled -snarl of the descending carnivore as it rose from the bank, and -immediately they heard also the thud of its impact upon the gray and -brown prominences of the mastodon’s body. The crafty creature had -not altogether succeeded. The great impetus given to it in its wide -leap outward, and a necessary descent in a vertical line of over some -twenty feet imparted an unexpected revolution to its body. It fell -upon the mastodon but was propelled over it, and a confused jumble -of tail, legs, head and claws met Ogga’s view, as, in the excitement -of his interest, he ran forward. The terrific elastic strength of -the animal saved it from falling in the water. It recovered itself, -inflicting long lacerations in the hide of its host. Almost instantly -as it regained its own equilibrium it dashed forward to the head of its -victim. - -The mastodon at first seemed shocked into immobility, the next moment -its head shook violently, its trunk with leviathan energy was swung -around and backwards, its evident design being to dislodge the invader. -To avoid this revolving sledge the cat had sprung forward and crouching -upon the frontal bones of the elephant had, with claw and tooth, -attacked its eyes. The excruciating agony drove the mastodon into a -demoniacal rage; the cat had torn away one cheek and the excavated -orbit of the elephant’s eye was drenched in blood. The mastodon, -furious and demented, turned backward into the lake, and as he turned -some rolling stone beneath his feet, some inequality or sudden -compression of the muddy floor threw him sideways. With an asthmatic -roar, his trunk still lifted above the surface, he sank, and the -imperilled cat, half immersed, clung to his head, so deeply submerged -as to deprive her of all opportunity of assault. - -The cat’s position was indeed unique. The elephant had now completely -abandoned its first attempt to reach the other side of the lake. -It turned and swam into the central current, that eddied in broad -swirling vortices directly in the path of the inrushing river. The -cat perched upon its living raft was plainly disconcerted. Its own -irritable snarls mingled with the occasional whines of the mastodon; -it stirred restlessly in its unwelcome bath, its glaring eyes and -hideously distended mouth, turning upon Ogga, whose presence, no -longer concealed, seemed to add a new motive or accent of ferocity to -its dismay. - -The exit of the water from the lake was made over a glacial dam, -forming the slope Ogga had ascended. Through this wall the corrosive -action of the stream had partially excavated a shallow channel. The -descent was still abrupt, and the overflow of the lake, which now was -excessive by reasons of the accelerated contributions from the melting -ice-barriers and fluviatile discharges from the glaciers, poured down -over it in a deep flood. - -Towards this perilous avenue of escape the mastodon was moving, and the -smilodon, tamed now by the cold and its untoward position, had abated -its defiant growls. With eyes almost piteously fixed upon the shores, -its cries had fainted into disconsolate moans. Erecting itself upon its -unstable support, the head of the mastodon, which sensibly had risen -so that the mammoth could itself discover its position, the cat seemed -about to project itself upon the water and seek summary escape from its -embarrassments. - -Both had now more than half passed the centre of the small but deep -lake, and the current which had relaxed its velocity as their distance -increased to the head of the lake, began to resume its initial force -as it felt the suction of the waterfall at the foot of the expanse. At -this moment, a critical one for the smilodon, the elephant suddenly -sank completely, his trunk and the polished tips of his tusks -disappearing simultaneously. The cat, completely inundated, was swept -from its high perch, and sprawling in the water, was forced to swim to -safety. At this instant Ogga became a participant in the feral drama. - -Running along the rim of the pond, he placed himself where the cat, -slowly extricating itself from the middle tide, was with difficulty -directing its way. He untied the reindeer skin from his neck, dropped -the spear, and hastily surveying the ground, chose a few plummet-shaped -stones from the numbers of stones encumbering the bank. Armed with -these he retired a short way back from the very edge of the lake, to a -low elevation. This slight prominence afforded him a clearer view and -brought the range of his efforts more directly upon the upper surfaces -of the bewildered animal. His object was evident. - -The cat was now swimming directly toward him. Ogga raised his arm. -With lightning speed, with the swiftness of a hurled bolt, the smooth -missile left his hand and smashed against the skull of the smilodon. -It was followed by a rain of others. They crashed upon the creature, -they entered its eyes, they tore its skin, they broke its teeth, -they opened its back. The water foamed with their rapid impact. The -desolated beast, now reduced to suppliance, still pursued its course -to the shore. During the short intervals when Ogga searched about him -for those water-worn and ellipsoidal pebbles which furnished him with -the most effective weapons, the creature, still strong and formidable, -gained in its approach. At last its feet touched the bottom, and as -if renewed in all its tenacious instincts, dripping and shrunk, its -beautiful coat pressed upon its lank and muscular form, it sprang -forward, its horrid mouth suffused and vomiting blood. - -Ogga sprang to meet it. But he held no rounded stones. Above his head -was poised a heavy boulder. As he advanced the smilodon with cowering -and subtle evasion crouched; its head lay flat upon the earth, its -long tail swept the ground behind it with eager oscillations. Ogga -rushed on. The dazed animal did not move, the great rock fell upon its -crumbling, cracking skull. The smilodon was dead. - -The mastodon had reaped the reward of its nimble strategy. Relieved -of its incubus it had turned again to the opposite banks, and when -Ogga had despatched its foe, it stood on the plain, suffering from its -wounds and wailing in whistling squeaks which sounded incongruously -enough when compared with its enormous size. Its bulk was indeed -unusual, and Ogga looked at the superb tusks garnishing the huge head, -with envy. It was just then browsing, tearing up small herbs, seizing -bushes and uprooting them, and with its trunk beating them upon its own -body at the spots where its dead enemy had inflicted painful gashes. - -Ogga recovered his composure. He dragged the smiloden up from the -water’s edge, replaced his shawl, picked up his spear, and hurried on -up the stream. About a mile beyond the lake, the river which fed it -broadened out in a flat, saucer-like depression full of stones and -boulders, over which it rippled and broke with musical cadences. Here -Ogga readily crossed the stream, and once over hastened back, hoping to -find the mastodon, which it was now his evident intention to secure. -The prey was more vulnerable because of its lost eyesight, though its -isolation, as Ogga well knew, would add vigor to its self-defence, and -its recent experience render it less susceptible to stratagem. - -When Ogga had returned on the other side to the herbage and bushes -where he had left the mastodon, the animal had gone. It was not -difficult to trace its steps, and indeed its frequent trumpetings heard -at a distance revealed inerrantly its location. The trail led up; a -continuous ascent carried the hunter from the lower valley to a wide -and mountainous plain, extending indefinitely on all sides, and only -interrupted in its even surfaces by islands of unassorted glacial tilt. -These formed elliptical elevations. They were the unremoved relics of -a great deposit of the same material, covering this whole area, which -had resisted the pluvial agencies which had degraded and disturbed -the morainal accumulations. Their elongated shape--one axis longer -than the other, and the longer axes in all cases directed in the same -direction--showed their origin. Floods of water had at some time poured -over this terrace, gradually the streams on the surface had excavated -for themselves deeper channels, and then wearing away their banks, -had finally crossed the partitions separating them from neighboring -streams, and the confluent and united inundation had denuded and -degraded the whole plain. These residual hillocks were now the only -witnesses of the former surface and composition of the land. - -When Ogga reached the level of this plain, as he glanced across it, no -trace of the mastodon was discovered. The almost naked field before him -was empty. But there had been no mistaking the heavy impress of the -prodigious feet of the mastodon, and without halting, Ogga followed the -great foot marks out into the plain. They led him directly to one of -these isolated projecting spools of gravel, and they disappeared behind -it. - -This projection was some thirteen or fifteen feet high, its upper -surface was coated with a feeble growth of grass, and its sides -incurved so that the upper rim of the mound ran outward and overhung. A -few observations only were necessary to reveal to Ogga the exhausted -quadruped sitting behind the mound preternaturally still, its hind legs -thrown sideways, its fore legs stiffly extended, and its great head, -covered with the deep furrows made by the tiger’s claws and shockingly -disfigured, where its right eye had been gouged from its socket, thrown -backward. - -Ogga spoke: “He is mine;” but he watched him for many moments longer, -forming his plans, and preparing for the skillful work which would save -his words from becoming an idle boast. Again the man threw away his -cloak and basket, flung from him the heavy stone maul, retaining only -his spear and knife. - -He clambered carefully to the top of the mound, examined its -circumference, and when apparently satisfied with his observation, -placed the ivory spear at one point near the edge, and on the side -above the still motionless mastodon. Then Ogga slid and tumbled down, -drew his nephrite knife from his neck and crept around to the mastodon. -The brute had remained in the same position, but its pain forced from -it deep sighs, and it trembled. Ogga’s demeanor was inspired with -daring and though his movements were governed by extreme caution, there -was not implied for an instant hesitancy or fear. - -Slowly on hand and knees he approached, from behind, the strangely -inert creature; when a few paces off he bounded to his feet, tore -forward, and utterly regardless of the monumental power before him, -and its amazing superiority in strength, rushed upon its side nearest -the dirt wall. The nephrite blade was brandished in the air, its fine -edge directed forwards. With frantic energy, Ogga immediately beneath -the bleeding wound on the animal’s head, drove the stone scimitar into -the folds of its neck, and with such force, such urgency, that it was -buried to the hilt. Quick as a flash he deserted his hold, sprang -up the dirt wall, clutched its overhanging edge, where his previous -observation had located a half buried boulder, and with his hand on the -stone support, drew himself above. His spear was at his side. He seized -it and stood erect, glowing with a splendid excitement, but voiceless; -his eyes were fixed below him. - -The mastodon, completely surprised, had regained its feet, convulsed -with a blind rage. It stumbled backward, and as it raised its head it -caught sight of the defiant figure above it. Pain and fury incited it. -With a stifled bellow it plunged forward, its head bent, its tusks -prominent. It had but one aim, the upheaval of the pedestal on which -Ogga awaited its attack. Again Ogga smiled. He encroached upon the -farthest margin of the diminutive table and held his spear before him -tightly clasped with both hands. - -The impetus of the mastodon was extreme. As it struck the bank against -which its useless anger impelled it, the tusks buried themselves in the -earth and the vanquished monster was momentarily held, its twisted head -held firmly against the dirt by the chancery of its own impalement. -Then Ogga jumped. He sprang to the head of the animal below him, its -occipital development affording room for his support. Balanced for -an instant, he raised his spear upward and then, at the exact nuchal -symphysis, forced it through skin and between the vertebrae, cutting -the spinal cord. With a throb that shook the colossal fabric of the -beast, the mastodon rolled sidewise and fell, and its tusks ripped out -of their burial in the earth. Ogga declined with the heaving mass and -lit upon the ground. The mastodon also was dead. - -The afternoon of the day had come, and neither food or drink had passed -the mouth of the hunter. He turned back to the basket with its pemmican -contents and sitting on a rock where he could see his mighty prey, -where he could also see the ice pinnacles of Zit, the long furrowed -glacier also, and just dimly, at this elevation, catch the blue hazes -of the sea where Lhatto was fighting for her life, Ogga, the hunter and -the Man, broke his fast. - -The incident is one of interest to recall. In the remoteness of a -day which science unsuccessfully endeavors to fix, but with lofty -magnanimity in its indifference to economy of time, places any -where from fifty to one hundred thousand years ago, the human -species, evolved or created, catching in its face the reflection of -higher things, feeling the pregnancy of its own fate in its untold -yearnings, its misty spiritual instincts, its forming language, its -emotional power, had begun the process of subduing the earth and -all that therein is. The uses of food, the preparation of clothing, -the devices of defense and attack, the ingenuity of observation and -application, the coinage of tales and prayers and verses, the emergence -of passion and of art, of the sense of beauty, the utilization of the -hard and wearable things of the soil, of animals, its grasping after -preeminence, its deification of courage and endurance, all these -things come before us, in the prefigurement of them in this story, of -Lhatto and of Ogga. And the chances of the race, then as now, lay in -the young. Theirs was power, was ambition, was aspiration, was the -indefinable lure and reward of love. On their lips words first formed, -their minds were the conceiving minds, their hands the artificers, -and in their organs resided the sexual promises of life. And Ogga and -Lhatto were both young. - -When Ogga had finished his meal, he walked away for a short distance -and at a spring softly flowing beneath a rock quenched his thirst, -leaning flat at its rim and sucking up the sparkle and the cold. The -man returned to the immense bulk of the mastodon, and began at once -to free from its skull the ivory tusks. With his stone maul he broke -in the alveolar sockets and from the shattered bone drew forth these -exaggerated teeth. - -The night was sensibly nearer when this task was completed. -Re-installing his slender outfit, wrapping more closely the reindeer -coat about him, balancing the ivory bows over his shoulders and holding -them as well, with his spear and knife, stuck full of blood, Ogga -turned back over the plain to the river in the lower valley, on whose -bank lay the bruised smilodon. But Ogga had no intention of recovering -the cat’s skin. His way, as the waning day shot red streaks into the -sky, and the northern lights, with phosphorescent palpitation, rose -above Zit, lay across the plain more to the west, bringing him finally -much below the lake, and the cedar wood which he had traversed in the -morning. He was advancing to the shore. - -As the stars lit the immensity of the black zenith, the Man had reached -the shelter of a huge erratic of such proportions and posture that, -tilted over on one side, it formed a sort of leanto. Here he rested, -casting down the ivory tusks. He swept together with his hand a few dry -fragments of wood and hurled upon them the uprooted trunks of small -trees. He took from his basket the dry tinder, struck the “fire makers” -together, holding his head close to the ground; a spark ignited the -punk-like powder, his breath fanned the little flame into a blaze, the -wood became ignited, and the ascending forks of the fire licked up -the tree trunks while they cast grotesque shadows on the granite face -behind them, and in those shadows a wavering and distorted silhouette -of Ogga himself swayed to and fro as he sang the song of the mastodon. - -OGGA’S SONG - - The great Mover stirs in the wood - His horns are white as the snow - And he makes a loud sound. - His feet are big as dog’s, his legs like trees, - The hair stands out on his breast and his back - He drinks the river dry and swims in the lake. - - He must die; he must move no more; - On the plain he must die, in the wood; - In the lake; Ogga must have his horns. - Where comes the Mover? He is born of the Ice. - - He has come from Zit, Where goes the Mover? - He goes through the wood, he sleeps there, - In the morning he shall come again. - No! he comes no more. Ogga has sent him away. - - The river runs, the lake runs - And the Mover runs never again. - -So sang Ogga, on the threshold of poetic feeling, in the days of -the Ice. His voice was not unmelodious, its chanting cry, with half -symptomatic expression, rose on the night air in that stony desert, -while the river sang too its endless lament, and, awakened from sombre -reveries, the snowy owl darted from its perch, sweeping the ground -with silver wings. Long before the light of the rising sun had built a -bridge of golden mosaic across the East upon the flaky clouds, Ogga -had left his improvised camp. The ivory tusks were secreted beneath -the rock. His reindeer mantle was again clasped about his shoulders, -and the nephrite blade which had hung about his neck was in one hand, -the stone hammer stuck in his belt, the precious basket yet holding -a remnant of its first contents under his arm, and with his other -disengaged hand he had seized the spear. He strode along the banks, -varied with many inequalities, of the murmuring river, and from his -haste seemed intent upon some well defined object. As the day dawned, -descending from the first light-touched crest of Zit with widening -circles over all the landscape, its increasing splendor fell with -a sudden flash of brightness upon a bank of white clay directly in -the path Ogga was following. The river had uncovered this nucleus -otherwise buried in superimposed stones and sand, exactly at the spot -where its waters bending southward had forced their way through the -narrow obstacle of this transverse ridge. The river delayed in its -course had formed in its eddying impatience a shallow expansion. On -the edge of this deeper pool Ogga halted. He dropped the spear and -the basket and the knife, and ran to the clay bank. He dug into the -plastic and slightly granular material, filling his closed hands with -it. Returning, he placed the knife, the spear and the hammer, which he -detached from his belt, in the shallow water, and then one after the -other, smeared and rubbed them with the sandy clay. The adherent blood -was slowly removed, and the lustrous implements became again sweet and -comely. - -The man regarded them with admiration. They were his friends, his -solicitors and helpers. Used well, they returned to him in results all -his attention, and they were well formed, symmetrical, expressive, apt, -faithful, unchanged, unchangeable. His hand glided with blandishing -pressure along the keen edge of the green stone, and he placed the -ivory apex of the spear lovingly against his cheeks. He was well -pleased. Ogga laughed. - -Then the man threw off his own garments and naked ran like a deer up -and down the sandy plain for the space of a mile or so, his hands and -arms now moving over his head, now shooting outwards, now falling with -resounding thwacks against his thighs. The speed and exertion were -really considerable. Ogga glowed and burned, his cheeks were hot with -flame, the drops of sweat slipped down his breast, his breath panted. -As he turned back on his last lap the man rushed onward into the water, -and splashing, half plunging, sank from sight in the cool pool. - -A few yards from the shore his black hair rose above the ripples, -a dash into the shore and the ablution was finished. Then, his -habiliaments resumed, his allies, the friendly weapons, placed aright, -the young hunter strode southward to the distant shore, still miles -away, while the steppe country grew less drear and savage. The glaciers -were farther and farther away, the clouds about Zit hid its pinnacle, -the land became smoothed and green with carpets of grass, deer sprang -suddenly aside in flight through spruce and willow groves, a low hum of -waves seaward became audible, and now and then a gull flew piping above -his head to some faraway eerie. A south wind wooed him, and his heart, -by some instinct of approach to a great joy, became light and eager. - -It was the afternoon of the same day that Ogga saw the sea. He saw it -limpid, shining from its mirror-like face with dazzling refulgence. -He was on a sort of knoll made by a northern outlier of the long -meridional dike which framed on its sea side the country of Lhatto--the -Fair Land. From this tubercle of rock covered with soil, he gazed -directly down upon its glassy surface. He went cautiously on, not -accustomed to the ragged descent, over split, splintered and weathered -rock cleavages. But his strength, the supple resources of his knit and -tireless body, met the unusual exercise, and Ogga at length stood upon -the shore of the Ocean. - -He stood upon a flat boulder, a sort of natural stone table, and a sort -of stupor, a poetic amazement, held him stunned. The coast line south -of him was full of beauty, the beetling cliffs, their verdurous and -dependent edges, the far off headlands, bays paved with colored rock; -the coast line north of him so recently formed upon the upturned and -disordered face of nature, culminating in crystalline glory in the ice -zone about Zit--the pathless waters before him, all, all united in some -sort of appeal that eviscerated and smote him, and a nameless longing -for companionship, the endless, depthless cry for love coordinate with -the bursting fires of desire and devotion transmuted the wild man into -something noble and ecstatic. - -He left his equipment on the shore and ran forward--from stone to stone -he leaped with unpremeditated cunning; his zig zag course, as he passed -from one pebble to another, brought him at last to the verge of a tiny -harbor entered by a neck of water, and fortressed by dark rocks draped -beneath with tressy sea weeds. - -His pursuit was checked; he could go no further. His eyes, bright with -ardor and delight, sought out the line of pale icebergs, and then -they fell below him upon the transparent and liquid beryl lapping -languorously at his feet. And as they fell, upon their retinas -sprang the image fair and true, of a sleeping woman’s face, dark and -beautiful, amid dishevelled hair, rocking in a little boat, as in a -cradle, on the quietly heaving bosom of the sea. It was Lhatto. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE MEETING. - - -In the newly systematized psychologies the analysis of love carries our -introspection to equilibrating shocks of feeling, of an accommodation -between an objective irritant and a subjective impulse, to -gratification of sense inwrought with the emotional satisfactions that -arise from perceptions of fitness, sympathy, congruity and the like; -and doubtless a process of ratiocination would make of love, or find in -it, all this. But love remains, and can we not be thankful that it does -so remain, a penetrating ecstacy that invades sense and thought, and -issues, like an electric fluid, instantaneously from all the surfaces -of our feeling, and thus transmutes that feeling, giving it glory and -radiance; that it changes the being in whose enraptured soul its flakes -of fire have fallen, making the limit of his excellence possible, -the range and widest capability of his nature patent, and along with -its energizing influence upon all his dynamic powers, awakening the -spiritual fires as well; or, more aptly and truly, elevating the -outlook, the intention, the design, thrusting upon him by a sort of -imperious moral necessity, the sweeter aspects of his relations to -beings, to himself, and widening his love by the whole compass of his -possible emotional exaltation, so that he become protagonistic, chaste -and fair. - -At least in the best men this is so, and even by some sort of -adumbration and suggestion, giving them momentary periods of nobility, -of insight, of joyful self-sacrifice, also true in the poorer sort. -Ogga was indeed a wild man, a prehistoric, a creature of the plain, -living next to nature, supplying his daily needs by a harsh ingenuity, -wringing from obstacles a concession to his daily requests, a being -utterly removed from all modern conceptions of social physics, a -being on whose uplifted face no word of revelation or literature or -exhortation had ever fallen, one whose instincts, the germinal moments -of whose mind, with its inseparable faculties of observation and -deduction, had only become active and projected under the influences -of nature. But then what a nature it was. It was the dying years -of an extraordinary geological phenomenon, the Ice Age, when the -splendid relics of the crystalline ice-cap yet clung to the higher -elevations of the continent, when in their retreat there had been left -a weird confusion of ice and river, and refuse masses of a denuded -world, monumental in extent and meaning, when animals, strange, big, -and desperate, ranged through the land, while in the scene, chosen -for this imaginative creation, to these boreal stages of life and -topography, were conjoined the insistent claims of warmer conditions -on the south in the Fair Land; and again to the east entered the -majestic desolations of the canyon country. In the chapter on The -Place the marvellous variety of natural conditions under which both -Ogga and Lhatto lived--for we have seen in their various and errant -life, however specialized, they were meeting all of them--were those -which appealed to their wonder, their fear, their admiration, awoke -in them joy and amazement and desire, fed the springs of poetic -impulse, stirred the sense of worship and dependence, and propagated -the thrilling currents of question and imagination. They reacted more -intricately, more coherently upon their moral nature by which, better -perchance than through the agency of books and stories, lessons and -education, the fine outlines of courage and devotion, self-sacrifice -and concentration, grew in their character, and without vagueness or -confusion, lifted them into a relief, stalwart and unique. - -As Ogga saw Lhatto he loved her, and he loved her nobly. The -whole process of approach, preparation, attack and capture was -instantaneously traversed. How could it be otherwise! The physiological -instant was critical and victorious. Ogga was young, the tides of blood -in his veins bore with them the impetuous claims of nature. And who, -born amongst men, shall not know beauty? Ogga’s eyes had only met the -forest, the wild animal, the untenanted steppes, the sky, the ice, -the river, but when they met the face of Lhatto, the charm of abiding -there was unquestioned. It fed his heart with a satisfaction, and -passion leaping to the cup, from whose fulness its own thirst should be -quenched, suddenly became realized; importunate, defiant, triumphant, -mature and regnant. - -And then by the dear subtlety of all things great and good, with -passion came also, with unhesitating foot, reverence and happiness and -aspiration, and Love thus born made of Ogga a divine thing, and of -Lhatto, yet unwaking, yet unknown, a woman drifting ashore in a little -awkward boat from the irresolute sea, it made of her a wonder of life, -full of affluent loveliness, full of assured excellence, full of peace, -and Ogga, feeling all these things, knelt and touched the hand of the -sleeping girl. - -Lhatto awoke. The rising sun, with its steeper rays, would soon have -smitten her eyelids apart. Was it not better to awake and find her -eyes looking in the face of a lover? It was a benison of destiny, -and, like all appointed things, seemed only a part of nature, as -do the stars, the moon, the showers, the flight of birds; and to -Lhatto, Ogga standing there smiling and listful, seemed a necessary -recompense, a blissful completion of her dreams, a friend coming down -from the unknown, and yet stamped with all the traits of familiar -acquaintanceship and loyalty. With that, the operatic stage of their -encounter passed, though all its shrewd and fine results remained, and -Lhatto jumped from the boat and stood by Ogga, and then both seized the -boat, lifted it to the rock on which they were, and carried it to the -shore. - -The passage to the shore, with their inconvenient load, over the -separated rocks, had not been without difficulties; and in the way of -caution, encouragement and direction, Ogga had spoken to Lhatto. Now -he told her to stop, now to lift her end of the boat higher, again to -rest it until he could more securely hold it, then anon, he asked her -to wait because the harpoon or the paddle or the seal had changed their -places and threatened to fall out. - -Besides, though he carried the heavier end where the seal lay, he -essayed to carry it all, at places where the slippery rocks made the -transit harder, and then Lhatto spoke and reproached him and laughed, -and held her end and tugged away from him. And so it happened that -in the work they became known to each other, and when the mute canoe -rested on the sandy beach between them, it was their common friend and -they shook hands over it and laughed, and Ogga caught Lhatto in his -arms and kissed her. - -And Lhatto, yet unblemished in that dawn of time, took Ogga’s face -between her hands, and pressed her own lips upon his, and there was -neither shame nor surrender in the act, for both were fair and free, -and in the simplicity of their hearts lived on the impulse that ruled -each minute, without check of calculation or artifice, duplicity or -sloth or strategy. An instant later, Lhatto fell backward to the -ground. Her endurance was overcome, hunger and fatigue, the long -exposure, the last efforts with the canoe, broke down her strength. - -Ogga realized all this. He placed her higher up the bank, upon the -thick turf, and under the shade of trees, he brought her water from a -spring. He emptied his pemmican bag, he made a fire and cooked portions -of the seal; and Lhatto, returning to herself, thanked him and ate; -and life, restored to her by this sudden power that met her hopes and -completed them, seemed more gracious and caressing and dear. - -Then Lhatto told him, as they sat by the waning fire with the canoe -a little way before them, the torn seal at Ogga’s feet, the spilled -basket of pemmican on one side, the whispering branches overhead, and -the broad rapture of the far-away ice-peaks shining about Zit, before -their eyes, told him of her strange adventure; the morning spent on the -shore, the sudden wicked tide--Lhatto called it “the Water God”--the -dreadful icebergs, her escape, her forgetfulness, and then her waking -amongst the rocks with Ogga sent to her by “the Air-Spirit--the Spirit -of Zit.” - -And Ogga shook his head and asked: “Where are your people?” Lhatto -pointed southward to the jutting capes, and standing up, her eyes -screened by her hand, told him to look well and he too might see a dark -hill on the water--“It was from there, a deer’s run back in the land;” -and Lhatto turned to him, who rose above her, so strong and eager, and -moved by the most feminine of motives, asked--“And where are yours?” - -Then Ogga motioned her to the bank again, and told her the story of -his life: he had pictures in his mind of a flat grassy table where he -played with other wild boys amid a great desolation of rocks, deep -chasms, ragged and grisly cliffs, but on the table the air was sweet -and cool, and there was a little deer that the older men had brought in -to the grassy table, and Ogga loved the animal and played with it, and -fought the other boys who plagued it and mocked him. - -Now amongst these boys was one of his age and size, strong like him, -but silent and envious. And one day as Ogga held the deer in his arms, -the boy pushed against the deer and struck it with a stone, so that the -deer was hurt, and they were at the edge of a little cliff on one side -of the grassy tableland. Ogga became enraged and struck the intruder -and they wrestled on the edge of the little cliff, and Ogga was strong, -for he was coming into manhood, and he pushed the enemy over the cliff -and he fell amongst the rocks and lay there moaning. - -Then Ogga became frightened, for this boy was the son of the head man. -When this happened it was about night fall and Ogga knew the path down -the rocks to the river, for he had carried up water that way, and he -snatched up the deer and hurried down the rocks and reached the river -and forded it and went up on the other side, and so wandered on and on. -The deer died and Ogga made food of it, drying its flesh in the sun, -still angry and wondering and frightened; he went on and on and on. And -he came to the Fair Land; its berries, fish and animals supported him. -He made stone knives for himself, he framed spears, he clothed himself -with skins, sewed with thread of plant fibres and with needles of bone. -Ogga was skillful in fashioning, and his skill grew, and as he lived -so, he came northward toward the steppe country and saw the mastodon. -Then he felt a desire to possess its great white tusks, and one day -he found a dead mastodon, and from its tusks he made many things, -patiently working in the woods for many years. He met men who bought -these things, exchanging baskets and green stone knives and even gold. -And so he became a hunter and lived alone in a bark tent watching -the Mastodon and becoming fearless and strong and knowing. Such was -Ogga’s story. And, though these two were wild denizens of nature, yet -so palpable is this human soul of ours, so fraught with kindred sense -in all its aspects, that as Lhatto listened she became as Desdemona did -before the Moor, “_She loved him for the dangers he had passed._” - -Scarcely had Ogga told his story, with halting phrase perchance, and -yet with words then loaded with the poesy of infancy, when a low roar -increasing in loudness was heard by the two, and with it the ground -about them trembled, a dislodged bird’s nest fell at their feet, the -water shrank suddenly from the shore, uncovering the glistening rocks -like worn teeth in a colossal jaw, and then returned with bristling -vigor rushing backward up the land in pell mell surges. - -Ogga and Lhatto sprang to their feet. A weird and purplish light -invaded the sky, another rumble, louder, with irregular reverberations -like the lateral explosions of sound in a summer thunder storm, -followed the first; and the ground shook constantly, a tree slipped -with a patch of earth above them, the ocean tumbled headlong on the -land, and, raising their eyes, they saw with a new terror smoke forming -on Zit. - -It was indeed far below Zit that the gush of ashes and volcanic dust -were emitted. A small cone had become the conduit of an igneous -outburst, its heated summit had already bared it of snows, and its -riven top opening with successive shocks had become a chimney for the -evolved lapilli, the erupted gases, and the slowly exuded lava flow. - -The ashen cloud rose up, densely straight at first, and encountering -some upper current, was spread out in dark layers, which, expanded -by rapid propulsion, descending and ascending, blurred and enveloped -the ice region, and whirled outward began to rain an impalpable dirt -about Ogga and Lhatto. As if, with repeated strokes upon its prison -doors, the enclosed fires of the earth struggled outwards, the shocks -continued, the waves rolled far up on the land. Spray flung from the -billows covered the two terrified spectators. They had retreated -inland. Suddenly a blast of flame seemed to mount upward in the -wreathing column of smoke, and then a wind pouring down upon them, -blinded them with dust and suffocating gases. Ogga, still mindful of -the uses of his spear, had snatched it from the ground upon the first -alarm, and now turning with bewildered eyes to Lhatto, he stretched -it before him to the woodlands southward, and they ran on, her hand -upon his shoulder, over the rugged land. They entered the forest, and -threading an open way, reached the banks of one of those rivers which -were indicated as reaching to the shore, in wide mouths, and bordered -by almost unimpeded meadow land. It was as if at some former time the -meadow land had formed part of the river bottom, and now formed its -banks, and the woodland had not as yet succeeded in establishing itself -upon this virgin soil. - -The refuge was welcome. The incredible horror they had seen, unknown -before, the thought of some superhuman conflict in which their minds -linked the powers and destiny of Zit, had baffled and stunned them. - -To the strange vagrant bodies of men who in little groups occupied -this diversified land, and of whom both Lhatto and Ogga were somewhat -contrasted types, Zit, the unchanging apex in the same sky that bent -over all, was a sort of religious fixity, a God, the open and clear -manifestation of the supernatural. - -And it had happened by reason of this mountain’s structural prominence, -its very great physical grandeur, its appealing beauty, that the simple -tendencies in aboriginal worship had been greatly elevated. Fetichism -was not as prevalent, the absurd and pernicious frivolities of a -childish idolatry had no such absorbing play, and under the absorption -of interest in the great mountain, fable and legend had woven about Zit -a curious mythology, and to it the worship of these races had been -lifted. The mid-day sun half flooded the solitude which Ogga and Lhatto -had reached, for even here a murky veil latticed the sunlight with -skeins of shadow. - -The two fugitives had stopped just where a solitary tree, stricken -by some accidents of storm, had been thrown down across the stream. -Its spreading top still green and full of leaves lay on one bank, -its enormous trunk crossed the river like a bridge, and the upturned -roots, shooting out, like distracted arms, from the huge flake of -ground enclosing them, marked its opposite extremity. Ogga and Lhatto -scrambled through the branches, and quickly reached the other side, and -when they came to the disk of earth they leaned against it and looked -upward. Broken palls of black clouds were thickening above them, and -tremors still quivering in the rocks shook their support. - -Lhatto took Ogga’s arm and drawing him to her said: “The Fire-Breather -fights with Zit.” - -And Ogga asked her what it meant, and so, watching the sombering sky, -even noting the falling dust of ashes sprinkling the water underneath -them with a minute rain, Lhatto told him the legend of Zit. - - -THE LEGEND OF ZIT. - -“It was long ago, and Zit, the spirit of the Snow and Cold, rose on the -earth. His mouth blew icy blasts, his fingers dripped with icicles, -from his nose fell blinding storms of snow, his ears poured out sleet -and rain, and his eyes froze everything on which they fell. He walked -over the earth. He walked over the earth and the rivers stopped in -their running, the hills were hidden in snow, the trees grew pale and -naked, the lakes became as floors over which the wild beast roamed, and -the great sea was crowded with the big drops of ice-like towers which -broke off from his fingers. - -“And he went on and on, the animals fled before him, for they shivered -when he opened his mouth, the trees broke and fell with the load of -snow that shot from his great white nose, the rivers were filled with -rain from his ears, and they became stiff and quiet again when the -glitter of his eyes shone upon them, and so the world was disappearing -before Zit, the Spirit of Cold and Snow. - -“Then the Fire-Breather, way down in the breast of the earth, asleep, -felt the chill through the thick skin of the ground which he wore -around him, and he woke with a cry and hurried out to try to get to the -top of the earth and kill Zit, with his hot breath, with the fire from -his eyes, with his warm hands. And the Fire-Breather knocked and pushed -at the doors of his own house, and he could not move it, it was frozen -tight, and he tried to get out at the window and it was stopped with -snow, and he broke a hole in the roof and was half way out, with his -head above the earth, when Zit rushed on him and with his mouth and his -fingers and his nose and his ears and his eyes, pushed him back and he -sank in the earth groaning and shaking. - -“Then Zit took the highest mountain which stood where the Fire-Breather -tried to climb out of the earth, and laid down on it and covered it -with ice and snow, and he sat there and broke icicles off his fingers -to sail in the sea, and blew snow from his nose till all the hills were -buried, and when the sun came he looked at it and kept it cold, and the -Fire-Breather was dumb and still. - -“And now and then when Zit falls asleep the Fire-Breather knows it -by his snoring and then he pushes up again and gets on his hands and -knees and fights Zit. Some time he will escape. He is trying now, he is -fighting Zit, for Zit has fallen asleep.” - -So Lhatto told Ogga, and they crept down from the stump on which they -stood, and as the day darkened, ran on together with backward glances. - -They had entered a wide valley running south between two ridges of -rather high foot hills, behind which on the east extended a mountain -range up which clambered the deep woods, but leaving its higher -summits bare. A muddy stream filtered through this valley which -shortly spread out variously and became a sort of inland savannah of -tall waving grasses that crept up to and even entered the limits of -a very considerable lake or pond. It was shallow, however, and in the -incipient stages of natural redemption by filling up from the deposits -of the sluggish silt-laden stream that fed it on one side. This stream -indeed, falling with broken descent from the mountain range, betrayed -its distant water-falls by the roar that came to the ears of the -wanderers through the thick woods above them. Throughout the lake were -low emergent banks of mud on which plants were growing, while thick -mattresses of water weed dotted its surface everywhere. The valley -stretched on indefinitely beyond. - -Ogga suddenly cried out and pointed to the farther edge of the lake. -From the distances in the produced valley there was swarming, in -rushing companies, an army of wild horses. They seemed countless. -They were entering in a solid stream, merged into a single surface by -compression, producing a curious semblance, in their crowded compact -progression, to the serpentine undulations of some titanic snake -or worm, whose skin bore flecks or monticules of hair. They were -yet so far away that to Ogga and Lhatto their individual forms were -indistinguishable. - -As they advanced upon the savannah they visibly distended, and then -the rapidity of their approach became obvious, even calculable. In a -few minutes this avalanche of wild horses would surround or overwhelm -the lovers. And the animals were panic stricken. The sudden violence -of the seismic convulsion had communicated an indescribable terror to -these nomads--the pleistocene horse of North America--and with neighs, -attaining a falsetto note like piercing shrieks, they came bounding -on, momentarily freed, in the broader arena of the savannah, from the -restraint of mutual impingement. - -Ogga realized the danger. He turned sideways and with Lhatto now -clasping his arm, with a new fear, flew across the field to the nearest -outlying grove of trees. Among their dense trunks there was safety. The -diversion was made none too quickly. As they reached the trees, the -first arrivals brushed past them, their heads erected and their eyes -blazing and wild in an agony of terror. Soon the feral current, dense -and expressive of some illimitable pressure, crushed upon them, and -they saw horses thrown down, trampled into unrecognizable mutilation, -while others, thrown against trees or rocks with ribs and legs broken, -writhed in mortal torments. - -The pleistocene horse of the Americas, both North and South, was a -reality. Developed through the slowly piled up centuries from the -Eohippus of the first tertiaries, the modern horse was practically -given to the world in the Ice Age. Then he lived on this Continent and -the men of that polar day knew and used him; the drawings on the rock -walls of the Combarelles Cave in France show that in Europe. There can -be no pretense of objection to the same claim here. - -But it has been an unsolved mystery how the pleistocene horse should -have so utterly vanished that when the Europeans came to North -America he had no existing representation, and even the Indians had -no legendary lore narrating their past knowledge of him. Sudden -and extensive destruction only can account for so extraordinary a -disappearance. It was under circumstances doubtless as strange and -awful as that which Ogga and Lhatto now witnessed that the horse owed -in some measure his rapid and complete extinction. - -Scarcely had the amphitheatre before them become filled with the equine -multitude, accessions to whose numbers seemed constantly received, -until it seemed as if no possible foothold could be secured by a new -individual, when, in some way, developed through the volcanic outbursts -upon Zit, a stupendous electric storm burst upon the valley. Before it -came the picture before the man and woman was a strange one. Lhatto -reached and touched the sweating breast of a stallion pinned against -the tree behind which she stood. The vast breathing mass emitting -the ordurous odors of their steaming bodies, seemed crushed into one -dark palpitation, its unity here and there broken by some plunging -horse smitten with madness, and rearing upward, an image of sudden art -with mane and distended nostrils, bloodshot eyes and beating hoofs -falling in a hail of blows upon the back of a quivering companion. -Sudden shocks of agitation swept through them, and then, by reason -of an increased compression, the agonized cries increased, as if, in -the almost human susceptibility of the horse, his sounds took on the -piteous vocality of suffering men. - -In an instant the ragged or bold outlines of the rising mountains bore -along their crests rushing pinnacles of clouds, a wind sucked through -the valley, driving, the shallow water of the lake into waves, and -tearing millions of leaves from the trees, hurling them broadcast or -projecting them in vortices through the air; upon this followed a lurid -twilight, beneath whose stifling solemnity the equine concourse became -stilled, and then a dreadful cold, some precursor of disaster, sank -upon the doomed multitude. It was the awful pause before destruction. -Leaping with incredible frequency from cloud to cloud, great forks of -lightning rent the sky; the bulging and cavernous outlines of vapor -dissolved in sheets of water, beneath the reverberations, peal upon -peal, of incessant thunder. The blackness of night descended, the -wind rose in tornadoes, and in the shrill blast, like some inconstant -titanic accompaniment of voices, the multitudinous wail of the horses -rose and fell. - -The descending torrents swept through the forests, tearing gulches -in the ground, ripping out boulders from their beds and racing madly -through the herd of animals. Ogga, with superhuman strength, held -Lhatto and himself to the trunk of a small sapling that had twined its -roots about a deeply sunken stone. - -And the horses? With the last pathetic impulse of unbearable panic, -they plunged by thousands into the insatiable lake of mud and water, -its extent now swollen beyond all limits by the avalanches pouring in -on every side. They were ingulfed almost as soon as they entered this -inland sea, and as the lightning flung its quick and keen glances into -the valley, the awful horror of the scene, converted into a saturnalia -of animal carnage, made Ogga and Lhatto shudder with a horrible -surprise. - -The storm slowly abated, the rolling thunders receded amongst the -mountains, the lightnings shrank back northward, the rainfall was over. -With the dying storm the tumult in the valley ceased. The dreadful -sounds of drowning and submerging beasts, the spasms of conflict -amongst those on the banks and in the plain had passed. The decimated -host, now free to move in the unencumbered space, had taken flight. The -thud and impact of their fleeing hoofs were plainly heard by Ogga and -Lhatto. They moved southward, out through the embrasure by which they -had come, into the long reaches of valley land that perhaps extended -for leagues and from which, by some common whim of madness, they had -converged into the fatal pool. - -When the sun stood upon the mountains, in the morning, only the cruel -vestiges of their presence remained. The disturbed and hideous lake -exposed their bodies, erect legs sticking up from reversed trunks, -heads enveloped in tangled manes, carcasses broken and bleeding, their -convex sides excavated and yawning, and over the plain in heaps rose -the signals of the shocking struggle. - -Nature, with that stoical placidity, that unruffled and heartless -evenness of temper that often seems to make her beauty only the mask -of some implacable enmity, was again calm and beautiful. The palls of -ash had been washed from the heavens, the mountains were radiant, the -trees radiant also; the torn ground yet bore witness to the slaughter -of the night, and the fouled lake, its islands of vegetation riotously -dismembered, like some dishevelled bacchanale, lay in the morning light -a picture of shame. - -Ogga and Lhatto, sleepless through the long and dreadful night, wearied -with fatigue of body and soul, stumbled out from the shadows of the -forest into the sunlit valley. Lhatto motioned to the entrance from the -river by which they had yesterday ascended. Ogga said--“It is best,” -and they left the hateful spot, where the processes of death had worked -so triumphantly. The fecundity of life and the powers of destruction -move with even foot, and in the necessary and remorseless balance of -life and death, Nature involves no blame for her equanimity, for in -the eternity of her design, all incidents of joy or woe are equally -invisible and unimportant. - -Observations on the heartlessness of nature were certainly not made by -Ogga and Lhatto, whatever indefinite mutiny the woman’s heart of the -latter may have felt against it. They hurried away from the fateful -place, and returned to the river valley. The tree over whose convenient -boughs they had crossed the stream was swept away and, ferried by the -flood, had been cast ashore some distance down, high on the terrace, -from which the subsiding waters had again retreated. It lay there gaunt -with every naked root extended. Neither one of them knew exactly their -present position, but Ogga, watching the wind above them, concluded -that eastward there was escape from the walled-in gorge. They were the -more willing to reach higher ground because they could again see Zit, -and, if the struggle between him and the Fire-Breather had given him -the upper hand, as both believed, his serene and splendid brow would be -again visible. - -The travellers were indeed worn and hungry. The warm light revived -their spirits, and--shall it be recorded--they embraced each other -with tears and smiles and kisses. Hunger was to be appeased, for no -circumstances of sentiment or grief will ever permit us to forget that -both sentiment and grief live on food and drink. The water of the river -was fresh and pure, and Ogga, who yet carried his sturdy and useful -spear, and wore about his neck the green stone knife, though the basket -had been abandoned when they began their flight from the shore, knew he -would soon secure food. - -His alert eyes had already detected the trail of bear, and as they -moved up the river he clung with Lhatto to the river’s bank, fearing -some ambush. They had proceeded on the way a long distance, in which it -was most noticeable that the river bed was rising, from its frequent -cataracts and long inclines covered with foaming waves, when the fall -and splash of water was heard and a waving mist above the forest -indicated the nearness of a waterfall. - -Ogga had become especially eager, rushing in and out amongst the -shrubs, which clustered now, more and more closely, to the river’s -brim. At one point he followed a fresh trail which he had discovered, -and a moment later a savage growl broke upon the sylvan stillness, and -Lhatto ran into the shadows whence the sound issued. She hurried up -a winding way half broken through the first undergrowth and finally -emerging in the woodland, where its plain outlines led her on until she -came to a cliff-side, part of the walls of the valley. Here an exciting -combat was in progress; Ogga was holding at bay a brown bear which had -retreated to a ledge which it had gained by a flight of most natural -steps, and up these steps Ogga was himself slowly ascending, the bear -fiercely objecting but awed by the spear which Ogga flourished in his -face, and which had already once penetrated his tough sides. The wound -the bear had received was a serious one, he was already disabled. - -Ogga, encouraged by Lhatto, who clapped her hands with admiration, -pressed upon the creature. He had now touched the threshold of the -ledge. It was some thirty feet above the stones, talus, and boulders -at the foot of the cliff, and the encounter promised to be final, for -one or the other. Ogga avoided the thrusts of the animal, keeping -it away by savage punches with the spear’s point. The bear realized -its predicament as it came nearer to the limit of the rocky table, -and reared and ambled forward. It was this moment that Ogga had -anticipated; stooping as quickly as the bear rose on its haunches, he -drove the ivory javelin into its exposed abdomen. With a deep howl of -pain the bear fell sideways and slid from the ledge, dropping heavily -almost at the feet of Lhatto, dead. Ogga had held his spear and it -became disengaged from the bear, as it tumbled from the cliff. He -stood upright, looking down, and there was pride and happiness in his -face, and in Lhatto’s there was no less. - -Ogga opened the bear, cutting with the sharp nephrite blade broad -strips of meat; he took two stones, choosing them carefully from the -boulder pile, and gathered a kind of dead wood from the under sides of -fallen trees, and bending flat to the ground, blowing softly, ignited -the natural tinder with the sparks from the stones. The cheerful flame, -nursed with little sticks, grew into a fire, and he placed stones in -the heat, piling upon them more wood. At last, with a broken bough, -he brushed the fire aside and thrust the bear strips upon the stones, -almost covered with fervent cinders. Thus was it cooked, and Ogga and -Lhatto, prototypes of the long retinue of woodmen who have found life -and wonders and new gastronomic pleasures in the primeval forests, -were again made strong and buoyant and resolute. Through the favoring -fortune of birth, these two aboriginal lovers carried within their -untutored natures, some of the quintessence of noble instincts, and -there was between them neither violence nor shame. - -Their further progress was prevented by an encircling cliff, high -and unassailable. It was over this that the head-waters of the river -poured, forming in their descent the falls, whose shattered and -buoyant spray floated above the trees. The wall seemed impregnable, a -sheer verticality actually leaning forward so that the falls, dripping -in a descent of more than a hundred feet, arched forward and left -behind them a deep recess, a cold drenched cavern. Into this, behind -the thundering solidity of the continuous sheet of water, leaping -from the sunlight above, where its coruscating folds entwined, to the -rayless depth in the forest-land below, Ogga and Lhatto carefully -peered and entered. They were in strange and unusual surroundings; they -moved in a sort of semi-conical cave, almost dark from the interception -of the outer light by the falls that seemed scarcely translucent. -Groping backward to the rock, Lhatto, exclaiming with surprise, called -Ogga to her, and showed a crevice running upward in the beds of rock -through which a crepuscular light, apparently shining from above, was -seen. Hesitatingly Ogga crept into the gash, which was almost dry. -He disappeared for a moment, then his voice calling Lhatto summoned -her, and the girl crept after him. The crevice, cleaving the vertical -schists, ran upward at such an oblique angle, and so discontinuously, -being somewhat faulted in its ascent, that without cutting across the -floor of the stream it passed the falls, piercing to the light at some -point on the table-land above. It was just possible to squeeze through -this cryptic passage, but it offered no real danger or difficulty, the -very closeness of its parallel sides affording constant support. - -Lhatto and Ogga went on, and after some not unusual and helpful -exercise, emerged upon an upper elevation, a sort of mesa-land, crowned -by the ranges from whose boisterous crests the storm of the last -night had descended. They had indeed turned the northern edge of this -Sierra and before them, in the purple and indistinguishable shadowed -distances, where peaks and minarets and sculptured stone seemed melting -together in a vaporous uncertainty, lay the Canyon Country, and far -westward, shining in all his ermine and beryl hues, Zit remained -unchanged. The Fire-Breather had withdrawn to the earth and again lay -still. - -And here Ogga and Lhatto rested. The love that ran with increasing -ardor through their souls, had now risen to that impassionate chance -when each word and gesture of endearment thrust anew upon them -the expectation and the opportunity of bliss. The warm night sank -breathless upon those verdurous highlands, the fragrance of the pines, -the half momentary delicacy of the odors of wild plants, the succoring -murmur of the river, the dull lustre of the moon as it rose amongst the -phantom-laden fogs, coming from hidden streams in all that creviced and -monumental land before them, engaged, in languorous alliance, to give -their love its final consecration. - -And Ogga, standing by the river and taking Lhatto by the hand, bent -himself and her towards the white pallor of Zit, and said--“I take thee -for my wife.” And Lhatto, answering, said--“I am yours.” - -The earth’s orb wheeled on through its incredible pathway in space, -which no consecutive movement through ages and ages shall ever yet -define or limit, the agencies of nature sprang to their appointed -places in the economy of all things growing, moving and acting; the -Eternal Law, with executions blind and patient, fulfilled the Great -Intention, and then, as it were, the next instant, the Moon sank on the -western wave, the Sun swimming upward in the East flooded the expectant -earth with light, and Ogga and Lhatto, awaking, saw the figure of a man -standing motionless on the brink of the river. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER VI. - -THE INTRUDER. - - -The little village of the horse-hunters, if village it could be called -when it was a sort of communal dwelling house, was built upon a very -flat and scantily herbaged plain, forming an elevated mesa, rather -sharply defined by cliff-sides. These cliffs were not continuously -precipitate or high, on all sides; and at one point access to the -summit was readily gained by broken inclines which actually permitted -the inhabitants of this isolated spot to form a rude road, so -skillfully constructed that by adaptation and selection, a pathway had -been built or smoothed to the bottom of the citadel of rock on which -the village stood. The butte rose with receding walls, disposed in -ascending steps or terraces from a canyon-like valley, from which again -escape to the country beyond was gained by less easy means. - -The butte of the horse-hunters formed indeed a depressed elliptical -elevation, planular at the top, which stood at the intersection of two -canyons, whose walls actually rose above it on all sides. Its position -was very picturesque. Running southwestward a deep gorge opened, -which extended back around the insular terrace, and divided on its -north eastern exposures into two tributary canyons of extreme depth -and narrowness. These two smaller arroyos united in the larger gorge, -and in both of them a stream, with intermittent flow, gave a temporary -animation to the dismal loveliness, the confluence of the rivers making -a more considerable body of water in the larger canyon. From the -plain of the butte’s crest, encircling walls were seen on all sides; -southward the descending vista, along the broken and bold declivities -of the large canyon with the river it contained reduced to a white -ribbon; northward the ascending vistas, in the two narrower canyons -with vertical walls, the streams running through their deep defiles, -reduced to a white thread. - -The butte only, amongst the eminences about it, was at all easily -approached, and then its ascent on one side alone offered any -attractive invitations. The rocks of the canyon were variously colored, -and the myriad fancy which had carved and trenched and cut them into -innumerable profiles, had indulged in a still wider complexity of -invention in its panoramic marvels of color. Bands of blood red lay -across the exposed strata, fading with inconstant undulations into -brown and yellow ochres--purple shades filled up the diversified -pallet, and white strips of quartz or unctuous edges of clay streaked -the cliffs with weird and sudden contrasts. - -In the mornings the extraordinary picture was dim with mists, the -tricks of optical interference, reflection and diffraction raising -strange phantoms in the silent gorges, and at night the shadows -stealing upward and quenching the radiant illumination imparted an -almost theatrical effectiveness, as if an artful scene shifter had -manipulated the setting sun, and pulled into place the changing and -relevant flies and screens. - -It was in the latter time that shadows settled like a flood upon the -home of the horse-hunters--when the sunlight still fell on the heights -about them, and they were submerged in a twilight night long before the -sun had deserted the uplands. - -It was the evening of the day when Ogga killed the mastodon that the -four medicine men of the little village--Shan, Flitout, Slin and -Slaggar--squatted on the edge of the mesa, gazing with half shut, -squinting eyes, into the vacancy before them. They had attained -a sufficient distinction in ugliness, querulousness, abiding and -carefully nurtured vindictiveness to hold without question in that -aboriginal community, the preeminence their position implied. Their -mutual distrust of one another had rendered more acute their craftiness -of demeanor. They incessantly quarreled, and the religious exhibitions -of their thaumaturgic powers were made none the less ridiculous by -their evident desire to excell their rivals in impossible antics. -Nature had furnished them with contrasted physical features, but a -common calling, and a very uniform tendency to intrigue produced a -noticeable resemblance amongst them. They were seldom separate from -each other, although their companionship led them into the most -discordant wrangles which usually ended in an encounter which excelled -in acerbity of language, rather than in bodily violence. - -Perhaps expressions in that early age were more restricted than in a -later age, but as Renan has pointed out, primal language gained in -compression what it lacked in capriciousness, and the squabbles and -fights of the four _doctors_, consisting generally of hair-pulling -and flesh scratching, like modern duels amongst cats, were punctuated -by sharp and shrieking exclamations which had sufficient poignancy of -meaning to make the melee more prolonged and vigorous. - -It may be objected that the assumption of Medicine Men amongst these -prehistoric and glacial people is audacious and impossible. But in this -current of pictures given in this absolutely veracious reconstruction -of that vanished time, it must be remembered that the author is dealing -with ethnic conditions that had reached some degree of complexity. -The instincts and rudimentary or moral or psychic motions in men had -begun their sway long before the time given in this story. Men had -been long upon the earth, and their distribution which involved means -and ways more primitive and considerably slower than the railroad or -the steamship, had been accomplished through a process of migration -which not only brought them under influences in Nature contrasted and -various, and developed self-initiative and constructive faculties, but -by every possible avenue of appeal stirred their fear and reverence, -and very quickly inaugurated morality and intensity of religious -practices. And such practices would have developed quite rapidly as the -imagination was powerfully excited by their environment. - -It has been from the first assumed that in this Ice Age, as depicted -in this story, the arctic severity of the north did, at least in the -western portion of this continent, come close at hand with far milder -conditions, and that the severity of self-preservation in this zone was -not at all so urgent as to repress or degrade or eliminate religious -customs. This is in itself, however, a concession to unnecessary -censoriousness, as the Esquimaux who to-day live in the ice, have well -advanced religious customs of humane and symbolic interest. - -That medicine men or something like, them should have reached an almost -instantaneous importance is most likely. The credulity of an aboriginal -mind increased by the wonders of natural phenomena and the hardships -of life, the mystery of death and the growth of many natural feelings -of love and terror, would have quite quickly started the pretensions -of crazy or inflamed, senile or adroit, individuals who could have -easily insisted upon their special privileges and powers of divination, -and by reason of ingenuity and fortuitous circumstance, given their -pretensions a very deceiving appearance of reality. - -At any rate, the four worthies to whom the attention of the reader is -now invited--Shan, Flitout, Slin and Slaggar--were veritable facts -at the very time when the mountain of Zit was incased in the broad -skirts of a semi-continental ice-sheet, when Ogga the hunter killed the -mastodon in the steppe country south of the glacier, and when Lhatto -left the upland of the Sierras in the Fair Land to kill seal in the -coast waters of the Pacific. And they were also, be it insisted with no -less emphasis, the medicine men of the horse-hunters who lived in the -Canyon Country east of the Fair Land, and who had begun to assume some -premonitional resemblances to the Pueblo Indians of today. - -The Horse-Hunters were an outlying settlement of kindred peoples to the -south and their present location was found useful as bringing them near -the grazing grounds of the wild horses in the river bottoms of the Fair -Land. The exchanges amongst aboriginal peoples,--their commerce,--was -more general than might be at first supposed and the Horse-Hunters -found ample opportunities for making useful bargains with the horses -they secured. Their origin, like that of all these disassociated and -stray inhabitants, was even then lost in antiquity. Their habits and -the business which helped to sustain them, were hereditary. They -occupied a peculiar and inaccessible retreat, not contiguous even to -their hunting fields. These latter were, however, reached by a trail -which presented few difficulties for the conduct of their captives, -though the way was long and circuitous. The aspect of their whole life -was unique and unintelligible, though they seldom were inclined to -improve or explain it. How they came to the lonely table-land, and why, -in so remote a position they should have found it convenient to pursue -their peculiar calling, were unanswered, unanswerable questions. The -hunters amongst them were not many, generally the young and artful, and -though they captured and subdued horses, they found no use for them. -The wild people further south who became their customers came to the -mesa with food supplies, clothing and implements, and took away the -animals, and thus the Horse-Hunters, in an impoverished and sad way, -maintained their strange and lofty seclusion. - -The four worthies who pretended to direct the spiritual destinies of -the colony, had arisen, and their varying statures and girths, as they -turned to the waning light in the sky above them, became apparent, as -well as the less easily defined peculiarities of their physiognomies. -Shan was a strong and high man, braced with broad thighs which, from -the execution of many trying and prolonged dances, displayed their -muscles in rigid relief, but his narrow chest and pinched neck imparted -insignificance to the rest of his figure. His appearance was completed -by a large head, heavily covered with tangled locks, from which a face -of mingled cruelty and deceit gazed at you from lancet shaped eyes, one -of which had been disabled by disease, and the second, compelled to do -duty for two, opened wide with a sinister glare beneath a low straight -hairy eyebrow. His nose was thin and beaked, his mouth distorted and -sunken, which, in the infrequent occasions when he became amused, -opened with a cackling laugh and revealed a single incisor. - -Flitout, who stood next to him, was a thin and shrunken man, stooping -and angular, with a peculiar flapping of his arms, symptomatic of some -nervous irritability or weakness, which gave him a not unfanciful -resemblance to a wounded bird trying to fly. His face was even more -concealed than that of Shan’s by the coarse and unkempt hair which -framed it, and as he lifted his head, his bright and restless eyes -moving incessantly, betokened some mental excitement or disorder which -much of his conduct showed was not far removed from insanity. His -face was really pallid, but the grease, paint and dirt which seamed -or smeared it, concealed the evidences of his anaemic and dissipated -condition. His voice was cracked and piping, a cough racked his weary -chest with intermittent spasms, and he spat with malevolent zeal at -almost everything moving near him. - -Slin alone in this extraordinary company was fat, or of such -proportions as made, in contrast with his associates, that epithet -appropriate. But this greater bulk carried with it no compensatory -advantages. His bulging eyes, thick cheeks and puffed lips, were -disfigured with pimples and pustules. His distended abdomen was -suspended above short and thick set legs. His arms, lengthened by -some freak of satirical cunning, reached to his knees, an adjustment -of parts which, taken in conjunction with protruding and heavy ears, -and a skull, alone, amongst the four, largely deprived of its natural -covering, gave him a very real likeness to an orang-outang. His -disposition was, perhaps, as simian as his looks, and while he owed -to that fact some sense of humour, it was also responsible for his -wickedness, his jealousy and his uncontrollable fits of temper. - -Slaggar was the youngest of them all and not without pretense to -natural proportions. He was of medium size and apparently muscular. It -was his peculiar pigmentation that attracted comment. He was in a state -of partial decoloration. Irregular patches of pinkish white skin, like -geographic markings, were distributed over his face, and two, extending -from the angles of his mouth to the corners of his eyes, made his -grimace or scowls equally hideous and shocking. - -The four men were covered quite imperfectly with skins, and around the -neck of each hung a perforated stone, while ivory beads decorated the -knuckles of their hands, and ribbons of red and yellow ochre striped -their naked legs. - -The salutation to the parting day completed, they sat down again with -their eyes fixed on the almost irresolvable depths of gloom beneath -them. The full moon was just then climbing in the east. Suddenly there -emerged amongst them from the shadows a short stalwart figure with a -face, could it have seen clearly, of real distinction and aboriginal -comeliness. It was Lagk, the son of the headman of the little tribe, a -hunchback. - -A voice from the shadows--“Are there any horse?” - -“No,” from the four doctors, in a basso from Shan, a falsetto from -Flitout, a tenor from Slin, and a barytone from Slaggar. The four -started to their feet and faced the inquirer. - -Then came the voice, even and monotonous in intonation, “I go to fetch -them.” - -“Not to-night,” exclaimed Flitout with a nasal snarl, as he directed -his expectoration at a moving object at his feet. - -“Why! The moon is up--the way I know. To-morrow I will be at the -fields. I will drive in many.” - -“Well,” added the nonchalant Slaggar, as the moon, peering now upon -them with its orb almost fully developed above the rim of cliffs, -revealed the entire group, “Luck and return.” “Pray to Zit and watch -the eye of the moon,” was the adjuration from Shan. The interview might -have ended then had not the insolent Slin ventured to interject, “And -keep your hump on your back.” - -The young man dropped the thongs and ropes and lassos of hide which he -held, the stone knife from his hand also, and flung himself with a loud -imprecation upon the grinning and wriggling Silenus before him. Slin, -surprised by the sudden resentment, and fearing his capacious abdomen -might meet with some untoward violence from his young assailant, jumped -behind his companions, who quite unwilling to incur the enmity of the -young brave, avoided the efforts of Slin to form of their interposed -bodies a screen, and quickly jumped aside. Slin, quivering with -uncertainty, his talon-like hands spread in deprecation before him, -still dodging and screaming some unintelligible apology for his insult, -was struck fairly in his rumpled and creased visage by the irate youth. -He stumbled and fell on his back, a piteous spectacle of helplessness, -his short legs kicking in the air in an exposure not altogether -deprived of some of the coarser elements of comedy. - -His official comrades seemed irresolute in this extremity, as to -whether their rival should be left to his humiliation, or whether -the dignity of their craft required some united assertion of -self-protection. Lagk, half expecting their attack, stood with clenched -fists, one hand reaching to the ground to recover the dropped knives. -The outlook was somewhat too serious for the spirit of the three -religious mendicants, and they drew back, quite aware that their recoil -was interpreted as cowardice, and yet quite unable to conduct any -action that might save their dignity. - -Slin had recovered his upright position but not his equanimity. The -struggle between his rage and the sense of his own physical impotence -was not unnoticed by Lagk, who taunted him to some sort of explosion: -“Put more toads in the hump on your own belly, and then you can touch -the hump on my back, old liar.” - -Slin was furious, he cowered in a passion of hate and futile -vindictiveness--his glance fell on his inert but uneasy companions. If -he could divert the eye of the youth to them, their discomfiture might -lead to some resistance that would be more dangerous than his own, for -the unconcerned horse-tamer. - -“They told me to say it. They said your hump would curse you. They -said you got it because Zit hated you. They said your hump has a snake -in it and it bites, bites, bites all the time.” As Slin uttered this -improvised and well conceived lie he pointed to his astounded friends, -in whose varied expressions of confusion nothing was more clear than -a fundamental dissatisfaction with the turn the affair was taking. As -Slin closed his sentences, his shrill voice rose higher and higher with -insertive ferocity upon the last words. He had not miscalculated the -effect of the scathing taunt. Lagk, with the keen susceptibility of -an injured man, his own strained sense of suffering exasperated into -rage by these repeated allusions to his deformity, knelt to the earth, -seized a big pebble, and leaning forward, hurled it at the bewildered -group. They sprang apart and the stone rolled over the mesa, and with -its last hesitating turn, plunged down the cliff side into the shadows. - -The situation became at once dramatic. Flitout, least adapted for -physical defense, was fleeing with asthmatic coughs across the plain, -his arms flapping, producing a spectral imitation of an ambling heron. -Shan, behind him, was using his stiff legs with adroit agility; -Slaggar alone withdrew with sullen and menacing gestures of defiance, -while Slin, thus momentarily relieved of his fears, and enjoying an -oblique revenge, had recovered his equanimity, and while rubbing a -somewhat injured posterior with one hand, controlled his laughter with -the other by holding it over his mouth. - -The hero of the fracas disdained pursuit, but contented himself with -suddenly changing Slin’s illusions by kicking him in the shin and -telling him to follow his brave associates. - -Lagk turned and looked at the full moon flooding this place of -mysteries and wonder; a thousand shadows, ten thousand surfaces of -light covered the cathedral depths, and far out upon the illimitable -wilderness of spire and butte, crevice, gorge, ravine, wall and -canyon-slope, the silver glory stayed. Lagk was hardly sentimental, but -upon him as upon all these wondering hearts the poetic power of nature -wrought its indispensable and irrevocable spell. - -Lagk was a strong and formidable figure, though the accident of his -youth had produced a disfiguring thickening and shortening of his -chest. He was one of the most successful of the horse-hunters and -tamers, and his skill had won him the apt nickname of _the hoofed -beast’s master_. Masterful he was in many ways, and his imperious -scorn of the doctors who were superstitiously regarded by his -contemporaries, was only one exhibition of his proud and fearless -nature. - -He strode across the mesa, passed through the shadow of the walls of -the communal house and descended the road, which with many turns and -deflections and straight level lengths, formed the avenue of exit and -entrance for their lonely settlement. - -The method adopted or inherited by the horse-tamers for the capture -and subduing of their four-footed prisoners was effective, but it -required boldness, resources and strength in its executants. The horse -lived in droves or families along the edges and in the grass lands of -the Fair Country. Thither the horse-hunters repaired, and equipped -with strong lassos, with which even in that ancient day they were -well supplied, awaited the approach of their prey. The custom was to -entice or drive, or simply wait for their horses to pass near the edge -of the woods in the neighborhood of some tree, and then to lasso some -convenient individual and running back to the tree, hold him by winding -the lasso’s end around the tree. If the hunters were in companies the -lassos were thrown in numbers over the unfortunate animal and he became -fastened to as many trees. His struggles were generally unavailing, and -he could after some hours, be thrown and vanquished. - -A more cruel but even more effective system, was to starve the horse -after his capture until his strength and spirit visibly diminished, -and then slowly to revive him. This peculiar practice was pursued -with great refinement by the horse-hunters and its results were -astonishing--pliant and obedient servants were made of the most -obstreperous and apparently invincible beasts. Lagk and his people did -not ride the horse, though amongst their customers there were skillful -horsemen; they drove or led him back to their camp in the canyon, where -at regular seasons the occupants of the southern settlements convened, -and a market day--the prototype of all bargaining and commercial -haggling since--was inaugurated. - -Lagk was festooned with lassos, his skill enabling him to use them in -succession on the same animal. In this way he quickly reduced it to -submission, and he often returned to the camp from his expeditions with -half a dozen captives. - -When Lagk reached the end of the long slant, his pathway almost -brilliantly illumined by the zenith-soaring moon, he found a pleasant -heat radiating from the walls of rock, and creeping to a familiar -shelter, he lay down and slept. - -Long before the dawn, just as Ogga left his stony bed, Lagk had shaken -off the clinging drowsiness of the night, and had resumed his walk. The -trail led him through narrow defiles and over interposed table-lands, -but presented at no point great difficulties, even the last ascent -which extricated him from the aisles of the canyon country, not -claiming any extreme test of endurance. - -It was a slope or talus of splintered rock, fragments dejected by frost -or heat, rain and sun, from the steep channelled palisades above, that -arrested Lagk for a moment just at the beginning of this last station -in his journey. He stood looking at the gray, herb-sprinkled surface, -like the stone heap of chippings and refuse in a modern quarry. He took -a thick dense rock from the ground and hurled it against the lower face -of the cliff,--a vibration, a dislodgement of loose particles that came -rattling down in diminishing numbers, and some readjustment of the -flakes in the talus,--and then suddenly a buzz increasing to a rasping -insistent locust cry, and there appeared over the extended incline -the emergent heads of the desert rattlers. Sinister and threatening, -the bodies raised for a foot or so, and thrown into recoiled loops -swinging uneasily with a graceful restlessness, the snakes, except for -size, acted with one impulse and one posture. Their flat heads, darting -tongues, and checkered bodies swam before Lagk’s eyes like a low -thicket of animated plants. He drew back and hurled a pebble amongst -them. The half expiring susurra sprang again into a fierce sibilancy, -and the aroused beasts started out with a simultaneous motion that made -them seem like animal springs worked together, at one and the same -pressure. They shot forward, bending their elated bodies, and then, in -a single sweep, that spread with unanimity amongst them, raising their -squamate heads and falling backward like so many hundred curved and -elastic wands. - -Lagk hastened on; the day was climbing fast, and a long distance -intervened before his feet touched the hunting fields. At last he -descended the slope of a pass that brought him to a southern portion -of the same valley, in whose northern extension lay the lake that has -been described, and where Lhatto and Ogga saw the cruel sepulchre of -the wild horses. It was then that Lagk realized the presence of the -volcanic disturbance that clouded Zit. The ashes and dirt fell around -him and far away from the summit of the pass he discerned on those -frozen heights he had never visited, but which to him were a sort of -Olympus, and which only in the clearest days he could see, the wreaths -of smoke, the rushing pillars of darkness, and the forked radiance -playing on their sides or lighting them with livid lambency. - -Long did Lagk watch the ominous clouds; he forgot his errand, and stood -like some carven image in the open pass above a chaparral with eyes -fixed on the unearthly picture. And as he looked the earth tremors -came. A mocking bird flew to a tree near him, jumping with excited -interest from branch to branch and uttering the “cha-cha-la-ca” of -the Texan Guan. Some thrushes lingered near the mute spectator and -sang. A tit-mouse whistled its sweet, clear notes in his ear, a group -of woodpeckers gathered near him on a projecting bough like a little -colony of colored toys. Some ground squirrels ran forward and halted -like a corvee of minute cavalry in front of him, and while he remained -unmoved, unnoticing, the sullen movement of terror in the air and earth -brought strangely into his companionship a mountain lion, less rare -then than to-day, crawling with prostrate paunch, upon a lifted cornice -of rock, her outline designated in the sky in a black silhouette. Below -him in the trail of the descending pass, a bear suddenly blocked the -way, snuffing the air, and scratching anxiously upon the trembling -earth. Above him aimlessly wheeled a company of bats. - -The singular congery of associates gathered around the solitary -figure, momentarily, in the still panic of the instant, forgetful of -their natural antipathies and fears, resembled some adamic renewal of -intercourse between man and Nature. Even while the motionless group -was thus assembled, Lagk’s ears caught the sound of trampling feet, -the thunder of a thousand desperate hoofs beating the valley floor. He -looked hastily towards the distance and his trained eye saw the phalanx -of wild horses stampeding up the valley. - -And yet he remained apathetic and estranged. The terror of Zit rested -on the face of all things, the security of the foot-stool was gone, the -reverberations of rumbling thunder coming nearer, the still darkening -sky, encompassed the whole circle of attention. Again Lagk looked to -the north, and still the birds and animals, and even the crouching -puma, stayed like rivetted and dead beings. - -Rapidly the storm gathered and the enlarging circuit of the electric -tempest spread around them and the crawling thunders deepened into -bomb-like explosions. The flood gates of the sky opened, and pitchy -darkness wiped out the heavens and the earth. Lagk hurried to a crevice -in the rocks, a seam of dislocation deep and wide enough to shelter -him. The frightened animals dissolved away and the drenched mountain -side, deserted and smitten, was lit in every recess when the blinding -lightning flashed. The wind, in furious gusts, tore through the oak -trees, howling and moaning, its exasperation raised to a sharp shriek, -as it sped through the fissured cliffs. - -Lagk crept from his hiding place in the morning, stiff and depressed. -He sat long in the sun, wondering, eating mechanically of the food he -had brought with him in a skin bag. But the returning serenity of the -world, the resumed chorus of the birds, the cleared ether, his own -improved spirits restored his quailed courage, and as he again saw Zit -triumphant, shining, immobile, the order of things as he knew it, -seemed renewed and he bethought himself of his errand. - -He did not turn down the pass to the valley where he had seen the -stream of doomed horses hastening. Had his footsteps been attended by -any sympathetic observer, the latter would have wondered why he climbed -so toilsomely up a pinched, scarcely possible trail to a shoulder of -the mountain range. The difficult way surmounted, Lagk found himself -upon a projecting spur of rock set out from the mountain mass and -rising to an apex from which a very broad view of the region was -obtained. He continued his scramble up to this apex--a cluster of riven -quartz or granite pinnacles--and here the beauties of a great quarry -table-land on one side, the flanks wooded and irregular, falling into -the horse valley on the other, Zit and its icy assemblage of peaks far -north, and the canyon country to the east, like an etching on a copper -plate, were revealed. Lagk lingered a long time watching the shifting -lights, and seemingly fascinated by the wondrous picture. He even lay -flat in the warming sun upon one glistening quartz cleavage, and slept. -The place cherished and suited him and he seemed to have forgotten the -purpose of his expedition. - -It was late in the afternoon that as Lagk, yet in his stupor of -admiration or uncertainty, looked upon the trough shaped table-land -in which springs and brooks from the mountain, by slow approximation, -formed the head waters of a stream, he saw a solitary horse moving with -a limp and broken gait, upon the flat plain below him. It was at the -river’s edge, and, with a stumbling and pained approach to the water, -throwing up its head and whinneying, it slowly entered the stream and -drank. - -Lagk cautiously left his aery, swinging himself down the rocks by -saplings, the tough branches of low rhododendrons, and sliding here -and there over pine needles. It was not long before he too was on the -upland, creeping out toward the spot where the lonely horse stood, -snorting and switching its tail with nervous reiteration. As Lagk -drew nearer, he could see that the animal had injured a fore-leg, and -was yet, at intervals, shivering with terror. He raised himself, and -as he did so the horse, turning, caught sight of him. With a broken -plunge, he sprang from the river’s shallows and ran directly towards -Lagk, whinneying in apparent recognition. It was a surprising and -disconcerting issue. Lagk was motionless with wonder. The animal came -nearer and nearer, and as its movements were friendly and reassuring -Lagk awaited it. - -It came forward sniffing portentously. Lagk raised his hand and -called it soothingly; the wild beast submitted with nonchalant -affection. It pushed its nose upon Lagk’s hand and pressed upon him -with eagerness. Its spirit subdued by the anarchy in nature seemed -tamed into obedience, and it almost nestled, in its big equine way, -against the delighted horse-tamer. Lagk walked over the open plain -and his complacent companion followed him. Lagk examined the wounded -leg, and the horse noted his interest with satisfaction. Rest would -soon restore the sprained ankle of the horse and Lagk, knowing a pine -grove a mile or so further on, patted and encouraged the creature, and -after intervals of halting, as night fell, the two slunk together into -the wood. Lagk tied his willing comrade to a tree with the deepening -shadows and, still weary with his own amazement and exposure, he lay -down in the shielded spot and passed into the nebulous fancies of an -over wrought and mystified mind. - -It was the dawn, dewy and slumbrous, the mists rose from the river, -they sped outward above the tips of the trees, they clung in tiny -clouds to the ground. Lagk awoke and leading the horse, now somehow -fastened to him by ties of friendliness, walked to the river and drank. -He looked around him, his eye swept the hillside, and there in the -mist just as he was, phantasmal and yet half expected, stood a man and -woman. It was Ogga and Lhatto. Why half expected? - -Lagk could not have explained his eagerness to see them closer nor -how, in feeling this curiosity, expectations seemed to forestall all -wonder that these new creatures should be there. There seemed to be a -naturalness in it, that his heart, his mind, his eyes should meet, in -the adumbrant day, some nascent answer to his dreaming thoughts. And so -he walked toward them. Neither Ogga nor Lhatto moved. The tenderness of -their own happiness forbade the consciousness of interruption. - -Lagk came close; Ogga strong, triumphant, with the wildness of that -younger day incorporated in his steel sinews, his dark lines, his -piercing eye, the unchecked richness and color of his hair, in his -arrowy and shooting gestures, in the demeanor of an unsoiled and -dustless youth, gazed at him with recognition. It was Lagk, the son of -the herdsman, whom he had thrown from the cliff in defense of his pet. - -And Lagk, strong too, and though not triumphant, confident and brave, -bearing many traces of physical nobility, not altogether dwarfed by -his infirmity, and with a face not unlike the visage he beheld, gazed -also with recognition. It was Ogga who had pushed him from the cliff, -who had brought upon him the ridicule of the Medicine Men, who made him -now hesitating before the charms of the wild woman before him. Lagk had -never felt before the presence of a beautiful woman. - -Small wonder that his blood rushed to his cheek, that his eyes blazed -with retaliation, that his hands clutched tightly upon the knife in -his belt. The sense of wrong unnerved and over-mastered him. He sprang -at Ogga with an uplifted arm, but Lhatto ran between them, and Ogga, -curbing his own quickly roused resentment, spoke even softly, “Lagk, -let that be gone. It is over. I am your friend.” - -Lagk stumbled backward, and his head fell against the warm shoulder -of the horse, who had moved forward with himself. The mute friendship -of the animal turned his thoughts, and the three, with the horse -following, walked to the river in silence. - -Ogga told Lagk of his life, how he had met Lhatto, that they were -man and wife, and Lhatto also told her story. They asked Lagk about -himself, they spoke of the death of the horses, of the terrors that -had threatened Zit, and as soon as the sun rose and it grew warmer and -the hunger of the night had been appeased, they seemed eager and happy -in each other’s company, and the melancholy and brooding Lagk felt a -strange pleasure entering his heart. It was a fitful and perilous joy. - -His eyes sought Lhatto with increasing earnestness, with desire. She -was so different from all women he had seen. Her grace, her sweet -strength and aptness, the potency of her beauty, was a revelation, for -in the camp of the horse-hunters and amongst the trading people of the -south, he had not met such a woman. They were coarse and shrunken, age -had wrinkled and distorted them, work had made them pinched and ailing; -exposure, a rude life, and perhaps no heritage of shape or feature, -deprived them of charm. They did not please his eye. - -Ogga and Lhatto were exceptionable and yet not unique. The prehistorics -were living close upon the period of emergence from something animal -and unformed. Traces of a strange or a debased ancestry lingered -amongst them, but it was not wonderful, not impossible, that in many -instances the efforts of nature, always ascending, always ameliorating -and artful, should produce types of human perfection. Nature so quickly -raises her ideals and her mechanism is so perfect, her power to follow -up an ideal with execution so implicit! The outlines and muscles -of a wild animal are sometimes the very acme of possible physical -expression, the beauty of an animal’s eye surpasses description, the -grace of an animal’s movement touches the keenest criticism with -despair, the adaptive structure of an animal’s frame and bones excels -the widest appreciation of art and of artificers. - -Have we not seen amongst savage races, whose routine of life brings -them into the air, trains them to run, to lie in wait, to fight, to -urge wild beasts, to watch the telltale skies for storm, to strive with -the inert resistance of stone, and refractory materials; who know the -plants of the forest, the bark of the trees, the trail and scent of the -beasts, have we not seen those who have been formed into strict types -of beauty? And thought has left upon them too, its refining stamp, -poetry has lit the flame of their eyes, and emotion spread the seal of -its presence and of its pressure over the whole face. - -In Winthrop’s _Canoe and the Saddle_ occurs this opulent description -of Prince and Poins (by soubriquet) his Indian guides. “It was worth a -shirt, nay shirts, merely to be escorted by these graceful centaurs. No -saddle intervened between them and their horses, no stirrup compelled -their legs, a hair rope, twisted around the mustang’s lower lip, was -their only horse furniture. ‘Owhhigh tenas,’ the younger, claimed to -be one of Owhhigh boys. _Nowhere have I seen a more beautiful youth; -he rode like an Elgin marble._ A circlet of Otter fur, plumed with -an eagle’s feather, crowned him. His forehead was hardly perceptibly -flattened, and his expression was honest and merry, not like the -sombre, suspicious visage of Loolocan, disciple of Talipus.” - -And again of the chief Kamaiakan, clad in the surplus and the dregs of -human hosiery and tailoring, the superb writer says: “Yet Kamaiakan -was not a scare-crow. Within this garment of disjunctive conjunction he -stood a chieftainly man. He had the advantage of an imposing presence -and hearing and above all a good face, a well lighted Pharos, at the -top of his colossal frame. We generally recognize whether there is a -man looking at us from behind what he chances to use for eyes, and when -we detect the man we are cheered or bullied, according to what we are. -It is intrinsically more likely that the chieftainly man will be an -acknowledged chief among simple savages than in any of the transitional -phases of civilization preceding the educated simplicity of social -life, whither we now tend. Kamaiakan, in order to be the chiefest chief -of the Yakimahs, must be clever enough to master the dodges of salmon, -and the will of wayward mustangs; or, like Fine-Ear, he must know where -Kamas-bulbs are mining a passage for their sprouts; or he must be able -to tramp farther and far better than his fellows; or by a certain -tamanous that is in him, he must have power to persuade or convince, to -win or overbear, he must be best as a hunter, a horseman, a warrior, -an orator. These are personal attributes, not heritable; if Kamaiakan, -Junior, is a Nature’s nobody, he takes no permanent benefit by his -parentage.” - -But nature fails to hit the mark persistently. Her efforts, always -intentionally perfect through the obstruction of accident, of heredity, -of use and of misuse, decline into homeliness and torpidity, and even -abortions. Now amongst wild people, let it be insisted amongst these -prehistorics, fortunate conjunctions of mother and father, of embryo -and environment, of employment and indulgence, might naturally have -been mingled with mistakes, indirection, harm, over-work, deprivation, -hunger and hardships of surroundings. But where such fortunate -conjunctions happened, where the efflorescence, the flowering, came to -view under the smile of some creative fancy reckless of tradition or -conventions, making the thing on which it worked beautiful, according -to the law of the thing’s type, may not, even at the earliest moment, -may not such images and glories have arisen? - -In Lhatto and in Ogga such an image and glory was realized, and its -power, its attractiveness, was felt by Lagk; he yielded to it as a bird -yields to the call of music, as flowers yield to the summons of the -sun, as rivers yield to the encompassing embrace of the ocean, as all -things incomplete and yearning yield to the complementary that makes -them full and complete, adequate and strong. - -And the three, with the changing days, still wandered on southward in -those summer hours full of unlacing heat, of fragrance and endless -mystery, rich in the languid temper of air that develops sense and -feeling, and germinates and brings to fruitage the bud of love. So Lagk -loved Lhatto. - -The days were serene and clear. Zit’s contest with the Fire-Breather -had been followed by peace so unmistakable and reassuring that it was a -conviction with the three nomads that the Fire-Breather had abandoned -an unequal fight. The last plume of smoke had faded away, the earth had -again lapsed into sleep, the glacier sky only reflected the poignant -splendor of the ice-cap. - -The strange animal companion of their journey still followed, and he -had not been unwisely used. The instinct for human companionship is -soon awakened, indeed, the currents of response spring into motion -almost by anticipation with the dog and horse. Kindness fostered the -natural union, and the horse attached itself with servile affection to -the careful and painstaking Lagk. - -Both Lagk and Ogga were skillful in woodcraft. They shaped bows and -arrows, they wrought in stone, they knit the braided boughs above the -fire. Lagk was ingenious and conniving in various skills. He shaped -artful traps for bird and beast, he called the wild things to him by -mimic whistles, notes and cries, he knew the flowers of the wood and -plain, he devised keen hooks and caught gleaming fish from the rivers, -he burrowed in the banks of the streams for the pearl unios, and he -found wonderful spiral shells on the land, he chased the radiant -insects, and sometimes returned from his excursions with tesselated -snakes wound about his arms. And all these wonders and many more he -diligently sought for, to bring them to Lhatto, and he would tell her -what he knew, and Lhatto learned to care for him, to feel an interest -in his knowledge, even in his attentions. - -And it was then, even in that old, old time as it has ever been since: -The persuasion of kindness and indulgent interest was mistaken by the -forlorn heart which essayed to find in them its peace and satisfaction, -for a woman’s love. The cruel misconception worked quickly upon the -nervous and excitable temperament of Lagk, and his darkening scowls, -when Ogga drew Lhatto to himself, grew deeper in their dread and -hatred. They betrayed a plotting soul, dark in its sense of injury, apt -to provocation and retaliation, and driven by physical inferiority to -schemes of cunning and deceit, to impish freaks of sin and shame. - -The love of Ogga and Lhatto was primal and strong, and carried in -itself and made affirmative in them, the simple principles of the -moral law. Without doubt the moral law may have been ignored in savage -communities, in the irregular gatherings of primal populations, in -those first avulsions from the life of beasts, of ethnic cultures. And -yet, who knows? The sudden step from tree climbing and nest building -monkeys to the attitude and attention of men may have brought with it -some equally sudden illumination, some transcendent push that raises -men at that first instant above the levels they sank to later, even -as the first dawn of day is brighter than the succeeding hours. But, -however imagined, the love of Ogga and Lhatto lifted their union above -accidental intercourse and fitted it to things supreme and eternal. - -The singular migration of these three with the ancillary horse, may -awaken ridicule in the reader accustomed to some anxious calculations -about the weather, the size and appointments of his room, his nearness -to a market and the conveniences of transportation for his wife -and family. The domesticities of Arcadia scarcely conform to the -intricacies of the West End Avenue, nor are the virgin instincts of men -cramped or deteriorated by the stiffening varnish of self-indulgence. - -Their casual camps embraced a wide loveliness and variety. The open -forest, the glades, the timbered uplands, the valley levels, defile -and peak, lakes set like sapphires within beryl rims of trees, rushing -torrents carrying in their waters the tint of the washed woods, and -holding in their mirrowy pools the cold and painted trout, the cliff -side from whose prominence the world seemed suddenly displayed, or -the climbing pinnacle whence even the blue ocean like a dream swam -upon their vision, still tireless in its endless task of renewing and -destroying continents, and still, with the witchery of its deathless -charm, calling men to its pale lips. - -And to them were gathered the most rare of incidents, the appurtenances -of nature swelled their resources in sport and pleasant episodes, the -arsenal of the skies beset their path with thrilling dangers, and all -living things accompanied them in a procession of beauty and wonderment -and terror. They saw the black snake snare the fledged firstlings of -the nest, they met the shrike impaling its furred captive on the thorn, -the herons were startled from their hidden homes, rising cloudlike in -discordant streams to the overhanging trees; the hawk, before their -eyes, set its talons in the squealing chipmunk, and the water moccasin -glided within their reach after the leaping frog along the slimy edges -of pond and pool; the lizards basked in the sunshine, their eyes -glimmering like gold-encircled stones, undisturbed at their approach, -and anon, the silence of some valley changed in a moment to the mocked -minstrelsy of an orchestra, when the migrant birds invaded it. - -Deer with timid outlook awaited them within the sheltering shadows -of the forest, their missiles lamed the shuddering partridge in the -fields, and Ogga fought the wild bear, where the edges of the pines -laid their pencilled shadows on the lichened rocks; Lagk trapped the -beaver at its clumsy dam, inundating the woods, and changing a forest -glade to a luxuriant dilapidation of moss covered logs, he chased the -keen whistling bat to its last covert. - -The cougar slunk to its lairs with menace and distrust before them, -and, in their adventuresome invasion, they essayed to trace the grizzly -to the verge of its retreat in the mountain caves. - -The scenic and theatrical diversity of storms filling the air with -colliding vapors, and the earth’s broad floor with deluge, and seaming -the spent spaces of the heavens with fire, surrounded them. - -They saw the stiff oaks snap before the cyclone’s blow, and through the -snapping boughs of the pines caught the lightning in its race to earth. - -Beasts and birds and plants crowded then into a shorter space, in an -area to which fled the evicted tenantry of the north, and into which by -an equal impulse of migration, entered the denizens of the south. These -were their clustering companions. They moved amongst them, merged and -lost, as part themselves of the aboriginal concourse, and yet lifted -above all this commotion, this myriad footed and colored and flowered -tapestry of life by the carriage within themselves of the destiny of -men, by the possession of a secret emotion that was to be finally -resolved in the tragedy of death. - -A note of interrogation may be here interposed. How was it that Ogga -and Lhatto and Lagk should thus move away from their occupations and -attachments, and begin an aimless wandering, a listless adventure among -perils and surprises and uncertainties? It can be understood better -by implication and suggestion rather than by explanation. It was -not rational. It was ethnic. It belonged to the period of zoological -settlement. It was part of the animal movement which was establishing -biological centres, determining geographical range, bringing too the -sparse population of the world into a heterogeneous distribution, by -which the world itself might become more quickly peopled. - -And there were imminent reasons too. To roam, to pass from place to -place, to follow streams, to thread mountain passes, to trace the -shore, to pass north and south, east and west by centrifugal impulses, -which cannot be defined or limited, belonged to the infancy of the race -as they now solely are implanted in the infancy of the individual. - -Who shall gauge the “world fever” in the youth of a day which knew -no boarded and bricked and stone domiciles? When the contact with -the elements and all the retinue of their phenomena with the beast, -the fish, the plant, was so quick, so constant, so marked, that man -was drawn into, or rather was the finished expression of geographic -mutability, of the ebb and flow of life in its incessant effort to -cover and possess the earth. - -The nomads in the deflections of their travel drew towards the sea -coast. Lhatto told Lagk of the great plain of water, and her pictures, -not inadroitly made, gave her absorbed listener a desire to see the -liquid wonder. Ogga had not been unobservant. The love which Lagk -bore Lhatto, his unconcealed devotion, the simple earnestness of his -industrious attentions came to his ears, and passed before his eyes, -not inaudible nor unseen. But from the confidence of his possession, -from the massiveness and rigorous simplicity of his nature, he did not -care to impugn the motives of Lagk, nor the fidelity of Lhatto. He felt -a tacit self-reproach that he had ever injured Lagk, that he had forced -him to a lower physical level, and it seemed, in his magnanimous motion -for restitution, some consolation that Lagk found joy in Lhatto’s -company, and that Lhatto returned to him a certain measure--not -traitorous nor fatal--of affection. - -They finally reached the coast range, a wide and fertile vale had been -traversed, the foot hills of an encompassing mountain chain surmounted, -the dark forests, entombing the gray rocks in a sepulchre of shadow, -crossed, and upon the flat shoulders of the mountain the three stood -looking westward over the ultra-marine floor of the ocean, with its -lighter aqua-marine margins, while scarcely moving, though turreted -upward in the zenith, in illimitable surfaces of resistance, the white -cumuli formed an ermine wall against the unimaginable Orient. The -scene was splendid in its breadth and inspiration, and in the clear -atmosphere, its coloring was simple and strong. It was almost noon. - -Lagk gazed as if the splendor, the beauty, the oceanic magnitude of -the water had stunned him. What traces of genealogical survival in -his memory, remote, unfathomable, dimly rising to the surface of -his psychic consciousness, may not have contributed to his profound -feeling! For sometime, doubtless before Zit was imprisoned in the -glaciers, his ancestors, wanderers on the earth, had crossed that azure -field, had trailed along its resounding shores, and fed themselves upon -the life, the fish and mollusks, that spun a web of being upon the -edges of its unfructified and barren breast. - -Lagk turned questioningly to Lhatto: “When we came you said I -could hear the story of the Great Water Spirit. There is the great -water--tell me the story. Ogga will listen too.” Ogga was quite -willing. And so Lhatto, sitting between them, with her head in -her hands that rested on her knees, and her eyes fixed, as if in -corroborative inquiry, upon the sea, told the Legend of the Great Water -Spirit. - - -THE LEGEND OF THE GREAT WATER SPIRIT. - -“Many, many suns ago the Great Water Spirit was in the air over the -whole earth, so that Zit could not be seen. It was a white spirit that -was very sorry because it had no children, and it cried, and its tears -ran down upon the earth and wet the trees and the rocks. And then it -stopped crying. And the little lizard that had run into the wet places -which the tears of the Great Water Spirit made, when they dried up -whispered very loud, ‘Great Water Spirit, you have no children, cry -much and you will have more children.’ So the Great Water Spirit cried -again and its tears ran down upon the earth and made holes of water. -And the little lizard ran into the holes of water and kept quiet until -they too were dried up. Then it whispered very loud again, ‘Great Water -Spirit, you have no children, cry much and you will have children.’ - -“And the Great Water Spirit cried again, and its tears ran down and -made holes of water and little running places. And as it cried, Zit -began to be seen, but all its tears that fell upon Zit were changed to -ice, and as the Great Water Spirit cried it grew thinner and thinner. -And the little lizard was happy a long time in the holes of water and -the running places, and when they dried up again it had grown bigger -and could talk more and it called out very loud, ‘Oh, Great Water -Spirit, you have no children, cry until you die and you will have -children.’ - -“And then the Great Water Spirit made terrible noises and cried and -cried, until the tears hid Zit again and the mountains and the trees, -and the tears ran down in rivers from the hills, and the ground was -full of tears and spouted them up again, (springs,) but where they fell -upon Zit they only made snow and ice. And still the Great Water Spirit -cried and the tears tore the ground and carried down trees and pushed -out rocks, and the tears ran on and on, until they came together and -made the ocean, and then the Great Water Spirit died and the air was -clear, but the tears ran on over the ground. But when the Fire-Breather -up high (the Sun) sent its arrows on the ocean, the Great Water Spirit -went up again in the air and made the clouds, and when it saw the holes -and murmuring and spouting places dry, it cried again, and the tears -kept its children--for these were its children--alive. And all water -runs to the ocean and the ocean is the grave and the cradle too of the -Great Water Spirit. - -“The tears of the Great Water Spirit are the rain. When the Water -Spirit is glad there is no rain, and when the Water Spirit is not -glad there is rain. And the ocean is all the tears of the Great Water -Spirit. And the Water Spirit wanted things to live in the ocean. And so -it saw on the hills the foxes, and it went over them and cried, and the -tears came down big and fast and the foxes were carried into the ocean -and made seals. And the Water Spirit saw snakes and lizards and little -birds on the hills, and it went over them and cried, and the tears came -down big and fast and the snakes and lizards and the little birds made -the fishes of the ocean, because they were carried into the sea. - -“And many, many suns ago, before Zit was, and the Ice Spirit was not, -there came a boat on the ocean, and when the Great Water Spirit saw it, -he was very angry. And he cried and blew and the tears filled the boat -and the blowing upset it, and the Men Spirits in it were killed. - -“But the Men Spirits made another boat and pushed it out on the ocean, -and they pushed it so fast that it got a great way over the ocean -before the Great Water Spirit saw it, and when he saw it, he ran over -the water making much noise, and he cried great tears and blew--but the -fire spirit (the Sun) shot his arrows at him so that he ran off, and -the Men Spirits in the boat came to the land and lived here. - -“And more Men Spirits came and walked over the land. And then the Great -Water Spirit was more angry and he cried and blew, and tears came from -his eyes, and snow blew out of his mouth, and he asked Zit to help -him. And Zit made it very cold, and Zit kept the Fire-Breather under -the ground, and he made it so cold that the rivers were solid, and the -ground was hid under the snow, and the Men Spirits and the bear and the -wolf and the deer came away, and the trees and flowers went with them, -and Zit ruled alone, over the ice. But when the Fire-Breather moves, -the ice goes back a little and the day comes when Zit will die.” - -As Lhatto finished, Ogga, who stood by her side, bent upon her and -kissed her on the neck. Lagk had his eyes fixed on Lhatto; the movement -and action of Ogga seemed to bewilder and infuriate him. He drew -aside hastily, his black eyes glittering, his mobile mouth drawn into -a scowl, and his nervous hands clenched hard upon one another as if -under some superhuman control to restrain them. The next instant, as if -seized with a sudden resolve, he leaped through some juniper bushes and -disappeared. - -Lhatto and Ogga were alone. Ogga knelt by the woman’s side and took her -hands and drew her face and body nearer to his own. “Lagk loves you,” -he said. - -Lhatto smiled. Who shall measure the subtle sense of joy which comes -to a woman, even to a wild emancipated creature like Lhatto, from a -man’s admiration! “Perhaps,” answered Lhatto. “I know it,” persisted -Ogga, and he raised her hands and placed them upon his shoulders, -and a darkness passed over his visage that surrendered its impotent -suspicions as Lhatto flung her face upon his own, and held him closer -and closer, and the whisper crept into his ear: “He may love me, but I -love you, Ogga, and it is all well with us.” - -Lagk reappeared, his face was at the aperture of the parted junipers; -behind him the horse was standing, and his head above Lagk’s seemed to -peer forward with almost the same frightened eagerness as his master. -Lagk had seen, had heard all and the momentary agony that creased his -face with frowns, passed into a sullen contraction of the brows, a -settled, determined, half pre-occupied glance at Ogga as he led the -horse upon the upland table--its back covered by thongs and lassos laid -there by Lagk. - -He left the horse and approached Ogga and Lhatto, yet oblivious of his -presence. They rose instantly, their eyes filled with that light that -in the savage, as in the modern, does most certainly send its throbbing -fires of passion and yearning and rapture into those strange organs -from whose windows man’s soul looks out upon the world. - -Lagk seemed almost unconcerned. He motioned to Ogga to follow him. The -two went out through the junipers, that sprang back again, and Lhatto -was left alone. Lagk led Ogga through some scattered woods and brought -him out upon a higher upland sparsely clothed in grass. There the two -men became engaged in earnest talk. Lagk motioned to the horizon and -his gesticulations became vehement and rapid. Ogga listened, his arms -folded, the braids of his hair framing the brown face, thrown slightly -forward, while the half bent shoulders expressed his interest in the -recital of his friend. At length the appeal prevailed, if appeal it -was, and Ogga walked on, out upon the upland, his ivory spear in his -hand, the nephrite knife about his neck, and the stone sledge in his -belt. - -It was curious and not altogether reassuring then to watch Lagk. He -threw his hands backward upon his deformed shoulders, lifted them in -the air, and brought them back upon his breast with the spread fingers -buried in the exposed flesh of his bosom. His face, capable of violent -changes in expression, became sombre and thoughtful, and then there -stole over it an increasing smile, that seemed fed by some anticipation -of pleasure, and lit his face with a wicked and baleful joy. Lagk -watched Ogga until the receding form disappeared, dropping down behind -rocks and trees. Lagk stood for an instant longer, as if gathering his -thoughts for the execution of his plans. - -Then he stole back through the juniper trees and saw Lhatto had -resumed her first posture, her head in her hands, her elbows on her -knees, and her face turned in reverie to the distant sea. The horse -was pulling upon the branches of a maple. Lagk stepped quietly in upon -the place that was soon to become the stage of so much terror. He -moved noiselessly to the side of Lhatto, holding a leathern thong of -considerable length in his hand. He leaned upon her. She hastily drew -herself upward. With an inarticulate shout, Lagk threw in rapid coils -the thong about her, pinning her arms closely to her side. They were -drawn tight and strongly; like a vise they held her arms helpless and -motionless. The action was so daring, so unexpected that Lhatto almost -yielded to it without resistance. An instant later she looked at Lagk. -His face was close to hers, his breath brushed her cheeks, a strange -gleam of exultation shone in his eyes. He seized her in his arms and -pushed his lips upon her with the violence of ravenous desire. Lhatto -jumped to her feet and struck him away with a savage kick. - -It was not well aimed. It hurt, but the hurt incensed Lagk. The color -had rushed to Lhatto’s face, her chest rose and fell with the tumult -of her own anger and disgust, but the flaming of her temper made her -more beautiful, more desirable, and Lagk felt the tension of his -craven thoughts. Lhatto was motionless. She made no attempt to escape. -She looked at Lagk--her arms straightened to her side, giving her a -strained uprightness--with a curious interest, her eyes wide apart and -her lips compressed, and a red spot in her cheeks that spread to the -spaces beneath her eyes, glowing darkly under her bronzed skin. - -But Lagk waited no longer. A leathern thong gathered in his hands, -snatched from the horse’s back, with bowed body he sped like a -ferret forward, and whirled the cord about Lhatto’s legs. He ran on -around her, drawing nearer and nearer with every loop of his circuit -tightening the web that held her rigid like an imprisoned fly, until he -had come quite close to her absolutely still form. He stopped in front -of her and as he turned his face to hers she spat upon it. It was like -a spark to a magazine. The hidden revolt which Lagk nursed, which made -him rebellious against the humiliation of his deformity, which defiled -the springs of his good nature and had fed the poisonous growths of -envy and malice and discontent, burst furiously into flame. From his -jagged lips, malediction started. - -He threw his arms around the helpless woman and swung her from him -with rage. The torrent of his indignation was not assuaged by the -sad picture of her fall upon the stony ground. He stood over her and -taunted her helplessness, swore she should be his, that Ogga would not -return, that he would carry her to the eyrie of the horse hunters, that -the Medicine Men would help him, that her life should no longer be by -the side of the Great Water Spirit. And then the tempestuous and fickle -creature, in an outburst of wailing love, knelt by Lhatto, raised her -head and besought her to think well of him; he would make her his wife, -he would treat her well, he loved her, he would bring her birds and -wild animals, and train horses for her, he would make her beautiful -with flowers and plumes, he would show her the stars in the sky, and -tell her where the fish lived, she should forget Ogga, Ogga had gone -away, he had forgotten her, Ogga was dead, Ogga wanted him, Lagk, to -take her to his home. - -His supplications became piteous and cringing. The wild man, touched -with the deathless passion which no art of modern affectation or -sycophancy can disguise or control, was in a paroxysm of despair. He -laid his head on Lhatto’s bound arm and implored her to be kind to -him. And Lhatto still was mute. His anger was rekindled. He raised her -roughly and carried her like a log to the horse. He said nothing, but -strapped her Mazeppa-like to the horse’s back. He was even tender, -placing soft skins between her and the animal. His vagaries of temper, -the illicit madness of his first thoughts had been succeeded by stolid -determination, and he made haste to vanish with his captive from their -little camp. - -The equipment with which he left it was slight enough. A lasso hung -around his neck, a few knives of stone were stuck in his belt, and -with nothing else he led the horse, carrying the still motionless -Lhatto, from the upland, and began the toilsome descent to the lowland, -trusting to his own sense of direction and the accidents of topography, -to find his way back to the canyon country, but, above all, solicitous, -that by means of his tortuous advance, he might escape pursuit. It -required some skill to bring on the horse without accident or injury to -its burden, but Lagk was both skillful and thoughtful, and slowly the -two threaded a devious path, while Ogga hunted the strange new beast -which Lagk had urged him to capture. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER VII. - -THE SLOTH. - - -When Ogga left Lagk, he crossed the uplands with rapid strides. His -hunter’s keen desire and ambition had been roused by the strange -report which Lagk had made to him. Lagk had told him of a singular -and monstrous beast which he had seen, almost casually, as the three -travelers made their way up to the mountain ridge. In one of his -rambling excursions he had entered a savannah-like level, which -appeared to be a southern extension of the horse valley, where Ogga -and Lhatto had witnessed the strange devastation of the equine host. -Here he had been arrested by a squeaking grunt, and tracing the curious -interruption, had detected in a grove of ash trees, assembled near a -depressed and wet area of heavy grass, a new and formidable creature. -It had a covering of tawny hair, it was standing on its hind feet, and -was dragging down with its huge front hands the pendant branches. Lagk -had not dared to approach it closer; its novel and whimsical homeliness -had dismayed him. He had concealed his discovery until the episode of -Ogga’s and Lhatto’s love duet suggested its useful interjection as a -device for securing Ogga’s absence. - -It was this anomalous and new animal wonder that Ogga was now in search -of. Suspicion of Lagk’s intentions, suspicion of his truthfulness, at -first deterred Ogga, but Lagk’s asseverations became so earnest, and -the picture he drew was so inexplicable that Ogga felt drawn to the -eccentric chase by curiosity alone. - -He had crossed the open field and found its further end cut by a -landslide which had scoured a broad concavity down the side of the -mountain, heaping up at the limit of its denudation the accumulated -earth into a huge mound, promiscuously mixed with projecting boughs -and trunks and mangled roots of trees and with fragments of rock. The -erosion formed a convenient line of descent for about half a mile. -Ogga slipped down the irregular and smooth surfaces and reached the -debris at its foot. Up that he ascended a short way, as far as its -annoying entanglement of sticks and stones allowed, and there he could -see far below him an opening in the unbroken wilderness which might be -interpreted as the spot mentioned by Lagk. - -He knew that their movement westward and south had brought them -now to the west wall of the Horse Valley, and that this continuous -triangle which seemed to form an avenue of indefinite extension, was -characterized by many side outlets or tributaries running for miles up -lateral ravines. Through these ravines a stream, rising at some higher -elevation usually was conducted, and they were further distinguished -by widenings or shelf-like expansions, free from trees, supporting -a luxuriant herbage, and almost invariably provided with marsh-like -bowls, where the water seemed to disappear or at best sluggishly emerge -from its inferior limits. These ravines were very warm and humid, and -by some occult reasoning, which bore no resemblance to the zoological -deductions of a naturalist, Ogga thought this shapeless and sluggish -beast, which fed on leaves and twigs, would be likely to find such -places congenial to its unusual nature. - -He remained upon the view-point he had secured for a long time. He -studied the scene, noting the trees, the points of rocky exposure, -the precipices, the cataract-like fall of the forest at spots where -there was some defalcation of the ground on which they stood, and thus -completed the mental survey, whose imagery, immutably fixed in his -memory, would help him reach the glade wherein he located his unknown -guest. - -When he had sufficiently stored his impressions and observations, -he climbed down the forward slope of the mound of detritus and -disappeared in the forest. We can hardly imagine that the details of -his meanderings could interest the reader, even if it were possible -to bring before the reader’s eye the features of his woodland journey. -The forests of the later Ice Age in southwestern America were probably -not essentially different in physical circumstances from the forests -of the same region to-day, except that in pleistocene time the -encroaching ice-cap had thrust southward the flora and the fauna that -had previously mantled with its color and animated with its diversity -the wide northern plains of North America, and so produced a biological -congestion, a crowding of types and forms, species and genera, like -a crush of humans, or of cattle, for that matter, striving to pass -simultaneously through a narrow entrance into some escapement, or -breadth of localities beyond; except for this, the forests in their -gloom and silence, in fallen monarchs, moss-covered and beetle-lined, -were just as they are to-day. - -Ogga certainly did not recognize that around him was going on an -invisible struggle, a contest unmarked by outcry or blows or surging -pressures. Certainly, there was such a conflict impending and in -progress. The conflict for survival amongst the birds and beasts and -plants was real, though noiseless. A population of living things that -had spread itself over a continent had been forced to compress itself -in much smaller areas, and share at the same time this restriction -with that same area’s own previous population. A carnage slow and -exterminating, a crafty emergence of adaptations in plants and -in animals that fitted this or that one to take advantage of its -competitors and displace them, was evidently present, though as he -pushed his toilsome way through shredded brakes and undergrowth, or -walked in the twilight of the gigantic pines, or scaled some moderate -pinnacle of rock to reset the bearings of his course, the depths kept -their impenetrable secrets and in the development of life of which he, -Ogga, was a divine element, covered with their shadows its remorseless -consequences. - -Ogga had made his way through that endless wood, the witness in the -skies and earth of many marvels. It had arisen in the dateless past, -and while with the coming and the going years its leaves had sprouted -and ripened and fallen, their shade had screened a changing animal -world. Those intangible unknown processes of alteration, which by the -subtlety of their influence upon the plants themselves evoked also -responses in the creature of the mountain and the plain, were replacing -an old fauna by a newer one. And Ogga was about to discover a relic -of a passing race. The sun had moved behind the mountain crests and -the narrow valley, faintly deepening into a verdant crease, like the -enrichment of a deeper colored border to a fabric, which passed on its -further side, was traversed by a stream. Towards this the prehistoric -turned, crossing the grass inundated field, bare of trees, in the -ashen gold of the falling day. - -There was opposite to the place where Ogga had emerged from the wood a -clump of low ginko trees. These strange plants, living to-day and in -Asia, were barely surviving from the tertiaries in the glacial age, -while their antecedent rise was far off in the mesozoic, in the vast -periods of reptilian abundance. It was Lagk’s description of this spot -and the singular fan-leafed trees which made Ogga certain that he had -reached the position where the new creature Lagk had run upon was to be -found. - -As Ogga came nearer to the peculiar trees, their scarcity and thinness -of foliage, united with the whorl-like arrangement of their branches, -permitted him to see distinctly the animal novelty which Lagk had urged -him to pursue. - -It had evidently remained at the very place in which it was discovered, -and its strangeness, its whimsical union of grotesque deformity and -awkwardness with mere physical mass, caused the hunter to stop in -amazement, sinking slowly to the ground in the tall grass, and stalking -stealthily towards the unusual object. It was engaged in feeding. For -this purpose it had raised itself upon its hind legs and had stretched -its long forearms upward, distending their length to the utmost to -reach the high twigs. It afforded Ogga a complete display of its -strange proportions, and the young savage remained motionless, puzzled -and astonished. - -The animal was covered with a coat of coarse, dun-colored hair, growing -heavily in patches about its thighs and forelegs, not unlike the skirts -of pelage about Indian sheep. Its forefeet were provided with enormous -extensive claws, which fastened themselves like little anchors upon the -swaying branches. These served the purpose of drawing to it the leafy -boughs on which it fed with its bizarre and produced jaws, behind and -above which, in deeply set sockets, burned its small, immobile eyes. -Its great, heavy quarters supported its somewhat contracted body, -though one of great size, and their assistance was supplemented by an -enormous tail. This stretched behind the creature like a round log and -seemed serviceable as a support, though moved by the animal itself with -exertion and extreme slowness. - -The stray long hair of the body disappeared on the tail, which lay -inert behind it, thickly swathed in its gray investiture of flesh and -skin. A strange, gaunt and horrible appearance, part of that untempered -productivity of nature which has engaged its energies so long in -fruitless and disappointing creations! The nightmares and disjointed -reveries of some struggling mind rising to its ideals through a host -of abhorrent things, things which once animate must linger through an -inexorable law of vitality and heredity until the correction of time -can destroy them. Indeed, this monstrous waif was itself the furthest -of a receding biological wave, a stranded horror dying before the -approach of conditions more benign and judicious. It was the gigantic -sloth, the relative of the megatherium and mylodon, the excrescent -development of that group of animals which typify to the psychologist -the inertia of mind and the collapse of invention, the drugged -dyspeptic sleep of creation and creators. - -Now, as a matter of more discreet scientific statement, the world of -science has almost resolved, after some remarkable demonstrations of -Dr. J. R. Wortman, to believe that the great South American family of -the sloths (_Tardigrades_) originated in the North American continent, -that they issued from the family of the _Ganodonta_. It seems certain -that late in that epoch, which preceded the Ice Age, the huge -representatives of this aberrant and forlorn stem of animal crudities -and curiosities, lived in the western regions of our continent. Whether -by slow and prolonged emigration from the South, painfully encountering -carnivorous foes and the accidents of climate, or whether indigenous -in their development from some original centre of growth here in North -America, they certainly passed their semi-slumbrous life, developed -upon a scale of colossal size in and west of the Rocky Mountains. - -It is not altogether easy to imagine this prodigious animal, -resembling the extinct marvels whose skeletons in their weird -homeliness and leviathan bulk charm the wonder seeking eyes of -visitors in Madrid and Buenos Ayres, as actually living somewhere -near the Sierras. And yet it presents no very difficult scheme of -reconstruction. There was a hot climate, luxuriant and dense forests, -interspersed with bottom lands, humid and saturated, and dry altitudes. -The rapacity of mere animal enemies as a contemporaneous incident -would have been no more marked in California than in Brazil, not any -more remarkable than the elephant and the tiger to-day in India, or -the rhinoceros and the lion in Africa. The range of the great sloth -may have been so adjusted to the range of the savage cats as not to -render its existence too precarious, and then it had attained itself -a formidable size, and its alert and muscular foe may not have found -it an easy or despairing prey. A blow from its monstrous tail, a -close, ripping onslaught from the terrible horny talons that resemble -long recurved hooks upon its feet, eviscerating and cruel, might very -quickly have established an equilibrium of advantages against its -crafty antagonist. At any rate, its presence in the western borders -of our country seems certain in the late pleistocene period. It is no -extravagant assumption that some trailing and solitary remnant of the -vanishing tribe should be seen in the glacial day. - -It was before a creature of this sort, gigantic, grotesque, decadent -and foreign, that Ogga stared with all his eyes, thinking to please -Lhatto by bringing back to her some trophy from its body. The strange -beast continued its prolonged feeding and Ogga watched. The night, -darkening the valley with blue shadows, that sensibly thickened, -overtaking each other and pressing like a repulsing force the fleeing -lights, rising upward on the mountain, soon hid the animal, and with -the night came rain and a low wind raising innumerable voices in the -great woods. - -Ogga stole under the cover of the darkness across the valley, and -guided by that indefinite light which even in the starless nights -pervades the air drew near to his prey whose occasional movements he -heard, heavy, slow and irregular. Under a chance shelter beyond the -ginko grove, made of heavy suffragan bushes, he waited for the morning. - -The morning came with uneven accessions of light. A pearly glimmer -entered the valley from the east, upon the tops of the hills, and then -flitted like a hesitating bird from point to point, dwelling at last -upon the copse where Ogga had retreated. It was yet faint, vague, -vacillating, rising; it seemed like a startled fugitive, retreating -to the widening skies and then returning with new courage. Slowly the -shadows fled. The sun lifted the curtains of mist and the scarlet -ribbons died out in the blazoned azure as with a wide awakening force -the full day rushed into the valley. - -Ogga had long arisen. The first pulsations of the dawn had met his -erect, expectant gaze. No sound came from the ginko trees and the -rasping sonority of the great beast’s respirations was no longer -audible. Ogga concluded the creature had moved. He waited for the -coming day, and before the full apparel of light descended on the place -he stole forward to note the changed position of his new quarry. - -The ginko grove was empty. Leaves from the denuded branches lay on the -ground, and the broken, torn and stripped boughs hung in confusion -from the slim and needle-shaped trunks. Ogga scowled and hastened into -the midst of the disarray. The sodden ground had been trampled into -mud, and the long grass was tossed and smoothed in rolls, where the -prostrate animal had apparently rested. Ogga soon detected an exit for -the strange occupant of the grove at an aperture between two trees. -Through this opening the sloth had made its way, pressing outward the -young saplings and leaving on their sides a few separated hairs scraped -from its tawny sides. The prints of its huge spoor were unmistakable. -There were the broad impression of its feet and the depressed concavity -of the trail of its hideous tail. Ogga looked out from the trees and -following in the yet unsettled dawn the bunched subsidences in the -grass, tangled low holes of verdure, his eyes rested out in the valley -in the tall grass, on a dull yellow mound. It was the recumbent sloth. -Its attitude was the limit of clumsy repose, an appropriate expression -of its own meaningless enormity. Like an elephant, in kneeling, its -forelegs were thrown forward, its hind legs bent, and its great uncouth -head terminating with horrid ugliness its shrunken neck, thrown upon -the ground between its front _mani_, while its angular back pushed -upward in a thatched prominence, half reclined, stuck out its inane -shapelessness towards Ogga, he peering at the oddity with increased -interest. - -And now a rapid brush and the light swinging backward of branches -startled his attention. With a quickened pulse, with blood coursing -backward in a regurgitation of fright, Ogga saw a few yards before him -the black bodies of two pumas (_Machaerodus_). They seemed indifferent -or unaware of his neighborhood. They were crouched beneath the slowly -balancing up and down movement of an alder, and their eyes, yellow and -expanded, were fixed upon the sloth. Ogga recognized the antipodes -of expression in this contrast of animal temperament and forms. The -sloth, gigantic, turgid in bulk and feeling, slow, inert, grewsome and -unwieldy, pushed into the foreground of zoological monsters by some -vital movement started along the line of animal evolution, a huge, -unadapted and decrescent whim of nature! The puma, lithe, insinuating, -electric in its response to any evanescent desire, holding in its power -all the resources of grace and agility and cunning and treacherous -audacity, its widest range of emotion covering the purr of affection, -and the infuriated snarl and attack of maddened malice, and living -and to live. All this Ogga felt, and he observed with pleasure the -sinuous motion outward through the grass of the cats, with their bodies -pressed close to the ground, their tails swinging and jerking slowly, -the elbows of their forelegs stretching the soft velvet of their skin -upward behind their elongated necks. - -The sloth was unconscious of this serpentine and murderous approach. -It still lay motionless, like a singular, yellowish protuberance on -the surface of the ground. Ogga felt unwilling to leave it unwarned. -His feelings of terror at the entrance so unexpectedly of the panthers -urged him to hope for their repulse and injury by the huge beast, and -he made some natural calculations upon so equal a combat, inuring to -his own benefit by the maiming or death of both sides in this animal -duel. He took measures to arouse the sleeping victim before the eager -and engrossed assailants should attack it. - -He hurried to the border of the small brook and picked up a few -pebbles. With these gathered in the skin cloak he carried, he ran back -to the ginko trees. He clambered from a low limb to the broken base -of a large branch, and steadying himself against the tree trunk, was -successful in disengaging his right arm so that it was at liberty for -his now very apparent, intention of rousing the sloth by the discharge -of his smooth and stony missiles. His position overlooked the sleeping -monster, and luckily was not in the line of the pumas, whose dusky and -lean outlines he also commanded, but at a very different angle. It was -far from his designs to draw their attention to himself. - -Ogga was strong, strong in his youth and strong through the exercise -of his toils in hunting. It was not difficult for him to send the -water-rolled pebbles as far as the sloth, nor less easy to hit its -broad sides. The first stone fell upon the shoulder of the creature, -and scarcely had its impact been felt, and the stone itself had rolled -to the ground, than another, and more effectively directed, struck its -back. A third, larger, and more swiftly driven through the air, landed -on one of its outstretched paws, crushing its horny hoofs. The sloth -was awakened. It rose to its feet and turning with a half indolent -movement of surprise, its eyes encountered the crouching, motionless -figures of the cats, their lips quivering in their retraction from -gleaming and sabre-like teeth. - -Its behaviour was curious, and Ogga, still enlaced among the ginko -boughs, remained motionless; perhaps at the uncouth and shambling -cowardice of the beast, a smile crossed his dark face. The sloth, -when it discovered its assailants, turned heavily around, and raised -itself as a quivering pile of flesh upon its broad and massive legs; -its prolonged head thrown forward, uneasily swinging up and down, and -its forelegs with their powerful claws aimlessly beating and pawing -the air. The next instant the larger of the cats shot like a long bolt -from the ground, its outspread paws descried by Ogga in its lightning -passage, and fell plump upon the breast of the sloth, below its neck. -As the huge monster felt the laceration of the cat’s talons, followed -by a savage, burrowing thrust of its armed jaws at the neck, where the -sloth was less heavily coated with hair, it emitted a half musical, -whimpering scream, so out of reason with its great size that Ogga -laughed. The next instant the second cat sprang on the creature’s -flanks, burying its head in the softer flesh of its abdomen. But the -first attack had already expiated with death its hardihood. The sloth, -frantic and smarting, had, as if impulsively, closed its powerful -front limbs over the arched back of its enemy, and with an effort that -gained a momentum from the desperation of its own fear, crushed it -to a lifeless pulp. And as it did so, with a swooning sob it dropped -forward, the blood flowing in rivulets from its own severed cervical -arteries. Its fall enveloped beneath it the second cat, yet mining -with voracious eagerness into the intestines of its wretched prey. A -second later this cat emerged, fighting to escape its own sepulchre -from beneath the mountainous mass overhanging it. - -Ogga had already dropped from the trees and had ventured out into the -valley. He was not far distant from the waning contest. When he saw the -panther’s head beneath the sloth, wriggling with violence to extricate -itself, he ran forward and his descending spear of ivory pierced its -eye. Another rending snarl, and the raging creature, blinded in the -copious gushes of blood and humous, and struck again and again by Ogga, -expired, while with a last somnolent groan, the megatherium lapsed -sideways and hid the puma under its own shaggy sides. - -Ogga knew the fight was finished, and with grim satisfaction he -reviewed the opportunities for his own trophies. But it was soon -evident his mind had changed. A few of the great claws only of the -sloth were broken or cut away by Ogga, and he turned hastily backward -to the forest and the mountain. He had concluded to bring both Lhatto -and Lagk to the strange sight, and only show, as some surety for his -incredible story, the great claws of the unknown animal. - -So Ogga reentered the twilight of the forest and passed through those -solitudes, yet undisturbed by man, man, that inevitable summation of -those forces which had made them, and of whom Ogga, strong, radiant and -simple, was the forerunner and type. - -His return, hastened by the expectation of the wonder of his friends -over the recital of his experience, and by his own better acquaintance -with the way which he had partially marked on his descent, was almost -accomplished at nightfall. The moon placed a sheen of silver on the -mountain peaks, and the far distant darkness below him screened the -dead creatures, whose impotent encounter he had seen in the morning. He -stood wonderingly on the edge of the little upland at the further end -of which was the simple camp where Lhatto and Lagk awaited his return. -He could afford to linger, and surely his mind could afford to think. - -A child’s mind and the mind of the infancy of the race may not, in some -respects, be inaptly compared. But it would be plainly silly to bring -them closely together in any claims of exact resemblance. At least in -the infancy of the race we are dealing with adults in whom passions -of mature life have become developed, and upon whom the practical -experiences of life, in winning food and shelter and clothing, have -made lasting marks. How foolish to place a child’s faculties or -apprehensions in such a category! In one thing, perchance, they are -strikingly alike, the futility, weakness or absence of language. But -behind the silence of the prehistoric is a web of emotional life, the -maze of natural impressions, and the formed habits of making and doing -things. Behind the silence of the child is an embryo mind, and only -that. - -But feeling and thought which, as they are refined, issue so naturally -in speech in our cultivated life, may, in the prehistoric, as in many -examples of living men and women, have moved over the nerve tissue with -no response at the portals of the lips. It is a trite suggestion that -the poets speak our unuttered thoughts, and their exquisite phrase -makes clearer to us our own yearnings and inquietudes and doubts. - -The prehistoric man in Ogga, the prehistoric woman in Lhatto, was not -some dishevelled emergence from simian ugliness, turpitude and filth. -In their minds the lamp of intelligence, in their hearts the fire of -love had both been lit, and they burned fairly, and gave light, though -no written page, no entwined sentences displayed them. They were there. -Back of them the twilight of growth from immense and carnal and animal -beginnings may have brooded over men or women. And along side of them -inchoate or drivelling beings, less well conditioned in their descent -and habitat, may have walked on legs and slung stone hatchets. But in -Ogga and Lhatto, while the Ice Age dwindled in the North, while the -resumptive vigor of vegetable and animal life was capturing again -the deserted northland, while the mastodon moved on the face of the -earth, and the great sloth yet stayed, and the cave tiger stole along -the fretted edges of the cliffs, in them Life had begun the intonation -of its great unceasing symphony of ideals, and hopes! and dreads, and -sorrows, joys and tears, and they both heard and _knew_ it. - -So Ogga lingered in the upland gazing at the full moon, his heart -strangely stirred. Religion in Ogga and Lhatto had reached only the -indefinite stage of awe and wonder. It hardly yet expressed itself in -signs or stories. But with it was poetic recognition, which, perhaps, -as duly hound in with the impressions of the senses, with what we see -and hear and smell and feel, rises early, indeed earliest. And to Ogga, -a somnambulous sense of the beauty of the world, of the wonderment of -his own passion for Lhatto, of the mystery of things, of the flux and -fall of the life of trees, and birds, and beasts, came then, and he -lingered, and as he stretched upward his hands to the white Orb, there -came to him also, as there comes in water at our feet, the mirrored -image of a distant cloud, a mild surprise of a sense of mercy and of -goodness, and Ogga took up the spear which had dropped to his feet, yet -encrusted with the blood and brains of the slain puma, and went forward -to the camp. - - - - -[Illustration] - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -THE CHASE. - - -In prehistoric time the camp was the stopping place, a few boughs, a -few skins, a fire amongst stones, perhaps a shelter under a rock. In -the southern land where they now were and in the summer, the young -hardihood and trained activity of these youths required little else, -and as the streams and ponds, or the life of the woods, furnished them -food, when inland, or the shores of the sea, sustenance, when on the -coast, their ease of movement was unlimited. In this respect also, Ogga -and Lhatto had been exceptional. - -The early man roves but with stealth and with slowness along rivers and -coast lines. He finds his bearings by their familiar configuration, -and only furtively enters the untrodden and pathless wilderness. -But Ogga and Lhatto were not aimless, though in these first weeks -of indulgence, and from that superior loftiness of nature which had -fitted them for new tasks, they had been adventuresome. They intended -to fix their destination southward on the sea coast, and had at no -time, in these days of wandering, forgotten their intention. Lagk, -who was more familiar with the interior, had guided them, but with -many vacillations. Their steps had tended southward along the mountain -ridges. They calculated they were not now far distant from their rest. - -Ogga pushed aside a wavering branch and stepped on the little cleared -space where for a few days he and Lhatto had lingered, feeling the -charm of its elevation in the clear salubrity of the air, the haunting -wonders of the distant view of the ocean, and those many laxative and -gentle interests that arise with lovers in solitude and remoteness. - -Ogga, in the moonlight which made everything visible, saw that the -camp was deserted, and a sudden shadow darkened his face, the blood -surged to his cheeks, and he stood looking about him with a curious -inquietude. The horse that with Lagk had been their companion and had -proven not unuseful in their wanderings, was also gone. No trace of -thong or lasso which commonly hung from the branches, or lay tangled -and displayed on the rocks, was there and--he began to move rapidly to -and fro over the ledge--the skins that Lagk had prepared, which formed -a rude alleviation to their primitive condition, had also disappeared. - -Ogga stopped, his head hung forward, he knelt and gazed at impressions -in the scanty soil at one side of the rock, where infiltrating and -creeping mosses, with a film of earth, formed a green carpet. He saw -the hoof marks of the horse, and the long foot marks of Lagk, but -nothing else. The slighter thin steps of Lhatto were not there, and yet -Lhatto also was gone. With a new accession of excitement Ogga rushed to -the opposite side, and throwing himself upon the ground that appeared -there, and which was part of the encroaching upland-field which he had -just crossed, looked for the telltale steps. There were none. Again he -leaped to his feet, and stood irresolute. - -Fast swarming thoughts filled his mind. He recalled Lhatto’s -confession, he remembered the clinging constancy of Lagk to Lhatto, -he weighed well Lagk’s resentment for himself, he recurred to his own -distrust and wonder over Lagk’s importunate insistency that he should -go alone to hunt the sloth, and then there stole into his brooding -thoughts the hitherto suppressed suspicions of Lhatto’s faith. He -remembered--how vividly the images rose in quiet succession to taunt -and tempt his patience--when Lhatto asked so anxiously if it was not -late for Lagk to return from some hunt he had undertaken for her sake, -how she sat with Lagk and listened to his long stories of the birds and -beasts, how she had wandered away with him to see some nest or wild -flower, how she had helped him dress the skins, and had amused herself -with so much archness and tenderness, sticking bright feathers in his -hair, while he worked at his nets, or strengthened and stiffened and -lengthened his lassos. He remembered--could it be pain that spread like -an aching ulcer over his heart--how Lhatto had pitied Lagk’s deformity, -and once Lagk had held her in his arms and kissed her, and Lhatto did -not repel him, and once again--Ogga strode to the edge of the ledge -and looked down the steep sides of the rock, even leaning forward over -the peril below him--he found her bending over Lagk sleeping, and she -touched his face with her lips. - -The strange unbidden thought of self-destruction, perhaps thus first -entering the heart of man, vanished, and following it, leaping like a -flame that has lain stifled in smoke, or moved unheeded, along hidden -tracts of heat towards the surface and the air, came the devastating -fire of jealousy and hatred and the thirst for vengeance. - -The prehistoric man then discovered his endowment of emotions, and -under the sudden summons of his offended passions, became as modern -as Leontes or Agamemnon. Ogga’s face certainly assumed no extreme -distortion of rage, and the air was not imperatively needed to repeat -his imprecations to the surrounding rocks. He simply walked, with -perhaps the sparkle of a peculiar light newly awakened in his eyes, and -a slightly noticeable tension of the muscles of his arm as his hands -grasped the long used ivory spear, and there was, were our eyes near -enough to discern it, a sinister pallor in his cheeks; he walked to the -edge of the ledge and listened. - -He turned his face to the directions below, above, around him, and, -motionless, like some lost animal expectant to regain his companions -by some wandering bleat or call, listened. Then, when that conjecture -proved fruitless, he fell upon his knees and studied the imprints that -were freshly made in the soil. The path Lagk and Lhatto had taken was -soon determined, and Ogga, with a sudden quivering ejaculation--the -first word he had spoken--followed the descending trail. - -Lagk had hurried Lhatto away, and yet his movements were not neglectful -of her comfort. The horse sought its path with trepidation, down the -steeper defiles of the descent to the valley, and not infrequently -Lagk’s strength and presence of mind alone prevented a serious accident -to beast and burden. His progress, greatly as he wished to hasten it, -was slow, nor was his own knowledge of the aisles and passages of the -woods quite sufficient. He intended to gain a prolongation of the -valley where the sloth had been seen, and pass beyond the ranges east -of it by some clove or depression, or, if that was impossible, by some -shoulder of the cordillera from which he might more successfully plot -his return to the canyon. - -The country was not altogether difficult to traverse. The forests were -continuous but not densely interrupted with undergrowth, and when the -valleys between the ranges were reached they formed quite open highways -for miles. Treeless areas extended on the mountain sides in places, -and here upon a plateau country the igneous agencies had developed a -landscape, weird and chaotic, where black shadows and glaring patches -of light marked the violent contrasts of cliff and plain. - -Lagk had been solicitous and tender with Lhatto. He loved her, and his -passion, by the corrective influence of his mind, superior to brutal -concupiscence, had maintained a certain aboriginal gallantry. He -brought her water and food. He plucked tender berries and offered them -to her. Except for the acceptance of water Lhatto remained stolid and -stubbornly unresponsive. Lagk would have unloosed the irksome bonds -and taken her with him under less constraint, but the sense of capture -was delightful to him, the physical possession thus assured seemed to -enervate and entrance him. He often paused in their descent, and stood -near Lhatto, his hand upon her body and his keen eyes, brilliant, with -a seam of light crossing them, in a frenzy of anticipation, resting -upon her. - -Such unwise surrenders to his fancy lost him time, the stumbling and -uncertain horse and his own hesitation as to the way added increased -delays, which were unfavorable for his escape from a resentful foe -whose feet were winged with anger, whose muscles sprang forward under -the whip of scorn, and in whose veins the blood bounded with a thirst -for murder. - -Yes! in the prehistoric, in Ogga, the gaunt horror of the desire to -kill had arisen. The pallid beast of hatred, ridden by the clutching -hags of envy and jealousy and spite and terror, ran before Ogga in -his path. He--Ogga--stared wildly at the image of a man, stifled and -gasping, held at the throat by Ogga’s hand--his own--until the eyes -started from their sockets, turning their lifeless whitenesses downward -and upward in the wanton agony of death. Ogga’s hands, thrust before -him, caught, in his dreaming mind, the body of Lagk, and they raised -it, struggling, kicking, voluble with cries and tears and prayers, -above the earth, above the splintered rocks, harsh and ragged with -edges and translucent tips, and these same hands smashed the pitiful -and shrinking body upon the hard edges, the lacerating, piercing tips, -and it lay there before Ogga, palpitating like a slain animal, gushing -red tides of blood. - -Ogga’s feet, whose impetuous haste, now sent him bounding like a -ball over an obstructing rock, now with slippery treachery sent him -sprawling from the damp mossiness of a fallen tree, those flying feet, -suddenly in Ogga’s inner sight, became immobile, stamped upon the -cracked and pensile neck of the deceiver, of the girl he loved, before -whom, before this happened, the wide earth and all the firmament of -stars were pale, inconsequent, and foolish things. With such surprising -madness did Ogga hunt the felons of his joy, the vague misery of his -desolation cutting his heart, in the sudden blackness which _touched_ -him on every side. - -Lagk had hurried up the valley where Ogga had found the sloth, and the -pale topped mountains rose, as he advanced, into flinty pinnacles, -gray and spectral, in the summer sun. They rose as the valley widened, -their bared heads destitute of covering, sending into the broad zenith -the half-visible rays of the reflected heat and light. They thrust -out wide shoulders, the shadows resting in the cold remoteness of -their elevations, revealing cliffs and recesses, ragged gorges and -wandering seams of dislocation. Lagk paused again and again, wondering -and dismayed. His path forward became more strange, and though he had -roamed for years through this country of the wild horses, this southern -marge frightened him with its sublimity. Its insistent immensity -oppressed him and the silent solitudes by some power of evocation, that -rests in all things majestic, summoned to his lips some confession of -disgrace and shame. - -He had not been harsh with Lhatto. He curbed his own impatience and -fear by resting from hour to hour, for he was not insensible of the -restraint and discomfort which Lhatto suffered. He had even lifted -her from the horse, like some fragile burden, and laid her on soft -couches of grass or moss. But he did not change the thongs that held -her rigid, swathed in a panoply of imprisoning cords. He was afraid to -loosen her, fearful perhaps of her agility, her sylvan velocity that, -as the bird flies, or the wild cat leaps, or the squirrel runs, would -evade, confuse and escape him. He could not be sure. Her silence, -yet unbroken, though now and then her lips twitched with suffocating -rage, or perhaps with sharp aches and dull misery, made him bitter and -distrustful. - -But now, before the awful splendor of the external world, before the -unvoiced appeal of those mountains up whose sides he was pressing and -whose altitudes, with their stony retinue of forms and faces gazing -unchanged, and yet with every moment a renewed persistency of inquiry, -made him tremble with alarm; before these things a kind of contrition -arose in him, and because it came from his own burning love--as in all -love there is something holy and self-condemning--he came slowly to the -side of Lhatto on the horse and spoke: - -“Lhatto, I do not mean harm or hurt. You shall be with me in my land -and with my people. I will be so good to you. I love you. The spirit -men shall be good to you. You will have so much to eat, to wear, and -you shall do nothing. I took you because I cannot live anyway, besides. -I will bring you birds and little animals, and furs and flowers. You -shall be beautiful. And my people will do as you say, all of them, or I -will kill them. Let it be so. Forget Ogga. Love me.” - -And yet as he spoke, Ogga, growing hotter, warier, keener, surer, -deadlier, followed his trail, even as the meteoric spark that crosses -the black night follows its inerrant path to earth. - -But Lhatto did not answer. In that woman’s heart, primeval with the -centuries, the rapture of devotion had its birth. Her ears were deaf, -her eyes were filled with the image of the man who woke her sleeping -on the rocking waves, and her heart was still with the great hope and -prayer that he would find her. Such a spirit dwelt in this woman of the -Ice Age, the prehistoric, in whom grew, by some mystery of design, the -consecration of fidelity. - -They hurried on. Lagk incensed, beat the lagging horse, and desperate -by an increasing apprehension of Ogga’s pursuit, breathlessly pushed -upward, expecting from a high and desert tableland, which he had -descried, to see more clearly his way eastward to the canyon land. - -At last they reached, by toilsome struggles in which Lhatto suffered, -the edge of a wide plain. On its farthest margin still rose the -baffling mountain peaks. It was a bowl-shaped expanse, of sand and -pebbles, that sloped by the most imperceptible subsidence to a small -lake. Sage bushes, groups of cedars, presenting angular and dwarfed and -prostrate forms, offered in spots some relief to the unmasked stare of -the palpitating scent. The day was well advanced. By some peculiarity -of position, or by some vagary of weather, the air was motionless, and -the unclouded sun shone mercilessly, until the heated stones emitted a -radiant warmth and the parched herbage seemed melted and shrunken. - -Over the singular field of stones and sand the little and exhausted -company forced their way, Lagk by turns pulling the reluctant beast, or -else from behind pelting it with pebbles. By means of such exertions he -reached the sides of the lake which revealed a border of mimic beaches -and low precipitous cliffs. Turning up a defile where a temporary -shade was secured from some fantastic trees, whose roots, by all the -available ingenuity of a subterranean quest for moisture, had fastened -themselves in riven rocks and over included boulders, they finally -emerged upon a flat exposure that rose from the lake in a vertical -wall, and like some miniature stage, commanded the desolate and -monotonous surroundings. - -It was a granite ledge hollowed over its surface with small -depressions, which were now pools of water from some recent rain, and -upon it lay scattered blocks, a few crowded together in a low wall, -full of apertures and chance shelters, beyond which again the arid -deposit stretched to the last needles of the range. Beyond these peaks -Lagk felt certain he should find an avenue of escape. To the wall of -drifted or weathered boulders he made his way, the shadows of the horse -with its recumbent load and the short muscular body of Lagk, moving -over the granite floor of the pedestal, like phantom silhouettes, the -sun burning the crystalline edges of the roughened asperities of the -rocks into dust. - -In the shadow of this wall they rested and Lagk looked long at Lhatto, -still silent. Slowly he passed his hand over her body, slowly his -fingers sought the knotted cords, slowly they unfastened the entwined -and embracing thongs, and slowly one by one the cords dropped from -Lhatto, and slowly the freed woman, with gestures of distress and -stiffness, rose on the back of the horse. It was not altogether painful -for her. She had been indeed cruelly confined, and on her legs and arms -and breast the strictures of the skin were visible. An enfeeblement -had overcome her, and as Lagk seized her in his arms and carried her -resistless to the rocks, his love seemed kindled to a more poignant -fury by the pressure of her warm and helpless body. She sat beside him, -her eyes with a wandering glance searching the strange spot. The color -had faded in her cheeks, its hue, that had been like the sheen of a -delicate bronze, was replaced by a pasty pallor, and a ring of shadow -lay beneath each eye. But to Lagk she was the same, but more precious, -more desirable, more his own. An eagle flying with convulsive leaps -from rock to rock approached them. Its whistling cackle seemed to mock -the loneliness and weakness of the girl. - -Lagk placed his hand upon her neck. He stood before her so that his -broad body shut out the sun; his other hand lifted her toward him; her -supineness thrilled him with a strange insanity. His thoughts ran pêle -mêle towards the gratification of his love. And yet--and yet--; the -circling eagle with its senile chatter rose flapping in the blazing -light, a hundred scintillations seemed flashed before Lagk’s eyes, a -breeze that had arisen brought to his ears the patter of the waves -upon the highland lake, and off, far off beyond him the gray and white -needles of the cordilleras, like blanched images of rebuke, stood -waiting. Lagk spoke. His voice was thin and whispering, and the breath -that came with it on the cheeks of Lhatto was hot and humid. He said, -“Lhatto, you are mine.” - -Then Lhatto sprang upward; at last her tired lips opened, and the faint -vestiges of her strength which had grown together in that interval of -resting, into something useful and vehement, forced him from her. Her -words, “I hate you,” were not misunderstood, nor misconceived, nor -welcomed. Lagk sprang back with tigerish zeal. The two, the Woman and -the Intruder, fought together on the silent radiant granite table, -while the horse nibbled the niggardly and grudging bunch grass. - -It was an unequal effort. Lagk was strong and behind his strength was -the grizzly power of his rage and desire, and Lhatto, whose, strength -had been slowly ebbing, resisted only with the last cooperative fusion -of muscle and of will. Lagk forced her to the stones. For an instant -they rested, Lhatto’s head bent forward and pushed against Lagk’s -breast, who held her arms twisted from him in a vice-like clutch. The -coupled pair slowly fell backward to the rock they had for an instant -deserted, the slow retreat broken only by sudden wrenchings and -spasmodic returns of Lhatto’s expiring strength and revulsion. - -It was over. Lagk bent down and bit Lhatto in the neck like any savage -or wicked thing that feels the impulse of an unquenchable thirst. And -then--a shadow from above shut out the light, a block of rock rolled -down the wall, a groan like the muttering and imprisoned sighs of a -tree bent in a storm of wind--all this happened in the acute silence -and sunlit splendor of the place. Lagk raised his head. Above him on -the tumbled stones stood Ogga. - -Ogga had indeed hastened. His quick eye had followed the trail -unhesitatingly and he had never paused. His chase had been unbroken. -The springs or brooks here and there had quenched his thirst, but food -had not passed his lips nor sleep visited his body. Perhaps he was -not strong enough for the rescue. He had detected below the mountain -desert the fleeing footsteps of his rival and he had crept upon the -sandy mesa quite unseen. He had seen as he approached, bending behind -bushes, stalking in the grass, running from boulder to boulder, the -movements of the two before him. The approach he made had been a little -circuitous and it was while he was skirting the opposite side of the -cairn of stones that Lagk had attacked Lhatto. Ogga, the moment this -screen removed the chances of his detection, ran rapidly forward, and -climbing the rampart saw the waning fight. He stood almost directly -above Lagk. He heard Lhatto speak. - -In an instant the dark torrent of vengeance lost its worst, its deepest -tint; the thought of Lhatto’s faith made him again more human. It was -now against Lagk that the fierce mutiny of his thoughts turned. And -as the agony of his rage burst forth, mixed with a strange sweetness -of reassurance, his lips moved, and the moan, that made Lagk look up, -issued on the rising wind. The two men--the prehistorics--were face to -face, and now all scores were to be wiped out between them. Thus at -the threshold, even beyond the threshold, in the untenanted spaces of -origin, the play of love and retaliation and jealousy and hate, began -its devastating path. Yes! and with one the sense of guilt was not -unnoticed. - -Lagk hastily abandoned Lhatto. He too knew the crisis was reached, and -his old resentment against Ogga flamed up; expiation was at hand, or -else--that silence that he had sometimes seen amongst his own people in -the canyon. His mind worked quickly, and as he retreated, backing out -over the level floor of rock, he bethought himself of his resources. -He knew Ogga’s strength, his size and agility. He was himself strong, -but he felt a safety in craft, and the implement of his cunning was the -lasso, that had so often caught and tamed the wild horses. - -Ogga leaped down towards Lagk, but turned to Lhatto. She was -breathless, she said nothing, she only pointed to Lagk, and her eyes -lit up with pleasure, with madness of joy even. Ogga had thrown away -his spear, in his hand was only the stone knife. The instant lost in -the recognition of the lovers allowed Lagk time to pass sideways and -recover a long skin rope with a sort of noose in it. He wound this -hastily, still hurrying away, anxious to bring Ogga after him in a -running attack. - -It came. Ogga, crouching, ran like a dart upon him. Lagk hoped to see -him stumble and fall. The sure foot of the mastodon hunter skimmed the -ground as a bird’s wing. Lagk trembled. He too crouched. In a dizzy -circle, widening and contracting, thudding the air with a faint, steamy -whizz and whirr, the thong sped above his head. Then it widened the -rotating, undulous noose, and the line sprang from his hand and fell, -vibrating in an irregular elipse over the head of Ogga, upon his neck. -It lay unperceived by him upon his shoulders. It tightened; the quick -restraint was noticed. Ogga seized it with his hands, his knife dropped -to the rock and broke. He was already worsted. - -As a spider, touching each radiating line of his web, feels the -telltale tremble that acquaints it with a new capture, so Lagk realized -his advantage, and with all his force, holding his place as best he -could, against the manifold and plunging struggles of his prey, he drew -him outward, outward over the granite ledge towards the lake. Ogga, -blinded by his own rage and bewilderment, helped the sinister purpose -of his enemy by too much resistance. The taut rope enabled Lagk to jerk -him again and again, upsetting and felling him, and every time he hit -the stone pavement over which in the hot sun, he was thus impatiently -sprawling, harsh wounds were given. - -His strength already severely tested by his pursuit, by his long fast, -was unequal to this new emergency. Sometimes, in his overthrows, his -head struck the unyielding floor. He was succumbing, he grew dizzy, he -fought wildly with the implacable cord. His best efforts only saved -him from being choked, and his imprisoned hands, occupied in saving -his neck from the tightening rope, were useless. He reeled, the blood -flowed down his face. His eyes seemed rolling in his head, and then -sounds of confusion burst on his ears. As to all men, approaching -exhaustion and unconsciousness, pictures floated before his eyes, the -smilodon and mastodon, the steppe country, Zit and the ice blanket, the -ocean, the boat with Lhatto, the stampede of the wild horses and then, -again, and again, and again, Lhatto. How then he resisted his cogent -foe! How her face summoned up new desperate energies, but how pitiably -inadequate! He tossed to and fro on the rock, falling, rising, pitching -headlong, a toy, a waif, in the iron hands of the relentless Lagk. And -Lhatto, stealing outward too from the wall, following with even pace -Ogga’s circling and vain motions, held her hands before her face, in -great pain and sorrow. - -Lagk knew his advantage, saw Ogga’s downfall and helplessness, but by a -cool precision of judgment, of prudence, risked nothing by coming too -near his prey, nor did he relax an instant the sharp pressure of the -cord. His plans slowly fixed, as the fight, now unequal and in his own -hands, drew certainly to a close. The fixation of his plan came with -the recollection of his own injury in youth at Ogga’s hands. Ogga had -pushed him from the cliff--he would push Ogga from the cliff, but into -the depthless waters; into the cold embrace of death; he would leave -him dead on the mountain top, in the blue hidden recess of the mountain -lake. And then Lhatto! - -The quick comprehension of his life-long thirst for vengeance and the -possession of the woman who now claimed his heart with unspeakable -power, suffocated him with its delirium of satisfaction. He cried -aloud, he reviled Ogga; the ribald, the obscene, the torturing cruelty -of the savage, ran loose in his vulgar, wicked jubilation. Strength -came to his arms. He hurled the smarting, almost senseless Ogga this -way and that; each fall of the staggering victim elicited new shouts of -triumph. He waved his arms, his lips spat upon the prostrate hunter, -whom at length he drew to himself, to the cliff’s edge, and he watched -the bleeding body, the matted hair, the rolling eyes, the mouth -discolored and thick with gore. Ogga was vanquished. Lagk possessed the -earth and Lhatto! The Woman of the Ice Age was his! It was enough. - -Lagk stood at the brink of the cliff, and Ogga, motionless, lay at -his feet. Below him the lake waters, yet disturbed by the wind which -had become stronger, colder with the sinking sun, splashed against -the broken face of the cliff. Their waves ran in upon half revealed -points of rock, and their spray was flung upward over higher edges -and irregular prominences. The cliff’s edge was undercut, and as Lagk -looked down, he stood upon a cornice of rock immediately above the -broken masses of granite, partially submerged, partially exposed. -The waters of the lake were at this point deep. Lagk noted that with -interest. He leaned over the splintered abyss. - -A dark spot crossed the rocks. It was the shadow of the eagle flying on -broad pinions to the forests he had left. Lagk watched it obliviously. -The faint impact of running feet came to his ears. With a start he -turned; the thong about Ogga dropped from his hand, but he had not -turned too quickly--Lhatto’s hands were beating with a sudden shock -upon his unbalanced body. It needed but a touch to throw him over, and -she had come with the impetus which the swiftness of the wind gave her. - -He slipped, the extreme lip of the granite crumbled as he fell, -writhing in a horror that smote his face with many grimaces, and stood -in his eyes like a spectre in a doorway and even ran through his thick -hair and bade it rise. Lagk fell. His hands clutched backward at -the woman, but they closed only on inviolable air. His head pitched -down and struck the splintered, rough faces of the stone. His body -lingered for an instant on the verge of the cold waiting waters and -as it turned in the last hideous convulsion, its eyes met Lhatto still -bending and gazing at his last chance. - -The waters broke in crisping ripples and the white spray rose in -the red light of the sun, hid now in a sultry haze. Lagk lost -consciousness, the harsh bruise of his fall had crushed his ribs; he -sank into the green filminess of the lake like a heavy dark mass, -not altogether without resistance. The water was churned with the -involuntary muscular revolt; the currents rising upward from his -twisting body, his flail-like extended arms, seamed the surface with -interlacing currents. Lhatto still watched until all was gone, until -even the perturbed water, save for the brushing of the wind, had come -to rest. - -Then Lhatto turned to Ogga. He was leaning on one arm with a wavering -effort at steadiness, the other mechanically engaged in freeing his -neck from the fatal noose, and his face, smeared and disfigured, was -lifted towards her. The young savage woman, the Prehistoric, knelt -beside him. She wiped his face with her hands, and put her cheeks to -his. She hurried to the lake and brought water in her scooped palms -and poured it on his head. She gathered skins from where they had been -thrown down by Lagk. These she brought to Ogga and so placed them under -and about him that he might rest more easily. She knelt beside him and, -as instinctively as might a nurse to-day, soothed and caressed him. -Ogga’s head lay in her lap, his eyes, now filled with tenderness and -shining with joy, were fixed on hers. She brought him food. The horse -was recovered. Finally, as Ogga was able to walk, though only feebly -yet, the harsh concussion on his head yet lingering in dumb aches and -dizzy and whirling shadows dancing before his eyes, she led him to the -slim shelter of the rocks. The nightfall hastened. The intense stars -shown in the inky vault above them, and the creeping cold followed the -dazzling sunshine and the intemperate heat. - -They gathered the warm furs about them, they shrank together in the -night, they talked softly about Lagk, only a little way from them in -the bottom of the lake, and their yet wondering minds, timid before the -strange catastrophe of death, changed the shadows they saw about them -into his image. He seemed to lurk in the crevice behind them, he rose -suddenly at the end of the cairn, he stooped over them from the air, he -crept between them, motionless and unfelt. They clasped each other in -fright, and their eyes wild with a suffocating dread of interruption, -of dispersal, of some nocturnal vengeance sweeping with the bat’s wing, -from the air upon them, grew weary at length, and the shuddering horror -succumbed to sleep. The morning sun smote their faces, pressed together -by the pressure of love and fear. Their arms unlocked, their eyelids -wet with dew parted, their lips opened with smiles; love rested upon -them like a consecration, and with the sense of warmth, in the sunlight -of the full day, the bright haloes and beckoning joys of life came back -tumultuously, gay and sweet. - -Ogga soon revived. The recuperative power in the wild man is part of -the recuperative power of the wild life about him, of the animals, the -plants, of the riven soil settling back into peace and cohesion and new -fruitfulness, after shock and storm and fire. So again they prepared to -move southward. Lhatto longed for the sea, and in both were growing the -hidden instincts of home seeking, of rest; and dreams of a fair spot -sheltered from storms, where there was good fishing, and trees and the -surf beaten beaches, and the long endless plain of the ocean stretching -into the scarlet blankets of the sunset, formed in their eyes, and drew -them onward with irrevocable power. - -They hardly knew the way, but they also knew no fear. After they had -left the haunted sand plateau, hurrying from it with averted faces, -fearing lest the long arms of Lagk might reach out from the lake and -pull them back to himself in the cold water; after they had left it -and entered the shielding woods, moving with the acceleration of -anticipation through the twilight day to the distant open valleys, to -the rivers and the long pale copses of _shinta_ bushes, their hearts -beat high. - -Their love enfolded them like a shining light that threw on all -things its own radiance, and their enlaced bodies chasing through the -solitudes seemed a tantalizing replacement, in the dim distant America -of the Prehistorics, of some Hellenic fancy. The horse, mute companion -and mute mourner, for Lagk possessed the singular traumeristic power -over animals which is the sixth sense in some peculiar natures, had not -followed them. Nor did they care. Even his intrusion spoiled their joy; -so transcendental, by some choice accident of nature, had life become -in these savage waifs, floating on the doorway of history, and yet thus -prefiguring, before the dawn of records, the immutability of love. - -And thus moving southward they discovered at length that they were -skirting the foot hills of a range of mountains which placed its high -barrier--a barrier that increased daily--between them and the sea. They -did not notice that an insensible divergence, accentuated at times by -sharper deflections to the east, was widening their distance from the -ocean. They were anxious to find some path across the towering peaks, -some defile of approach to the coast, but day by day the inexorable -mountains seemed to raise their restraining hands and deny escape. -The ranges multiplied. Lhatto and Ogga entered a region of manifold -complexity, the Sierras developed about them in bewildering frequency, -and the growth of the forests became more dense. - -Their confusion increased; the valley which had, like a broad avenue of -transit, led them on, now was lost in a series of parallel or divergent -ravines. Their path, marked before, in monumental style, by the steep -and bare crests of the cordilleras, was now hopelessly disconcerted -by the intricacy and hardships of the new paths, and these children -of nature, taught only in the rough methods of aboriginal calculation -and instinct, slowly lost heart in the midst of a vast topographical -difficulty. They could not surmount the intermediate ranges and push -westward. The task dismayed them. The small game which Ogga had -contrived to take, was becoming more scarce, the rivers disappeared and -the asperity and disturbed condition of the ground offered in places -almost insurmountable obstacles to their advance. In this dilemma, -beginning to feel a strange loneliness and dread, a certain nervous -irresolution, characteristic of the aboriginal mind, they began to -elude the problem they could not determine, by following the most easy -path, fleeing like children from an omnipresent danger along simple and -self-indulgent ways. - -And so it came to pass that they hastened into lower levels, traversing -country that became more parched, more desolate and bare. - -The herbage alone accompanied them; the trees already halted as if -unable or fearful to enter the lowlands, and desert the protecting -shadows and nutritious soil of the hills. The ground was baked and -a saline efflorescence hid the surface with a dazzling crust. The -sun devoured them with its flagrant power, water almost disappeared, -and what they drank acted with terrifying distress and inscrutable -pains. They had indeed entered a desert charged with all the powers of -annihilation, itself a sepulchre, remote and pitiless. Over it hung the -oppression of irrespirable volumes of air quivering with heat, and from -it came the infiltrating currents of minute alkaline dust, stirred into -invisible clouds by the accidental winds, winds that came from the hot -fires of a furnace, and bore with them the pang of flames. - -The pair had grown thin and haggard and hollow eyed, despairing with a -gaunt terror that stalked behind them, holding each other’s hands and -blind to prudence or reprieve, still driving on, believing it would -pass, even as they saw miraged before them a distant limit, verdant, -shadowy, with mirrors of water and bending and rising grasses. - -The moment of unreason had come, their brains pierced by the awful heat -lost the tottering balance of sanity, and their vagabond footsteps -carried them wherever the illusions of their blinded eyes led. But -still linked by the potent power of their affection, in this last sad -travesty of union, they kept their hands closed together. - -It was the end of day. Lhatto and Ogga had fallen on the caustic desert -almost unconscious. The clouds had robbed the sun during the last hours -of its persecuting zeal, of something of its power. They gathered -still more closely as the light died out in the sky, and the momentary -assuagement of the heat restored the lovers to temporary reason and -self possession. - -It was Lhatto, looking still with the tenderness of sympathy upon the -sufferings of Ogga, his own eyes growing brighter in the supervening -moments of restoration, who spoke, and her voice came as a whisper, the -inarticulate breath of death. - -“Ogga, we go to the Ice Spirit. We go together. The Fire-Spirit kills -us. But there is no more hurt now. We are happy.” The voice was still. -And Ogga, denied of the last lingering impulses of effort and recovery, -yet by some interior remnant of volition, leaned forward upon Lhatto. -Their lips touched. - -The atmospheric change had come. A few drops of water grudgingly -squeezed from the leaden sky fell upon them. Lhatto held up her hand -and in its wasted palm the falling drops ran together in a little -circle. Death was upon her, the agony of the creeping fires of thirst -was in her throat; Ogga had fallen backward, and upon him the silence -of Hereafter rested, but the woman, strong with the superhuman -strength of her great love, pressed the wet palm upon his lips, and -died. - -So, in the far backward of time, as the Ice Age departed, the Man -and the Woman began the endless Poem of Life, endlessly beautiful, -endlessly sad. - - - - -THE LITERARY COLLECTOR PRESS - -GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time of publication - has been preserved. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of the Ice Age, by -L. P. 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