The months came and went. The
drama and tragedy of the future
were yet to come upon the stage,
and in the meantime we pounded
nuts and lived. It--vas a good
year, I remember, for nuts. We
used to fill gourds with nuts
and carry them to the pounding-places.
We placed them in depressions
in the rock, and, with a piece
of rock in our hands, we cracked
them and ate
them as we cracked.
It was the fall of the year
when Lop-Ear and I returned from
our long adventure-journey, and
the winter that followed was
mild. I made frequent trips to
the neighborhood of my old home-tree,
and frequently I searched the
whole territory that lay between
the blueberry swamp and the mouth
of the slough where Lop-Ear and
I had learned navigation, but
no clew could I get of the Swift
One. She had disappeared. And
I wanted her. I was impelled
by that hunger which I have mentioned,
and which was akin to physical
hunger, albeit it came often
upon me when my stomach was full.
But all my search was vain.
Life was not monotonous at
the caves, however. There was
Red-Eye to be considered. Lop-Ear
and I never knew a moment's peace
except when we were in our own
little cave. In spite of the
enlargement of the entrance we
had made, it was still a tight
squeeze for us to get in. And
though from time to time we continued
to enlarge, it was still too
small for Red-Eye's monstrous
body. But he never stormed our
cave again. He had learned the
lesson well, and he carried on
his neck a bulging lump to show
where I had hit him with the
rock. This lump never went away,
and it was prominent enough to
be seen at a distance. I often
took great delight in watching
that evidence of my handiwork;
and sometimes, when I was myself
assuredly safe, the sight of
it caused me to laugh.
While the other Folk would
not have come to our rescue had
Red-Eye proceeded to tear Lop-Ear
and me to pieces before their
eyes, nevertheless they sympathized
with us. Possibly it was not
sympathy but the way they expressed
their hatred for Red-Eye; at
any rate they always warned us
of his approach. Whether in the
forest, at the drinking-places,
or in the open space before the
caves, they were always quick
to warn us. Thus we had the advantage
of many eyes in our feud with
Red-Eye, the atavism.
Once he nearly got me. It was
early in the morning, and the
Folk were not yet up. The surprise
was complete. I was cut off from
the way up the cliff to my cave.
Before I knew it I had dashed
into the double-cave,--the cave
where Lop-Ear had first eluded
me long years before, and where
old Saber-Tooth had come to discomfiture
when he pursued the two Folk.
By the time I had got through
the connecting passage between
the two caves, I discovered that
Red-Eye was not following me.
The next moment he charged into
the cave from the outside. I
slipped back through the passage,
and he charged out and around
and in upon me again. I merely
repeated my performance of slipping
through the passage.
He kept me there half a day
before he gave up. After that,
when Lop-Ear and I were reasonably
sure of gaining the double-cave,
we did not retreat up the cliff
to our own cave when Red-Eye
came upon the scene. All we did
was to keep an eye on him and
see that he did not cut across
our line of retreat.
It was during this winter that
Red-Eye killed his latest wife
with abuse and repeated beatings.
I have called him an atavism,
but in this he was worse than
an atavism, for the males of
the lower animals do not maltreat
and murder their mates. In this
I take it that Red-Eye, in spite
of his tremendous atavistic tendencies,
foreshadowed the coming of man,
for it is the males of the human
species only that murder their
mates.
As was to be expected, with
the doing away of one wife Red-Eye
proceeded to get another. He
decided upon the Singing One.
She was the granddaughter of
old Marrow-Bone, and the daughter
of the Hairless One. She was
a young thing, greatly given
to singing at the mouth of her
cave in the twilight, and she
had but recently mated with Crooked-Leg.
He was a quiet individual, molesting
no one and not given to bickering
with his fellows. He was no fighter
anyway. He was small and lean,
and not so active on his legs
as the rest of us.
Red-Eye never committed a more
outrageous deed. It was in the
quiet at the end of the day,
when we began to congregate in
the open space before climbing
into our caves. Suddenly the
Singing One dashed up a run-way
from a drinking-place, pursued
by Red-Eye. She ran to her husband.
Poor little Crooked-Leg was terribly
scared. But he was a hero. He
knew that death was upon him,
yet he did not run away. He stood
up, and chattered, bristled,
and showed his teeth.
Red-Eye roared with rage. It
was an offence to him that any
of the Folk should dare to withstand
him. His hand shot out and clutched
Crooked-Leg by the neck. The
latter sank his teeth into Red-Eye's
arm; but the next moment, with
a broken neck, Crooked-Leg was
floundering and squirming on
the ground. The Singing One screeched
and gibbered. Red-Eye seized
her by the hair of her head and
dragged her toward his cave.
He handled her roughly when the
climb began, and he dragged and
hauled her up into the cave.
We were very angry, insanely,
vociferously angry. Beating our
chests, bristling, and gnashing
our teeth, we gathered together
in our rage. We felt the prod
of gregarious instinct, the drawing
together as though for united
action, the impulse toward cooperation.
In dim ways this need for united
action was impressed upon us.
But there was no way to achieve
it because there was no way to
express it. We did not turn to,
all of us, and destroy Red-Eye,
because we lacked a vocabulary.
We were vaguely thinking thoughts
for which there were no thought-symbols.
These thought-symbols were yet
to be slowly and painfully invented.
We tried to freight sound with
the vague thoughts that flitted
like shadows through our consciousness.
The Hairless One began to chatter
loudly. By his noises he expressed
anger against Red-Eye and desire
to hurt Red-Eye. Thus far he
got, and thus far we understood.
But when he tried to express
the cooperative impulse that
stirred within him, his noises
became gibberish. Then Big-Face,
with brow-bristling and chest-pounding,
began to chatter. One after another
of us joined in the orgy of rage,
until even old Marrow-Bone was
mumbling and spluttering with
his cracked voice and withered
lips. Some one seized a stick
and began pounding a log. In
a moment he had struck a rhythm.
Unconsciously, our yells and
exclamations yielded to this
rhythm. It had a soothing effect
upon us; and before we knew it,
our rage forgotten, we were in
the full swing of a hee-hee council.
These hee-hee councils splendidly
illustrate the inconsecutiveness
and inconsequentiality of the
Folk. Here were we, drawn together
by mutual rage and the impulse
toward cooperation, led off into
forgetfulness by the establishment
of a rude rhythm. We were sociable
and gregarious, and these singing
and laughing councils satisfied
us. In ways the hee-hee council
was an adumbration of the councils
of primitive man, and of the
great national assemblies and
international conventions of
latter-day man. But we Folk of
the Younger World lacked speech,
and whenever we were so drawn
together we precipitated babel,
out of which arose a unanimity
of rhythm that contained within
itself the essentials of art
yet to come. It was art nascent.
There was nothing long-continued
about these rhythms that we struck.
A rhythm was soon lost, and pandemonium
reigned until we could find the
rhythm again or start a new one.
Sometimes half a dozen rhythms
would be swinging simultaneously,
each rhythm backed by a group
that strove ardently to drown
out the other rhythms.
In the intervals
of pandemonium, each chattered,
cut up, hooted,
screeched, and danced, himself
sufficient unto himself, filled
with his own ideas and volitions
to the exclusion of all others,
a veritable centre of the universe,
divorced for the time being from
any unanimity with the other
universe-centres leaping and
yelling around him. Then would
come the rhythm--a clapping of
hands; the beating of a stick
upon a log; the example of one
that leaped with repetitions;
or the chanting of one that uttered,
explosively and regularly, with
inflection that rose and fell, "A-bang,
a-bang! A-bang, a-bang!" One
after another of the self-centred
Folk would yield to it, and soon
all would be dancing or chanting
in chorus. "Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah-ha!" was
one of our favorite choruses,
and another was, "Eh-wah, eh-wah,
eh-wah-hah!"
And so, with mad antics, leaping,
reeling, and over-balancing,
we danced and sang in the sombre
twilight of the primeval world,
inducing forgetfulness, achieving
unanimity, and working ourselves
up into sensuous frenzy. And
so it was that our rage against
Red-Eye was soothed away by art,
and we screamed the wild choruses
of the hee-hee council until
the night warned us of its terrors,
and we crept away to our holes
in the rocks, calling softly
to one another, while the stars
came out and darkness settled
down.
We were afraid only of the
dark. We had no germs of religion,
no conceptions of an unseen world.
We knew only the real world,
and the things we feared were
the real things, the concrete
dangers, the flesh-and-blood
animals that preyed. It was they
that made us afraid of the dark,
for darkness was the time of
the hunting animals. It was then
that they came out of their lairs
and pounced upon one from the
dark wherein they lurked invisible.
Possibly it was out of this
fear of the real denizens of
the dark that the fear of the
unreal denizens was later to
develop and to culminate in a
whole and mighty unseen world.
As imagination grew it is likely
that the fear of death increased
until the Folk that were to come
projected this fear into the
dark and peopled it with spirits.
I think the Fire People had already
begun to be afraid of the dark
in this fashion; but the reasons
we Folk had for breaking up our
hee-hee councils and fleeing
to our holes were old Saber-Tooth,
the lions and the jackals, the
wild dogs and the wolves, and
all the hungry, meat-eating breeds.
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