CHAPTER I
A hundred thousand years have passed since a certain memorable twilight in the forest of Umbaddu. Beyond a long ragged ridge of spruce, the sun went down in forlorn crimson precisely like the suns of a later day; across the winding valley, with its shaggy woods and age-battered buttes and cliffs, an enchanted calm had settled, as though time had ended and there were no other days to come. Only the Harr-Sizz or Long-Snake River, foaming in tumultuous serpentine along its deep rocky cañon, persistently broke the silence of the great wilderness; though now and again the call of some belated bird, or howling of hyena, or long-drawn, mournful plaint of some lonely wolf, would sound weirdly and from far away like a voice from another world.
Yet birds, wolves, and hyenas were not the only inhabitants of those houseless solitudes. Down by the brink of the river, where the waters had widened for a space to a smooth-flowing glossy expanse, a curious creature was threshing its way among the dense reeds and bushes. At the first glance one might have mistaken it for some monstrous beast, a cousin of the orang-utan or the gorilla; but a second glimpse would have shown one that it belonged to a more advanced race.
Walking with a pronounced stoop on two massive legs, it reached a height only slightly below that of a modern man. At its side was slung a rabbit-skin pouch filled with pebbles, and in its huge right hand it carried a rough-hewn club the size of a table leg; while its great barrel-like chest, its short pugilistically thick neck, and enormously developed arms gave proof of a strength that few moderns could equal. For clothes it wore only a rudely cut strip of deerskin, which hung loosely from the broad, curving shoulders not quite to the knees; and over all the exposed parts of arms, legs, and breast there spread an unbroken mat of dense black hair.
But most remarkable of all was the creature's face. In features more beastlike than human, the savagery of the jungle seemed to be warring with something that was not quite of the jungle, and in spite of the heavy jowls and apelike jaws there was just a hint of a miracle to come. The head was large and powerful, the forehead broad but low and receding, the eyebrows perched on prominent bony ridges that went far toward giving a brutish aspect. The nose was flat, and the nostrils broadly dilated, the ears round, protruding and movable, the chin weak and almost non-existent; the mouth was wide and the teeth ground down almost to the jaw, while the cheeks, like the rest of the body, were covered with a wilderness of black hair. And as for the eyes—they were small and black, and yet keen and brilliantly lighted; and they burned and sparkled with alert intelligence as their possessor pushed his way warily through the thicket.
Arriving at the edge of the dense brush, he was confronted by a wall of rock that shot precipitously upward for hundreds of feet. Even a mountain-goat might have hesitated before attempting the seemingly impossible ascent; but the hairy-limbed one did not so much as pause, though handicapped by the weight of his pouch of pebbles and of his club. With an air of absolute assurance, he turned a few paces to the left, then began to scramble up an almost imperceptible little path that twisted in and about among a jumbled pile of boulders. It was a sort of natural stairway, though frequently there was a gap of five or six feet between steps and the man had to lift himself from rock to rock with much straining and pulling of his huge arms. Sometimes he stood on ledges so narrow that one misstep would have plunged him to destruction; sometimes it was not his feet but a powerful clinging hand that preserved his balance, and one would have expected to see his fingers slip and his huge form reel and stagger into the abyss. Yet all the time he betrayed no fear, and continued on his way with the apparent carelessness of a tight-rope walker.
The last gray of twilight was merging into the blackness of night when at last the climber paused on a little shelf of rock two-thirds of the way to the top. Out of a long irregular fissure in the cliff a dim light was shining, a strange flickering light that might have brought visions of goblins or ghosts. But the climber was neither surprised nor alarmed; and after halting for a moment to give his panting heart time to subside, he uttered a loud, thick-voiced grunt. Instantly, from some unseen recess in the wall, dozens of responsive voices were raised in a hoarse, excited chorus; then, after a second or two, the fissure began to widen, and by the pale, eery illumination the watcher could distinguish three or four grinning, apelike faces, and six or eight curving hairy arms that tugged and tugged at a huge, slowly moving boulder.
Meanwhile the shouts continued, louder and louder, growing and growing in volume and excitement, until it seemed that hundreds of wildly agitated voices were clamoring all at once. At the same time, the tumult grew stranger and stranger, with hollow reverberations as of men calling from some subterranean grotto; nor did the uproar diminish before the straining arms had opened a cleft the size of a man's body. Then suddenly, with a swift contortion of his limbs, the new arrival slipped through the aperture; and once again the tugging arms were to be seen, pulling, pulling the boulder back against its fellow rocks.
Soon, on that deserted terrace of the cliff, only the weird, wavering light was visible through an opening as narrow as when the climber had arrived. But, from within, a multitude of voices could be heard, clamoring not quite so tumultuously as before, but chattering steadily and excitedly, like enthusiastic children who have no end of things to say.
And just beyond the replaced boulder, in the cavern whence the grinning faces had appeared, a grotesque spectacle was in progress. To the modern eye, it would have looked more like a scene from another planet than of this world—and more striking, perhaps, than the scene itself would have been the stage on which it was erected. Imagine a long, curving, irregular gallery, roofed and paved and walled with smoke-stained rock, in places so low that a man would have to stoop to pass beneath it, in places arching to an ample vault from which slow waters eternally drip and drip; imagine the dusky walls adorned with strange-colored pictures, pictures of animals long extinct, of cave wolves and cave bears, of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses; imagine curious trophies hung side by side with the paintings, and above them, the skulls and antlers of huge stags, the horns of aurochs, the hides of wild boars and of mountain-sheep, the teeth of bears and the fangs of serpents slung into great hideous chains; while at one end a tall heap of bones, hundreds of which have been split and splintered for the marrow, bears evidence of many a greedy repast. And picture the whole scene illuminated from a single source, a great blazing pile of logs near the mouth of the cavern, so that for a few yards the cave stands forth clearly revealed, while for its greater length it is obscured in a vague smoky twilight that gradually gives place to the blackness of utter night.
Within the cave, all was tumult and confusion. Every shadow seemed to be populated; and out of every dark recess crawled some hairy form, with excited voice raised to greet the new arrival. That he was one of them would have been apparent at a glance; they too were mantled in furs and skins, whether of the deer, the wild horse, or the bison; they too were stooping and brawny and covered with hair, with the same retreating forehead, the same thick neck and powerful jaws, the same bony eye-ridges and glittering black eyes.
As the newcomer entered, half a dozen long stout arms were flung about his neck and shoulders, and half a dozen sinewy hands seized him in a fierce grip of friendship. Then so closely did the swarm press about him, so furiously did they squeeze and struggle to be near, that one might have expected him to be crushed or suffocated.
"Welcome back!" they chorused, in a tongue crude as that of a mid-African savage. "Welcome back, Mumlo the Trail-Finder!"
And in the confusion of voices that ensued, one might have distinguished little more than a series of guttural clucks and grunts—"Gru ghra, gru ghra, gru ghra!"—like the murmurings of a bewildered mob.
Yet that throaty tumult was in reality a pandemonium of joy. "Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!" rang out the voices—which is as near as the primitive words can be given a modern equivalent. And mingled with the greetings, there came a storm of questions: "Where have you been so long? What have you done? What have you seen? Why are you alone? Where is Grop the Tree-Climber? and Wamwa the Snake-Eyed?"
So insistent were these inquiries, and so determined was each questioner to be answered, that the newcomer could only turn in bewilderment from one to another, mumbling a monosyllable here and a monosyllable there, but apparently saying nothing to satisfy anyone, since for some time the confused jabbering continued unabated.
Then with lightning suddenness the tumult ceased. One of the mob uttered a single frightened monosyllable—and all tongues stopped short in mid-sentence. A look half of awe, half of actual fear, came across the grimacing faces; the sharp glittering eyes were all fastened upon the farther recesses of the cave, from whose midnight fastnesses a huge shambling form was emerging into the nearer twilight.
"Grumgra the Growling Wolf!" muttered one or two under their breath; and all drew back as if by instinct as the newcomer sullenly approached.
His great form, in the wavering shadows, seemed truly monstrous and redoubtable, perhaps more monstrous than the clear radiance of day would have shown it to be. As compared with his fellows, he was of enormous build—not less than six feet in height, with gorilla-like chest, thick-set sinewy limbs, and the solid stocky aspect of one whose excess weight runs to muscles. His head was large, even in proportion to his immense frame, and his broad forehead was not quite so low as those of his kinsmen, although the glowering, ferocious aspect of his long hairy face, with the exceptionally prominent jaws and high, tapering cheek-bones, made him even more savage-looking than the majority. Armed with an oaken club almost as tall as himself, clad in the hide of a black wolf and adorned with a crown of wolf's teeth, he was truly a figure to strike terror to the hearts of the timid.
Majestically he stalked toward the firelight, while at his coming his tribesmen retreated as far as the walls would permit. Within a dozen paces of the flames, he paused; then, lifting his club ceremoniously above his head, he uttered a single deep-voiced sound, more like the bellowing of a bull than the speech of a man. And, at this command, the cowering mob began hesitatingly to approach him, though all were careful to keep beyond range of the club. But one of their number—he who had that evening scaled the cliff and been received so tumultuously—made bold to step almost within arm's length of the scowling one, and, without waiting to be bidden, launched into speech.
"O Grumgra, O great chief," he said, "I have done as you have ordered. I have been many days' travel toward the land of the noonday sun, and have seen wonderful things and met with queer adventures. And I have entered a strange bright country, fairer than this country, a strange and glorious place for our tribe to live. But evil spirits dwell there and have done wicked things to my companions, for Wamwa the Snake-Eyed was caught by the deep waters, and Grop the Tree-Climber was caught by a wild beast—and none of us shall ever see them again!"
At these words a low moan issued from a far corner of the cavern. But, disregarding the interruption, Grumgra burst out sonorously, in tones more thunderous than those of his fellows: "Let us thank the gods of the wood that brought Mumlo back, although he bears us sad news. But what does the fate of a few men matter? Mumlo has saved us from the bad spirits that try to destroy us. For a longer time than any man can remember, our fathers have lived in this cave; but now, my people, the day comes when we must leave. You know how the winters have been growing longer and colder; how the sharp winds blow, and the snow piles thick for many moons, while the great sheets of ice, in the direction of the storm-wind, creep nearer and nearer every year. And our game gets scarcer and scarcer, for the mammoth is huge and terrible and hard to hunt, and the reindeer is wary and fleet, and the woolly rhinoceros and the wolves and bears are ferocious and kill many of our people. Yet there are stories in our tribe of a time when great warmth-loving beasts bathed in our rivers, and when mammoths without hair roamed in the woods. If we are wise, we may follow these creatures to warmer lands. And that, as you know, is why we have sent Mumlo the Trail-Finder to learn what sort of country lies under the noonday sun."
"Let Mumlo tell us what he has seen!" came the voice of one of the men. "Let Mumlo tell us—"
But instantly the rash one regretted his words. An angry flash came into the black eyes of the chieftain; with a resounding thud, his great club smashed against a projecting spur of the cavern wall.
And while the splinters flew in a hundred directions, Grumgra bellowed, "Mumlo will speak only when I bid him to!" And perversely he added, "I do not bid him to speak now!"
For a second he paused, as if uncertain of his own intention; then followed with the growling admonition: "Let him now be fed and given sleep and rest after his long journey! And let none question him more! Tomorrow, when the sun is awake again, we shall all gather here and listen to his story—and then I shall tell you whether we shall leave the cave or stay!"
And, having issued his ultimatum, he made a sedate about-face; and, swinging his club commandingly, slouched away into the shadows.