Chapter Five.
The Tree Clan.
They walked a little way along the bank, looking for a good place to cross the flat, green meadow that lay between the river and the forest. Soon they came to a sort of path which led back into the woods. Hawk-Eye looked at it very carefully. He even got down and examined the wet ground at the water’s edge. In the mud there were foot-prints.
“Isn’t it a drinking-place for the wild creatures?” asked Limberleg.
Hawk-Eye grunted. “Like ourselves,” he answered briefly. “There are people living in these woods. That’s the print of a man’s foot.”
Limberleg looked just as she would have looked if he had said, “There’s a pack of hyenas living in those woods.” There was reason for it in those days. The different groups of people in the forests had nothing to do with one another, and when they met, they were much more likely to fight than to be friendly.
“Can’t we go up the river-bank and not go into the woods at all?” asked Limberleg. For answer Hawk-Eye pointed down the river. Far away in the green meadow they saw two mammoths feeding. Even at that distance they looked like giant rocks looming out of the grass. Their long ivory tusks gleamed in the sun.
“We can’t go that way,” said Limberleg, “and it’s no use to go back.”
“We’ll go up the path to the edge of the wood, then follow the river,” said Hawk-Eye. “Maybe no one will see us. It’s the best we can do. Be quiet and be quick.”
He set off at a swift trot, his spear in his hand. The two children followed with their mother.
“I see shadows moving in the trees,” said Firefly. Both twins wished very much
that they were at home with Grannie just at that moment.
“They are following us, higher up on the bluff,” Limberleg answered in a low voice.
Hawk-Eye had seen all that they had seen, and more, but he said nothing.
He trotted on. Just then a chunk of mud and dirt came flying through the air and struck Hawk-Eye on the head. Stones, sticks, and all sorts of missiles followed.
“Keep on running,” said Hawk-Eye.
They were terribly frightened, but they did as they were told. If they had looked up, they would have seen a terrifying sight. On the edge of the bluff there was a strange group of people. At least we must call them “people,” though they looked more like monkeys than like human beings. They were grinning horribly and dancing about and chattering to each other. Their bodies were covered with dark hair. Their arms were long and strong, their legs short. They had little eyes set near together, and almost no forehead at all. Every one of them had something in his hand to throw at the travellers.
Hawk-Eye kept straight on. “Run,” he cried. “We can’t fight; they are too many.”
On, on they ran, panting and breathless. A little way ahead there were some large rocks on the edge of the wood. There they might find a momentary shelter. They had almost reached the rocks, when suddenly a woman of the wild tribe let herself down out of a tree on the edge of the bluff and
made a bold dash down the slope. Before they could stop her, she had seized Firefly and dragged her away. She got as far as the first oak tree on the slope and had actually snatched a limb, intending to swing herself and Firefly into it, when Limberleg, screaming with fury, reached the spot. Limberleg seized Firefly by one arm. The wild woman had hold of the other.
They pulled in opposite directions and screamed, and if it had not been for Hawk-Eye, there’s no telling what might have become of poor Firefly. She might have been pulled in two, or she might have been carried off and adopted into the wild clan. But Hawk-Eye was there in almost no time, and though the people on the bluff rained down sticks and stones upon them, Hawk-Eye drove his spear into the woman’s arm. With a shriek of pain she let go of Firefly and dashed away into the forest.
“Run for your lives,” cried Hawk-Eye, and they started again at top speed for the rocks. They reached them none too soon, for the people on the bluff, infuriated by the injury to the woman, came dashing down the slope after them. Once in the shelter of the rocks, Hawk-Eye turned and faced his pursuers. When they had almost reached his hiding-place he gave a fierce yell and threw his spear. It was a very well made spear with a bone barb on the end, and it struck the leader of the wild tribe in the thigh. With a shriek of pain he fell to the ground. Then he seized the spear and pulled it out of his flesh.
The wild tribe had no weapons but sticks and stones. They were tree-dwellers. They did not even know the secret of fire. They lived upon roots and berries and nuts, and such small game as they could catch with their hands or in snares. Their homes were rude shelters in the trees. When they saw what had happened to their leader, they were terribly frightened. They turned and ran for the trees, leaving the wounded man on the ground.
Hawk-Eye ran out from behind the rock, picked up his spear, and sent it flying after the enemy. It struck another man. Howling with pain and fear, he too dropped in his tracks. His companions ran faster than ever, and when they reached the trees, instantly swung themselves up by the branches and disappeared. Only now and then one could be seen swinging from tree to tree, back into the deep forest, like great monkeys. Hawk-Eye again ran after his spear. This time he pulled it out of the wounded man’s flesh himself, and left him rolling on the ground, too much hurt to attack him or defend himself. Then Hawk-Eye ran back to the little group hidden behind the rock.
Everything was now as quiet as if no one lived in the forest at all. There was not a single tree-dweller in sight except the first wounded man, and he was already crawling as fast as he could up the bluff.
In spite of everything, Hawk-Eye and Limberleg had held on to their meat, and now they felt the need of food. They cut Limberleg’s load into four great chunks, and each took one. They ate as they walked. They ran along past the place where the mammoths were feeding and then turned their backs on the river and plunged into the deep forest toward the east. The ground began to rise a little, and Hawk-Eye said, “If we keep on climbing in the direction of the rising sun, we are bound to reach the blue hills at last.”
All that day they journeyed, and that night they spent in a tree. The next morning found them still climbing. At last, about noon of the second day, they reached the crest of the range and climbed out upon the high, bald summit of the highest hill.
No one of their clan had ever been so far from the cave, and no one of them had ever seen what Hawk-Eye and Limberleg and the Twins now saw. There was the world spread out before them! They looked back far away in the blue distance toward the west, and there they saw a little silver thread. That silver thread was their river. They looked toward the south, and far, far away they saw more water than they had ever dreamed there was in the whole earth. They didn’t know what it was. They were not even sure that it was water. They had never heard of the sea. They stood silent and breathless with wonder and gazed at it. At last Hawk-Eye said in an awestruck tone, “It’s the end of the world.”
“Let’s go to the very edge and look over it,” said Limberleg. “Maybe we can find out where the sun hides during the darkness.”
You see what a brave woman she was.
“Then are these the blue hills?” asked Firetop. “They don’t look blue a bit.”
“The blueness is all around us, though,” cried Firefly, pointing down into the valley. “And beyond the end of the world, it’s all blue too, with sparkles on it! And the sky is blue. The only place that isn’t blue is right around us.”
“We will surely go through the blue country to get to the end of the world then,” said Firetop.
All this time Hawk-Eye had been standing on the highest point, studying the view and choosing landmarks. He knew how to find his way through forests as well as we know the way to the post-office. When he had the route all planned out, he called the children and Limberleg to his side. He pointed to the south. “Do you see far away that little neck of land which leads out to the very end of the world?” he said. “We will keep the sun on this side of us the first half of the day and on the other side the other half of the day and we shall surely reach it. Then we shall see what lies beyond.”
Hawk-Eye led the way over the crest of the hill and down into the forest below, the Twins and Limberleg close behind him. All day they pressed on, over hills, through dense woods, and across little streams, keeping always to the south. At last they found the narrow neck of land which they had seen from the hill-top. They camped that night in a tree, near the water’s edge, and, at night-fall of the second day after, they climbed the last weary mile and stood upon the great rocks at the end of the world.
A stream of fresh water poured through a deep gorge beside them.
Toward the east and toward the west, farther than their eyes could see, stretched the dark blue waters. Toward the north they could look clear across the island to the distant shore of the mainland. We know now that they stood on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight, and that the faint blue line across the water would some day be called France. But the Twins and their father and mother thought that they stood on the very edge of the earth and looked out into mysterious regions which lay beyond.
As they stood gazing, the western sky flamed with red and gold and the sun sank out of sight behind a distant point of land. High up in the east the pale round disk of the moon hung in the deep blue of the
sky. It was more wonderful than they had dreamed.
“To-morrow, if we wake early, we shall see where the sun comes from,” said Limberleg.
They sat on the rocks and watched the stars come out and saw the moon sail away to the west, and then, when they were too weary to stay awake longer, they spread their skins on the rocks and slept under the open sky, with the boom of the surf for a lullaby.
