"I am through, or nearly," said he, the sweat running into his eyes, for he was wholly out of condition, and the attitude was trying. "Let us turn the needle, I will work a little from the other side and then we can give it a point and a polish."
The Master-Girl, meanwhile, overlooked this new magic of the Sun-Men, with a breathless frowning intentness which (and this marks the woman we have to deal with) had no contempt in it. Your savage has a fathomless irrational scorn for the arts and usages of any other tribe than his own. A traveller who had photographed a group of Fingo women at their field work showed them a picture of a similar group of Pondos taken a fortnight before; there was a shout of derisive laughter. "They are using the long-handled hoe—Baboons!" Upon his return journey he showed the Fingo photograph to his Pondo friends; again the yell of scorn. "They are using the short-handled hoe—the Baboons!"
The girl's cast of mind, or her relation to this man, saved her from this fatal attitude of sterile complacency. She waited and watched, reserving judgment. Full approval was conceded, with an undercurrent of doubt as to the possibility of improvement. To her husband the size and curvature of his implement were fixed by custom and unimprovable. To Dêh-Yān these dimensions were open questions. She experimented; would not a longer bow give longer strokes? He stared, but, being sensible beyond the run of men, and grateful somewhat, and what was possibly more to the point than all else, having no one to laugh at him[1]—consented to give the larger drill a trial and presently found his tool biting faster.
Within the week the girl, having such a head upon her brown shoulders as is conceded to a savage but once in a thousand generations or so, after much watching and brooding, made for herself a bigger drill from a bough of her own height, and seating herself opposite to her man, drove the bow rapidly, whilst he steadied the bit and watched the holes deepen at a pace quite new to his experience. It was no longer needles but hunting-whistles.
It was whilst thus at work, he, seated with his face to the mouth of the cave, beheld the broad, five-clawed fore-paw of a bear thrust up from below, feeling for foothold upon the smooth sill of the dwelling. The woman saw the living fear in his eyes, sprang for an axe, and was hacking hard at the protruding toes before they found their purchase. Thrice she beat them down, and when the great wrinkled, snarling muzzle and fanged cavern of a mouth came up within reach, she was too urgent and too sudden to be faced. The enemy withdrew deliberately beneath a pelting storm of stones not ill-directed.
It was all over, a brief struggle of wills between a girl and an ogre, but how intolerably long had it seemed to the foot-fast convalescent. It was over, and Pŭl-Yūn listening to the final slide and scratching upon the rock and crash among the bushes beneath, drew deep breaths and looked upon this woman of his with a new and huge admiration, for not once had she cried for help, but thrice and four times had she bidden him keep still and respect his injured limb.
There are people who give vent to the surplus excitement generated by an adventure in chatter and exclamation; there are others who take it quietly. Pŭl-Yūn was one of the latter, he felt the imperative need of silence in which to review the thing, and see whether he had played the game. Had Dêh-Yān fallen into tears or gigglings, he would have been hard put to it to have borne with her; but, it appeared that she was of his own way of taking things, and when for some while neither had spoken one word, their mutual respects had deepened.
"Woman, that was well done!" said the man at length, and the girl nodded with a proud humility. She had played a great innings and knew it, but, having an intuitive understanding of Man, she wisely forbore to celebrate her achievement with vaunts, as a brave of her tribe would certainly have done under like circumstances.
"We were near the end of our stones," remarked Pŭl-Yūn, looking about him.
"We had only one left—this—" replied the girl. "I kept it to the last."