The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR

Adh had been dead a long time, now, and Ra was his great-great-great-great-grandson. He was called Ra because that was the word the Ape-Men used to mean big, or strong, and Ra was the strongest boy in the valley.

He lived with his mother and father and several brothers and sisters in a cave high up among the rocks, and because his father was lame, Ra had to do most of the work for the family. He knew how to say a number of words, queer little cries and grunts that meant things, and the hair on his body was not as thick and shaggy as Adh's had been. The Ape-People had been living in caves, protected from the weather, for a long time now, and as they did not need so much hair to keep them warm, the great law of Nature we have heard about before, had begun to take their hair away from them. But it was not until Man began to wear clothes that he really lost his coat of hair.

There were many Ape-Men in the valley now, descendants of Adh and his wife, and they had hollowed other caves in the soft rock and earth of the hillsides at the upper end of the valley, digging with sharp-pointed sticks and stones. They lived on raw fish, and fruits, roots and nuts, just as Adh and his family had done before them, and the eggs of wild birds, and the young fledglings, which they found in nests among the trees and rocks. They carried long wooden spears, and clubs, and were quick and strong. And because there were plenty of fish in the stream, and in the lake at the lower end of the valley, even during the cold rainy season, they had never thought of storing up food for the Winter. Of such things as clothes, or fire, they knew nothing at all.

There were high, rough hills, covered with thick forests, all about the valley, except at its lower end, where the great lake spread out, pouring its waters into the country below through a narrow gorge between two hills. Because the valley was protected in this way, few enemies came into it to attack the cave men. When one appeared, as sometimes happened, the hunters, with their clubs and spears, would attack it in a body, and while it often happened that some of them were killed, they usually were able to overcome the intruder in the end, or drive him from the valley. The most terrible of these enemies was the sabre-toothed tiger, larger than any tiger you have seen in the circus, with two long sharp teeth or fangs, curving down like sabres from his upper jaw. When this terrible beast appeared, the cave men usually hid in their caves, afraid.

Once, when Ra was about twenty years old, a huge beast like an elephant, with long shaggy hair and great curving tusks came splashing up along the marshy shores of the lake, and began to strip and eat the tender leaves and fruit from the young bushes and trees.

Ra, who was spearing fish at the upper end of the lake, had never seen such a creature before, and when he caught sight of it coming towards him he was very much frightened.

He quickly gave the alarm, and soon twenty or more of the cave men ran up, and surrounding the huge creature, began to attack it by throwing stones at it, at the same time making a loud noise, hoping to scare it away.

The great creature did not mind the stones, at first, for he scarcely felt them, as they bounced from his thick, hairy sides, but soon one of the stones struck him near the eye and hurt him, and he turned on the cave men with a snort of pain, waving his long trunk about in the air.

When the cave men saw him coming they did their best to get out of the way, at the same time striking with all their might at his huge sides with their spears. The spears, however, with their wooden points, while strong enough to pierce a fish, were of no use against the elephant's tough hide, and fell back blunted or broken. Ra, as he saw the great beast coming toward him, its little red eyes gleaming, its long trunk swinging to and fro, drove his spear with all his might at its flank but the point was splintered from the blow and he barely escaped with his life. Three of his companions were trampled to death by the savage creature as they tried to escape, and two more were seized in its great trunk and crushed. The cave men, frightened, ran back to their caves and sat there, helpless, until the animal, unable to find them, had eaten his fill of the leaves and fruit, and gone away, leaving a trail of stripped and broken bushes and trees behind him.