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

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

The taste of blood made the crocodiles furious; they pushed their great bodies against the frail raft, driving it this way and that, and soon the vines which bound the logs together broke, and the two passengers found themselves struggling in the water. Their struggles did not last long; the hungry crocodiles rushed at them, and quickly ate them up.

The fifth man, who had stayed on the shore, set up cries of fear and rage, and ran away. Ka-Ma and Tula, on the other side, watched him go, glad of their narrow escape. They did not try to continue their journey that day, but made a camp on the river bank. They had no fire, to keep away wild beasts, so Ka-Ma watched all night, spear in hand, while Tula slept.

In the morning, after eating the last of the smoked meat they had brought with them, Ka-Ma added some new logs to his raft, and bound it with stronger vines, so that there would be no danger of its coming apart, in case the crocodiles attacked them.

When they pushed off from the shore in the morning, they found the current much stronger than it had been the afternoon before; there was a tide running toward the ocean, but Ka-Ma and his wife, who did not know what a tide was, were thankful that their raft moved so swiftly. There were no crocodiles to be seen.

All day long they drifted toward the sea. The forests on each side of the river became thinner and thinner, and by the time the sun was sinking below the trees, the raft had come to the mouth of the river, and the voyagers saw before them the wide curving surface of the ocean.

The sight of the Great Water terrified them, they were drifting right toward it, and their raft, unlike the log of Tul and Ni-Va, did not ground on a sand bar, but kept right in the middle of the rapid current. They were very hungry, for they had had nothing to eat since morning, and their tongues were dry and swollen from thirst. The legend told by the old men in the valley had said that the river water as it neared the ocean was salt and bitter, not fit to drink. They had tried to drink it, as the day wore on, but could not, and the salt made them more thirsty than ever.

These troubles, however, they soon forgot in the terrible fear that they would be washed out to sea. Being land people, they were afraid of the great, wide ocean; they wanted to feel the earth, solid and firm, under their feet. And each moment they saw themselves being carried farther away from it. The mouth of the river was now so wide, that in the twilight they could scarcely see the low, sandy shores.

Both Ka-Ma and his wife knew how to swim; they had learned this, in the river which flowed through the valley at home. With his spear in hand, while Tula carried the bow and arrows, Ka-Ma sprang into the water, and Tula followed him. Afraid as they were of the crocodiles, they were more afraid of the sea, so they struck out for the shore with all their might.

When they were almost tired out, they felt the sandy bottom under their feet, and a few moments later they had waded to the bank, where they lay for a time in the warm sand, resting.

Hunger and thirst drove them to their feet, for they knew they must find food and water before the darkness came. Ka-Ma remembered that the tale of the old men spoke of strange food, in shells like nuts, which Tul and Ni-Va had dug from the sand. With the point of his spear he also began to dig, and soon a pile of shell-fish lay before him. When they broke the shells open, they found soft, jelly-like creatures inside, which tasted very good and were moist enough to take away a little of their thirst. At last, when night came, they threw themselves on the sand tired out, and without keeping watch, slept until the dawn.