The Pagan's Progress

by Gouverneur Morris

As he slept, his brow wrinkled and unwrinkled, his hands and feet twitched and contracted. Sometimes he made a noise in his throat that was like growling, sometimes he started as if in fear.

For when the first men dreamed, they dreamed, for the most part, about the ancient ages when they had not been men; of long, cool leaps from tree to tree; of feet that had the grip of strong hands, and of the great fear that had driven them to become men—fear of the other beasts, fear of the night.

That which turned into man, differed only from the other beasts in the acuteness of its sensations. Fear, pain, shadows, and lust. Fear worked upon its intelligence and it survived, where nobler and stronger and more courageous animals perished—the ship-size creatures of the deep, and the mastadon and the mammoth.

Man in his fear found out many inventions by which he proved his fitness to survive. And the battle did not go to the strong.

But when No Man awoke, he did not remember his dreams. He arose, shook himself, took up his bow and his arrows, and trotted into the forest. He trotted with caution, for he wished his secret to be his secret, until the sun stood over his head and he was far from the caves of his tribe. Then he began to hunt.

He had probably less notion of hunting than any member of the tribe, but if we had seen him and had not seen the others, we would have thought him the most astute hunter imaginable.

He had the instinct of the chase, dormant in all of us, but better, he had senses nearly as acute as those of a dog. Eyes that could see in the dark, ears that could hear the rose-leaf footfall of a wolf on soft ground, and a nose that could scent that same wolf half a mile away if the wind blew right.

All the time that he had been running, from sunrise to high noon, his nose and ears had been twitching with the smells and sounds of the forest. But now he ran in a great circle, with his eyes on the ground, and paid strict attention.

Presently clear, deep, black, and shining in the wet, rank ground by a stream, he saw where a moose had stepped. The track pointed into the wind, and was fresh and clear. He followed, twitching and silent.