A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

The sun had reached the ninth hour of the day when Lhatto turned backward to the shore, leaving the waves that were now lapping with soft kisses her knees and thrusting out innumerable tongues upon her smooth and sculptured thighs. She made her way unhesitatingly to a thicket of cedars which, by some propulsion, and encouraged by a spring of water welling upward near them, had advanced far beyond their companions, and by reason of this temerity had become the target of storms, which had broken their boughs, bent their growth, and thrust them upon each other as if, in a last fraternal embrace, they had concluded to die together.

In the shadow of this thicket, and now evident, as the Woman advanced toward it, lay a narrow keeled but somewhat well shaped and serviceable boat. It was a tree trunk hollowed out with some precision, the method being clearly indicated by the charred remnants of its roughened and chipped interior surfaces. The original tree trunk had been hewn down, its outer bark removed and one half of its circumference hacked away. Upon the section of the tree thus exposed fires had been lighted, or heated stones placed, and the incinerated wood loosened and excavated. The process had been toilsome; but in the primitive occupations of that prehistoric people, time or exertion counted for little, so free could they then be in the expenditure of each.

The boat had not been altogether carelessly conceived. A sort of prow, a square stem, full sides and a flat bottom made it useful along the shore fisheries, and a long paddle now lying at the bottom of the boat, and bruised and indented by use, showed that its occurrence was not accidental.

Lhatto threw her food basket and harpoon into the boat and then unwrapping the little bundle of clothes took out a pair of skin breeches, a soft fabric shirt, and a seal-skin blouse or jacket. She unloosened the fox skin apron about her loins. It dropped to the ground, and the nude Eurydice, save for the glittering anklets and wristlets and necklace, for an instant saw her beauty in the still encroaching waters that may even have hastened their tardier approach to indulge in the shadowy carresses of her reflection.

It was only for an instant, for even then modesty—the primal birthright and ornament of womanhood—in this wild child of nature, this woman hidden in the nameless, dateless past, made clear its claims. Lhatto, with a startled look, through which there also sprang hints of a mischievous and tantalizing happiness in her own beauty, half bent, half turned, though only the impersonal sky and rocks and trees were there, and snatched the waiting garments. Quickly they were drawn on over her warm bronzed skin, and then seizing the boat’s stern and pushing outward, she drove it across the shallow tidal flood, its harsh grating sounding strangely on that empty shore.

It floated, and as Lhatto stepped upon it, the sides were half hidden in the water. Her hand, with balanced rhythm, paddled the little boat out from the shore, and the crude invention evinced some artful adaptation for its purposes as it moved on an even and noiseless keel.

She first propelled it beneath the highest sheer cliff of dark basalt, whose pediments lay fathoms deep beneath the wave. The steep walls resounded in hollow and reinforced echoes, as she worked her way through gaunt spires of rock or looking upward caught the tiny rain that shot from some narrow shelf of rock tufted with grass, drenched with percolating waters.

For a moment she rested, and then her wandering eye turned seaward. Far out she saw the lifted ledges, remnants of the wasted dike, now withdrawn through the age-long conflict with frost and wave, leaving behind these rugged roots; and she saw too the glint of a seal’s gray body on the rocks. Quickly she turned the careening canoe and shot towards the distant spot where the white spray dashed upward. Perhaps a mile’s distance would cover the breadth of water she crossed, perhaps less. The ledges almost formed a low islet, and Lhatto still noticing the unchanged location of the seal whose eyes arrested by her approach now rested, half vagrantly turning from side to side, upon the unexpected visitor, steered her boat to the opposite end of the little patch of reef. It occupied her but a moment to slide the boat up upon a convenient and smoothed edge, and then as quickly to seize her harpoon, and hunter-like, creeping almost prostrate on the rocks, to reach a point almost directly above her still undisturbed prey.

Even as she raised in the air the sharp bone point of the harpoon above it, its eyes turned half languidly upon her, but no sense of alarm, scarcely an indolent effort to see her more clearly, interfered with her design. Lhatto paused, and the poise and action of her body, although hidden and disguised by her more cumbrous clothing, were strikingly suggestive, and full of interest. The succeeding second, and the harpoon, hurled with splendid precision, buried its murderous point in the neck of the seal that tumbling from its perch struggled momentarily in the water, pouring out a red stain upon the foam and green blades of waves. Its efforts were soon over, and hauled back and earned by Lhatto to the boat, its glazed eyes seemed to renew its vacant inquisition of this cruel and unexplained intruder.

Lhatto stood irresolute. Her minute scrutiny of the dead animal showed an awakening repulsion, and to the first glance of satisfaction succeeded an unsettled expression in which perchance regret fought with wonder, and finally surrendered to the latter. For the woman kneeled and pressed and smoothed the drenched skin, lifted up the disfigured head, and holding it in both hands so that its shadowed orbs were in the direct line of her vision, she sang again, and this time the song was low and whispering and plaintive.