The Crystal Sceptre: A Story of Adventure

by Philip Verrill Mighels

After three or four hours the heat of the sun became so great, on my unprotected head, that I abandoned the pebbles long enough to construct a makeshift for a hat. For this I employed some palm leaves, excellently suited to the purpose. The chief eyed all our business with something of a look of sullen disdain. Perhaps it was jealousy beginning to work. He held to his precious club of rock-crystal—which certainly gleamed with great beauty in the rays of sunlight piercing through the leaves—as if it were the all in all that a warrior should require. At his side was a fawning fellow whom I had marked before as lazy, small-headed and much too fond of grinning, in a manner which conveyed no idea of mirth nor good-nature, but which, on the contrary, threw his teeth into disgusting prominence.

At about noon, when I was cramped and tired, from my close application to the work, I was glad to see a small detachment of our number returning from an excursion in quest of meat. It was not until a subsequent time that I learned how they drove their game into pits, to replenish the larder, but this day I inaugurated a new system of cooking. It was too great a waste of time for each to cook for himself, or herself, and the women being employed at nothing more arduous than gathering fruits and suckling babes, I saw no reason why they should not become the chefs for the tribe.

Accordingly I soon had two uprights driven in the ground and a lot of meat spitted on the green branch of a sapling. With glowing embers from two fires, collected between my uprights, and the wooden spit resting upon them, I showed a female how to keep the roast turning. Again the Links approved of the plan, for they were quick to see that one person working in this manner, could cook for all as readily as for one. They were restless to be at the meat as soon as the first bit of brown appeared, but I kept them off, made them replenish the embers from fires burned down, and then I cut off the places where the meat was done with my knife, for general distribution.

Again at this meal I was mad for salt. What did these fellows do for this requisite seasoning? I asked myself, for I had always understood that even savages grow unhealthy, if they lack this mineral, and become willing to barter off their souls for a small pinch. There was no explanation of the riddle that day.

CHAPTER VIII
ATTACKED AND BESIEGED

We set to work again in the afternoon, getting out a lot of material to be finished later. The following morning I won the regard of all—unless I except the fawning creature mentioned before—by giving lessons in archery, another bow and several arrows having been hastily completed. The Links proved themselves not only practicable, but most excellent pupils. They were magnificently muscled, to begin with, and therefore shot with force from the start, while all seemed to possess a natural knack, as if the weapon had once been theirs and then for long had been mysteriously lost.

In the midst of our “tournament” and while I was walking cautiously about, to get a shot at a brilliant bird which had flown into a near-by tree, a peculiar sound was uttered by many of the Links. The cause of their exclamation was revealed a second later, for moving through a clearing, not forty yards away, was a large black bear.

My heart leaped with excitement. I moved quickly to gain a point of vantage, raising the bow for a shot, when a dozen of the Links leaped in alarm between myself and the bear, raising their arms as if in affright and plainly imploring me not to shoot at the creature. This I thought absurd. I believed them to be a pack of cowards who feared the arrow might only serve to irritate the brute and so bring down its wrath upon us all. But in this I was mistaken. As I tried to wave them away—for the bear would be gone in a minute—they became frantic in their appeals. They indicated clearly that if I wished I might try the shaft on any one of themselves, if only I would spare the beast which had walked thus deliberately into camp.

There was nothing else for it; the creature disappeared before I could argue the question. Thereupon a score of males, foremost of whom was the chief, hurried to the place where the bear had paused a moment and there each placed his head on the ground with such a show of reverence and primitive superstition, that even I could comprehend they attached some great significance to this peculiar visit. When I reasoned how easily two or three with their terrible clubs could have despatched the animal, I concluded that they all regarded bruin’s visit as an omen of particular good fortune.

I was speculating upon this occurrence when suddenly another cry—this time of alarm—startled us all. The males came dashing back from their adoration of the bear tracks, making a shrill sound of warning and waving their arms wildly. The females and scores of others ran pell-mell for the cave. Children came swinging down from trees as if the sky were raining little Links. Mothers fled with babes in their arms. There was sudden arming of the fighters.