In the Morning of Time

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

Having found the place good, and resolved to stay, the man had built a refuge for himself and his family in this tall watch-tower of a tree. With interwoven branches he had made a rude but substantial platform, and carpeted it to something like softness with smaller branches and twigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof that was anything but waterproof, 33 and a few bushy branches served for walls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. He loved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downy brown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaur and Dinoceras with his naked hands.

For some days nothing more was seen of the two Dinosaurs, the King being probably occupied, in the depths of the jungle, with the nursing of his wrath and his hurts. The herds of the Dinoceras, meanwhile, kept to their meadows, having better drinking-water in a slow stream which traversed the pastures than in the brackish tide of the lagoon.

Then came a morning when the brown mother, babe on arm, was gathering plantains not far from the waterside, while the man chanced to be away exploring the limits of his new domain. The woman looked up suddenly; and there, almost upon her, was the giant horror of the Dinosaur, his cold, expressionless eyes gaping at her immovably from their goggling sockets. She turned to flee; and there was the monster’s mate, not quite so huge, but equally appalling. Behind her was an impenetrable wall of thorn-acacia. There was only one refuge––a tree, all too small, but lofty enough to take her beyond the reach of those horrifying horned and immobile masks. Up the little tree she went, nimbly as a monkey, and crouched shivering in a crotch. The slender trunk swayed beneath her weight. She clutched the brown baby to her heart, and sent shriek after shriek through the glades. 34

A mile away the man heard it. He gave one deep-chested shout in answer, and then came running in silence, saving his breath.

But it was a mile he had to come. The female Dinosaur, the more instantly malignant of the two, hurled herself upon the trunk of the tree. It swayed horribly, but did not yield at once. Thereupon the two began to root beneath it with their horns, having often used this method to obtain fruits which were above their reach. The tree leaned far over. The giant straddled it as a moose straddles a poplar sapling, and bore it down irresistibly. Its top touched earth.

The brown mother sprang forth with a tremendous leap, clearing the horns with a twist which nearly broke her back. She thought herself free. And then a gigantic tail struck her and felled her senseless. A second more, and the female Dinosaur’s great foot crushed her and the wailing babe out of existence together.

The swift end of the tragedy the man had seen as he came racing down a stretch of open glade. He did not need to look at the awful thing beneath the monster’s foot to know that all was over. Beyond one hoarse groan he uttered not a sound. But blindly––for he had never yet practised such an art––he hurled his ragged club at the nearest monster. It rebounded like a baby’s rattle from the vast horn-armored head. But a lucky chance had guided it. One of its sharp, splintered knots struck fairly in the 35 Dinosaur’s eye, and smashed it in the socket. She roared with agony; and the two, side by side, came lunging towards him.

The man ran back slowly. His despairing grief had changed suddenly into a cold hate and a resolve for vengeance. It was so easy for him to outstrip these lumbering monsters who were spouting their fetid, musky breath close upon his heels. He stumbled carefully at every other step. He let them feel that at the next stride they would transfix him. He led them on, the earth shaking beneath their tread, till another fifty feet would have brought them out upon the skirts of the meadow. But at this point, wearied by such an unwonted burst of effort, the King halted sulkily. He had not had an eye put out. He wanted to give it up. But his mate came right on, thirsting for her revenge.

The man was not content with her pursuit alone. Spurting ahead, he gathered up two handfuls of sand and gravel, whirled about, and drove them with all his strength into the King’s cold eyes. It worked. Smarting and half blinded, the monster forgot his weariness, and came charging along furiously in the trail of his mate.

They were stupid, these Lizard Kings, with more brains in their pelvic arches than in their giant skulls. Because the puny man-creature went stumbling almost within reach of their beaks, they imagined they were going to catch him. That he would go dodging around thickets which they crashed over blindly, and would 36 then return to present himself again deliberately before them, did not strike them as at all suspicious. Their dull but relentless hate once thoroughly aroused, as long as he was in sight and they could move the mighty columns of their legs, they would pursue him.