In the Morning of Time

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

This matter settled in his mind, Grôm burned to put his wonderful new weapon to practical test. He descended cautiously the steep slope from the eastern edge of his plateau––a broken region of ledges, subtropical thickets, and narrow, grassy glades, with here and there some tree of larger growth rising solitary like a watch-tower. Knowing this was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hid himself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a green glade, and waited.

He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from a runway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge, dun-colored bull, 189 with horns like scimitars each as long as Grôm’s arm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, and Grôm realized that he was a solitary, beaten and driven out from his herd by some mightier rival. The bull glanced warily about him, and then fell to cropping the grass.

The beast offered an admirable target. Grôm’s arrow sped noiselessly between the curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull’s fore-shoulder. It penetrated––but not to a depth of more than two or three inches. And Grôm, though elated by his good shot, realized that such a wound would be nothing more than an irritant.

Startled and infuriated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glared about him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest idea of the direction from which the strange attack had come. The galling smart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grôm let drive another arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again, stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plunged headlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he went through the close-set stems. Grôm heard 190 him crashing onward down the slope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonist that might cross the mad brute’s path.

This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grôm one thing clearly. He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he could carry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find some shoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollow canes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully and warily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve his purpose.

But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked or gnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. It was not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urging him back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across something worth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on the mountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which had evidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious of life, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or two in height to the level of Grôm’s head. They were as straight and slim as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grôm’s satisfaction when he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that he almost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the best way to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of the fiber, where they sprang from the 191 parent trunk or root. Having at length gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded to shape the refractory butts in the fire. As he squatted between the cave door and the fire he made his meal of raw flesh and plantains, and gazed out contemplatively over the vast, rankly-green landscape below him, musing upon the savage and monstrous strife which went on beneath that mask of wide-flung calm. And as he pondered, the fire which he had subjugated was quietly doing his work for him.

The result was beyond his utmost expectations. After judicious charring, the ends being turned continually in the glowing coals, he rubbed away the charred portions between two stones, and found that he could thus work up an evenly-rounded point. The point thus obtained was keen and hard; and as he balanced this new shaft in his hand he realized that its weight would add vastly to its power of penetration. When he tried a shot with it, he found that it flew farther and straighter. It drove through the tough, fleshy leaf of the prickly pear as if it hardly noticed the obstruction. He fashioned himself a half-dozen more of these highly-efficient shafts, and then set out again––this time down the ravine––to seek a living target for his practice.

The ravine was winding and of irregular width, terraced here and there with broken ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrow gullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was an accumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up 192 through the fissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms of canna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a dense curtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was a region well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grôm moved stealthily as a panther, keeping for the most part along the upper ledges, crouching low to cross the open spots, and slipping into cover every few minutes to listen and peer and sniff.

Presently he came to a spot which seemed to offer him every advantage as a place of ambush. It was a ledge some twenty feet above the valley level, with a sort of natural parapet behind which he could crouch, and, unseen, keep an eye on all the glades and runways below. Behind him the rock-face was so nearly perpendicular that no enemy could steal upon him from the rear. He laid his club and his spear down beside him, selected one of his best arrows, and hoped that a fat buck would come by, or one of those little, spotted, two-toed horses whose flesh was so prized by the people of the Caves. Such a prize would be a proof to all the tribe of the potency of his new weapon.

For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for his ranging eyes, as the rock on which he leaned. To a hunter like Grôm, schooled to infinite patience, this was nothing. He knew that, in the woods, if one waits long enough and keeps still enough, he is bound to see something interesting. At last it came. It was neither the fat buck nor the little two-toed horse with 193 dapple hide, but a young cow-buffalo. Grôm noticed at once that she was nervous and puzzled. She seemed to suspect that she was being followed and was undecided what to do. Once she faced about angrily, staring into the coverts behind her, and made as if to charge. Had she been an old cow, or a bull, she would have charged; but her inexperience made her irresolute. She snorted, faced about again, and moved on, ears, eyes and wide nostrils one note of wrathful interrogation. She was well within range, and Grôm would have tried a shot at her except for his seasoned wariness. He would rather see, before revealing himself, what foe it was that dared to trail so dangerous a quarry. The buffalo moved on slowly out of range, and vanished down a runway; and immediately afterwards the stealthy pursuer came in view.