In the Morning of Time

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

The rest of the crowd meanwhile had been looking on with instinctive disapproval. The portions of the meat which the fire had cooked, or partly cooked, seemed to them spoiled. A-ya might, indeed, like the strange food; but she was different from the rest of them in so many ways! When, however, they saw her two boys follow her example, and noted their enthusiasm, several of the old men ventured to try for themselves. They were instant converts. Last of all, the old women and the children––always the most conservative in such matters, took the notion that they were losing something, and dared to essay the novel diet. One taste, as a rule, proved enough to vanquish their prejudices. In a very few minutes every shred of the carcase that could claim acquaintance with the fire had been eaten, and all were clamoring for more. Fully three-parts of the carcase remained, indeed, but it was all raw flesh. A-ya looked down upon it with disdain.

“Take it back and throw it on the fire again!” she ordered angrily. The generous lump of steak, which she had hacked off for herself from the loin, had proved 254 to be merely scorched on the outside, and she was disappointed. She stood fingering the raw mass with resentful aversion, while the old men and women, chattering gleefully and followed by the horde of children dragged the mangled carcase back to the fire, lifted it laboriously by all four legs, and managed to deposit it in the very midst of the flames. A shrill shout of triumph went up from the withered old throats at this achievement, and they all drew back to wait for the fire to do its wonderful work.

But A-ya was impatient, and vaguely dissatisfied as she watched that crude roasting in the process. She stood brooding, eyeing the fire and turning her lump of raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitude of body was one she had caught from Grôm, when he was groping for a solution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught his attitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive and receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it had been whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone head firmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of the fire, as far as it could go without burning the wood of the spear shaft.

It took her a very few minutes to realize that her idea was nothing less than an inspiration. Moving the morsel backwards and forwards to keep it from charring, she found that it seemed to do best over a mass of hot coals rather than in a flame; and being a thin cut, it cooked quickly. When it was done she burnt 255 her fingers with it, and her big red mouth as well; and her two boys, for whom she had torn off shreds too hot for herself to hold, danced up and down and wept loudly with the smart of it, to be instantly consoled by the savor.

Noting the supreme success of A-ya’s experiment, the spectators rushed in, dragged the carcase once more from the fire, and fell to hacking off suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one who could get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, was busy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding the excitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and came forward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched in the sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant Ook-ootsk, away in the green hollow nursing his honorable wounds, had no part in the rejoicing, in this revel of the First Cooked Food. The hot meat juices, modified by the action of the fire, were almost as stimulating as alcohol in the veins of these simple livers, and the revel grew to something like an orgie as the shriveled nerves of the elders began to thrill with new life. A-ya, seeing the carcase of the elk melt away like new snow under a spring sun, gave orders to skin and cut up the body of the first bear.

But the old men were too absorbed in their feasting to pay any attention to her orders; and she herself was too exhilarated and content to make any serious effort to enforce them. Every one, old and young alike, was sucking burnt fingers and radiating greasy, 256 happy smiles, and she felt dimly that anything like discipline would be unpopular at such a moment.

During all this excitement the main body of the tribe came straggling back along the beach from their hunting of whelks and mussels. At the foot of the bluff below the cave they found the body of the second bear, and gathered anxiously about it, clamoring over its spear-wounds and the arrows sticking in it, till Bawr and Grôm, who were in the rear, came up. It was plain there had been a terrific battle at the Cave. With most of the warriors the two Chiefs dashed on and up the path, to find out how things had gone, while a handful remained behind to skin the bear and cut up the meat.

When the anxious warriors arrived before the cave, they were amazed at the hilarity which they found there––and inclined, at first, to resent it, being something to which they had no clue. What were all the old fools doing, dancing and cackling about the fire, and wasting good meat by poking it into the fire on the ends of sticks and spears and arrows?

The younger women, coming up behind the warriors, were derisive. They were always critical in their attitude towards A-ya––so far as they dared to be––and now they ran forward to scold and slap their respective children for putting this disgusting burnt meat into their mouths.

To Grôm and Bawr, however, A-ya explained the whole situation in a few pertinent phrases, and followed up her explanation by proffering them each a 257 well-cooked morsel. They both smelled it doubtfully, tasted it, broke into smiles, and devoured it, smacking their bearded lips.