In the Morning of Time

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

The first few days of the march were like a nightmare. Grôm led the way along the shore of the river, both because that seemed the shortest way to the hills, and because, in case of emergency, the open water afforded a door of escape by raft. Had it been possible to make the journey by raft matters would have been simplified; but Grôm had already proved by experience that his heavy unwieldy rafts could not be forced upwards against the mighty current of the river. At the last point to which the flood-tides would carry them the rafts had been abandoned––herded together into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shore by twisted vine-ropes against some possible future need.

At the head of the dismal march went Grôm, with his mate A-ya, and her two children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were as quick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were as untiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind 297 these came the main body of the warriors, on a wide line so as to guard against surprise on the flank. Then followed the women and children, bunched as closely as possible behind the center of the line; and a knot of picked warriors, under young Mô, the brother of A-ya, guarded the rear. There were no old men and women, all these having gone down in the last great battle at the Caves, selling their lives as dearly as possible to cover the retreat. Such of the young women as had no small children to carry bore the heavy burdens of the fire-baskets, or bundles of smoke-dried meat, leaving the warriors free to use their bows and spears.

In traversing the swamp the march was sometimes at ground-level, sometimes high in the tree-tops. In the tree-tops it was safer, but the progress was slow and laborious. At ground-level the swarms of stinging insects were always with them, till Grôm invented the use of smudges. When every alternate member of the tribe carried a torch of dry grass and half-green bark, the march was enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke, which the insects found more or less disconcerting.

Of the grave perils of this weary march to the hills a single instance may suffice. The nights, as a rule, were passed by the whole tribe in the tree-tops, both for the greater security, and because there was seldom enough dry ground to sleep upon. But one evening, toward sunset, they came upon a sort of little island in the reeking jungle. Its surface was four or five feet above the level of the swamp. The trees which 298 dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with wide fans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between these clean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with a rich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Such an opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, and Grôm ordered an immediate halt.

A fat, pig-like water beast, of the nature of the dugong, had been speared that day in a bayou beside the line of march, and with great contentment the tribe settled themselves down to such a comfortable feasting as they had not known for many days. While the fat dugong was being hacked to pieces and divided under the astute direction of A-ya, Grôm made haste to establish the camp-fires in a chain completely encircling the encampment, as a protection against night-prowlers from the surrounding jungle. As darkness fell the flames lit up the soaring trunks, but the roof of the over-arching foliage was so high that the smoky illumination was lost in it.

While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the feasting, Grôm and Loob, and half a dozen of the other warriors, kept vigilant watch whilst they ate, distrusting the black depths of jungle and the deep, reed-fringed pools beyond the circle of light. Suddenly, all along one side of the island there arose a sound of heavy splashing, and out of the darkness came a row of small, malignant eyes, all fixed upon the feasters. Then into the circle of light swam the masks of giant alligators and strange, tusked caymans. 299 Quite unawed by the fires they came ashore with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed.

While the clamoring women snatched the children away to the other side of the encampment, Grôm and the other warriors hurled themselves upon the hideous invaders as they came waddling with amazing nimbleness in between the fires. But these were no assailants to be met with bow and spear. At Grôm’s sharp orders each warrior snatched a blazing brand from the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearest assailant. In their stupid ferocity the monsters invariably bit upon the brand before they realized its nature. Then, bellowing with pain, they wheeled about and scrambled back toward the water, lashing out with their gigantic tails, so that three of the warriors were knocked over and half a dozen of the fires were scattered.

The feasters had hardly more than settled down after this startling visitation, when from the darkness inland came a hoarse, hooting cry, followed by a succession of crashing thuds, as if a pair of mammoths were playing leap-frog in the jungle. All the men sprang again to their weapons, and stood waiting, in a sudden hush, straining their eyes into the perilous dark. Some of the women herded the children into the very center of the island, while others fed the fires with feverish haste. The hooting call, and the heavy, leaping thuds, came nearer and nearer at a terrifying speed; and suddenly, amid the far-off, vaguely-lighted tangle of the tree-trunks appeared a giant form, 300 seven or eight times the height of Grôm himself. Leaping upon its mighty hind-legs, and holding its mailed fore-paws before its chest, it came bounding like a colossal kangaroo through the jungle, smashing down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancing itself at each spring with its massive, reptilian tail. Its vast head, something like a cross between that of a monstrous horse and that of an alligator, was upborne upon a long, snaky neck, and its eyes, huge and round and lidless, were like two discs of shining and enamelled metal where they caught the flash of the camp-fires.

This appalling shape had apparently no dread whatever of the flames. When it was within some thirty or forty yards of the line of fire, Grôm yelled an order and a swarm of arrows darted from the bows to meet it. But they fell futile from its armored hide, which gleamed like dull bronze in the fire-light. Grôm shouted again, and this time the warriors hurled their spears––and they, too, fell harmless from the monster’s armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster to the edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feet obliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head it seized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, high into the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the same instant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly an arrow which pierced full half its length into the center of one of those horrifying enamelled eyes; while Grôm, who alone, of all the 301 warriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving a spear deep into the unarmored inner side of the monster’s thigh. But both these wounds, dreadful though they were, failed to make the colossus drop its prey. With mighty, braying noises through its nostrils it brushed the spear shaft from its hold like a straw, flopped about, and with the arrow still sticking in its eye, went leaping off again into the darkness to devour its victim.

For several hours, with the fires trebled in number and stirred to fiercer heat, the tribe waited for the monster to return and claim another victim. But it did not return. At length Grôm concluded that his spear-head in its groin and A-ya’s arrow in its eye had given it something else to think of. Once more he set the guards, and gradually the tribe, inured to horrors, settled itself down to sleep. It slept out the rest of the night without disturbance––but the following night, and the next two nights thereafter, were spent in the tree-tops. Then, on the fourth day, the harassed travelers emerged from the swamp into a pleasant region of grassy, mimosa-dotted, gently-rolling plain. The hills, now showing green and richly wooded, were not more than a day’s march ahead.