Still, after I had left Feather, there was almost a little fear in me. I knew that many beasts had perished in the marsh, and that in past times more than one person who had hunted along its edges, and maybe ventured a little way into it after some wounded game, had never been seen in the village again; but I was proud, and would not give up the venture. I sought, however, one of the very old men, Three Tooth, who had been a great hunter and very daring in his youth, and who, I thought, might give me good advice as to the way I should take to get to the island safely. He was very old, and mumbled as he talked, but from him I learned that once he had reached the island in midsummer, though after a most perilous journey, leaping from tussock to tussock, where from the land to the east of the island they rose more closely than elsewhere; but he raised his thin arms, and shook his wrinkled hands, and warned me in his cracked voice against trying to make the journey. Barely had he come back from the island with his life. Once he slipped as he leaped, and the black ooze and sucking sand caught him; and had there not been on the tussock from which he slipped a deep-rooted overhanging willow, to a limb of which he clung, and by aid of which he at last pulled himself out, he would surely have been lost. He begged me not to go, but I told him that I had resolved, and so he told me again the way he had taken, but as I left him he was shaking his head and mumbling wildly.
One of Feather’s skin bags I took, and fastened it to my skin belt, that I might not be bothered with the carrying of it, and, besides it, only my flint spear, the long, strong staff of which I thought might aid me in my leaping or in balancing upon the tussocks. Across the plain I went until I reached the eastern side of the great marsh, in the midst of which rose the island—not very high, but showing green with its shrubs against the dreary gray stretch of little ponds and black mud and brown rushes which lay between it and where I stood. It was true, as the old man had told me, that there stretched irregularly across this space a line of little uprising mounds and tussocks, upon some of which were stunted willows growing, but they were not as close together as I could have liked, and all seemed desolate and threatening. However, the sun shown brightly, and some of the scummy pools were glittering in a way, and I felt a little braver than I would have had the day been gloomy, and so set my teeth together and started to make the passage.
There was shallow water between me and the nearest uprearing hummock; but I felt the bottom with my spear, and found it to be safe enough, and waded out easily to the hummock, which was gray and grassy, and firm beneath my feet. The next was farther away; but again I felt the bottom with my spear, and again I waded, and once more landed easily. And so from hummock to hummock I waded, sometimes leaping when the dry places were near together, always feeling my way carefully with my spear, but going forward rapidly. I laughed then at the foolish fears of the people of the village.
“It is but an old tale,” I shouted aloud in my glee. “It is but a fearsome story invented by the old men and women. A child might wade to the island.”
I was within a hundred yards of it. I leaped to the next hummock and across it, and again thrust down my spear. The water was shallow now all the way to the shore. But, though I thrust it in to the butt, I could reach no solid bottom through the black ooze. It clung to the spear, and strength was required even in pulling out the slender shaft.
Now I thought deeply, and something like a fear came to me again. Between me and the island’s shore there rose in almost a straight line a series of sedgy tussocks within leaping distance of each other, but some of them were small, and I feared unstable in their rooted anchorage. However, I must try to cross upon them. They might all be solid. And I must take them with a rush, leaping from one to another before there could be time for any settling. I braced myself at the hummock’s edge, holding my spear crosswise in front of me, to assist me as a balance, and leaped forward in a mad race for the firm land. From tussock to tussock I sprang, each affording stoutness enough for the next leap, though some I could feel sway beneath my feet beneath the thrusting force, and so desperately I gained my way until I leaped triumphantly for the last, a little sedge-tufted uprising not six feet from the shore. It turned beneath my feet!
I did not fall, but my feet and legs shot straight downward into the black ooze, and I stood erect there in water less than a hand’s-breadth deep, but engulfed nearly to my hips. For a moment I did not seem in such a dreadful strait. There was the firm land so near me that I could reach it with my spear; and surely I, strongest man in a tribe where were many strong ones, could, some way, pull myself from the clutching, and flounder out to safety. I laid the spear crosswise upon the bottom in front of me, that I might press upon it as a sort of leverage, and bore down hardly, and strove to lift my right leg to the surface. I could not. The spear but sank into the ooze, affording no resistance, and the leg seemed held in an awful grip such as I never before had felt. I tried to lift the other, but it would not come from the clasp of the monster beneath. My struggling but sank me more deeply. That would not do. I stood motionless, thinking that perhaps I would sink no deeper. If I could but remain thus, even though I should suffer, they would—since all the village knew of my quest—come at least to the border of the marsh, in the morning, to seek for me, and would hear my shouting. It might be then that they would devise some means of reaching and rescuing me. I made note of a thong in my skin leggings below the waist, and so waited, shouting all the time, with a little hope that some hunter might be passing along by the distant shore. But there came no answer. Rarely did the hunters seek the water birds of the marsh. I looked at the thong again. I could not see it! Though I was making no move, the quicksand of the ooze was drawing me steadily downward. I lost my wits. I sought to rush to the solid land by some huge effort of main strength and force, but there was nothing beneath my feet to aid me, and I sank deeper and deeper. When my struggling ceased, I was engulfed to my shoulders. Even to free my arms I must uplift them, and I knew that the end of me was very near. I held them aloft for a little time, and then, wearied, let them drop into the water and upon the ooze of the bottom, where they rested, sinking slowly.
But at the end, brave men are always brave. I shouted at the ooze and quicksands. They should not take my life! They could not, for my life would be gone before they had all my body. There was the water, only half a foot of it, but enough, and of all deaths, drowning I knew was the easiest. I had seen men nearly drowned whom we had saved just in time, and they had told me that such a death must be pleasant. The very head alone was above the water now. I whooped defiance.
CHAPTER VII
THE TAMERS
I was aroused from a bad dream by the sharp, yipping cry of dogs. I was glad to be awake, for in my dream there was suffocation. For a little time after I awoke I was dazed in mind, and could not recognize myself or my surroundings. I was lying in a little sunlit hollow upon a grass-green spot on the surface of a slight rocky height in the plain, and my bow and skin quiver of arrows and my flint-headed spear, smooth as the teeth of the river horse and keen of edge as the blades of the marsh grass, were beside me. Gradually I remembered that I had come alone to the plain to hunt the hares which were abundant in and about the scattered rocks, and the bustards which fed upon the seeds of the many bushes. I had climbed the little height to look about the better, but could see no game, and so had thrown myself down on the soft turf, to await whatever might appear, and then had fallen asleep.