There was excitement in the hunting. The huge and dangerous beasts of the past of which the old men prattled in the legends they related were now gone, but in this new land to which this vanguard of our race had come were others which did not exist in the region from which we had come, and which we soon learned to regard with caution. There was a monster, maned yellow beast called the lion, as large almost as the brown bear we feared in the country from which we had come, and there were leopards and bears of a kind new to us, and other beasts of prey not to be faced wisely single-handed. But there were deer in abundance, and the wild ox, the urus, and the aurochs, and we did not lack for meat. From such a village in such a region had come our party which had battled with the Goatskins.
We were but warriors, dangerous raiders, perhaps the first among the Cave and Hut men, and this long march of ours was the greatest we had ever undertaken. Much we longed now for the women and the cakes made from the crushed grain, for now we must subsist on flesh alone, and such nuts and fruits as we might find upon our way, but we sought more plunder before returning. Fine skins we had taken and many trinkets such as women delight in, and such as were sometimes worn by the fighting men, but nowhere had we taken prizes of fine axes or spears or arrow-heads, for nowhere had we found weapons to compare with our own. We had met no force to equal us in any village we had found, and the word of our advance must have travelled fast and far, for many places where men lived, some in caves and some in huts of bark, we found abandoned, the people having fled into hiding in the forests. Only these puny creatures of the valley before us had assailed us fairly, relying upon their numbers, which were great. Weak as they were, they had beset us somewhat sorely and in the two fights ten of us had been killed and many others hurt. But we had killed scores of the Goatskins and we did not think they would dare to face us again. After a little rest we were to go down into the valley and ravage it, and then, with what we might find worth taking, we would return to our own people by the sea and have again the women and the grain cakes. We were joyous and boisterous of mood that day, feasting upon venison and lying idly about where the sun shone upon the mountainside. As for me, my strength had all returned.
We slept well that night, wrapped in our coats of bearskin, while sentinels watched lest the Goatskins, despite their losses, might come upon us suddenly, and woke to a morning as bright as I had ever seen. The sun blazed fiercely down and by noontime it became so hot that we sought the shade of the rocks, where we lay panting. There had been a little wind in the morning, but this had died away and the leaves upon the bushes did not move. All the world was still as the dead, and, as the sun dropped toward the west, it seemed to change from golden to almost red. The air became strangely heavy and was hard to breathe. The sky was clear, save where, far to the south and west, a cloud hung low on the horizon. It was lighted from above; but low down, close to what were the waters of the sea, there ran along it a strip of darkness. All was strange and it affected our minds, though very great must be the real danger to alarm such reckless men as we. We had never felt such curious dread before, and became the more fearful because we could not tell the reason of it to ourselves. Then followed what was more alarming. There came a tremor to the ground beneath our feet, as if it were alive, then suddenly it heaved and rocked. Three times this happened swiftly, as we leaped for our weapons and other gear and ran together out into a great open space, to await whatever might come to us, and it was well that we did so! The whole earth suddenly lifted and sank again and the huge rocks beside which we had rested and those above them were heaved upward from their beds and went crashing down the slope of the mountainside, though we escaped them all. At the same time, from the westward, came the sound of such bursting explosion and such thundering and appalling roar as surely man had never heard before!
The world above was changing. In a moment, as it seemed, the white cloud in the sky low down to the westward had climbed halfway up the heavens, shining gloriously at its crest, while from its base, climbing even more swiftly and eating up the whiteness as some monster might devour its prey, the black cloud followed. Upward it rushed until it hid the sun, and deep gloom followed the brightness. There came another awful roar to the westward and then another, and then the rocking of the earth grew less. Still the black cloud kept towering and climbing until it overhung us and still rushed on until all the sky was blotted out and we were left in almost utter darkness. Then came what threatened us with sudden death!
The heavy air had been given a new quality, a surcharge of sulphurous fumes in which we gasped for life, hiding our heads in our skin cloaks. For some time this lasted, but finally there came some abatement to the suffocation and we breathed more freely.
The ominous darkness continued, but, though we could not see, we knew that something was happening all around us. There were fearsome cries and a thousand strange sounds which were frightening because we could not understand them. Then came a sudden opening in the gray pall above us—caused, it may be, by some whirlwind of the sky—and the sunlight streamed down for a few moments. We saw now whence came the sounds!
The world seemed full of living things fleeing in wild terror before approaching evil. The earth was crowded with the desperate fugitives; the sky above was filled with thousands of them. Showing against the briefly lightened clouds, screaming their different cries, were an innumerable host of seafowl sweeping over us in whirling flight, and, as they neared the mountain, streaming away by some common instinct in a great mass toward the northwest, seeking, it might be, the shores of the sea from which we had come. There were vultures and eagles among them, but these seemed to be flying straight ahead toward the mountain-tops. It was a marvellous and dreadful flight.
But strange, impressive and alarming as was the flight of the birds, it was nothing to what was happening on the earth beneath. Here was an exhibition of mortal terror close at hand. There was no limit to it. All the beasts of the region, great and small, were coming toward us in a wild and senseless tide. A great stag, with his does, swept by us like the wind, and next a thundering urus; then, strangest of all, came four lions together in long leaps—the country was full of them—straight toward us and regarding us not at all! Over the heads of some of us they leaped and were gone in a moment. It was this happening, I think, which most affected us and gave us a greater sense of fear for ourselves. And so the terrible flight continued. Leopards, wild-cats, all the beasts of prey, and all the harmless animals, they came in a rushing army, whole herds of deer and flocks of goats, and all the grazing things, and the little creatures of the wood and plain. But among all this horde of fugitives there were no men. Where were the Goatskins? I could not understand it, until I remembered that, perhaps a league to the south of us, there rose in the plain a solitary high mountain. To this must have fled such of the tribe as perceived their danger in time. It was a cone-shaped mountain with no great area at its summit. What scenes, I thought, must be there now!
And then, even while the sun still shone through the cloud-rift, came something which made this flight of bird and beast as nothing, for swift death seemed certain for us. From the south came such a roar of waters as never could have been heard before or since, a roar which did not cease and but grew louder and more full of dreadful menace every moment. Then we saw! Looming almost mountain high, raging white at its top, a mountainous wave reaching across the whole valley and appearing certain to engulf us! It came toweringly and roaringly. It broke upon the mountainside with such stunning thunder as I may not describe, and swept upward, carrying back with its terrific force even some of the rocks the earthquake had cast downward.
Then, after a few moments, the waters receded somewhat, but not greatly, for another vast wave loomed in the far distance. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the opening in the sky was closed, and we were again in darkness. But no longer about us was the sound of fleeing things.