A Son of the Ages: The Reincarnations and Adventures of Scar, the Link / A Story of Man From the Beginning

by Stanley Waterloo

We had sped upward when we saw the coming of the monster wave, but it did not quite reach, even with its surging wash, the spot where we had been, for we were well up the mountain, and now we returned and gathered together all we had and carried it a long way higher. Then came the thundering of wave after wave against the mountainside, but none so terrifying as the first, and, finally, these ceased and we concluded they were done; there was only the roaring and washing of a turbulent sea upon the steep and rocky shore. Leaving a few men on guard to rouse us if need be we lay down and tried to sleep. Rain fell in torrents, but to us, hardened as we were, that was nothing. It was what had come with the dreadful day that had shaken all of us. Fearless or dull and stupid must have been the man among us who slept well that night!

Morning came, but with it little of the light of day, though, as our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we could make out objects indistinctly. The rain continued to fall in a torrent, and this made seeing things still more difficult. All was nearly still on land; there was no sound save that of the lashing waters of the new sea and the splashing of the rain. I stumbled down to the shore, as commanded by Old Horn, and looked about me as well as I could. There was little to see or learn except that the waters had risen steadily during the night. There were bodies of drowned creatures left by the first great wave, lying about here and there, and that was all. The day passed in dread discomfort.

The next morning showed the water still rising, while there was no abatement of the tremendous rain, and so with the day succeeding. The fearful downpour continued and the waters still rose. Then came something like a panic among men as fearless as any upon earth. The dark waters beneath which lay such multitudes of drowned, of man and beast, came ever lapping upward hungrily toward us, and none could tell when the rising would cease. How we longed for boats, we who could handle boats so well! Then, in our desperation, we would make rafts! The work was begun at once. Driftwood tossed up by the great tidal wave was dragged together, dead trunks lying further up the mountainside were hacked into lengths and bound side by side with withes and strips of skin, and the work went forward feverishly. We had made rafts before. It was good for us, this work with its faint promise, distracting our minds somewhat from the perils we were in.

As for myself I was but a poor workman that day, despite my strength. All appeared so dismal and so hopeless. The whole world seemed like a bad dream and I had many thoughts such as had never come to me before. No longer did I care what might be our plunder from this raiding journey of the band into unknown regions. I thought of the clean sandy beaches and the pleasant huts by the distant great sea and of the people we had left there, and a great desire came upon me to be with them again. Would the waters never cease rising until even the mountain was overwhelmed and we would have no further refuge and must die strangling at its top? It seemed to me then as if it might be so, though of course the thought was foolish. Then there came before my eyes the face of a girl with a leaf of scarlet in her hair. The face would not go away from me, the face of Red Leaf, as she had come to be called, because in the autumn, when the colours of the leaves changed, she always gathered many of the brightest and kept them in a skin bag in the hut of her father and mother and always wore one braided somewhere in her hair, which was as black as the wing of the raven or the black panther of the woods, and against which the scarlet ever shone out brightly.

She was not tall, this girl of my tribe, not like many of the others, great-limbed and full-bosomed and strong of arm in pulling at the nets we had learned to make from the tough inner bark of certain trees and with which we caught abundance of the seashore fishes, nor was she as deft at the trapping of small things, or in the gathering of nuts and fruits, and, surely, she was not a fitting mate for such a strong fighting man as I, but—I could not help it—she of the red leaf had long been more to me than any other of the young women of my clan. Men are but foolish with women and unreasoning as the queer brown bird which lines its nest with glittering things. But she always smiled, this Red Leaf, and she was so small and slender and had such eyes, asking so much and telling so much, that the fancy ever grew upon me that I wanted her in a hut of my own that I might but play with her and bring her warm furs and feed her well. What need had I, Scar, of one of the great woman creatures of my tribe save for the cooking and the making of skin garments? And for these things Red Leaf would suffice, for, within the hut, though laughing, she was most diligent. It was odd that my heart should be bigger within me for her than for the others, yet it may be that it was best. So have I seen the grisly leader of the wolf pack have ever at his side in the running some light-hued, slender she wolf, the slightest of the yelping lot. That I cannot understand; I know but that the only face of woman I saw upon the mountainside was the face of Red Leaf. But even this face I saw not all the time, for there were the waters and we must needs look to ourselves.

Night found the rafts well advanced in the building and we all felt more hopeful. When morning came it seemed more like a real daybreak. I can hardly describe it, but there was an indefinable something, a feeling in the air as if a change had come, a change for the better, though the rain still fell in floods. Work was eagerly resumed, and as I had been told to do, I went down the mountain to the shore of the sea, to note whatever the rise might be and went to a great rock where had been the water’s limit yesterday, the waves barely washing its base. I could not believe my eyes! the waters were receding! Between the rock and the waves was now a space of yards!

I bounded up the mountainside to where the band were at work upon the rafts, and yelled out what I had seen. There was a joyous answering roar, the stone axes, the thongs and withes, all things in use, were cast aside, and the band streamed down together to the shore to assure themselves that I was not mistaken. Scarcely had we regained the camp when came another heartening thing. The rain, which had fallen in such torrents unceasingly for days and nights, began to slacken and in a little time had ceased entirely. The vast leaden pall which had hung over the world began to lighten somewhat, as well, and again we felt that there was a sun beyond it. It was a new world, and to us a glorious one!

We could see things far away again, and we looked for the lone mountain to the south where must be huddled what few might remain alive of the Goatskins. It was nearly submerged. Its peak stood out merely a little dot on the wide expanse of water. Those clustered upon it must be assured that they were the only human beings left alive. How the legend of destruction of all other mankind would go down among them! How their children and their children’s children would transmit the story, and how the old men of many scores of centuries later would repeat it to the youth! How it would pass in the fullness of time, to generations more civilized, how the Chaldean priests would make of it a story of supernatural significance, to be enlarged by those teachings in the cities of clustered splendour where the Tigris and Euphrates join, and how, finally, it would be accepted and adapted by the prophets of a great tribe of shepherd kings, whose petty battles would, perhaps, become a credited part of the world’s history. How, too, might it become part of a mighty faith—a faith encompassing the world!

There was a great blasted tree, not very high but with enormous outspreading limbs extending dead and bare, which stood not far from the utmost limit of the waters, and which had become strangely peopled on the day of the earthquake and first tidal wave, as I had noticed dimly on my visits to the shore. Tired in their flight or seeking the tree but as a place of refuge, creatures of earth and air had peopled it and even sought shelter at its base, unmoving and stupefied throughout the days and nights of ceaseless rain and darkness. There stood together a stag and a great brown bear each mindless of the other. Upon the huge outspreading lower limbs crouched half a dozen more of the leopard cats of the region and as many of the sort of smaller bears which climb, and, above them scores of the lesser climbing things, while above them still perched wearied birds of many kinds, from those of the woods and fields to vultures and croaking ravens. Bats from the flooded caves hung dangling by hundreds from the smaller branches. It was a black dream of a tree, a tree of life in death. And now, it suddenly awoke to life! The stag raised its head snortingly and went leaping up the mountain, and the bear followed him shufflingly, followed in turn by all the other animals. The birds took flight; and I watched this departure gladly, for it seemed a proof that our sufferings were really ended. The birds and beasts know many things unknown to man.

But whence had come this awful catastrophe which had brought such tremendous death and changed a part of the face of the earth? Much I thought upon it. Had the fearful earthquake, such as never was before, but rent apart the mountain chain between the lower inland sea and the great ocean to the westward and so let in the mighty rush of water, raising the level of the sea to that of the ocean itself, the ocean no man had ever passed and the awful limit of which no man could tell? This seemed to me the reason of all that had come, but who could tell assuredly? The water kept at an even level now. It had become as it would stay. The land of the Goatskins lay deep beneath its waters, and life in this part of the world must subsist only upon the higher plains to the south and east, the curtailed land of future Palestine.