The gray of the sky became lighter, the vast curtain parted into floating clouds, and the radiance of the sun burst upon the world again. But upon what a scene that radiance fell!
The sea was giving up its dead, and upon its surface everywhere their bloated bodies rocked and swung. There was not a beast of all the region whose carcass was not a part of the water’s ghastly burden, nor were there the bodies of beasts alone! The Goatskins, hundreds of them, were coming to us again! But the horror of it all was not in the sight of the bodies alone. Thousands of ravens and vultures had come to the tremendous feast and the air was vibrant with the beating of the wings of myriads more still flocking from all directions save that of the sea itself. They were riding on the bodies and tearing at them, gorging themselves. The clamour and their croaking drowned out all other sounds. Close to the shore where I stood watching, a huge vulture rode on the body of a man, a Goatskin, devouring at its leisure, and so the horrible scene extended everywhere. It was a carnival of unclean birds!
The sight before us was one not long to be endured, even by men of such hardihood as made up our wandering band. The limbs of the lately beast and bird burdened tree were now bare and white, and as its inhabitants had fled, so would we from this dread region. We gathered our belongings together as swiftly as we might and took up our long march, eager to leave such land of death and desolation.
Easily did we live as to food, for the forests teemed with game because of the multitude of creatures driven from the valley. There were dangers, too. I have said that it was a region of lions. Now we came upon them everywhere, restless and savage, so that none of us wandered far from the band alone. Yet one day, near nightfall, just after we had encamped at the foot of a great barren boulder-strewn slope, I ventured up among the rocks alone. Surely there could be no lions there. Then, just as I turned about a huge boulder, I came upon a great maned monster face to face! I could not fly, for should I attempt it, I knew he would be upon me in an instant. There was nothing left to me but to face him as I might. I could crouch with the butt of my spear planted in the ground and await the spring of the monster. He crept a little nearer, his eyes blazing like coals, and his body held close to the ground taut as the string of a bow. He was within three yards of me now. I braced myself for the coming shock, hopeless, indeed, but desperately resolved to make all of my one slight chance. Fear seemed to have left me. I counted myself as already dead, and I was filled with a great rage. Could I hold the spear so firmly and move it with even eye so well that it would impale him at the climax of his leap, his own weight doing all the work of a mighty thrust? Calm, as fiercely strained as the lion himself, I was now. Closer to the ground he crouched, and then, with a hideous roar, he sprang.
I did not fail myself! Like a rock I knelt; braced and with certain eye I aimed the spear between the huge forelegs and on the broad tawny breast, even in that fraction of a moment when the beast was in the air almost above me. Fairly in the breast the spear-head struck and, with a roar of beastly suffering, the lion, impaled, came down upon me. I was borne to earth and, even as he turned in his agony, a stroke from his mighty paw crushed my right arm at the elbow, the bones cracking sickeningly. Then his great jaws sought my throat to tear it. Never again should I gaze across our Northern Sea; never again should I look upon the face of the slender Red Leaf.
CHAPTER IX
THE KITCHEN-MIDDENITES
Great rollers were coming in upon what must be a rugged beach, for their clamour was appalling. Such roaring, thunderous sound of water I did not remember to have heard before, and I wondered where I was. It was dark where I lay upon what seemed a mass of weed in a hut-like place, having at the side a low door reminding one of the entrance to a burrow of some animal. It was nearing morning now, for it began slowly to grow lighter and I could distinguish my surroundings better. There was little to consider, though upon one side of the strange place lay what I knew to be a stone axe such as I had carried once, and there were other things which might be weapons, but the use of some of which I could not then understand. I knew well that I could not be quite myself, else I would remember more. I was dazed as I had seen wild beasts sometimes become when great rocks had been rolled down from heights above and some had been struck upon the head and wandered about unknowingly and helplessly. Only I had no pain. I felt strong, and I was hungry.
I crawled out through the low doorway and looked about me. There was much to see. In the east was the glow of the rising sun, its first clear rays making glitter the crests of the rollers which were tumbling and roaring in over reefs and boulders, and climbing far up a long sandy beach. There had been a storm. The beach, which was a wide one, extended from the shore backward to nearly the edge of a dense forest, and along this edge rose a great line of huts from some of which smoke was arising. The huts were rude affairs, built of driftwood and brush and resembling generally the one I had just emerged from, which stood at the southern end of the long line. There was something more. Directly in front of the line of huts, and parallel with them, rose a mound of regular height almost equalling that of the huts themselves and cutting off the view of the sea save where wide passages led through it here and there. It was the view of this mound which brought me to my senses, for, as I now knew, I had been dazed only by a dream, a dream of warm winds and hunting. All that was gone now, and I knew that I was but looking upon the huts inhabited by my own people, the shell-fish eaters, and that the vast mound extending before them, and which exhaled a mighty odour, was but the refuse of our eating. The “Kitchen-middens,” were such mounds as these to be called by far distant future peoples. Not alone were shells in the mound, but the bones of countless birds and beasts and fish, for we were hunters and fishermen as well as plunderers of the enormous beds of oysters and mussels and cockles and other shell-fish, and of the toothsome sea-snails in the shallow waters. It was to our disadvantage, though we did not know it, that such an abundance of sea food lay at our very doors, for so we had become more slothful and indifferent and were making no advancement. This I knew because when any accretions to our numbers on our peninsula crossed the narrow strait we called the Skaw, between us and the mainland, they bore better weapons than we and knew more of many things. We remained as we had been when our first ancestors crossed from the lands beyond the Kattegat—the sea bay connected at its ends with those seas the North and Baltic—and remained upon this jutland because of the abundant shell-beds they discovered.
Better for us had we all been hunters and far rangers. It was a land for it, this Jutland. Wonderful flint, the finest for spear and arrow-heads and knives, abounded everywhere, and game was plentiful. What quarry for skilled hunters there was in those great forests of pine, at this time yielding fast to other forests of beech and oak, and on the grassy plains of the interior! There were wandering herds of reindeer and white elk and the urus and red deer; there were bears and wolves and lynx and wild boars and a host of the smaller things. In the streams were many beaver; in the lakes were swan and geese and lesser waterfowl, and in the marshes millions of woodcock and other birds as succulent. But of all this spoil of bird and beast we took slight toll because of our ease of living, though there were hunters among us and men who were not lacking in courage. Some of the more hardy had crossed the peninsula to the western shore against which rolled the sea. It was told that one adventurer had even put forth to the northward in his boat and had been sucked down into the great maelstrom there which roars by Varo Island.
None remained upon this shore, because the winds were chill and there were no beds of shell-fish to make the living easier. On our own side, it is true, the winters were cold, but some of the game remained in the forest, there was still the fishing, through the ice or from the boats far out, and we had always much provided of dried meat and fish, and were never in danger of absolute starvation. We were as listless as the seals, which minded not the seasons.