Allan and the Ice Gods (5 page)

about to plunge into some seeming state of former existence, as I had

done once before under the influence of this herb. My late friend,

Lady Ragnall, believed that state to be not seeming but real; while I,

on the other hand, could not accept this as a fact. I set it down, as

I am still inclined to do, to the workings of imagination,

superexcited by a strange and powerful drug and drawing, perhaps, from

some fount of knowledge of past events that is hidden deep in the

being of every one of us.

However these things may be, this rhetorical summing up of the case,

of which I can only recollect the last part, was but a kind of

introductory speech such as is sometimes made by a master of

ceremonies before the curtain rises upon the play. Its echoes died

away into a deep silence. All the living part of me went down into

darkness, dense darkness that seemed to endure for ages. Then, with

strugglings and effort, I awoke again—reborn. A hand was holding my

own, leading me forward; a voice I knew whispered in my ear, saying:

“Look upon one record of the past, O Doubter. Look and believe.” Now

there happened to me, or seemed to happen, that which I had

experienced before in the museum at Ragnall Castle; namely, that I,

Allan, the living man of to-day, beheld myself another man, and yet

the same; and whilst remaining myself, could enter into and live the

life of that other man, knowing his thoughts, appreciating his motives

and his efforts, his hopes and his fears, his loves and his hates, and

yet standing outside of them, reading him like a book and weighing

everything in the scales of my modern judgment.

The voice—surely it was that of Lady Ragnall, though I could not see

her face—died away; the hand was loosed. I saw a man in the cold,

glimmering light of dawn. He was a very sturdy man, thick-limbed,

deep-chested, and somewhat hairy, whose age I judged to be about

thirty years. I knew at once that he was not a modern man, although

his weather-tanned skin was white where the furs he wore had slipped

away from his shoulder, for there was something unusual about his

aspect. Few modern men are so massive of body, and never have I seen

one with a neck so short and large in circumference, although the feet

and hands were not large. His frame was extraordinarily solid; being

not more than five feet seven inches in height and by no means fat,

yet he must have weighed quite fifteen stone, if not more. His dark

hair was long and parted in the middle; it hung down to his shoulders.

He turned his head, looking behind him as though to make sure that he

was alone, or that no wild beast stalked him, and I saw his face. The

forehead was wide and not high, for the hair grew low upon it; his

eyebrows were beetling and the eyes beneath them deep set. They were

remarkable eyes, large and gray, quick-glancing also, yet when at rest

somewhat sombre and very thoughtful. The nose was straight with wide

and sensitive nostrils, suggesting that its owner used them as a dog

or a deer does, to scent with. The mouth was thick-lipped but not

large, and within it were splendid and regular white teeth, broader

than those we have; the chin was very massive, and on it grew two

little tufts of beard, though the cheeks were bare.

For the rest, this man was long armed, for the tip of his middle

finger came down almost to the kneecap. He had a sort of kilt about

his middle and a heavy fur robe upon his shoulder which looked as

though it were made of bearskin. In his left hand he held a short

spear, the blade of which seemed to be fashioned of chipped flint, or

some other hard and shining stone, and in the girdle of his kilt was

thrust a wooden-handled instrument or ax, made by setting a great,

sharp-edged stone that must have weighed two pounds or so into the

cleft end of the handle which was lashed with sinews both above and

below the axhead.

I, Allan, the man of to-day, looked upon this mighty savage, for

mighty I could see he was—both in his body and, after a fashion, in

his mind also—and in my trance knew that the spirit which had dwelt

in him hundreds of thousands of years ago, mayhap, or at least in the

far, far, past, was the same that animated me, the living creature

whose body for aught I knew descended from his, thus linking us in

flesh as well as soul. Indeed, the thought came to me—I know not

whence—that here stood my remote forefather whose forgotten existence

was my cause of life, without whom my body could not have been.

Now, I, Allan Quatermain, fade from the story. No longer am I he. I am

Wi the Hunter, the future chief of a little tribe which had no name,

since, believing itself to be the only people on the earth, it needed

none. Yet remember that my modern intelligence and individuality never

went to sleep, that always it was able to watch this prototype, this

primeval one, to enter into his thoughts, to appreciate his motives,

hopes, and fears, and to compare them with those that actuate us

to-day. Therefore, the tale I tell is the substance of that which the

heart of Wi told to my heart, set out in my own modern tongue and

interpreted by my modern intellect.

Wi, being already endowed with a spiritual sense, was praying to such

gods as he knew, the Ice-gods that his tribe had always worshipped. He

did not know for how long it had worshipped them, any more than he

knew the beginnings of that tribe, save for a legend that once its

forefathers had come here from behind the mountains, driven sunward

and southward by the cold. These gods of theirs lived in the blue-black ice of the mightiest of the glaciers which moved down from the

crests of the high snow mountains. The breast of this glacier was in

the central valley, but most of the ice moved down smaller valleys to

the east and west and so came to the sea, where in springtime the

children of the Ice-gods that had been begotten in the heart of the

snowy hills were born, coming forth in great bergs from the dark wombs

of the valleys and sailing away southward. Thus it was that the vast

central glacier, the house of the gods, moved but little.

Urk the Aged-One, who had seen the birth of all who lived in the

tribe, said that his grandfather had told him, when he was little,

that in his youth the face of this glacier was perhaps a spear’s cast

higher up the valley than it stood to-day, no more. It was a mighty

threatening face of the height of a score of tall forest pines set one

upon the other, sloping backward to its crest. For the most part, it

was of clear black ice which sometimes when the gods within were

talking, cracked and groaned, and when they were angry, heaved itself

forward by an arm’s length, shaving off the rocks of the valley which

stood in its path and driving them in front of it. Who or what these

gods might be, Wi did not know. All he knew was that they were

terrible powers to be feared, in whom he believed as his forefathers

had done, and that in their hands lay the fate of the tribe.

In the autumn nights, when the mists rose, some had seen them: vast,

shadowy figures moving about before the face of the glacier, and even

at times advancing toward the beach beneath, where the people dwelt.

They had heard them laughing also, and their priest, N’gae the

Magician, and Taren the Witch-Who-Hid-Herself, who only came out at

night and who was the lover of N’gae, said that they had spoken to

them, making revelations. But to Wi they had never spoken, although he

had sat face to face with them at night, which none others dared to

do. So silent were they that, at times, when he was well fed and happy

hearted and his hunting had prospered, he began to doubt this tale of

the gods and to set down the noises that were called their voices to

breakings in the ice caused by frosts and thaws.

Yet there was something which he could not doubt. Deep in the face of

the ice, the length of three paces away, only to be seen in certain

lights, was one of the gods who for generations had been known to the

tribe as the Sleeper because he never moved. Wi could not make out

much about him, save that he seemed to have a long nose as thick as a

tree at its root and growing smaller toward the end. On each side of

this nose projected a huge curling tusk that came out of a vast head,

black in colour and covered with red hair, behind which swelled an

enormous body, large as that of a whale, whereof the end could not be

seen.

Here indeed was a god—not even Wi could doubt it—for none had ever

heard of or seen its like—though for what reason it chose to sleep

forever in the bosom of the ice he could not guess. Had such a monster

been known alive, he would have thought this one dead, not sleeping.

But it was not known and therefore it must be a god. So it came about

that, for his divinity, like the rest of the tribe, Wi took a gigantic

elephant of the early world caught in the ice of a glacial period that

had happened some hundreds of thousands of years before his day, and

slowly borne forward in the frozen stream from the far-off spot where

it had perished, doubtless to find its ultimate sepulchre in the sea.

A strange god enough, but not stranger than many have chosen and still

bow before to-day.

Wi, after debate with his wife Aaka, the proud and fair, had climbed

to the glacier while it was still dark to take counsel of the gods and

learn their will as to a certain matter. It was this: The greatest man

of the tribe, who by his strength ruled it, was Henga, a terrible man

born ten springs before Wi, huge in bulk and ferocious. This was the

law of the tribe, that the mightiest was its master, and so remained

until one mightier than he came to the opening of the cave in which he

lived, challenged him to single combat, and killed him. Thus Henga had

killed his own father who ruled before him.

Now he oppressed the tribe; doing no work himself, he seized the food

of others or the skin garments that they made. Moreover, although

there were few and all men fought for them, he took the women from

their parents or husbands, kept them for a while, then cast them out,

or perhaps killed them, and took others. Nor might they resist him,

because he was sacred and could do what he pleased. Only, as has been

said, any man might challenge him to single combat, for to slay him

otherwise was forbidden and would have caused the slayer to be driven

out to starve as one accursed. Then, if the challenger prevailed, he

took the cave of this sacred one, with the women and all that was his,

and became chief in his place, until in his turn he was slain in like

fashion. Thus it came about that no chief of the tribe lived to be

old, for as soon as years began to rob him of his might, he was killed

by someone younger and stronger who hated him. For this reason also

none desired to be chief, knowing that, if he were, sooner or later he

would die in blood, and it was better to suffer oppression than to

die.

Yet Wi desired it because of the cruelties of Henga and his misrule of

the tribe which he was bringing to misery. Also he knew that, if he

did not kill Henga, Henga would kill him from jealousy. Long ago he,

Wi, would have been murdered had he not been beloved by the tribe as

their great hunter who won them much of their meat food, and therefore

a man whose death would cause the slayer to be hated. Yet, fearing to

attack him openly, already Henga had tried to do away with him

secretly; and a little while before, when Wi was visiting his pit

traps on the edge of the forest, a spear whizzed past him, thrown from

a ledge of overhanging rock which he could not climb. He picked up the

spear and ran away. It was one which he knew belonged to Henga;

moreover, its flint point had been soaked in poison made from a kind

of cuttlefish that had rotted, mixed with the juice of a certain herb,

as Wi could tell, for sometimes he used this poison to kill game. He

kept the spear and, save to his wife Aaka, said nothing of the matter.

Then followed a worse thing. Besides his son Foh, a lad of ten years

whom he loved better than any thing on earth, he had a little daughter

one year younger, named Fo-a. This was all his family, for children

were scarce among the tribe, and most of those who were born died

quite young of cold, lack of proper food, and various sicknesses.

Moreover, if girls, many of them were cast out at birth to starve or

be devoured by wild beasts.

One evening, Fo-a was missing, and it was thought that wood wolves had

taken her, or perhaps the bears that lived in the forest. Aaka wept,

and Wi, when there was no one to see, wept also as he searched for

Fo-a, whom he loved. Two mornings afterward, when he came out of his

hut, near to the door place he found something wrapped in a skin, and,

on unwinding it, saw that it was the body of little Fo-a with her neck

broken and the marks of a great hand upon her throat. He knew well