Gods: A Prehistorical Novel

The Speaker, October 9, 1897

A gross, grey fog hid the face of the world. In the darkness mammoths, elks, huge and fantastic creatures whose trace has vanished off the globe, trod each other down as they swayed and surged together. For through the mist was coming a great sound, incessant yet varying, now hoarse like falling waters, now soaring up in piercing peals and screams like a flock of eagles. Every note of wood and hill passed through it—the dash of the rain, the chatter of the bird, the cry of the stricken thing. And between these bursts of mimicry came obscurer passages, prophecies of tongues yet unknown, sounds that were the symbols of passions still without name. Yet all came from one place.

At last the sun climbed up, and against it broke the dark outline of a strange creature. It stood poised on two legs only, but yet there were no plumes upon its bare lean body, except a ragged shock or crest. It had teeth and ears and eyes according to rule; but its want of a tail made it altogether ridiculous. The feet were on the horns of a slain elk, great wings of ravenous vultures flapped about its head, the eyes were fierce as stars, the throat sending forth in shout after shout the first poem of the world. It was the epic of the victory of man, which is not yet ended.

"What are you talking, Ribs-hard?" inquired a weak voice, like a baby's. It belonged to another primeval man, an old gentleman with a great part of his face covered with white hair, who hoisted himself up the bank until his nose was just over the edge. His name was Feet-very-large; the name of the elk-slayer was Ribs-hard, bestowed on him by his admiring neighbours after many experiments.

"I have hit an elk and made it dead," replied Ribs-hard haughtily. Then giving vent to his natural feelings of superiority, unhampered by any modern affectation, he put his face close to the other's, grinned, put out his tongue, hooted, and gave other evidences of pardonable vanity, without in any way disconcerting the owl-like solemnity of the old gentleman with his nose over the edge of the rock. Feet-very-large, however, coming to the conclusion that this state of things gave Ribs-hard an unfair rhetorical advantage, swung up over the bank and alighted cross-legged in front of the victorious hunter.

The latter had lifted the dead elk by the horns and was gazing at it. "Feet-very-large," he said patronisingly, like a child, "this is my fetish. You also, Feet-very-large—you also may worship my fetish."

Feet-very-large snorted. "Your fetish is a frog-that-lives-in-the-mud," he said with severity.

"I will make your head all smashed," said Ribs-hard furiously. In those days decisions were rapidly arrived at.

Feet-very-large merely grunted. Ribs-hard snatched his flint axe and prepared to begin the first religious persecution. Feet-very-large did not appear to take the least notice of him. This always irritated man in early times- a characteristic that has disappeared.

"You are afraid," said Ribs-hard; "you are cow. This is very good. It is always safer to fight when the other man is cow."

Feet-very-large appeared to be rubbing two pieces of stick together, which seemed an aimless amusement even for prehistoric times; but his face was so grave and expectant that Ribs-hard stopped to stare.

"I make a good fetish," said Feet-very-large solemnly. "Mine is good."

Ribs-hard laughed: a horrible sight. "Feet-very-large makes a fetish of two little sticks!" And he put out his tongue again, as one who had himself reached a purer form of religion. "A fetish of two sticks!" he repeated. "The wood is full of sticks!" He felt himself becoming the wit of the valley.

Seeing, however, that Feet-very-large went on rubbing the sticks, quite unmoved by this satire, he suddenly recollected his warlike intentions. Clutching his hatchet, he leapt on his enemy, and the next moment leapt back again with a howl, wringing his fingers. From one of the two sticks had broken a luminous red tongue, that played to and fro like a living thing. It also stung.

"My fetish is a good fetish," said the phlegmatic Feet-very-large. "It bites me if I am bad. It has bitten you. You were bad."

Ribs-hard was too depressed to resent this moral remark. "Why do you make your fetish if it bites?" he asked.

"If I hit it, it bites. If I do not hit, it kisses. "Wait. Wait and see."

He went limping away hurriedly, leaving Ribs-hard staring at the moving glory and mystery which was to light the cities of his far-off children.

Presently Feet-very-large returned, carrying a heap of boughs and twigs. But his hoary face, instead of its usual expression of monkey-like sagacity, wore an expression of bewilderment and humility. "I have seen your woman, Ribs-hard."

Ribs-hard looked suspicious. "She has a fetish," went on Feet-very-large, "a new fetish; better than my fetish." And he rolled his eyes.

"My woman is a brown pig," said Ribs-hard authoritatively. "She can do nothing. She cannot make a fetish. She lives in a hole, and has not got anything to make fetishes."

"Nevertheless she has a fetish," said Feet-very-large. "It is a new fetish."

The two went together down the valley. The sun had set, and the dome of evening was a mellow green.

"That is a good star," said Ribs-hard. "It is over my woman's hole." They were silent, even for primeval men, until they came to the low cave where Ribs-hard had left his squaw.

The cavern was quite bare. There were neither sticks nor skins of which to make a fetish. But on the ground in front of the woman, and watched by her with a strange new light in her eyes, lay a small brown baby.

It may have been that the fire was still in Ribs-hard's eyes, but he fancied he saw a sort of glory round the child's head.

They both fell on their knees.