Read Ebook: The wonder stick by Coblentz Stanton A Stanton Arthur Glankoff Sam Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1131 lines and 79248 words, and 23 pages

THE WONDER STICK

A hundred thousand years have passed since a certain memorable twilight in the forest of Umbaddu. Beyond a long ragged ridge of spruce, the sun went down in forlorn crimson precisely like the suns of a later day; across the winding valley, with its shaggy woods and age-battered buttes and cliffs, an enchanted calm had settled, as though time had ended and there were no other days to come. Only the Harr-Sizz or Long-Snake River, foaming in tumultuous serpentine along its deep rocky ca?on, persistently broke the silence of the great wilderness; though now and again the call of some belated bird, or howling of hyena, or long-drawn, mournful plaint of some lonely wolf, would sound weirdly and from far away like a voice from another world.

Yet birds, wolves, and hyenas were not the only inhabitants of those houseless solitudes. Down by the brink of the river, where the waters had widened for a space to a smooth-flowing glossy expanse, a curious creature was threshing its way among the dense reeds and bushes. At the first glance one might have mistaken it for some monstrous beast, a cousin of the orang-utan or the gorilla; but a second glimpse would have shown one that it belonged to a more advanced race.

Walking with a pronounced stoop on two massive legs, it reached a height only slightly below that of a modern man. At its side was slung a rabbit-skin pouch filled with pebbles, and in its huge right hand it carried a rough-hewn club the size of a table leg; while its great barrel-like chest, its short pugilistically thick neck, and enormously developed arms gave proof of a strength that few moderns could equal. For clothes it wore only a rudely cut strip of deerskin, which hung loosely from the broad, curving shoulders not quite to the knees; and over all the exposed parts of arms, legs, and breast there spread an unbroken mat of dense black hair.

But most remarkable of all was the creature's face. In features more beastlike than human, the savagery of the jungle seemed to be warring with something that was not quite of the jungle, and in spite of the heavy jowls and apelike jaws there was just a hint of a miracle to come. The head was large and powerful, the forehead broad but low and receding, the eyebrows perched on prominent bony ridges that went far toward giving a brutish aspect. The nose was flat, and the nostrils broadly dilated, the ears round, protruding and movable, the chin weak and almost non-existent; the mouth was wide and the teeth ground down almost to the jaw, while the cheeks, like the rest of the body, were covered with a wilderness of black hair. And as for the eyes--they were small and black, and yet keen and brilliantly lighted; and they burned and sparkled with alert intelligence as their possessor pushed his way warily through the thicket.

Arriving at the edge of the dense brush, he was confronted by a wall of rock that shot precipitously upward for hundreds of feet. Even a mountain-goat might have hesitated before attempting the seemingly impossible ascent; but the hairy-limbed one did not so much as pause, though handicapped by the weight of his pouch of pebbles and of his club. With an air of absolute assurance, he turned a few paces to the left, then began to scramble up an almost imperceptible little path that twisted in and about among a jumbled pile of boulders. It was a sort of natural stairway, though frequently there was a gap of five or six feet between steps and the man had to lift himself from rock to rock with much straining and pulling of his huge arms. Sometimes he stood on ledges so narrow that one misstep would have plunged him to destruction; sometimes it was not his feet but a powerful clinging hand that preserved his balance, and one would have expected to see his fingers slip and his huge form reel and stagger into the abyss. Yet all the time he betrayed no fear, and continued on his way with the apparent carelessness of a tight-rope walker.

The last gray of twilight was merging into the blackness of night when at last the climber paused on a little shelf of rock two-thirds of the way to the top. Out of a long irregular fissure in the cliff a dim light was shining, a strange flickering light that might have brought visions of goblins or ghosts. But the climber was neither surprised nor alarmed; and after halting for a moment to give his panting heart time to subside, he uttered a loud, thick-voiced grunt. Instantly, from some unseen recess in the wall, dozens of responsive voices were raised in a hoarse, excited chorus; then, after a second or two, the fissure began to widen, and by the pale, eery illumination the watcher could distinguish three or four grinning, apelike faces, and six or eight curving hairy arms that tugged and tugged at a huge, slowly moving boulder.

Meanwhile the shouts continued, louder and louder, growing and growing in volume and excitement, until it seemed that hundreds of wildly agitated voices were clamoring all at once. At the same time, the tumult grew stranger and stranger, with hollow reverberations as of men calling from some subterranean grotto; nor did the uproar diminish before the straining arms had opened a cleft the size of a man's body. Then suddenly, with a swift contortion of his limbs, the new arrival slipped through the aperture; and once again the tugging arms were to be seen, pulling, pulling the boulder back against its fellow rocks.

Soon, on that deserted terrace of the cliff, only the weird, wavering light was visible through an opening as narrow as when the climber had arrived. But, from within, a multitude of voices could be heard, clamoring not quite so tumultuously as before, but chattering steadily and excitedly, like enthusiastic children who have no end of things to say.

And just beyond the replaced boulder, in the cavern whence the grinning faces had appeared, a grotesque spectacle was in progress. To the modern eye, it would have looked more like a scene from another planet than of this world--and more striking, perhaps, than the scene itself would have been the stage on which it was erected. Imagine a long, curving, irregular gallery, roofed and paved and walled with smoke-stained rock, in places so low that a man would have to stoop to pass beneath it, in places arching to an ample vault from which slow waters eternally drip and drip; imagine the dusky walls adorned with strange-colored pictures, pictures of animals long extinct, of cave wolves and cave bears, of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses; imagine curious trophies hung side by side with the paintings, and above them, the skulls and antlers of huge stags, the horns of aurochs, the hides of wild boars and of mountain-sheep, the teeth of bears and the fangs of serpents slung into great hideous chains; while at one end a tall heap of bones, hundreds of which have been split and splintered for the marrow, bears evidence of many a greedy repast. And picture the whole scene illuminated from a single source, a great blazing pile of logs near the mouth of the cavern, so that for a few yards the cave stands forth clearly revealed, while for its greater length it is obscured in a vague smoky twilight that gradually gives place to the blackness of utter night.

Within the cave, all was tumult and confusion. Every shadow seemed to be populated; and out of every dark recess crawled some hairy form, with excited voice raised to greet the new arrival. That he was one of them would have been apparent at a glance; they too were mantled in furs and skins, whether of the deer, the wild horse, or the bison; they too were stooping and brawny and covered with hair, with the same retreating forehead, the same thick neck and powerful jaws, the same bony eye-ridges and glittering black eyes.

As the newcomer entered, half a dozen long stout arms were flung about his neck and shoulders, and half a dozen sinewy hands seized him in a fierce grip of friendship. Then so closely did the swarm press about him, so furiously did they squeeze and struggle to be near, that one might have expected him to be crushed or suffocated.

"Welcome back!" they chorused, in a tongue crude as that of a mid-African savage. "Welcome back, Mumlo the Trail-Finder!"

And in the confusion of voices that ensued, one might have distinguished little more than a series of guttural clucks and grunts--"Gru ghra, gru ghra, gru ghra!"--like the murmurings of a bewildered mob.

Yet that throaty tumult was in reality a pandemonium of joy. "Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!" rang out the voices--which is as near as the primitive words can be given a modern equivalent. And mingled with the greetings, there came a storm of questions: "Where have you been so long? What have you done? What have you seen? Why are you alone? Where is Grop the Tree-Climber? and Wamwa the Snake-Eyed?"

So insistent were these inquiries, and so determined was each questioner to be answered, that the newcomer could only turn in bewilderment from one to another, mumbling a monosyllable here and a monosyllable there, but apparently saying nothing to satisfy anyone, since for some time the confused jabbering continued unabated.

Then with lightning suddenness the tumult ceased. One of the mob uttered a single frightened monosyllable--and all tongues stopped short in mid-sentence. A look half of awe, half of actual fear, came across the grimacing faces; the sharp glittering eyes were all fastened upon the farther recesses of the cave, from whose midnight fastnesses a huge shambling form was emerging into the nearer twilight.

"Grumgra the Growling Wolf!" muttered one or two under their breath; and all drew back as if by instinct as the newcomer sullenly approached.

His great form, in the wavering shadows, seemed truly monstrous and redoubtable, perhaps more monstrous than the clear radiance of day would have shown it to be. As compared with his fellows, he was of enormous build--not less than six feet in height, with gorilla-like chest, thick-set sinewy limbs, and the solid stocky aspect of one whose excess weight runs to muscles. His head was large, even in proportion to his immense frame, and his broad forehead was not quite so low as those of his kinsmen, although the glowering, ferocious aspect of his long hairy face, with the exceptionally prominent jaws and high, tapering cheek-bones, made him even more savage-looking than the majority. Armed with an oaken club almost as tall as himself, clad in the hide of a black wolf and adorned with a crown of wolf's teeth, he was truly a figure to strike terror to the hearts of the timid.

Majestically he stalked toward the firelight, while at his coming his tribesmen retreated as far as the walls would permit. Within a dozen paces of the flames, he paused; then, lifting his club ceremoniously above his head, he uttered a single deep-voiced sound, more like the bellowing of a bull than the speech of a man. And, at this command, the cowering mob began hesitatingly to approach him, though all were careful to keep beyond range of the club. But one of their number--he who had that evening scaled the cliff and been received so tumultuously--made bold to step almost within arm's length of the scowling one, and, without waiting to be bidden, launched into speech.

"O Grumgra, O great chief," he said, "I have done as you have ordered. I have been many days' travel toward the land of the noonday sun, and have seen wonderful things and met with queer adventures. And I have entered a strange bright country, fairer than this country, a strange and glorious place for our tribe to live. But evil spirits dwell there and have done wicked things to my companions, for Wamwa the Snake-Eyed was caught by the deep waters, and Grop the Tree-Climber was caught by a wild beast--and none of us shall ever see them again!"

At these words a low moan issued from a far corner of the cavern. But, disregarding the interruption, Grumgra burst out sonorously, in tones more thunderous than those of his fellows: "Let us thank the gods of the wood that brought Mumlo back, although he bears us sad news. But what does the fate of a few men matter? Mumlo has saved us from the bad spirits that try to destroy us. For a longer time than any man can remember, our fathers have lived in this cave; but now, my people, the day comes when we must leave. You know how the winters have been growing longer and colder; how the sharp winds blow, and the snow piles thick for many moons, while the great sheets of ice, in the direction of the storm-wind, creep nearer and nearer every year. And our game gets scarcer and scarcer, for the mammoth is huge and terrible and hard to hunt, and the reindeer is wary and fleet, and the woolly rhinoceros and the wolves and bears are ferocious and kill many of our people. Yet there are stories in our tribe of a time when great warmth-loving beasts bathed in our rivers, and when mammoths without hair roamed in the woods. If we are wise, we may follow these creatures to warmer lands. And that, as you know, is why we have sent Mumlo the Trail-Finder to learn what sort of country lies under the noonday sun."

"Let Mumlo tell us what he has seen!" came the voice of one of the men. "Let Mumlo tell us--"

But instantly the rash one regretted his words. An angry flash came into the black eyes of the chieftain; with a resounding thud, his great club smashed against a projecting spur of the cavern wall.

And while the splinters flew in a hundred directions, Grumgra bellowed, "Mumlo will speak only when I bid him to!" And perversely he added, "I do not bid him to speak now!"

For a second he paused, as if uncertain of his own intention; then followed with the growling admonition: "Let him now be fed and given sleep and rest after his long journey! And let none question him more! Tomorrow, when the sun is awake again, we shall all gather here and listen to his story--and then I shall tell you whether we shall leave the cave or stay!"

And, having issued his ultimatum, he made a sedate about-face; and, swinging his club commandingly, slouched away into the shadows.

The first gray of dawn had barely begun to widen above the eastern ridges when the people of Umbaddu were once more astir. Great brawny hands applied themselves again to the boulder at the cavern entrance; and, through an aperture barely large enough to admit a man, the inhabitants emerged one by one, each armed with a club, yet each making his way with apparent ease down the perilous slopes to the river. Reaching the bank, they flung themselves down at full-length and sucked in long draughts after the manner of thirsting beasts; following this they fumbled about among the brush for roots and berries, and at length, having satisfied their appetites, pulled themselves once more up the precipitous stairway of the cliff.

Meanwhile, within the cavern, all was activity and life. Several of the younger men were strenuously hauling in great dead logs through a rear entrance, which gave directly upon the forest; several half-grown lads were disposing of the refuse of yesterday's meals by the simple process of casting it outside the cave door; and scores of the women--who were clad precisely like the men, and were most easily distinguishable by their smaller stature and relatively hairless faces--were absorbed in what might be termed the household pursuits of the time. A few sat sprawled about nursing hairy infants in full view of all the tribe; a few were undertaking the vigorous chastisement of unclad urchins of five or six, who seemed too energetic in flinging flint chips about the cavern; one or two were casting fagots upon the great roaring fire, which had to be kept alive both night and day; while a majority were engaged in culinary duties. One, holding the flayed body of a rabbit above the flames on a long sharpened stick, was cooking according to the conventional method; another, busily grinding up nuts between two flat unpolished pieces of stone, was preparing a sort of gruel which, when seasoned with crushed grasshoppers and grubs, was regarded as delicious; still others, equipped with rude mallets, cleavers, scrapers, and knives of flint, were ripping off the skins of slaughtered deer, or pounding various edible herbs into a pulp, or smashing and softening a certain small beanlike seed until it came within the range of a hardy digestion.

For more than an hour these activities continued without interruption save for the snorts and snarls which marked the not infrequent disagreements between tribesmen. Then suddenly, as on the preceding evening, a portentous hush, almost a paralysis, came over the people; and out of some hidden recess stalked the great glowering figure of Grumgra, his club swinging menacingly, his shrewd little eyes glittering and sparkling like an evil threat.

"Let all our people come here!" he roared, in tones that rang and echoed angrily in those narrow corridors. "Let them stop whatever they are doing, and come! Go, call those that are outside! And if anyone wants to stay away, let him do so--if he dares!"

Here Grumgra twirled the club above his head as if to acquire practice in swinging it; and his people, needing no second warning, hastily abandoned their various tasks, and scurried in all directions in loud-voiced haste. It was not fifteen minutes before the stragglers had all been called back from the river bank and the entire tribe had gathered in a semi-circle about the fire.

A weird assemblage they made, those two hundred men, women, and children, with their heavy-featured, bestial faces, their sinewy, hide-mantled bodies, and alert, staring black eyes; while the firelight cast fantastic wavering shadows about them, and in their midst, dominating them as a cock dominates a flock of hens, a great apelike figure stood with battered club uplifted in command.

With the abruptness of a thunderclap, the deep bellowing voice burst forth: "Listen with careful ears to what I say, my people! Many days ago--more days than the fingers on the hands of three men--I sent Mumlo the Trail-Finder to the country of the noonday sun. I told him, and also Grop the Tree-Climber and Wamwa the Snake-Eyed, to look for a better cave for our tribe. Now he has come back, and we will hear what he has to tell us."

While the voice of the chieftain still roared and echoed through the cave, several stout hands seized the unwilling Mumlo and thrust him toward the firelight.

Standing in front of all his tribesmen, his face illuminated fitfully by the flames, while two hundred pairs of eyes regarded him solemnly, he had no choice but to obey Grumgra's command, "Speak, Mumlo! Speak!"

"What would you have me speak of?" he pleaded, gazing with fascinated interest at the chieftain's club. "There is too much to tell! Wamwa and Grop and I traveled for days and days through dark forest, and along green river ca?ons and over rocky hills. Sometimes we came out upon wide meadows, and sometimes the land was covered with brush and stones and was very hard to pass. But we kept on and on, and lived mostly on roots and berries and the bark of trees, though now and then we feasted on some small creature we slew with stones or clubs. At night we lit a fire with our flints to keep the wolves away, and in the day we watched and watched for wild things, since great and terrible animals filled the forest, and often we had to climb the trees in a great hurry. And it was a huge animal that took Grop away from us, for once we came upon a herd of buffaloes in an open field, and before we could get back to the woods a mad bull had rushed upon him, and--"

Horrified exclamations interrupted the speaker; but Grumgra, apparently unaffected, brought his club down warningly upon the floor.

"We are not here to learn what happened to Grop!" he grumbled, with a foreboding scowl. "We are here to learn about the country you found. Tell us that, and nothing more!"

"The country that we found," resumed the Trail-Finder, taking care to put a few additional inches between himself and Grumgra's club, "was all overgrown with grass and deep forests. It was much warmer than our own land, and even on the tops of the mountains there was no snow. But deer and bison and wild boars and horses and cattle browsed there in large herds; and there were many berries and fruits and nut-bearing trees. And up among the cliffs above a great river I thought I saw the entrance to a cave like ours. In crossing this river, Wamwa slipped and was taken by the bad spirits--"

Again the great club was lifted in a silent threat; and the angry eyes of Grumgra warned the speaker to keep to his story.

"It would be a very good land for us to live in, O great chief," Mumlo hastened to add. "When the cold days came, we would not find it so hard to kill game enough to keep us strong. We would not have to shiver all the long winter moons, not having fires or furs to make us warm. Our babes would not die, and our women would not moan and cry for meat we could not give them; but it would be summer always, and there would always be warmth and plenty for us all."

And into the eyes of Mumlo for an instant came a contemplative glow, a half-dreamy light that seemed to belie the heavy jowls and brutish features, and to foretell the visionary who--a hundred thousand years later--would still be conjuring up Utopia.

But almost instantly that light died out; the thick lips were curled into a snarl, and a hoarse growl rumbled from the speaker's throat. Across from him, in the further rim of the firelight, a bull-like shaggy form had sprung up with menacing fists upraised, and there came the muttered challenge: "You lie! You lie! There can be no such land!"

"Quiet, Woonoo!" yelled the chieftain, with an oath. And the club swung in such deadly earnest that only the extreme agility of Woonoo saved him from being mangled. As it was, the crash with which the club struck the cavern floor served as a warning to the overdaring; and the attempted chastisement was followed by an appalled silence, broken only by the murmurs of the more audacious: "Just what Woonoo deserved! Woonoo the Hot-Blooded always is getting into trouble!"

Meanwhile the offender had slunk away into the shadows to the rear, and, having once tempted destiny, was apparently resolved to take no further chance.

"Tell us more, Mumlo," encouraged Grumgra, in milder tones than before. "Tell us more. You think--you think we should all go to the land of the noonday sun?"

"O great chief, I think we should all go," pleaded the Trail-Finder. "We hear nothing now but the cries of the hungry, and the groans of those whom the demons of sickness have taken. You know how our people are growing fewer and fewer each year. Our old men can tell of a time when we were many as the days from one spring season till the next; but for every two that walked in our cave then, there is only one that walks in it now. And you know, O chief, where the rest are--how many are sleeping with their women and babes in the burial grotto at the cavern's end--and how many have left their bones to the cave-bear and the hyena. You know, O chief, so why should I try to tell you? A few more ice-cold winters, and the wolves will be crunching the ribs of the last of our tribe!"

The speaker stopped short, and a horrified silence--broken only by the crackling logs in the great fire--settled over the entire assemblage.

It was Grumgra's voice that next made itself heard. "Mumlo speaks well," the leader acknowledged, leaning meditatively upon his club, as though he had forgotten its aggressive purposes. "Mumlo speaks well--it is true that we are getting fewer and fewer, for the great frosts are more than our people can stand, and when the winter comes the wild beasts seize us, or else some evil spirit creeps near, and we sicken and die. We do not wish to leave this cave, where our fathers and their fathers and their fathers before them have lived--but is it not better to go from our home than to perish?"

Having reached a bellowing climax, Grumgra paused as if to allow his words time to penetrate. There followed a frightened silence, broken now by a whispered exclamation of dread, now by a muttered oath of horror; and this awed speechlessness continued even after Grumgra had shouted his last words, "What do you say, my people? Tell me, what do you say?"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet