Chapter XVII

by Jack London

　　It was in the early fall of the following year that it happened. Afterhis failure to get the Swift One, Red-Eye had taken another wife; and,strange to relate, she was still alive. Stranger still, they had a babyseveral months old--Red-Eye's first child. His previous wives had neverlived long enough to bear him children. The year had gone well for allof us. The weather had been exceptionally mild and food plentiful. Iremember especially the turnips of that year. The nut crop was also veryheavy, and the wild plums were larger and sweeter than usual.In short, it was a golden year. And then it happened. It was in theearly morning, and we were surprised in our caves. In the chill graylight we awoke from sleep, most of us, to encounter death. The SwiftOne and I were aroused by a pandemonium of screeching and gibbering. Ourcave was the highest of all on the cliff, and we crept to the mouth andpeered down. The open space was filled with the Fire People. Their criesand yells were added to the clamor, but they had order and plan, whilewe Folk had none. Each one of us fought and acted for himself, and noone of us knew the extent of the calamity that was befalling us.By the time we got to stone-throwing, the Fire People had massed thickat the base of the cliff. Our first volley must have mashed some heads,for when they swerved back from the cliff three of their number wereleft upon the ground. These were struggling and floundering, and onewas trying to crawl away. But we fixed them. By this time we males wereroaring with rage, and we rained rocks upon the three men that weredown. Several of the Fire-Men returned to drag them into safety, but ourrocks drove the rescuers back.The Fire People became enraged. Also, they became cautious. In spite oftheir angry yells, they kept at a distance and sent flights of arrowsagainst us. This put an end to the rock-throwing. By the time halfa dozen of us had been killed and a score injured, the rest of usretreated inside our caves. I was not out of range in my lofty cave, butthe distance was great enough to spoil effective shooting, and the FirePeople did not waste many arrows on me. Furthermore, I was curious.I wanted to see. While the Swift One remained well inside the cave,trembling with fear and making low wailing sounds because I would notcome in, I crouched at the entrance and watched.The fighting had now become intermittent. It was a sort of deadlock. Wewere in the caves, and the question with the Fire People was how to getus out. They did not dare come in after us, and in general we would notexpose ourselves to their arrows. Occasionally, when one of them drew inclose to the base of the cliff, one or another of the Folk would smasha rock down. In return, he would be transfixed by half a dozen arrows.This ruse worked well for some time, but finally the Folk no longer wereinveigled into showing themselves. The deadlock was complete.Behind the Fire People I could see the little wizened old hunterdirecting it all. They obeyed him, and went here and there at hiscommands. Some of them went into the forest and returned with loads ofdry wood, leaves, and grass. All the Fire People drew in closer. Whilemost of them stood by with bows and arrows, ready to shoot any of theFolk that exposed themselves, several of the Fire-Men heaped the drygrass and wood at the mouths of the lower tier of caves. Out of theseheaps they conjured the monster we feared--FIRE. At first, wisps ofsmoke arose and curled up the cliff. Then I could see the red-tonguedflames darting in and out through the wood like tiny snakes. The smokegrew thicker and thicker, at times shrouding the whole face of thecliff. But I was high up and it did not bother me much, though it stungmy eyes and I rubbed them with my knuckles.Old Marrow-Bone was the first to be smoked out. A light fan of airdrifted the smoke away at the time so that I saw clearly. He broke outthrough the smoke, stepping on a burning coal and screaming withthe sudden hurt of it, and essayed to climb up the cliff. The arrowsshowered about him. He came to a pause on a ledge, clutching a knob ofrock for support, gasping and sneezing and shaking his head. He swayedback and forth. The feathered ends of a dozen arrows were sticking outof him. He was an old man, and he did not want to die. He swayed widerand wider, his knees giving under him, and as he swayed he wailed mostplaintively. His hand released its grip and he lurched outward to thefall. His old bones must have been sadly broken. He groaned and strovefeebly to rise, but a Fire-Man rushed in upon him and brained him with aclub.And as it happened with Marrow-Bone, so it happened with many of theFolk. Unable to endure the smoke-suffocation, they rushed out to fallbeneath the arrows. Some of the women and children remained in the cavesto strangle to death, but the majority met death outside.When the Fire-Men had in this fashion cleared the first tier of caves,they began making arrangements to duplicate the operation on the secondtier of caves. It was while they were climbing up with their grass andwood, that Red-Eye, followed by his wife, with the baby holding to hertightly, made a successful flight up the cliff. The Fire-Men must haveconcluded that in the interval between the smoking-out operations wewould remain in our caves; so that they were unprepared, and theirarrows did not begin to fly till Red-Eye and his wife were well up thewall. When he reached the top, he turned about and glared down at them,roaring and beating his chest. They arched their arrows at him, andthough he was untouched he fled on.I watched a third tier smoked out, and a fourth. A few of the Folkescaped up the cliff, but most of them were shot off the face of it asthey strove to climb. I remember Long-Lip. He got as far as my ledge,crying piteously, an arrow clear through his chest, the feathered shaftsticking out behind, the bone head sticking out before, shot through theback as he climbed. He sank down on my ledge bleeding profusely at themouth.It was about this time that the upper tiers seemed to empty themselvesspontaneously. Nearly all the Folk not yet smoked out stampeded up thecliff at the same time. This was the saving of many. The Fire Peoplecould not shoot arrows fast enough. They filled the air with arrows, andscores of the stricken Folk came tumbling down; but still there were afew who reached the top and got away.The impulse of flight was now stronger in me than curiosity. The arrowshad ceased flying. The last of the Folk seemed gone, though there mayhave been a few still hiding in the upper caves. The Swift One and Istarted to make a scramble for the cliff-top. At sight of us a greatcry went up from the Fire People. This was not caused by me, but by theSwift One. They were chattering excitedly and pointing her out to oneanother. They did not try to shoot her. Not an arrow was discharged.They began calling softly and coaxingly. I stopped and looked down. Shewas afraid, and whimpered and urged me on. So we went up over the topand plunged into the trees.This event has often caused me to wonder and speculate. If she werereally of their kind, she must have been lost from them at a time whenshe was too young to remember, else would she not have been afraid ofthem. On the other hand, it may well have been that while she was theirkind she had never been lost from them; that she had been born in thewild forest far from their haunts, her father maybe a renegade Fire-Man,her mother maybe one of my own kind, one of the Folk. But who shall say?These things are beyond me, and the Swift One knew no more about themthan did I.We lived through a day of terror. Most of the survivors fled toward theblueberry swamp and took refuge in the forest in that neighborhood. Andall day hunting parties of the Fire People ranged the forest, killing uswherever they found us. It must have been a deliberately executed plan.Increasing beyond the limits of their own territory, they had decided onmaking a conquest of ours. Sorry the conquest! We had no chance againstthem. It was slaughter, indiscriminate slaughter, for they spared none,killing old and young, effectively ridding the land of our presence.It was like the end of the world to us. We fled to the trees as a lastrefuge, only to be surrounded and killed, family by family. We saw muchof this during that day, and besides, I wanted to see. The Swift One andI never remained long in one tree, and so escaped being surrounded. Butthere seemed no place to go. The Fire-Men were everywhere, bent on theirtask of extermination. Every way we turned we encountered them, andbecause of this we saw much of their handiwork.I did not see what became of my mother, but I did see the Chatterer shotdown out of the old home-tree. And I am afraid that at the sight I did abit of joyous teetering. Before I leave this portion of my narrative, Imust tell of Red-Eye. He was caught with his wife in a tree down by theblueberry swamp. The Swift One and I stopped long enough in our flightto see. The Fire-Men were too intent upon their work to notice us, and,furthermore, we were well screened by the thicket in which we crouched.Fully a score of the hunters were under the tree, discharging arrowsinto it. They always picked up their arrows when they fell back toearth. I could not see Red-Eye, but I could hear him howling fromsomewhere in the tree.After a short interval his howling grew muffled. He must have crawledinto a hollow in the trunk. But his wife did not win this shelter. Anarrow brought her to the ground. She was severely hurt, for she madeno effort to get away. She crouched in a sheltering way over her baby(which clung tightly to her), and made pleading signs and sounds to theFire-Men. They gathered about her and laughed at her--even as Lop-Earand I had laughed at the old Tree-Man. And even as we had poked him withtwigs and sticks, so did the Fire-Men with Red-Eye's wife. They pokedher with the ends of their bows, and prodded her in the ribs. But shewas poor fun. She would not fight. Nor, for that matter, would she getangry. She continued to crouch over her baby and to plead. One of theFire-Men stepped close to her. In his hand was a club. She saw andunderstood, but she made only the pleading sounds until the blow fell.Red-Eye, in the hollow of the trunk, was safe from their arrows. Theystood together and debated for a while, then one of them climbed intothe tree. What happened up there I could not tell, but I heard him yelland saw the excitement of those that remained beneath. After severalminutes his body crashed down to the ground. He did not move. Theylooked at him and raised his head, but it fell back limply when they letgo. Red-Eye had accounted for himself.They were very angry. There was an opening into the trunk close to theground. They gathered wood and grass and built a fire. The Swift Oneand I, our arms around each other, waited and watched in the thicket.Sometimes they threw upon the fire green branches with many leaves,whereupon the smoke became very thick.We saw them suddenly swerve back from the tree. They were not quickenough. Red-Eye's flying body landed in the midst of them.He was in a frightful rage, smashing about with his long arms right andleft. He pulled the face off one of them, literally pulled it off withthose gnarly fingers of his and those tremendous muscles. He bit anotherthrough the neck. The Fire-Men fell back with wild fierce yells, thenrushed upon him. He managed to get hold of a club and began crushingheads like eggshells. He was too much for them, and they were compelledto fall back again. This was his chance, and he turned his back uponthem and ran for it, still howling wrathfully. A few arrows sped afterhim, but he plunged into a thicket and was gone.The Swift One and I crept quietly away, only to run foul of anotherparty of Fire-Men. They chased us into the blueberry swamp, but we knewthe tree-paths across the farther morasses where they could not followon the ground, and so we escaped. We came out on the other side into anarrow strip of forest that separated the blueberry swamp from the greatswamp that extended westward. Here we met Lop-Ear. How he had escapedI cannot imagine, unless he had not slept the preceding night at thecaves.Here, in the strip of forest, we might have built tree-sheltersand settled down; but the Fire People were performing their work ofextermination thoroughly. In the afternoon, Hair-Face and his wife fledout from among the trees to the east, passed us, and were gone. Theyfled silently and swiftly, with alarm in their faces. In the directionfrom which they had come we heard the cries and yells of the hunters,and the screeching of some one of the Folk. The Fire People had foundtheir way across the swamp.The Swift One, Lop-Ear, and I followed on the heels of Hair-Face and hiswife. When we came to the edge of the great swamp, we stopped. We didnot know its paths. It was outside our territory, and it had been alwaysavoided by the Folk. None had ever gone into it--at least, to return.In our minds it represented mystery and fear, the terrible unknown. AsI say, we stopped at the edge of it. We were afraid. The cries of theFire-Men were drawing nearer. We looked at one another. Hair-Faceran out on the quaking morass and gained the firmer footing of agrass-hummock a dozen yards away. His wife did not follow. She tried to,but shrank back from the treacherous surface and cowered down.The Swift One did not wait for me, nor did she pause till she had passedbeyond Hair-Face a hundred yards and gained a much larger hummock. Bythe time Lop-Ear and I had caught up with her, the Fire-Men appearedamong the trees. Hair-Face's wife, driven by them into panic terror,dashed after us. But she ran blindly, without caution, and broke throughthe crust. We turned and watched, and saw them shoot her with arrows asshe sank down in the mud. The arrows began falling about us. Hair-Facehad now joined us, and the four of us plunged on, we knew not whither,deeper and deeper into the swamp.