Chapter XVIII

by Jack London

　　Of our wanderings in the great swamp I have no clear knowledge. When Istrive to remember, I have a riot of unrelated impressions and a loss oftime-value. I have no idea of how long we were in that vast everglade,but it must have been for weeks. My memories of what occurred invariablytake the form of nightmare. For untold ages, oppressed by protean fear,I am aware of wandering, endlessly wandering, through a dank and soggywilderness, where poisonous snakes struck at us, and animals roaredaround us, and the mud quaked under us and sucked at our heels.I know that we were turned from our course countless times by streamsand lakes and slimy seas. Then there were storms and risings of thewater over great areas of the low-lying lands; and there were periods ofhunger and misery when we were kept prisoners in the trees for days anddays by these transient floods.Very strong upon me is one picture. Large trees are about us, and fromtheir branches hang gray filaments of moss, while great creepers, likemonstrous serpents, curl around the trunks and writhe in tangles throughthe air. And all about is the mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth gases,and that heaves and sighs with internal agitations. And in the midst ofall this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our bones showthrough our tight-stretched skins. We do not sing and chatter and laugh.We play no pranks. For once our volatile and exuberant spirits arehopelessly subdued. We make plaintive, querulous noises, look at oneanother, and cluster close together. It is like the meeting of thehandful of survivors after the day of the end of the world.This event is without connection with the other events in the swamp.How we ever managed to cross it, I do not know, but at last we came outwhere a low range of hills ran down to the bank of the river. It was ourriver emerging like ourselves from the great swamp. On the south bank,where the river had broken its way through the hills, we found manysand-stone caves. Beyond, toward the west, the ocean boomed on the barthat lay across the river's mouth. And here, in the caves, we settleddown in our abiding-place by the sea.There were not many of us. From time to time, as the days went by, moreof the Folk appeared. They dragged themselves from the swamp singly, andin twos and threes, more dead than alive, mere perambulating skeletons,until at last there were thirty of us. Then no more came from the swamp,and Red-Eye was not among us. It was noticeable that no children hadsurvived the frightful journey.I shall not tell in detail of the years we lived by the sea. It wasnot a happy abiding-place. The air was raw and chill, and we sufferedcontinually from coughing and colds. We could not survive in such anenvironment. True, we had children; but they had little hold on lifeand died early, while we died faster than new ones were born. Our numbersteadily diminished.Then the radical change in our diet was not good for us. We got fewvegetables and fruits, and became fish-eaters. There were mussels andabalones and clams and rock-oysters, and great ocean-crabs that werethrown upon the beaches in stormy weather. Also, we found several kindsof seaweed that were good to eat. But the change in diet caused usstomach troubles, and none of us ever waxed fat. We were all lean anddyspeptic-looking. It was in getting the big abalones that Lop-Ear waslost. One of them closed upon his fingers at low-tide, and then theflood-tide came in and drowned him. We found his body the next day,and it was a lesson to us. Not another one of us was ever caught in theclosing shell of an abalone.The Swift One and I managed to bring up one child, a boy--at least wemanaged to bring him along for several years. But I am quite confidenthe could never have survived that terrible climate. And then, one day,the Fire People appeared again. They had come down the river, not on acatamaran, but in a rude dug-out. There were three of them that paddledin it, and one of them was the little wizened old hunter. They landed onour beach, and he limped across the sand and examined our caves.They went away in a few minutes, but the Swift One was badly scared.We were all frightened, but none of us to the extent that she was. Shewhimpered and cried and was restless all that night. In the morning shetook the child in her arms, and by sharp cries, gestures, and example,started me on our second long flight. There were eight of the Folk (allthat was left of the horde) that remained behind in the caves. There wasno hope for them. Without doubt, even if the Fire People did not return,they must soon have perished. It was a bad climate down there by thesea. The Folk were not constituted for the coast-dwelling life.We travelled south, for days skirting the great swamp but neverventuring into it. Once we broke back to the westward, crossing a rangeof mountains and coming down to the coast. But it was no place for us.There were no trees--only bleak headlands, a thundering surf, and strongwinds that seemed never to cease from blowing. We turned back across themountains, travelling east and south, until we came in touch with thegreat swamp again.Soon we gained the southern extremity of the swamp, and we continued ourcourse south and east. It was a pleasant land. The air was warm, and wewere again in the forest. Later on we crossed a low-lying range of hillsand found ourselves in an even better forest country. The farther wepenetrated from the coast the warmer we found it, and we went on and onuntil we came to a large river that seemed familiar to the Swift One.It was where she must have come during the four years' absence fromthe horde. This river we crossed on logs, landing on side at the largebluff. High up on the bluff we found our new home most difficult ofaccess and quite hidden from any eye beneath.There is little more of my tale to tell. Here the Swift One and I livedand reared our family. And here my memories end. We never made anothermigration. I never dream beyond our high, inaccessible cave. And heremust have been born the child that inherited the stuff of my dreams,that had moulded into its being all the impressions of my life--or ofthe life of Big-Tooth, rather, who is my other-self, and not my realself, but who is so real to me that often I am unable to tell what age Iam living in.I often wonder about this line of descent. I, the modern, amincontestably a man; yet I, Big-Tooth, the primitive, am not a man.Somewhere, and by straight line of descent, these two parties to my dualpersonality were connected. Were the Folk, before their destruction,in the process of becoming men? And did I and mine carry through thisprocess? On the other hand, may not some descendant of mine have gonein to the Fire People and become one of them? I do not know. There is noway of learning. One thing only is certain, and that is that Big-Toothdid stamp into the cerebral constitution of one of his progeny all theimpressions of his life, and stamped them in so indelibly that the hostsof intervening generations have failed to obliterate them.There is one other thing of which I must speak before I close. It is adream that I dream often, and in point of time the real event must haveoccurred during the period of my living in the high, inaccessible cave.I remember that I wandered far in the forest toward the east. There Icame upon a tribe of Tree People. I crouched in a thicket and watchedthem at play. They were holding a laughing council, jumping up and downand screeching rude choruses.Suddenly they hushed their noise and ceased their capering. They shrankdown in fear, and quested anxiously about with their eyes for a way ofretreat. Then Red-Eye walked in among them. They cowered away from him.All were frightened. But he made no attempt to hurt them. He was oneof them. At his heels, on stringy bended legs, supporting herself withknuckles to the ground on either side, walked an old female of the TreePeople, his latest wife. He sat down in the midst of the circle. I cansee him now, as I write this, scowling, his eyes inflamed, as he peersabout him at the circle of the Tree People. And as he peers he crooksone monstrous leg and with his gnarly toes scratches himself on thestomach. He is Red-Eye, the atavism.