It was the fall of the year when Lop-Ear and I returned from our long adventure-journey, and the winter that followed was mild. I made frequent trips to the neighborhood of my old home-tree, and frequently I searched the whole territory that lay between the blueberry swamp and the mouth of the slough2 where Lop-Ear and I had learned navigation, but no clew could I get of the Swift One. She had disappeared. And I wanted her. I was impelled3 by that hunger which I have mentioned, and which was akin4 to physical hunger, albeit5 it came often upon me when my stomach was full. But all my search was vain.
Life was not monotonous6 at the caves, however. There was Red-Eye to be considered. Lop-Ear and I never knew a moment’s peace except when we were in our own little cave. In spite of the enlargement of the entrance we had made, it was still a tight squeeze for us to get in. And though from time to time we continued to enlarge, it was still too small for Red-Eye’s monstrous7 body. But he never stormed our cave again. He had learned the lesson well, and he carried on his neck a bulging8 lump to show where I had hit him with the rock. This lump never went away, and it was prominent enough to be seen at a distance. I often took great delight in watching that evidence of my handiwork; and sometimes, when I was myself assuredly safe, the sight of it caused me to laugh.
While the other Folk would not have come to our rescue had Red-Eye proceeded to tear Lop-Ear and me to pieces before their eyes, nevertheless they sympathized with us. Possibly it was not sympathy but the way they expressed their hatred9 for Red-Eye; at any rate they always warned us of his approach. Whether in the forest, at the drinking-places, or in the open space before the caves, they were always quick to warn us. Thus we had the advantage of many eyes in our feud10 with Red-Eye, the atavism.
Once he nearly got me. It was early in the morning, and the Folk were not yet up. The surprise was complete. I was cut off from the way up the cliff to my cave. Before I knew it I had dashed into the double-cave,—the cave where Lop-Ear had first eluded11 me long years before, and where old Saber-Tooth had come to discomfiture12 when he pursued the two Folk. By the time I had got through the connecting passage between the two caves, I discovered that Red-Eye was not following me. The next moment he charged into the cave from the outside. I slipped back through the passage, and he charged out and around and in upon me again. I merely repeated my performance of slipping through the passage.
He kept me there half a day before he gave up. After that, when Lop-Ear and I were reasonably sure of gaining the double-cave, we did not retreat up the cliff to our own cave when Red-Eye came upon the scene. All we did was to keep an eye on him and see that he did not cut across our line of retreat.
It was during this winter that Red-Eye killed his latest wife with abuse and repeated beatings. I have called him an atavism, but in this he was worse than an atavism, for the males of the lower animals do not maltreat and murder their mates. In this I take it that Red-Eye, in spite of his tremendous atavistic tendencies, foreshadowed the coming of man, for it is the males of the human species only that murder their mates.
As was to be expected, with the doing away of one wife Red-Eye proceeded to get another. He decided13 upon the Singing One. She was the granddaughter of old Marrow-Bone, and the daughter of the Hairless One. She was a young thing, greatly given to singing at the mouth of her cave in the twilight14, and she had but recently mated with Crooked-Leg. He was a quiet individual, molesting15 no one and not given to bickering16 with his fellows. He was no fighter anyway. He was small and lean, and not so active on his legs as the rest of us.
Red-Eye never committed a more outrageous17 deed. It was in the quiet at the end of the day, when we began to congregate18 in the open space before climbing into our caves. Suddenly the Singing One dashed up a run-way from a drinking-place, pursued by Red-Eye. She ran to her husband. Poor little Crooked-Leg was terribly scared. But he was a hero. He knew that death was upon him, yet he did not run away. He stood up, and chattered20, bristled21, and showed his teeth.
Red-Eye roared with rage. It was an offence to him that any of the Folk should dare to withstand him. His hand shot out and clutched Crooked-Leg by the neck. The latter sank his teeth into Red-Eye’s arm; but the next moment, with a broken neck, Crooked-Leg was floundering and squirming on the ground. The Singing One screeched22 and gibbered. Red-Eye seized her by the hair of her head and dragged her toward his cave. He handled her roughly when the climb began, and he dragged and hauled her up into the cave.
We were very angry, insanely, vociferously23 angry. Beating our chests, bristling24, and gnashing our teeth, we gathered together in our rage. We felt the prod25 of gregarious26 instinct, the drawing together as though for united action, the impulse toward cooperation. In dim ways this need for united action was impressed upon us. But there was no way to achieve it because there was no way to express it. We did not turn to, all of us, and destroy Red-Eye, because we lacked a vocabulary. We were vaguely27 thinking thoughts for which there were no thought-symbols. These thought-symbols were yet to be slowly and painfully invented.
We tried to freight sound with the vague thoughts that flitted like shadows through our consciousness. The Hairless One began to chatter19 loudly. By his noises he expressed anger against Red-Eye and desire to hurt Red-Eye. Thus far he got, and thus far we understood. But when he tried to express the cooperative impulse that stirred within him, his noises became gibberish. Then Big-Face, with brow-bristling and chest-pounding, began to chatter. One after another of us joined in the orgy of rage, until even old Marrow-Bone was mumbling28 and spluttering with his cracked voice and withered29 lips. Some one seized a stick and began pounding a log. In a moment he had struck a rhythm. Unconsciously, our yells and exclamations30 yielded to this rhythm. It had a soothing31 effect upon us; and before we knew it, our rage forgotten, we were in the full swing of a hee-hee council.
These hee-hee councils splendidly illustrate32 the inconsecutiveness and inconsequentiality of the Folk. Here were we, drawn33 together by mutual34 rage and the impulse toward cooperation, led off into forgetfulness by the establishment of a rude rhythm. We were sociable35 and gregarious, and these singing and laughing councils satisfied us. In ways the hee-hee council was an adumbration36 of the councils of primitive37 man, and of the great national assemblies and international conventions of latter-day man. But we Folk of the Younger World lacked speech, and whenever we were so drawn together we precipitated38 babel, out of which arose a unanimity39 of rhythm that contained within itself the essentials of art yet to come. It was art nascent40.
There was nothing long-continued about these rhythms that we struck. A rhythm was soon lost, and pandemonium41 reigned42 until we could find the rhythm again or start a new one. Sometimes half a dozen rhythms would be swinging simultaneously43, each rhythm backed by a group that strove ardently44 to drown out the other rhythms.
In the intervals45 of pandemonium, each chattered, cut up, hooted46, screeched, and danced, himself sufficient unto himself, filled with his own ideas and volitions to the exclusion47 of all others, a veritable centre of the universe, divorced for the time being from any unanimity with the other universe-centres leaping and yelling around him. Then would come the rhythm—a clapping of hands; the beating of a stick upon a log; the example of one that leaped with repetitions; or the chanting of one that uttered, explosively and regularly, with inflection that rose and fell, “A-bang, a-bang! A-bang, a-bang!” One after another of the self-centred Folk would yield to it, and soon all would be dancing or chanting in chorus. “Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah-ha!” was one of our favorite choruses, and another was, “Eh-wah, eh-wah, eh-wah-hah!”
And so, with mad antics, leaping, reeling, and over-balancing, we danced and sang in the sombre twilight of the primeval world, inducing forgetfulness, achieving unanimity, and working ourselves up into sensuous48 frenzy49. And so it was that our rage against Red-Eye was soothed50 away by art, and we screamed the wild choruses of the hee-hee council until the night warned us of its terrors, and we crept away to our holes in the rocks, calling softly to one another, while the stars came out and darkness settled down.
We were afraid only of the dark. We had no germs of religion, no conceptions of an unseen world. We knew only the real world, and the things we feared were the real things, the concrete dangers, the flesh-and-blood animals that preyed51. It was they that made us afraid of the dark, for darkness was the time of the hunting animals. It was then that they came out of their lairs52 and pounced53 upon one from the dark wherein they lurked54 invisible.
Possibly it was out of this fear of the real denizens55 of the dark that the fear of the unreal denizens was later to develop and to culminate56 in a whole and mighty57 unseen world. As imagination grew it is likely that the fear of death increased until the Folk that were to come projected this fear into the dark and peopled it with spirits. I think the Fire People had already begun to be afraid of the dark in this fashion; but the reasons we Folk had for breaking up our hee-hee councils and fleeing to our holes were old Saber-Tooth, the lions and the jackals, the wild dogs and the wolves, and all the hungry, meat-eating breeds.
点击收听单词发音
1 gourds | |
n.葫芦( gourd的名词复数 ) | |
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2 slough | |
v.蜕皮,脱落,抛弃 | |
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3 impelled | |
v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4 akin | |
adj.同族的,类似的 | |
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5 albeit | |
conj.即使;纵使;虽然 | |
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6 monotonous | |
adj.单调的,一成不变的,使人厌倦的 | |
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7 monstrous | |
adj.巨大的;恐怖的;可耻的,丢脸的 | |
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8 bulging | |
膨胀; 凸出(部); 打气; 折皱 | |
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9 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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10 feud | |
n.长期不和;世仇;v.长期争斗;世代结仇 | |
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11 eluded | |
v.(尤指机敏地)避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 );逃避;躲避;使达不到 | |
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12 discomfiture | |
n.崩溃;大败;挫败;困惑 | |
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13 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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14 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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15 molesting | |
v.骚扰( molest的现在分词 );干扰;调戏;猥亵 | |
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16 bickering | |
v.争吵( bicker的现在分词 );口角;(水等)作潺潺声;闪烁 | |
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17 outrageous | |
adj.无理的,令人不能容忍的 | |
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18 congregate | |
v.(使)集合,聚集 | |
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19 chatter | |
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战 | |
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20 chattered | |
(人)喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 ); 唠叨; (牙齿)打战; (机器)震颤 | |
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21 bristled | |
adj. 直立的,多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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22 screeched | |
v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 );发出粗而刺耳的声音;高叫 | |
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23 vociferously | |
adv.喊叫地,吵闹地 | |
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24 bristling | |
a.竖立的 | |
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25 prod | |
vt.戳,刺;刺激,激励 | |
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26 gregarious | |
adj.群居的,喜好群居的 | |
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27 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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28 mumbling | |
含糊地说某事,叽咕,咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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29 withered | |
adj. 枯萎的,干瘪的,(人身体的部分器官)因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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30 exclamations | |
n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 );感叹;感叹语;感叹词 | |
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31 soothing | |
adj.慰藉的;使人宽心的;镇静的 | |
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32 illustrate | |
v.举例说明,阐明;图解,加插图 | |
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33 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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34 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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35 sociable | |
adj.好交际的,友好的,合群的 | |
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36 adumbration | |
n.预示,预兆 | |
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37 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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38 precipitated | |
v.(突如其来地)使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 );促成;猛然摔下;使沉淀 | |
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39 unanimity | |
n.全体一致,一致同意 | |
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40 nascent | |
adj.初生的,发生中的 | |
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41 pandemonium | |
n.喧嚣,大混乱 | |
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42 reigned | |
vi.当政,统治(reign的过去式形式) | |
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43 simultaneously | |
adv.同时发生地,同时进行地 | |
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44 ardently | |
adv.热心地,热烈地 | |
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45 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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46 hooted | |
(使)作汽笛声响,作汽车喇叭声( hoot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47 exclusion | |
n.拒绝,排除,排斥,远足,远途旅行 | |
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48 sensuous | |
adj.激发美感的;感官的,感觉上的 | |
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49 frenzy | |
n.疯狂,狂热,极度的激动 | |
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50 soothed | |
v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 );抚慰;使舒服;减轻痛苦 | |
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51 preyed | |
v.掠食( prey的过去式和过去分词 );掠食;折磨;(人)靠欺诈为生 | |
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52 lairs | |
n.(野兽的)巢穴,窝( lair的名词复数 );(人的)藏身处 | |
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53 pounced | |
v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 );猛扑;一眼看出;抓住机会(进行抨击) | |
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54 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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55 denizens | |
n.居民,住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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56 culminate | |
v.到绝顶,达于极点,达到高潮 | |
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57 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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