L. P. Gratacap

“ The next instant, as if seized with a sudden resolve, he leaped through some juniper bushes and disappeared.
Lhatto and Ogga were alone. Ogga knelt by the woman’s side and took her hands and drew her face and body nearer to his own. “Lagk loves you,” he said.
Lhatto smiled. Who shall measure the subtle sense of joy which comes to a woman, even to a wild emancipated creature like Lhatto, from a man’s admiration! “Perhaps,” answered Lhatto. ”

“ When Ogga opened the door of his tent he could look over the steep land ascending to the glacier, and not infrequently he watched the mastodon moving in small herds, or a few individuals in pairs stirring in dark patches among the low trees and bushes at the sides of rivers; could even see their white tusks reflecting the light from the curved ivory, could even hear their low trumpet calls increasing to brisk short snorts, or the wash of the pond waters as their slouching bodies entered some unfrequented pool to drink or bathe. ”

“ The earth’s orb wheeled on through its incredible pathway in space, which no consecutive movement through ages and ages shall ever yet define or limit, the agencies of nature sprang to their appointed places in the economy of all things growing, moving and acting; the Eternal Law, with executions blind and patient, fulfilled the Great Intention, and then, as it were, the next instant, the Moon sank on the western wave, the Sun swimming upward in the East flooded the expectant earth with light, and Ogga and Lhatto, awaking, saw the figure of a man standing motionless on the brink of the river. ”

“ It was before a creature of this sort, gigantic, grotesque, decadent and foreign, that Ogga stared with all his eyes, thinking to please Lhatto by bringing back to her some trophy from its body. The strange beast continued its prolonged feeding and Ogga watched. The night, darkening the valley with blue shadows, that sensibly thickened, overtaking each other and pressing like a repulsing force the fleeing lights, rising upward on the mountain, soon hid the animal, and with the night came rain and a low wind raising innumerable voices in the great woods. ”

“ Lagk hastily abandoned Lhatto. He too knew the crisis was reached, and his old resentment against Ogga flamed up; expiation was at hand, or else—that silence that he had sometimes seen amongst his own people in the canyon. His mind worked quickly, and as he retreated, backing out over the level floor of rock, he bethought himself of his resources. He knew Ogga’s strength, his size and agility. He was himself strong, but he felt a safety in craft, and the implement of his cunning was the lasso, that had so often caught and tamed the wild horses. ”

“ In Lhatto and in Ogga such an image and glory was realized, and its power, its attractiveness, was felt by Lagk; he yielded to it as a bird yields to the call of music, as flowers yield to the summons of the sun, as rivers yield to the encompassing embrace of the ocean, as all things incomplete and yearning yield to the complementary that makes them full and complete, adequate and strong. ”

“ But when the Fire-Breather up high (the Sun) sent its arrows on the ocean, the Great Water Spirit went up again in the air and made the clouds, and when it saw the holes and murmuring and spouting places dry, it cried again, and the tears kept its children—for these were its children—alive. And all water runs to the ocean and the ocean is the grave and the cradle too of the Great Water Spirit.
“The tears of the Great Water Spirit are the rain. When the Water Spirit is glad there is no rain, and when the Water Spirit is not glad there is rain. ”

“ The lonely woman, emblem and promise, stood a long time on that untenanted shore looking outward, the encroaching tide slowly encircling her feet with wavelets, while each advancing ripple bearing some bubble of foam bound her ankles with a ring of airy beads.
Before the ocean, whether in calm or in storm, youth feels the power of its silence and its immensity. The wind that moved over its passionless face when still, the wind that carries hurricanes over the same ocean when convulsed and dangerous, solicit the recreant passions of youth, aimless, boundless, and unfulfilled. ”

“ It was Lhatto, looking still with the tenderness of sympathy upon the sufferings of Ogga, his own eyes growing brighter in the supervening moments of restoration, who spoke, and her voice came as a whisper, the inarticulate breath of death.
“Ogga, we go to the Ice Spirit. We go together. The Fire-Spirit kills us. But there is no more hurt now. We are happy.” The voice was still. And Ogga, denied of the last lingering impulses of effort and recovery, yet by some interior remnant of volition, leaned forward upon Lhatto. ”

“ But Ogga had no intention of recovering the cat’s skin. His way, as the waning day shot red streaks into the sky, and the northern lights, with phosphorescent palpitation, rose above Zit, lay across the plain more to the west, bringing him finally much below the lake, and the cedar wood which he had traversed in the morning. He was advancing to the shore.
As the stars lit the immensity of the black zenith, the Man had reached the shelter of a huge erratic of such proportions and posture that, tilted over on one side, it formed a sort of leanto. Here he rested, casting down the ivory tusks. ”

“ They lead us only into a new zone of imaginative work, and we are bidden to weave fabrics of design which carry on them the pictures of a lost past, when strange creatures, long extinct, were known to men, themselves extinct, when a strange epoch was placing its landmarks over a world, upon which the dawn of Mind had opened, when the Prehistoric somehow extricated from an inheritance of claws and hair and carnivorous ferocity, felt the mystery of the earth, looked with question upon the unrolled skies, and began the long drama of human love and hate. ”

“ Lagk had hurried up the valley where Ogga had found the sloth, and the pale topped mountains rose, as he advanced, into flinty pinnacles, gray and spectral, in the summer sun. They rose as the valley widened, their bared heads destitute of covering, sending into the broad zenith the half-visible rays of the reflected heat and light. They thrust out wide shoulders, the shadows resting in the cold remoteness of their elevations, revealing cliffs and recesses, ragged gorges and wandering seams of dislocation. ”

“ A beetling wedge of ice formed its apex. Beneath this impending block and straight against a shelf of ice at its base, the exile had drifted. The dug-out struck the ice-cake sharply and Lhatto was thrown forward upon the prow of the small boat. Her fall was fortunate. The next instant, long enough for the slight concussion to be communicated to the toppling summit, the great mass fell, splintering like some colossal Rupert’s bubble into myriads of fragments, indenting the water with a deep concavity upon whose depression the refluent waves rolled in deafening disorder. ”

“ And then by the dear subtlety of all things great and good, with passion came also, with unhesitating foot, reverence and happiness and aspiration, and Love thus born made of Ogga a divine thing, and of Lhatto, yet unwaking, yet unknown, a woman drifting ashore in a little awkward boat from the irresolute sea, it made of her a wonder of life, full of affluent loveliness, full of assured excellence, full of peace, and Ogga, feeling all these things, knelt and touched the hand of the sleeping girl. ”

“ Ogga said—“It is best,” and they left the hateful spot, where the processes of death had worked so triumphantly. The fecundity of life and the powers of destruction move with even foot, and in the necessary and remorseless balance of life and death, Nature involves no blame for her equanimity, for in the eternity of her design, all incidents of joy or woe are equally invisible and unimportant.
Observations on the heartlessness of nature were certainly not made by Ogga and Lhatto, whatever indefinite mutiny the woman’s heart of the latter may have felt against it. ”

“ On one side of the broad depression, filled to its farthest marge with intermittent forest-land, broad backs of alluvial sand, and seamed with sparkling rivers, rise the myriad summits of a long range of mountains torn by time and deeply bitten into picturesque contrasts of ravine, gorge, canyon, buttes and facetted pinnacles of stone. Far over the wide valley, scarcely seen, but still like a shadow upon the horizon, is the western limit of this quarternary basin, another line of hills, less wonderful, younger, and rather monotonously low. ”

“ With the last pathetic impulse of unbearable panic, they plunged by thousands into the insatiable lake of mud and water, its extent now swollen beyond all limits by the avalanches pouring in on every side. They were ingulfed almost as soon as they entered this inland sea, and as the lightning flung its quick and keen glances into the valley, the awful horror of the scene, converted into a saturnalia of animal carnage, made Ogga and Lhatto shudder with a horrible surprise. ”

“ The open forest, the glades, the timbered uplands, the valley levels, defile and peak, lakes set like sapphires within beryl rims of trees, rushing torrents carrying in their waters the tint of the washed woods, and holding in their mirrowy pools the cold and painted trout, the cliff side from whose prominence the world seemed suddenly displayed, or the climbing pinnacle whence even the blue ocean like a dream swam upon their vision, still tireless in its endless task of renewing and destroying continents, and still, with the witchery of its deathless charm, calling men to its pale lips. ”

“ Lhatto threw her food basket and harpoon into the boat and then unwrapping the little bundle of clothes took out a pair of skin breeches, a soft fabric shirt, and a seal-skin blouse or jacket. She unloosened the fox skin apron about her loins. It dropped to the ground, and the nude Eurydice, save for the glittering anklets and wristlets and necklace, for an instant saw her beauty in the still encroaching waters that may even have hastened their tardier approach to indulge in the shadowy carresses of her reflection. ”

“ Then, as if it felt the assurance of an improving destiny, woods rose over ranges of increasing altitude, rivers swept in circling glory through narrow and alluvial valleys, and groves of great trees clustered over mountain terraces, defiled in green seas of leafy glory to the lowlands, where the rhythm of verdurous beauty was resumed in more open country, the reincarnated spirit of Nature loosened its power upon a coast line, washed by the restless ocean. ”

“ The ashen cloud rose up, densely straight at first, and encountering some upper current, was spread out in dark layers, which, expanded by rapid propulsion, descending and ascending, blurred and enveloped the ice region, and whirled outward began to rain an impalpable dirt about Ogga and Lhatto. As if, with repeated strokes upon its prison doors, the enclosed fires of the earth struggled outwards, the shocks continued, the waves rolled far up on the land. ”

“ They rose instantly, their eyes filled with that light that in the savage, as in the modern, does most certainly send its throbbing fires of passion and yearning and rapture into those strange organs from whose windows man’s soul looks out upon the world.
Lagk seemed almost unconcerned. He motioned to Ogga to follow him. The two went out through the junipers, that sprang back again, and Lhatto was left alone. Lagk led Ogga through some scattered woods and brought him out upon a higher upland sparsely clothed in grass. There the two men became engaged in earnest talk. ”

“ Strength came to his arms. He hurled the smarting, almost senseless Ogga this way and that; each fall of the staggering victim elicited new shouts of triumph. He waved his arms, his lips spat upon the prostrate hunter, whom at length he drew to himself, to the cliff’s edge, and he watched the bleeding body, the matted hair, the rolling eyes, the mouth discolored and thick with gore. Ogga was vanquished. Lagk possessed the earth and Lhatto! The Woman of the Ice Age was his! ”