To some comes clearness of vision, of memory. Shall I say I have dreamed? No, for they were not dreams, the glimpses I had of Eternity.
For Eternity I have seen, the Ages of long ago and the future Ages. For as sure as I have lived before and as sure as I shall live again, I have drawn back the veil of Time and gazed clear-eyed into the Centuries. Glimpses I had in my youth, in child-hood, in infancy. Fleet snatches I caught, in dreams, in the Mystic Bowl of the Orient, in the Crystal.
But in manhood my clearest sight was reached, in manhood, when I purchased, for ten times its weight in gold, the Mystic Plant of the Orient.
In the waste place of the Orient it grows scantily, and from a wandering Hindu faquir I purchased a small quantity.
“Taduka,” I shall call it, although it is not Taduka nor is it anything known to or by, white men.
It is not an opiate, nor is its effect harmful in the least. It is to be smoked and when smoked, the world of today fades from about me and I travel back into the Ages or forward into the Future. Years, space, distance, time, are nothing. I have covered a million miles with the speed of light and a thousand years in as many seconds.
I have traversed empty space, from world to world. I have passed from Age to Age.
I have lived Centuries and Centuries on Centuries.
Sights I have seen and leagues on leagues have I traversed, in seconds time, for the effects of Taduka does not last many minutes, an hour at the utmost. A boon to humanity it would be, greater than the greatest inventions, greater than the written annals of history, and withal, absolutely harmless. Indeed, beneficient is Taduka.
So I have lived again the by-gone Ages of other lands.
And so it is that I, Stephen Hegen, knowing that the average human mind does not believe what it cannot conceive, and knowing that the conception of Mystery lies beyond the average human mind, yet I set down these, shall I call them adventures ? of mine.
I was a man in the Younger World. I lived in the trees and my only clothing was the thick, shaggy hair that grew on my body. I was not a large man but I was terrificly powerful.
I travelled through the trees, leaping and swinging from bough to bough like any ape.
I lived on fruit and nuts and such birds as I could snare and I crept, silently and fearful, to the river for water, glancing swiftly from side to side, ready to flee.
I was Swift-Foot the Tree-man, in those early days and my name did not lie. Swift of foot, men had to be in those days. Many a time have I footed it to the trees or the cliffs with the Mighty One, the lion, or old saber-tooth, the tiger, bounding behind me, shaking the earth with roars.
Once among the trees, nothing could catch me, not even the leopard nor the Hairy Fierce One, the ape.
The Hairy People, we called them, we of the Trees, for they were but savage apes. Powerful they were, and terrible, and possessed of a nasty temper. We of the trees were much higher in the scale of evolution. We had a sense of humor, childish and grotesque, I grant you, yet still, a sense of humor. The Hairy People had no sense of humor, and since they were morose and savage and of a hermit nature, we of the Trees let them alone.
Mighty fighters they were; a full grown male of the Hairy People was ten times as strong as a man of today, and nearly twice as strong as a man of the Trees.
If they had had union, they might have wiped out the Tree People, but when they came to steal the women of the Tree People, as they sometimes did, they came singly or only in twos and threes.
We of the Trees had feuds and fights with one another but we always united against a common enemy. And not one or three or ten Hairy Men could overcome the whole tribe of Tree People.
When a Tree Man was matched singly a Hairy Man, the Hairy Man almost invaribly came off victor.
Yet when a savage and powerful Hairy Man sought to carry off a girl of the Tree People whom I desired for a mate, I proved I was strong of arm as well as swift of foot.
For I saw red rage and there in the swaying tree-tops, a hundred feet from the ground, we fought, hand to hand, the Hairy Man and I, and bare-handed and unaided I slew him, there in tree-tops, when the world was young.
I was a slave in Egypt when Menes built the first pyramid. By day I toiled unceasingly with thousands of other slaves, working on the erection of the pyramids and at night I shared a squalid mud hut with other slaves.
I was tall and fair skinned and fair haired. One of the tribe of fair haired people who lived in caves on the coast of the Mediterranean. The ancestors of the Berbers of today.
I toiled without pause or rest and many a time I felt the slave-driver’s lash, until I remembered that I had been a chief in mine own land. Then, laying hands on the slave-driver, I slew him and broke away, regaining my freedom with one bold stroke.
To Ethiopia I fled, and there I became a chief of fighting men. From power to power I rose, until the Karoon, the king of Ethiopia, jealous of my rising power, sought my life.
Again I fled, across the desert, until I came to a tribe of black men.
Fierce fighters they were, and they took me into their tribe. I led them to victory against other tribes and I was made a chief among them.
When we had conquered the tribes’ enemies, I led an army of some two thousand out of the jungle, across the desert and into Ethiopia.
The black tribesmen were spearmen. They knew nothing of the bow and the Ethiopians were all skilled archers, and they greatly outnumbered us. But I led them skillfully and we fell upon the Ethiopians, surprizing them and closing in so swiftly that they had scant time to use their bows. In hand-to-hand fighting the Ethiopians could not stand before the fierce speamen and they broke and fled.
The Karoon, the king of Ethiopia, was slain in battle and I put myself on the Ethiopian throne.
Ethiopia became powerful under my rule and the Egyptians were forced to double their frontier armies.
I trained the armies of Ethiopia and I invaded Egypt. The Egyptian armies were hurled back and the Egyptian cities fell before the onslaught of my Ethiopian bowmen and savage black spearmen.
I conquered Egypt and for a time I reigned on the throne of the nation in which I had been a slave.
But the Egyptians rose against me and I was forced to flee to Ethiopia.
But no Egyptian army ever successfully invaded Ethiopia during my reign and I was content with the kingdom of Ethiopia for I made it into a mighty nation, supreme in that part of Africa.
I was a Pict and my name was Merak. I was a wiry man of medium height, with very black hair and very black eyes.
My tribe lived in wattle huts on the east coast of Britain. It was not known as Britain then, for the Brythons had not yet given the island its name.
My people were artizans, then, not warriors. We hunted a little and tilled the soil and were a peaceful people.
I sat before the door of my hut, fashioning a spear of bronze.
Before the Gaelic invasion, the Picts made their weapons and implements of skillfully fashioned flint and obsidian and jade.
But the first Celts had come from Hibernia and had settled in Britain, bringing with them the first metal ever seen by the Picts of the island. The Gaels had not conquered Britain entirely, by any means, nor did they ever entirel subjugate the Picts.
We were artizans and we were not warriors but we were cunning and skilled in crafts of many kinds.
As I fashioned the spear I glanced up, to see Mea-lah, the daughter of one of the chief’s councilors, passing.
I was aware of large, dark, beautiful eyes gazing into mine. Just an instant and then the girl had walked on.
I watched her, a vague yearning filling my soul.
Mea-lah’s eyes were very beautiful, her skin was as softly white as snow. Her soft, dark hair rippled down over her slim, snowy shoulders. She tripped lightly along on dainty feet that seemed scarcely to touch the ground.