At sight of him and his capture Flint uttered a cry of wonder. He grunted and went into his squat, ignoring her. He was suddenly hungry. The hind, driven no longer, sank to the ground; the fawn began vigorously sucking. Flint, approaching her boldly, but careful to keep beyond reach of her jaws, stroked her steaming flanks. The hind turned her great violet eyes towards the woman, and it may be that the relief she felt, the comfort of having the milk drawn from her distended udder, became thereupon associated with the presence of Flint, who from that moment was no stranger to her. And presently Hawkon came out. He had found his meat and eaten of it, and only a sudden fear lest the hind should escape prevented his immediately sinking into sleep. Seeing Flint he was surprised. He had forgotten her. He became pleased with her and proud of his exploit.
‘Hawkon is a great hunter,’ said Flint.
Hawkon waxed talkative and began to tell her how it had all happened. ‘And now,’ he finished,’ we shall have milk.’ He drove the fawn away and tried to put himself in its place, receiving a kick in the face for his pains. He returned the kick with extreme violence. Flint soothed him.
‘Tomorrow,’ she assured him, ‘we shall take milk from this beast.’
‘And that one,’ said he, pointing to the fawn, ‘I shall eat. You shall have some too, because you are my woman.’ Then he told her the tale all over again. ‘We shall have milk,’ he pointed out, recalling attention to his idea. ‘I am clever and strong.’
Flint was all admiration. ‘You are great and very clever,’ she said. And paused a long while before adding: ‘We must tie the beast, lest it escape us in the night.’ She did not tell him what was also in her mind: that the fawn must not be killed tomorrow.
The talk turned on ways and means.
CHAPTER 7
OF A WOMAN AND A WEDDING, AND HOW OGO DROPPED HIS AXE
Bikkoo paddled his boat downstream, and Ogo sat marvelling. So easy was their motion, so intimate their conjunction with the river, that it seemed sometimes as if they were at rest, with the forest on both sides flowing past them. At other times the winding river was a snake on whose back they rode into the unknown. The demons of the forest were now, thought Ogo, held in check; and it comforted him to be moving away from the one among them that he most feared, that of his slain enemy, whose face and staring eyes were more livid and vivid in retrospect than he had seen them in fact, and from whose mouth still protruded his peace-offering. Was the demon of the dead man placated? Was the offering accepted? Had the prayers availed? Lacking a sign, he could not answer these terrifying questions; and there was nothing for it but to yield himself humbly into the river’s keeping, and with new prayers invoke the spirit of the river, that it might hide and protect him from the encompassing darkness. ‘You are a kind river,’ he said. So he believed, and was resolved to believe. ‘You are kind. You are mighty. You are very big. You will keep Ogo safe and not let them hurt him. I am Ogo and I will be your man. You are kind. You are big. I will be good and speak well of you wherever I go.’ The spirit of the river made no audible response, but Ogo felt fortified by his prayers, and the fears of the night dwindled away. The wash of the cleft water soothed him, and the soft sheen pouring from the sky coloured his thoughts, till, with tiredness aiding, they became dreams.
Morning came like an answer to his prayers, bringing him sight of a new world and a world of new wonder, the sea. He saw it in the near distance; at first, as his gaze followed the direction of Bikkoo’s pointing finger, not to be distinguished from the red sky. He could not believe it to be water, but when, both having abandoned the boat, his companion led him to a high ground from which a vast horizon was visible, disbelief could not restrain his chattering excitement. Of fear now he knew nothing, for the pleasure that filled him was the pleasure of reassurance. The sky was kind; the forest at his back was friendly; and this new monster, the sea, was a good monster, quiet and well disposed to him. All this he believed to be sober truth. For him the world was personaclass="underline" it was indeed a multitude of persons, who stood always in a perfectly definite relation to himself. Sometimes they were angry with him. The wind would screech, the trees would shake in their wrath, and the sky become black with fury; and it was this malice in the storm, rather than its destructiveness, that made storms terrible. Sometimes the sky was sulky and out of humour, sometimes playful, sometimes sleepily content and forgetful of him; for he had as many moods, this changing sky, as any other god or man. But now, visibly and obviously, he was smiling; the sleek sea was smiling too; small freshets of wind hurried to and fro over the ground smelling the dewy fragrance of the grass; and the forest (when Ogo looked back at it) trembled with pleasure in its own greenness. Ogo grinned greeting at everything he saw, feeling himself to be surrounded by a vast friendliness. Bikkoo seemed to share his pleasure, though not his surprise. Ogo’s surprise, indeed, was largely the cause of Bikkoo’s high spirits. The little man pointed proudly to the sea, as though he had made it himself. As he did so, Ogo uttered a little squeal and turned to run. Three strange black-bearded faces were peering at him over the cliff’s edge; three pairs of hands clawed the turf for support. Seeing themselves seen the strangers howled ferociously, and the row of faces lengthened. Hairy bodies and agile limbs appeared, with spears attached to them, and were lost to sight in the grass. The strange faces, all alike, came crawling quickly across the intervening ground. Ogo was already racing back towards the forest, dragging Bikkoo by the hand. But before they had gone many paces his companion’s grip tightened and tugged at him, and Ogo was pulled to a standstill to see the little man stagger backwards, with upflung arms, impaling himself upon a spear that had transfixed him in the small of the back. Ogo, after one glance at the writhing body, tore the spear out, and turned desperately towards the enemy. He hurled the spear at the nearest face. It entered the open exultant mouth and the man fell choking. Bikkoo writhed no longer, but lay, a loose heap, in his own blood. Ogo ran on alone, making for the boat.
It was a homing instinct that took him to the boat, for the boat was associated in his mind with safety and peace and quiet dreams. But, as he remembered only just in time, it was also associated with Bikkoo. Therefore to enter it, to touch it, would be the craziest folly. Bikkoo was dead: a friend had become a demon, and hostile. For the dead are lonely and resentful. They lust after the lost delight of living, and seek, in envy of our felicity, to draw us after them into the everlasting night. They cannot forgive us for being alive when they are dead. They hold us, indeed, guilty of their death, and we ourselves, though it be against all reason, feel twinges of doubt and remorse. We did not contrive it, but could we not perhaps have prevented it, and aren’t we in some obscure fashion profiting by it? Ogo was innocent enough. Even in the terror of being hunted he could grieve that his friend was lost to him. But his conscience was guilty: the belief was deep-rooted that the dead had a grudge against him, and against all living souls. So Bikkoo’s boat, by means of which he could perhaps have put the river between himself and his pursuers, must not be touched. But, though they were close at his heels, he was already hidden by trees from even the foremost of his enemies; and now with new hope he gave himself to the task of running. He ran on and on: at first with the mounting speed of frenzy, but later, his fears subsiding, at a swift unvarying pace. Running became a habit, effortless and unnoticed; and morning had already half spent itself before he lay down to rest. He was deep in the forest. His surroundings were strange to him. There was no sound of following feet.