บทที่ บทที่ 4 · 第4章

THE WALL OF THE WORLD

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions,

the cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the

entrance. Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed

on him by his mother’s nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear

was developing. Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered

anything of which to be afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down

to him from a remote ancestry through a thousand thousand lives. It was

a heritage he had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but

to them, in turn, it had been passed down through all the generations

of wolves that had gone before. Fear!—that legacy of the Wild which no

animal may escape nor exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear

was made. Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life.

For he had already learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he

had known; and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt

restriction. The hard obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of

his mother’s nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger

unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon him that all was not

freedom in the world, that to life there was limitations and

restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient

to them was to escape hurt and make for happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely

classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And

after such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the

restrictions and restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and

the remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and

in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he

kept away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall

of light. When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while

during the intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing

the whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did

not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling

with its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the

cave. The cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something

unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible—for the unknown was one of

the chief elements that went into the making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled silently.

How was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to

bristle? It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the

visible expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his

own life, there was no accounting. But fear was accompanied by another

instinct—that of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he

lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to

all appearances dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the

wolverine’s track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him

with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had

escaped a great hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which

was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth

demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away

from the white wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to

make for light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was

rising within him—rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with

every breath he drew. In the end, one day, fear and obedience were

swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled

toward the entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall

seemed to recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided

with the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The

substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as

condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into

what had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the

light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him

on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall,

inside which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him

to an immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He

was dazzled by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and

tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyes were adjusting

themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased

distance of objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision.

He now saw it again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable

remoteness. Also, its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated

wall, composed of the trees that fringed the stream, the opposing

mountain that towered above the trees, and the sky that out-towered the

mountain.

A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He

crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was

very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him.

Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled

weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his

puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world.

Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot

to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been

routed by growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He

began to notice near objects—an open portion of the stream that flashed

in the sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope,

and the slope itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet

beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never

experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he

stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the

cave-lip, so he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a

harsh blow on the nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down

the slope, over and over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had

caught him at last. It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about

to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear,

and he ki-yi’d like any frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he

yelped and ki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition from

crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now

the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good.

Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here

the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last

agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a

matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand

toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the

earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the

world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without

hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced less

unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without

any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in

a totally new world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the

unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the

things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry

plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on

the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around

the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright.

He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It

ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back savagely.

This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he next

encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such

was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him,

he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on

the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he

made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight.

But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an

unconscious classification. There were live things and things not

alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not

alive remained always in one place, but the live things moved about,

and there was no telling what they might do. The thing to expect of

them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.

He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that

he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose

or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes

he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and

stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned

under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that

the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable

equilibrium as was his cave—also, that small things not alive were more

liable than large things to fall down or turn over. But with every

mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked. He

was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular

movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances

between objects, and between objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though

he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own

cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering

that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into

it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten

bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched

down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a

small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in

the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he

perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved.

He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was

a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his

mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he was

made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed together. There

was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The

taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him,

only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the

ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then

he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to

crawl out of the bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by

the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his

paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a

fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his

paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and

tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows

upon him with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was elated. He

forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He

was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also,

this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just

destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He

was too busy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and

exulting in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known

before.

He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.

The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to

drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and

on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking

with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The

pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of

his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living,

though he did not know it. He was realising his own meaning in the

world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing meat and

battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life

can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the

uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by

the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried

to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by

now, what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She

pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He

tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on

her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used

nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he

turned tail and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat.

He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the

bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose

still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he

lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something

terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him,

and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush. As he

did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept

ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had

barely missed him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering

fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space

fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she

paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and

it was a warning and a lesson to him—the swift downward swoop of the

hawk, the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of

its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan’s squawk of

agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush upward into the blue, carrying

the ptarmigan away with it.

It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned

much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things

when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat

small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live

things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick of

ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan

hen—only the hawk had carried her away. May be there were other

ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.

He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water

before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface.

He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the

embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly.

The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always

accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was

like the pang of death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious

knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the

instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the

very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the

unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could

happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared

everything.

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth.

He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a

long-established custom of his he struck out with all his legs and

began to swim. The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with

his back to it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the

opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The stream

was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet.

Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him

downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the

pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had become

suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At all times

he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again,

being smashed against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped.

His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced

the number of rocks he encountered.

Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he

was gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of

gravel. He crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had

learned some more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved.

Also, it looked as solid as the earth, but was without any solidity at

all. His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared

to be. The cub’s fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it

had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of

things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances. He would

have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into

it.

One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected

that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there

came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the

things in the world. Not only was his body tired with the adventures it

had undergone, but his little brain was equally tired. In all the days

he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore,

he was sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother,

feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness and

helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp

intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a

weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he

had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small

live thing, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like

himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat

before him. He turned it over with his paw. It made a queer, grating

noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes.

He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant received a

sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the

mother-weasel cut into his flesh.

While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled backward, he saw the

mother-weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the

neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but

his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly

whimpered. This mother-weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to

learn that for size and weight the weasel was the most ferocious,

vindictive, and terrible of all the killers of the Wild. But a portion

of this knowledge was quickly to be his.

He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not

rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more

cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean,

snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her

sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he

snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap,

swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow body

disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision. The next

moment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh.

At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this

was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper,

his fight a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She

hung on, striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein where

his life-blood bubbled. The weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was

ever her preference to drink from the throat of life itself.

The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to

write about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes.

The weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf’s throat,

missing, but getting a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted

her head like the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel’s hold and

flinging it high in the air. And, still in the air, the she-wolf’s jaws

closed on the lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew death between the

crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his

mother. Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at

being found. She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made

in him by the weasel’s teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they

ate the blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept.