Allan and the Ice Gods by H. Rider Haggard Read Free Book Online Page B

glacier that thus moved and gave birth,
    together with the other smaller glaciers of the west, what would
    chance to the tribe upon the beach beneath? They would be killed,
    every one, and there would be no people left in the world.
    He did not call it the world, of course, since he knew nothing of the
    world, but rather by some word that meant “the place,” that is, the
    few miles of beach and wood and mountain over which he wandered. From
    a great height he had seen other beaches and woods, also mountains
    beyond a rocky, barren plain, but to him these were but a dreamland.
    At least, no men and women lived in them, because they had never heard
    their voices or seen the smoke of their fires, such as the tribe made
    to warm themselves by and for the cooking of their food. It was true
    that there were stories that such people existed and Pag, the cunning
    dwarf, thought so. However, Wi, being a man who dealt with facts, paid
    no heed to these tales. There below him lived the only people in the
    world, and if they were crushed, all would be finished.
    Well, if so, it would not matter very much, except in the case of
    Aaka, and, above all, of Foh his son, for of other women he thought
    little, while the creatures that furnished food, the seals and the
    birds and the fish, especially the salmon that came up the stream in
    spring, and the speckled trout, would be happier if they were gone.
    These speculations also tired him, a man of action who was only
    beginning to learn how to think. So he gave them up, as he had given
    up praying, and stared with his big, thoughtful eyes at the ice in
    front of him. The light was gathering now, very soon the sun should
    rise and he should see into the ice. Look! There were faces, grotesque
    faces, some of them vast, some tiny, that seemed to shift and change
    with the changes of the light and the play of the shadows. Doubtless,
    these were those of the lesser gods of whom probably there were a
    great number, all of them bad and cruel, and they were peering and
    mocking at him.
    Moreover, beyond them, a dim outline, was the great Sleeper, as he had
    always been, a mountain of a god with huge tusks and the curling nose
    much longer than the body of a man, and a head like a rock, and ears
    as big as the sides of a hut, and a small, cold eye that seemed to be
    fixed upon him, and behind all this, vanishing into the depths of the
    ice, an enormous body the height of three men standing on each other’s
    heads, perhaps. There was a god indeed, and, looking at him, Wi
    wondered whether one day he would awake and break out of the ice and
    come rushing down the mountain. That he might see him better, Wi rose
    from his knees and crept timidly to the face of the glacier to peer
    down a certain crevice in the ice. While he was thus engaged, the sun
    rose in a clear sky over the shoulder of the mountain and shone with
    some warmth upon the glacier for the first time that spring—or rather
    early summer. Its rays penetrated the cleft in the ice so that Wi saw
    more of the Sleeper than he had ever done.
    Truly, he was enormous, and look, behind him was something like the
    figure of a man of which he had often heard but never before seen so
    clearly. Or was it a shadow? Wi could not be sure, for just then a
    cloud floated over the face of the sun and the figure vanished. He
    waited for the cloud to pass away, and well was it for him that he did
    so, for just then a great rock which lay, doubtless, upon the extreme
    lip of the glacier, loosened from its last hold by the warmth of the
    sun, came thundering down the slope of the ice and, leaping over Wi,
    fell upon the spot where he had just been standing, making a hole in
    the frozen ground and crushing the wolf’s head to a pulp, after which,
    with mighty bounds, it vanished towards the beach.
    “The Sleeper has protected me,” said Wi to himself, as he turned to
    look after the vanishing rock. “Had I stayed where I was, I should
    have been as that