Before Adam by Jack London Read Free Book Online Page A

between myself and the nearest tree, and knew that to that haven of refuge I could outfoot the Tawny One, or old Sabre Tooth, did one or the other suddenly appear.
    One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproar arose. The horde was animated with a single emotion – that of fear. The bluff-side swarmed with the Folk, all gazing and pointing into the north-east. I did not know what it was, but I scrambled all the way up to the safety of my own high little cave before ever I turned around to see.
    And then, across the river, away into the north-east, I sawfor the first time the mystery of smoke. It was the biggest animal I had ever seen. I thought it was a monster snake, upended, rearing its head high above the trees and swaying back and forth. And yet, somehow, I seemed to gather from the conduct of the Folk that the smoke itself was not the danger. They appeared to fear it as the token of something else. What this something else was I was unable to guess. Nor could they tell me. Yet I was soon to know, and I was to know it as a thing more terrible than the Tawny One, than old Sabre Tooth, than the snakes themselves, than which it seemed there could be no things more terrible.

7
    Broken Tooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His mother lived in the caves, but two more children had come after him and he had been thrust out to shift for himself. We had witnessed the performance during the several preceding days, and it had given us no little glee. Broken Tooth did not want to go, and every time his mother left the cave he sneaked back into it. When she returned and found him there her rages were delightful. Half the horde made a practice of watching for these moments. First, from within the cave, would come her scolding and shrieking. Then we could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling of Broken Tooth. About this time the two younger children joined in. And finally, like the eruption of a miniature volcano, Broken Tooth would come flying out.
    At the end of several days his leaving home was accomplished . He wailed his grief, unheeded, from the centre of the open space, for at least half an hour, and then came to live withLop Ear and me. Our cave was small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I have no recollection of Broken Tooth spending more than one night with us, so the accident must have happened right away.
    It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we had eaten our fill of the carrots, and then, made heedless by play, we had ventured on to the big trees just beyond. I cannot understand how Lop Ear got over his habitual caution, but it must have been the play. We were having a great time playing tree tag. And such tag! We leapt ten-or fifteen-foot gaps as a matter of course. And a twenty-or twenty-five foot deliberate drop clear down to the ground was nothing to us. In fact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances we dropped. As we grew older and heavier we found we had to be more cautious in dropping, but at that age our bodies were all strings and springs and we could do anything.
    Broken Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game. He was ‘it’ less frequently than any of us, and in the course of the game he discovered one difficult ‘slip’ that neither Lop Ear nor I was able to accomplish. To be truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.
    When we were ‘it’, Broken Tooth always ran out to the end of a lofty branch in a certain tree. From the end of the branch to the ground it must have been seventy feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall. But about twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet out from the perpendicular, was the thick branch of another tree.
    As we ran out the limb, Broken Tooth, facing us, would begin teetering. This naturally impeded our progress; but there was more in the teetering than that. He teetered with his back to the jump he was to make. Just as we nearly reached him he would let go. The teetering branch was like aspring-board. It