Part 3 (2/2)

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled toward the mouth of the cave And in this his brothers and sisters were one with him Never, in that period, did any of theht drew them as if they were plants; the cheht as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally conscious of iht increased They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back frorey cub learned other attributes of his ue In his insistent crawling toward the light, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed hi stroke Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating These were conscious actions, and were the results of his first generalisations upon the world Before that he had recoiled automatically froht After that he recoiled from hurt because he knew that it was hurt

He was a fierce little cub So were his brothers and sisters It was to be expected He was a carnivorous animal He came of a breed of meat- killers and meat-eaters His father and mother lived wholly uponlife, was milk transformed directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was beginning hiorged for the five growing cubs that already reat demand upon her breast

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter He could es were much more terrible than theirs It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow- cub over with a cunning paw-stroke And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched And certainly it was he that caused theher litter froht for the grey cub increased fro adventures toward the cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back Only he did not know it for an entrance He did not know anything about entrances--passages whereby one goes from one place to another place He did not know any other place, et there So to hiht As the sun was to the outside dweller, this as to him the sun of his world It attracted hi to attain it The life that was so swiftly expanding within hiht The life that ithin him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread But he hi about it He did not know there was any outside at all

There was one strange thing about this wall of light His father (he had already conise his father as the one other dweller in the world, a creature like his er of ht into the white far wall and disappearing The grey cub could not understand this Though never permitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose This hurt And after several such adventures, he left the walls alone Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father, as ested rey cub was not given to thinking--at least, to the kind of thinking customary of men His brain worked in dim ways Yet his conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved bythe why and wherefore In reality, this was the act of classification He was never disturbed over why a thing happened How it happened was sufficient for him Thus, when he had bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear into walls In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the difference between his father and hiic and physics were no part of his mental make- up

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine There came a time when not only did the er came from his mother's breast At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for thebefore they were reduced to a coer There were no rowling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether The cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down

One Eye was desperate He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair that had now become cheerless and miserable The she-wolf, too, left her litter and went out in search of meat In the first days after the birth of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian ca of the snow and the opening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closed to hiain took interest in the far white wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced Only one sister reer, he found hier lifted her head nor moved about His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the food had come too late for her She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out

Then there ca and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance This had happened at the end of a second and less severe famine The she-wolf knehy One Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye And she had found him, or what rens of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair after having won the victory Before she went away, the she-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she had not dared to venture in

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork For she knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx for a fierce, bad-tehter It was all very well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a lynx--especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens at her back

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the tirey cub's sake, would venture the left fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath

CHAPTER IV

--THE WALL OF THE WORLD

By the ti 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 hi Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to be afraid Yet fear was in hih a thousand thousand lives It was a heritage he had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to theenerations of wolves that had gone before Fear!--that legacy of the Wild which no anirey 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 er 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 s 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 na, fear, he kept away from the ht When histhe intervals that he ake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whi 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-tre out the contents of the cave The cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a so unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible--for the unknoas one of the chief ele of fear

The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently Hoas 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 hi 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 irowled 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 soreat hurt

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth Instinct and law derowth demanded disobedience His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the white wall Growth is life, and life is for ever destined toup the tide of life that was rising within hi with every mouthful of meat he sith 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 hich 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 hi as light And as condition, in his eyes, had the see of form, so he entered into what had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that coh solidity And ever the light grew brighter Fear urged hirowth drove him on Suddenly he found himself at the ht himself, as suddenly leaped back before hiht had becoht He was dazzled by it Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space Autohtness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of objects At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision He no it again; but it had taken upon itself a reed It was now a variegated wall, co mountain that towered above the trees, and the sky that out-towered the reat 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 hi his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an atte snarl Out of his puniness and fright he challenged andhappened He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl Also, he forgot to be afraid For the tirowth had assuan 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 knohat 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 doard The earth struck hian rolling down the slope, over and over He was in a panic of terror The unknown had caught hiely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some terrific hurt Groas now routed by fear, and he ki-yi'd like any frightened puppy

The unknown bore hihtful hurt, and he yelped and ki-yi'd unceasingly This was a different proposition froside Now the unknown had caught tight hold of hiood Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed hirass-covered Here the cub lost onised yell and then a long, whih in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled hiht 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 ithout hurt But the first man on Mars would have experienced less unfae, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally neorld

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of hiot that the unknown had any terrors He are only of curiosity in all the things about hirass 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 a around the base of the trunk, caht He cowered down and snarled But the squirrel was as badly scared It ran up the tree, and froely

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 ht safety in flight

But the cub was learning His misty little mind had already s and things not alive Also, he s not alive res ht do The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared

He travelled very cluht a long way off, would the next instant hit hi 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 thes not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrius not alive were s to fall down or turn over But with every er he walked, the better he walked He was adjusting hi to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between objects and hiinner Born to be a hunter of h 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 ptar 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, se and stalks of a sround, fetched up in the an chicks

They htened 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 hiled and tickled his tongue At the saer His jaws closed together There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warood This was ave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better So he ate the ptaran Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood Then he licked his chops in quite the saan to crawl out of the bush

He encountered a feathered ind 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 ry 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 ptar blows upon hi 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 hi was meat The lust to kill was on his 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 hireater to hi and growled between his tight-clenched teeth The ptared hi him back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away fro outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall The pitch to which he was aroused was tre blood of his breed was up in hih he did not know it He was realising his ownthat for which he washis 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 ti 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 nohat of previous adventures was sore He winced but held on She pecked hi He tried to back away froed her after hiht ebbed down in hi his prey, he turned tail and scalorious 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 hi him to continue his whimper But as he lay there, suddenly there ca The unknoith 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 hied body swept o down out of the blue, had barelyfroan 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 doard swoop of the hawk, the short skiround, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarht, and the hawk's rush upward into the blue, carrying the ptar time before the cub left its shelter He had learned ood to eat Also, live things when they were large enough, could give hurt It was better to eat se live things like ptaran hens Nevertheless he felt a little prick of a desire to have another battle with that ptaran hen--only the hawk had carried her away May be there were other ptar bank to the streaood There were no inequalities of surface He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the e quickly The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always acco The suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death To hie of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death To hireatest of hurts It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the su and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to hi and about which he feared everything

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open h it had been a long-established custoan to swim The near bank was a yard away; but he had co his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, tohich he ian 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 hiht in the miniature rapid at the botto The quiet water had becory Sometimes he was under, someti turned over or around, and again, being sainst a rock And with every rock he struck, he yelped His progress was a series of yelps, froht 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 ithout any solidity at all His conclusion was that things were not alhat they appeared to be The cub's fear of the unknoas 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 hi in the world as histhat he wanted her s 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 hisrush of loneliness and helplessness

He was sprawling along between so cry There was a flash of yellow before his eyes He saeasel leaping swiftly away fro, and he had no fear Then, before hi, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like hi It tried to retreat before hi noise The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes He heard again the inti 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