The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 29

  Three or four tribesmen were toasting last delectable morsels on green twigs in the outlying beds of coals. More of them lolled and even slept in heavy surfeit, assured that no great trampling foe would overtake and destroy them. The children, who no amount of gorging could quiet down, were skipping and chattering in the immemorial game of tag. To one side sat Soko, on a boulder that was caught between gnarled roots, and his pose was that of a benevolent ruler.

  A comely young woman of his people was applying a fresh dressing of astringent herbs and leaves to the wound Krol had made the night before. Grandly Soko affected not to notice the twinges of pain or the attractions of the attendant. He spoke with becoming gravity to Hok, who lounged near with his back against a tree, his big flint axe cuddled crosswise on his lap.

  “There is much more meat than my people will ever finish,” Soko observed.

  “Build fires of green wood, that will make thick smoke,” Hok directed. “In that smoke hang thin slices of the meat that is left. It will be dried and preserved so as to keep for a long time, and make other meals for your tribe.”

  Soko eyed Hok’s bow, which leaned against the tree beside him. “That dart-caster of yours is a wonderful weapon,” he observed. “I have drawn two shafts, still good, from Rmanth’s body. If I can make a bow like it—”

  “Take this one,” said Hok generously, and passed it over. “I have many more, as good or better, in my own home village. Study the kind of wood used, how it is shaped and rigged, and copy it carefully. Your men can hunt more meat. A jungle like this must have deer and pig and perhaps cattle. Since your people have tasted roasted flesh, they will want more on which to increase their strength.”

  “We will keep coals from that cooking fire,” said Soko.

  “Do more than that,” Hok urged. “You have seen my fire-sticks and how I used them. Make some for yourself, that the fire may be brought to you when you need it.” He peered around him. “See, Soko, there are outcroppings of hard rock near and far. I see granite, a bit of jasper, and here and there good flints. Use those to make tools and weapons instead of bone or ivory.”

  THE dressing of Soko’s wound was completed. Soko dismissed the young woman with a lordly gesture, but watched her appreciatively as she demurely departed. Then he turned back to his guest. His smile took from his face the strange beast-look that clung to the wide loose lips and chinless jaw.

  “Hok,” he said, “we shall never forget these wonders you have done for us, and which you have taught us to do for ourselves. In future times, when you deign to come again—”

  “But I shall not come again,” Hok told him.

  Soko looked surprised and hurt. Hok continued:

  “You and I are friends, Soko. It is our nature to be friendly, unless someone proves himself an enemy. But your people and my people are too different. There would be arguments and difficulties between them, and then fights and trouble. When I leave here, it will be forever. I shall not tell at once what I have seen. What I tell later will be only part of the truth. Because I think you and your kind will be better off untroubled and unknown in this valley.”

  Soko nodded slowly, his eyes thoughtful. “I had been counting on your help from time to time,” he confessed. “Perhaps experience will help me, though. What shall we do here after you are gone?”

  “Be full of mystery,” said Hok sententiously. “The Stymphs seem to have flown away, but their reputation will linger over your home. I judge that game does not prowl near, and only the mammoth knows the valley—to dive into it and die. If ever a hunter of my sort comes near, it will be the veriest accident.

  “Thus you will have the chance to make your people strong and wise. They have regained the full right to walk on the ground and breathe air under open skies, which right was denied by Krol. In times to come, I venture to say, you shall issue forth as a race to be great in the outer world. Meanwhile, stay secret. Your secrecy is safe with me.”[24]

  He rose, and so did Soko. They shook hands.

  “You depart now, at only the beginning of things?” Soko suggested.

  “The adventure and the battle, at least, are at an end,” Hok reminded him. “I am tormented by a sickness of the mind, Soko, which some call curiosity. It feeds on strife, travel and adventure. And so I go home to the northward, to find if my people do not know of such things to comfort me. Goodbye, Soko. I wish you joy of your Ancient Land.”

  He picked up his furs and his axe, and strode away toward the trail up the slope. Behind him he heard Soko’s people lifting a happy noise that was probably their method of singing.

  THE END.

  [1] See “Battle in the Dawn”, “Hok Draws the Bow”, etc. Amazing Stories, January, ’39, and May, ’40.—Ed.

  [2] Professor Katherine E. Dopp and others have pointed out the absolute necessity for the invention of snowshoes by Stone Age hunters of Hok’s time.—Ed.

  [3] This was a specimen of the Imperial Mammoth, which stood some 14 feet high. Partial remains of such a giant can be seen at the National Museum of Natural History in New York City.—Ed.

  [4] Examination of the stomachs of frozen mammoth remains has enabled scientists to decide on juniper as a favorite article of their winter diet.—Ed.

  [5] A similar legend is told about modem elephants and their “graveyard”—it is a fact that bodies of naturally dead elephants are seldom seen. The great beds of mammoth fossils in Russia, from which as much as 100,000 pounds of ivory was gleaned annually in pre-Soviet times, may bear out Hok’s belief.—Ed.

  [6] Hok’s people were contemporary with Cyon alpinis fossils, a species of wolf larger and stronger, and probably fiercer, than modern types. Such hunting animals must have had to pursue and drag down the powerful game of the age, and would not have shrunk too much from combat with man. At least once among the remarkable art-works of Stone Age man is included a painting of a wolf—a lifelike polychrome on the wall of the cavern at Font-de-Gaume, once the home and art studio of a community of the magnificent Cro-Magnons, Hok’s race.—Ed.

  [7] Johannes V. Jensen, Danish poet and scholar, predicates his celebrated “Long Journey” saga on the race-old myth of a warm Lost Country—the memory among Ice-Age men of the tropical surroundings among which the earliest human beings developed, and which were banished by the glaciers.—Ed.

  [8] The race of pterodactyls, of which this specimen was a survivor, had wing-spreads as wide as twenty-five feet, with beaks four feet long.—Ed.

  [9] In Europe, where Hok lived, no remains of native monkeys or apes more recent than Pliocene times have been discovered; but, as the paleontologist Osborn reminds us, the tree-dwelling habit of such beasts might have made the remains difficult to keep whole.—Ed.

  [10] Dinoceras ingens, one of the largest and ugliest of the Dinocerata, flourished in Eocene times and may have lived later. It partook of the natures of rhinoceros and swine, and its teeth suggest it ate both animal and vegetable food. Its many head-bumps may have been primitive horns. Specimens have been found that were twelve feet long and eight feet tall at the shoulders.—Ed.

  [11] The old legend, mentioned in the book of Genesis and elsewhere, that once “all men were of one speech” may well be founded on fact— witness similarities of certain key words among races so far scattered as Welsh, Persian, and Mandap Indian. Even in the Stone Age there seems to have been commerce and alliance, which means that men must have understood each other. Languages were simple then. Only with widely divergent races, as the beastlike Gnorrls or Neanderthal men, would there be a definitely separate tongue, hard to pronounce and harder to understand because of differences in jaw structure, brain, and mode of life.—Ed.

  [12] Several types of big tropical vine, both in Africa and South America, create this curious growth-pattern by killing the trees they climb and remaining erect in the same place.—Ed.

  [13] The Neanderthal men were of massive, clumsy build—obviously poor climbers.—Ed.

  [14] This description is no fancy. T
he author himself, and many others, have seen such sky-gardens among the branches of modem rainforests in West Africa.—Ed.

  [15] The great apes make such nests, roofs and all.—Ed.

  [16] The Piltdown Race seems to have flourished in the Third Interglacial Epoch, a warm age when even northern Europe was as pleasant and temperate as Italy. Such African-Asiatic fauna as hippopotami and tigers flourished side by side with these forerunners of human beings. When the Fourth Glaciation brought ice and snow to cover Europe, the robust Neanderthals and the later, greater true men of Hok’s race could survive and adapt themselves; but a less rugged prehuman type like the Piltdown must flee or perish.—Ed.

  [17] Readers who know the mythology of ancient Greece will already have seen some connection between the surviving pterodactyls called Stymphs and the Stymphalides, described as “great birds” who ate men. The ancient Greeks said that the Stymphalides had plumage of metal, which sounds very much like reptilian scaliness. Hercules, the Grecian memory of Hok is credited with destroying these monsters as one of his twelve heaven-assigned labors.—Ed.

  [18] The surviving myth tells how Hercules (Hok) was sheltered from the Stymphalides by the buckler of Pallas Athene, so that he was able to win I victory at leisure.—Ed.

  [19] Blood and earth, mixed into a primitive cement, dates back to long before the dawn of history. It is fairly universal among the simple races of the world, and is used to make durable hut-floors in both Africa and South America. The blending calls for considerable judgment and labor; the author has seen samples, and has tried to imitate them for himself, but with only indifferent success.—Ed.

  [20] For fuller accounts of these characters and what happened to them, see “Battle in the Dawn,” January ’39 Amazing Stories; “Hok Goes to Atlantis,” December ’39, Amazing Stories; “Hok Draws the Bow,” May ’40, Amazing Stories; “Hok and the Gift of Heaven,” March ’41, Amazing Stories.—Ed.

  [21] The myth that will rise quickest to the reader’s memory is the one concerning Hercules and his conquest of the mighty wild boar of Eurymanthis. It is odd, or not so odd, that Greek myths tell the same story in several forms. Thus Theseus, who may be another memory of Hercules or Hok, destroys such a giant swine in his youthful journey to his father’s court. Meleager hunts and kills the Calydonian boar. And one of the Tuscan heroes of Latin Legend, named in “The Lays of Ancient Rome” as an adversary of Horatius, won his fame by killing a boar “that wasted fields and slaughtered men.”

  Such super-swine are described as unthinkably huge and strong, clumsy but swift, with fierce and voracious natures that made them a menace to whole communities and districts. Not even the European wild boar, wicked fighter though it is, could approximate such character and performance. It becomes increasingly sure that Rmanth, the boar of Eurymanthis, and those others, trace back to tales of the now extinct Dinoceras.—Ed.

  [22] “. . . something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle . . . and when you’ve once heard it you’ll be quite content.”—Lewis Carroll, in THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS.—Ed.

  [23] The sturdiest of animals can be dealt with by attacking the spine through the nape of the neck. Most familiar of such attacks is probably the sword-thrust of the matador in a Spanish bullfight. The bull is induced to lower his head, bringing into reach a vulnerable spot the size of one’s open palm at juncture of neck and shoulders. Elephant and rhinoceros also can be killed by a proper stab there, since the spinal cord is close to the surface, for all the thick, hard hide. Scientists think that the down-pointing front teeth of the sabre-tooth tiger—extinct, or very rare, in Hok’s time—were designed by nature for just such a mode of killing.—Ed.

  [24] Again referring to the Greek myths, there is the tale of how Hercules came close to the Garden of the Hesperides, a fruitful paradise guarded by dragons. Now we know the source of that story.—Ed.

  The Love of Oloana

  It was one of the smallest pools of that dense, semi-tropic forest of the Ancient World, a dark jewel over which boughs and vines laced into a green, arched ceiling. The girl turned over lazily on its ripply surface, swam three strong, slow strokes to the brink, and waded out.

  Her tanned, glistening body might intrigue even a modern eye. Richly, delectably curved at shoulders, breasts and thighs, she was formed for deep warmth of love. Formed, too, for ideal motherhood of a race—a strong race that might some day conquer even the mammoth and the sabre-tooth tiger and emerge from the darkness of the Stone Age into mastery of the whole wild planet. First she donned her single garment of soft fur, that fell below like a shirt skirt from waist to midthigh, while above it looped over one round shoulder to hide half the generous swell of her breasts. Next she slipped her slender foot into sandals of deer-hide. On one round arm she fastened a sort of bracelet, made of small shells strung together. Finally she fumbled in a belt-pouch, brought out a saw-tooth comb crudely carved from horn, and, leaning against a half-rotten stump, began to untangle her great, damp clouds of blue-black hair.

  Oloana, girl of the Stone Age, feared nothing. The fierce huntsmen of her tribe had long ago driven the beasts of prey from this part of their forest. As for human menaces, who would dare molest the daughter of the head chief and the beloved of the most celebrated warrior? Who would dare so much as look at her, for all her smouldering beauty?

  Yet someone was looking. He lounged apelike in a tree-fork overhead, lithe and lean and cord-muscled as the leopard whose pelt he had taken for a loin-cloth. Unlike Oloana’s dark kinsmen, he boasted a shock of lion-tawny hair, cut shoulder length and bound at the brows by a snakeskin fillet. His face, plucked clean of beard according to custom of his own far-off people, was not tanned but freckled. The scar of some bygone adventure seamed his rugged young cheek, adding sternness to his good looks. He wore moccasins instead of sandals, and the sharp-ground stone heads of his axe and javelin were of a make unknown in that forest. He was Hok—Hok the Mighty—an adventurer from the open country to the north, now drinking in the fairest sight on all his travels.

  His blue fighter’s eyes sparkled with delight as they lingered on the charms of the dark girl. His wide mouth spread wider in an admiring grin. His big hands trembled, as if eager to clutch and hold. Was ever such a girl? No, not among all the tribes he had visited. He wanted her. And to want, with Hok the mighty, was to take.

  He twitched the javelin free from its leather loop at his shoulder. Noiselessly he rose erect on his perch, drew back his arm in a lithe gesture, and cast the shaft.

  It yelped in the air, then thudded into the stump. Oloana screamed in sudden terror and tried to spring away. No! The stone head of the javelin, driving deep into the wood, had pinned fast her scanty skirt. Even as she struggled a triumphant laugh rang above her. A long-limbed demon with blazing blue eyes fell out of the branch-filled sky and seized her.

  “Mine!” he cried, in a language similar to her own.

  She screamed again and struck at him. Her fist rang on a chest as hard as wood. He laughed the louder, drew her close and plucked away the tight-wedged javelin as easily as a man of today would gather a flower. Still struggling and shouting in fear and anger, she felt herself tossed lightly onto his broad shoulder. And then he ran.

  For another, deeper shout answered Oloana, and then more shouts. Her people—the dark forest men—had heard and were coming. Hope thrilled the girl as she fought to get free. But Hok only chuckled and fled the faster.

  Louder came the pursuing cries. Racing men were visible now through the thickets and trees behind—yelling, black-bearded, fierce.

  “No arrows!” bellowed one great voice, the voice of Oloana’s chieftain father. “You might kill her. Catch him!”

  “We have him!” bawled another—Kimri, the giant who was to marry Oloana. “He’s running toward the ravine!”

  It was true—a narrow, ancient crack had cut deeply into the forest floor, and there the thief must come to a halt. Oloana ceased her cries.

&n
bsp; In half a dozen seconds her ravisher would be brought to bay, struck down, and herself rescued. Even as she exulted in the thought, she heard his sharp exclamation of surprise as the ravine, a good thirty feet across and fifty deep, came into sight.

  But he did not slacken his pace. Once more she screamed, screamed her loudest, as Hok raced to the very brink of the chasm and sprang out over it.

  For one horror-stricken moment she gazed down at the rock-torn current far below. But they did not fall. A shock—her despoiler’s free hand had made a lightning clutch upon a dangling vine. Their weight carried them floating onward, upward, while the far bank rushed to meet them. His feet found the brink, he let go the vine and he tottered there for a moment while she gazed backward into the depths with wide eyes. Then he found solid footing and turned for a moment to shout mockeries.

  The black-beards lined the other side, cursing and raving. Several aimed arrows or spears. Hok laughed and swung Oloana’s squirming body in front of him.

  “No arrows!” commanded the chief again, his thundering voice full of anxiety. “Cross after him.”

  “No man dares the leap,” taunted Hok.

  “I will follow!” screamed Kimri, towering among his fellows, hoarse with rage. “I will follow and take her back.”

  “Follow, then,” laughed Hok, and plunged anew into the depths of the forest.

  For hours his tireless lope ate up the miles. Oloana had ceased to struggle, for struggling was useless. She knew now that she was in strange country—her own part of the forest was left far behind. Just when she wondered if her captor would ever grow weary, he halted abruptly and lowered her from his shoulder, setting her feet on the earth but still holding her by the wrist. She found herself in a little clearing among birch trees, with a murmuring trickle of water crossing it and, to one side, a low, rocky mound with a cave in it.