CHAPTER IV--THE WALL OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER IV--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.