Before Adam by Jack London Page B

tothrow on larger pieces of wood. We put on more and more, until we had a mighty fire. We dashed excitedly back and forth, dragging dead limbs and branches from out the forest. The flames soared higher and higher, and the smoke column out-towered the trees. There was a tremendous snapping and crackling and roaring. It was the most monumental work we had ever effected with our hands, and we were proud of it. We, too, were Fire Men, we thought, as we danced there, white gnomes in the conflagration.
    The dried grass and underbrush caught fire, but we did not notice it. Suddenly a great tree on the edge of the open space burst into flames. We looked at it with startled eyes. The heat of it drove us back. Another tree caught, and another, and then half a dozen. We were frightened. The monster had broken loose. We crouched down in fear, while the fire ate around the circle and hemmed us in. Into Lop Ear’s eyes came the plaintive look that always accompanied incomprehension, and I know that in my eyes must have been the same look. We huddled, with our arms around each other, until the heat began to reach us and the odour of burning hair was in our nostrils. Then we made a dash of it, and fled away westwards through the forest, looking back and laughing as we ran.
    By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land, made, as we afterwards discovered, by a great curve of the river that almost completed a circle. Right across the neck lay bunched several low and partly wooded hills. Over these we climbed, looking backwards at the forest which had become a sea of flame that swept eastwards before a rising wind. We continued to the west, following the river bank, and before we knew it we were in the midst of the abiding place of the Fire People.
    This abiding place was a splendid strategic selection. It was a peninsula, protected on three sides by the curving river. Ononly one side was it accessible by land. This was the narrow neck of the peninsula, and here the several low hills were a natural obstacle. Practically isolated from the rest of the world, the Fire People must have here lived and prospered for a long time. In fact, I think it was their prosperity that was responsible for the subsequent migration that worked such calamity upon the Folk. The Fire People must have increased in numbers until they pressed uncomfortably against the bounds of their habitat. They were expanding, and in the course of their expanding they drove the Folk before them, and settled down themselves in the caves and occupied the territory that we had occupied.
    But Lop Ear and I little dreamt of all this when we found ourselves in the Fire People’s stronghold. We had but one idea, and that was to get away, though we could not forbear humouring our curiosity by peeping out upon the village. For the first time we saw the women and children of the Fire People. The latter ran for the most part naked, though the former wore skins of wild animals.
    The Fire People, like ourselves, lived in caves. The open space in front of the caves sloped down to the river, and in the open space burnt many small fires. But whether or not the Fire People cooked their food, I do not know. Lop Ear and I did not see them cook. Yet it is my opinion that they surely must have performed some sort of rude cookery. Like us, they carried water in gourds from the river. There was much coming and going, and loud cries made by the women and children. The latter played about and cut up antics quite in the same way as did the children of the Folk, and they more nearly resembled the children of the Folk than did the grown Fire People resemble the grown Folk.
    Lop Ear and I did not linger long. We saw some of thepart-grown boys shooting with bow and arrow, and we sneaked back into the thicker forest and made our way to the river. And there we found a catamaran, a real catamaran, one evidently made by some Fire Man. The two logs were small and straight, and were lashed together by means of