Before Adam

f nest of twigs and boughs. Sometimes I was lying on my back. In this position it seemed that I spent many hours, watching the play of

er saw it, I never peered over the edge of the nest to see; but I KNEW and feared that space th

uddenly, there would rush into the very midst of it strange forms and ferocious happenings, the thunder and crashing of storm, or unfamiliar landscapes

an of the Younger World locked in combat with the hideous Red-Eye; and the next moment I was creeping carefully down to the water-hole in the h

lain. Then it was that I got the clew of time, and was able to piece together events and actions in their proper order. Thus was I able to reconstruct the vanished Younger World as it was at the

re is a certain thread of continuity and happening that runs through all the dreams. There is my friendship with Lop-Ear, for instance. Also, the

der than during the nest days, but still helpless. I rolled about in the dry leaves, playing with them and making crooning, rasping noises in my throat. The sun shone warmly and I was h

ied. The sound drew closer. It was like the grunt of a pig. Then I began to hear the sounds caused by the moving of a body through the brus

om one foreleg to the other, at the same time moving his head from side to side and swaying the f

ate of instinct. And so I sat there and waited for I knew not what. The boar thrust the ferns aside and stepped into the open. The curiosity

his stage of the proceedings, was the thing expected of me. From not far away came an answering cry. My sounds seemed mom

different. She was heavier of build than they, and had less hair. Her arms were not so long, and her legs we

untarily bunched himself together on the defensive and bristled as she swerved toward him. Then she swerved toward me. She had quite taken the breath out of him. I knew just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet

instant, with clashing tusks, the boar drove past underneath. He had recovered from his surprise and sprung forward, emitting a squeal that wa

nd, and, still holding on to her, we perched there in safety. She was very excited. She chattered and screamed, and scolded down at the bristling,

ass. These grew momentarily louder, and soon I saw him approaching, my father-at le

earth, nor in the earth. He was a large man in his day, and he must have weighed all of a hundred and thirty pounds. His face was broad and flat, and the eyebrows over-hung the eyes. The eyes themselves were sm

the eyes and ran up over the head. The head itself was preposterously

e were no full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented

ll meaty calf such as graces your leg and mine. I remember he could not walk on the flat of his foot. This was because it was a prehensile foot, more like a hand than a foot. The great toe, instead of b

came swiftly. I can see him now, in my wake-a-day life, as I write this, swinging along through the trees, a four-handed, hairy creature, howling with rage, pausing now and again to beat his chest with his clenched fis

t power in that being and in those muscles of mine. And why not? Little boys watch their fathers swing axes and fell trees, and feel in themselves that some day they, too, will swing a

uding underlip as he glared down at the wild pigs. He snarled something like a dog, and I r

antalizingly just beyond reach, and mocked them as they gnashed their tusks with impotent rage. Not content with this, he broke off a stout branch, and, holdin

her as she climbed and swung through space. I remember when the branch broke with her weight. She had made a wide leap, and with the snap of the wood I was overwhelmed with the sickening consciousness of fallin

blowing through the room. The night-lamp was burning calmly. And because of this I take it that the wild pigs did not

member I was an inexperienced child. I had never seen a wild boar in my life. For that matter I had never seen a domesticated pig. The nearest approach to one that I had see

aid to tell. I do not know why, except that I had a feeling of guilt, though I knew no better of what I was guilty. So it was