J. H. Rosny Read online

  Aoun, son of Urus, was tall and strong and delighted in the hunt. His courage was legion and his strength formidable, but he had a strange weakness that the other Oulhamr tribesmen did not understand—he could feel pity. His companion was Zouhr, last of the Men-without-Shoulders, whose subtle, dreamy intelligence was also unique among men.

  They set out, these two, to discover new and fertile hunting grounds for the horde, in the unknown land beyond the mountains. Here they would encounter the fierce sabertooth, the giant lion, the crocodile, the huge python, and wild mammoth. But most dangerous of all, these two would have to face alone the strange primitive hordes of the forest—the half-men who ate the flesh of other men.

  J. H. ROSNY was the pen-name of Joseph Henri Honoré Boëx who, throughout his long life (1856-1940), was one of France's most prolific writers. Since he originally collaborated with his younger brother, under the joint signature of J. H. Rosny, he was generally referred to as J. H. Rosny ainé (the elder) after he began writing on his own in 1909.

  Having his roots in the Nineteenth Century's revolutionary scientific theories—Darwinism, etc.—his works of fiction and non-fiction show his fascination with science, including astronomy, anthropology, zoology, and sociology. He wrote distinguished science-fiction as well, and was renowned in France for his novels of the Cro-Magnon era, of which The Giant Cat {Le Félin Géant) is one of the best

  Quest of the Dawn Man

  (Original title: The Giant Cat)

  J. H. R0SNY

  Translated from the French by The Honorable Lady Whitehead

  ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York 36, N.Y.

  QUEST OF THE DAWN MAN (THE GIANT CAT)

  This Ace edition follows the text of the first American book edition, originally published in 1924.

  Cover painting by Harry J. Shaare.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  INTRODUCTION TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

  This novel on its appearance at once hit the public fancy in France and ran through forty editions.

  In the fabulous time of the Mammoth and the Great Lion of the Caves, some twenty thousand, or perhaps some hundred thousand years ago, races of men, today extinct, lived upon the earth.

  Monsieur Rosny, basing his vivid narrative upon all the findings of science, has found a way to reconstruct imaginatively, in the form of a novel of the passions and combats of this primitive age, the life of these prehistoric times.

  As with much of Kipling's work this book will cast its spell alike upon young and old.

  H. S. K.

  CONTENTS

  Pages

  PART I 9

  THE SABRE-TOOTH 14

  THE FIRE IN THE NIGHT 18

  THE MEN AND THE RED BEAST 26

  THE PYTHON 38

  PART II - THE GIANT FELINE 41

  THE TIGER AND THE FLAME 54

  PART III - THE ATTACK OF THE TIGER 67

  THE FOREST OF THE LEMURIAN MEN 73

  THE MEN-OF-THE-FIRE 90

  THE INVISIBLE ENEMY 95

  PART IV 101

  AT THE END OF THE LAKE 112

  THE FLIGHT FROM THE CHELLIANS 118

  PART V - IN THE DEFILE 123

  THE RETURN TO THE CAVE 130

  THE GIANT FELINE or THE GIANT 132

  THE HORDE 142

  EPILOGUE 153

  PART I

  -AOTIN, son of Urus, loved the subterranean country. There he angled for blind fish or livid cray fish, accompanied by Zouhr, son of Earth, the last of the Men-without-Shoulders, who had escaped the general massacre of his race by the Red Dwarfs.

  For days together Aoun and Zouhr would walk along the borders of the river which flowed through the caverns. Often the bank became nothing but a narrow ledge; sometimes it was necessary to creep along the passages formed in the strata of porphyry, gneiss or basalt. Zouhr lit torches made of the wood of the turpentine tree, and the purple light was reflected back from the vaults of quartz above and the ever-flowing water below. Then they would stoop down to watch the pale creatures swimming in the stream, determined to find

  outlets by which to continue their journey, until they came to the wall from which the waters gushed forth. There they halted for a long time. They would have liked to surmount that mysterious harrier, against which the Oulhamr had vainly hurled themselves during six springs and five summers.

  Aoun, who was the son of Naoh, the son of the Leopard, belonged according to custom to his mother's brother, but he preferred Naoh, whose build he had inherited together with his untiring chest and his instincts. His hair fell in tangled masses like a stallion's mane, and his eyes were the colours of blue clay. His strength rendered him a formidable antagonist, but he even surpassed Naoh in sparing the lives of those he vanquished when they grovelled before him on the ground, and this was the reason that the Oulhamr mingled contempt with the admiration which his courage awoke in them. He hunted alone with Zouhr, whose feebleness rendered him of no account, but who was clever in discovering the stones from which fire could be obtained, and in preparing an inflammable substance from the pith of trees.

  Zouhr's slight form resembled that of a lizard, his shoulders sloped away so rapidly that his arms appeared to spring directly from his trunk; this build had always been that of the Wahs, the Men-without-Shoulders, from the time of their first origin till they were annihilated by the Red Dwarfs. His intelligence was slow, but more subtle than that of the Oulhamr. It was doomed to perish with him and only to be reborn in other men after a lapse of millions of years.

  Even more than Aoun, he delighted in the subterranean country; his fathers and the fathers of his fathers had always lived in countries full of water, of which a part disappeared into the hills or was lost in the mountains.

  One morning they found themselves on the bank of a river. They had seen the scarlet of the sunrise change to a golden yellow light. Zouhr knew that he derived pleasure from watching the flow of the stream, Aoun experienced the same pleasure without being conscious of it. They directed their steps towards the country of the caverns. A mountain lay before them, high and inaccessible; its summit formed a long wall. To the North and to the South, where the range was indefinitely prolonged, impassable masses arose. Aoun and Zouhr desired to scale the mountain; all the Oulhamr were anxious to do so.

  They came from the North-West. They had been travelling for fifteen years towards the East and South. At first they had been driven back by floods, then, seeing that the land became ever more and more desirable and more rich in prey, they had grown accustomed to that endless journey.

  They grew impatient of the obstacle which the mountain placed in their way. Aoun and Zouhr rested by the rushes under the black poplars. Enormous yet benevolent, three mammoths passed by on the opposite bank. Antelopes ran away into the distance and a rhinoceros moved close to a promontory. Obscure feelings were stirred in the son of Naoh; his spirit, more vagabond than that of the storks, longed to conquer the universe. Then he stood up and went towards the rising ground from which he could see the frowning opening whence the river gushed forth. Bats flew about in the shadows; an intoxicating feeling came over the young man and he said to Zouhr, "There must be other countries beyond the mountains."

  Zouhr replied, "The river comes from the lands of the sun." His sleepy eye, closely resembling the eye of a reptile, fixed itself upon Aoun's sparkling orbs. It was Zouhr who had interpreted the desire of the Oulhamr. A prey to the dreamy intelligence of the Men-without-Shoulders, which had caused the downfall of his race, he knew that streams and rivers have a source.

  The blue shadow changed to black. Zouhr lighted one of the branches which he had brought with him. He could have walked easily without light, for he knew the country very well. They continued their way for
a long time, traversing passages, surmounting crevasses, and towards evening they slept, after partaking of some roasted cray fish.

  They were awakened by a shock, as if the very ground at their feet were rocking. They heard a sound as of stones rolling, then all was silent again. The anxiety this had aroused was soon lulled, however, and they went to sleep again. But when they resumed their march they found then-way impeded by masses of rock which had not been there before.

  Then recollection surged up in Zouhr's mind, "The earth trembled," he said.

  Aoun did not understand and did not try to do so. His thought was alert, intrepid and short, it concerned itself only with immediate difficulties or with living creatures. His impatience grew and caused him to hasten his pace so that before the end of the second day they had reached the wall of rock where the subterranean country ended.

  Zouhr lighted a fresh turpentine torch so that he might see better; its light travelled along the gneiss and mingled the life of its flame with the mysterious life of the mineral.

  The companions broke into loud exclamations, a large fissure had appeared in the wall.

  "It is the earth," cried Zouhr.

  Aoun advanced and leant over the opening. It was wider than a man's body. Although he knew the danger that lurked in newly-riven rocks, his impatience urged him on towards the crevasse. Walking was difficult, at every moment it was necessary either to climb or leap over the blocks. Zouhr followed the son of Urus; there was in him a kind of latent tenderness which caused him to share the other's perils, and changed his prudence to audacity.

  The passage grew so narrow that they had to walk slantwise, and a heavy air seemed to emanate from the rock. Then a sharp projection made the passage narrower still, and as they could not stoop the adventure appeared to be at an end.

  Drawing out his axe of jade, Aoun struck out angrily as he would have struck at an enemy—the projection tottered. The two warriors understood that it would be possible to detach it from the rock. Zouhr fixed his torch into a fissure and united his efforts to those of Aoun. The projection tottered still more; they pushed against it with all their strength. The gneiss cracked, stones rolled down, they heard a dull thud, and the passage was clear.

  It grew larger, they were able to walk without difficulty, the air became pure, and they found themselves in a cavern. Much excited Aoun began to run, until he was stopped by the darkness, for Zouhr remained behind with the torch. The halt was a short one. The Oulhamr's impatience had infected the Man-without-Shoulders, and he advanced with long strides.

  Soon a light as of dawn filtered through and grew clearer as by degrees the entrance to the cavern became visible and revealed a defile hollowed out between two walls of granite.

  High up a band of sapphire blue sky appeared. "Aoun and Zouhr have scaled the mountain," cried the Son of Urus joyously.

  He drew himself up to the full extent of his great height. An unconscious but profound pride vibrated through all his being; his nomad instincts carried him away with ungovernable ardour. Zouhr, whose nature was more secretive and dreamy, subordinated his emotions to those of his companion.

  But that narrow defile, lost in the recesses of the mountains, bore too great a resemblance to the land of caverns; Aoun wanted to see the free earth again and would hardly take any repose. The defile appeared interminable. When they reached its extreme end the day was already dying, but their dream was accomplished.

  Before them stretched vast pasture lands which seemed to blend with the distant firmament. The mountins rose sheer above it on either side, a formidable world made up of stones, silence and tempests. They appeared immovable, yet drops of water were forever undermining them, carrying them away and dissolving their substance. Aoun and Zouhr could hear the beating of their own hearts. Life with boundless possibilities lay before their eyes. It teemed in the fertile earth, and man's whole destiny was bound up with those black basalt cliffs, with the granite peaks, with the veins of porphyry, with the gorges where the torrents raged and with the gentle valleys where the stream murmured in tender tones: it hung also on the armies of fir trees, the legions of beeches, on the pasture lands which had appeared amongst the rocky indentations, on the glaciers lost among the summits, on the deserted moraines. . . .

  The sun was setting over a panorama of turret-like summits, cupolas and peaks; the forms of a few moufflon sheep appeared mysteriously silhouetted on the edge of an abyss, an old wolf was spying out the solitude from his vantage ground on a rock of gneiss, whilst a baldheaded eagle hovered slowly upon the edge of an amber-bordered cloud.

  A new land called to Aoun's adventurous soul, and to the dreamy spirit of Zouhr, the last remaining Man-without-Shoulders.

  THE SABRE-TOOTH

  Aoun and Zohur walked for fourteen days. A powerful force forbade their returning to the Horde until they had discovered savannahs and forests in which the Oulhamrs would find such meat and plants in abundance as were necessary for the nourishment of human beings.

  It is impossible to live permanently in the mountains. The climate there forces men to abandon them at the end of summer; the earth becomes green again there much later, when the plains are already covered with fresh grass or new leaves.

  More than once evening was upon them before they had killed enough game or discovered sufficient roots to appease their hunger. They were going towards the East and the lands of the South. On the ninth day the beech trees became more numerous than the fir, then oaks and chestnut trees increased in their path. Aoun and Zouhr knew that they were nearing the plains. Beasts roamed about them in greater numbers; every evening flesh and roots were roasting at their fire, and the nomads slept under warmer stars.

  On the fourteenth day they reached the end of the mountains. The plain stretched out interminably along the banks of a giant river. Standing on a declivity of a basaltic promontory, which rose out of the savannah, the two companions gazed on the new country, which had never before been trodden by any of the race of the Oulhamrs or the Wahs. At their feet grew unknown trees: banyans, each of which seemed to form an arbour, palms with leaves like immense feathers; green oak trees crowned the hillsides, and bamboos reared their giant grasses beneath. Innumerable flowers studded the expanse with hidden joys; all expressed the fertile love and patient voluptuousness of the vegetable world, on which all life depends.

  But it was the animal life which Aoun and Zouhr were especially watching. The beasts appeared and disappeared according to the nature of the soil, the height of the grasses, the rushes or the tree ferns, and the lie of the hills, the trees and bamboos. They could see troops of lithe antelopes racing away, horses and onagers advancing towards them and zebus feeding peacefully. Deer and gaurs were landing at a turn of the river; a horde of dholes surrounded an antelope; snakes were crawling cunningly among the grasses; the humped bodies of three camels stood out on an eminence; peacocks, pheasants and parrots appeared at the edge of the palm wood, while monkeys hid themselves among the branches and the hippopotami plunged into the river, where the crocodiles floated like logs. There would never be lack of meat each evening at the fires of the Oulhamr! The promise of a life full of abundance set the hearts of the nomads beating faster, and as by degrees they descended the promontory, the atmosphere became so warm that the stones seemed to bum under their feet.

  They thought that they had only to cover a short distance to reach the plain, when suddenly a rocky peak arrested their progress.

  The Oulhamr gave vent to a cry of rage, but the Wah said, "This land is full of pitfalls! Aoun and Zouhr have not enough spears. Here no man-devouring beast can touch us."

  The silhouette of a lion appeared in the distance in the hollow of a hill.

  Aoun replied, "Zouhr has said the right thingl We will fashion many spears and clubs and javelins to bring down our game, and to conquer the man-eaters."

  The shadows grew long upon the promontory; the light became like the pale hue of honey. Aoun and Zouhr bent their steps towards a young oak, fr
om which they could obtain suitable material for their arms. They knew how to make javelins and clubs, how to work in horn and how to sharpen stones and harden wood by fire. Their hatchets had become dull, and they had not been able to renew their tools since they left the caverns. They had an impression that it would be wise to arm themselves powerfully, before they entered that alarming country.

  They hewed off branches until the sun set over the distant landscape, like a vast red fire. Then they gathered together the horns, the bones and the stones, which they had brought from the mountains.

  "Night is coming upon us," said Aoun. "We will work on when the light returns."

  They had gathered some dry wood, and Zouhr began to make a fire with the aid of a marcasite stone and a flint, whilst his companion stuck a pointed stick into a leg of wild goat.

  They sprang to their feet as a noise like something between a roar and the laugh of a hyena fell upon their ears. They saw a strange animal about five hundred cubits from the promontory. It had the shape of a leopard, its fur was red striped with black, and its eyes were large and more brilliant than those of the tiger. Four teeth, very long and sharp, crossed each other outside its jaw. Its whole form betokened swiftness.

  Aoun and Zouhr realized that it belonged to the carnivorous race, but it was unlike any of the wild beasts that were found on the other side of the mountains. It did not appear dangerous to them. Aoun could overcome a beast of that size with a harpoon, a club or a spear. He was as strong and swift as Naoh the conqueror of the Hairy Men, the grey wolf and the tiger.

  "Aoun does not fear thé red beast," he cried.