his spear, for this was a crime against the hunter’s law – that one should steal what another had slain. Then the head of the skinner appeared, and Wi smiled and loosened his grip of the spear. For this was no thief, this was Pag, his slave who loved him.
A strange-looking man was Pag, a large-headed, one-eyed dwarf, greatchested, long-armed, powerful, but with thick little legs, no longer than those of a child of eight years; a monstrous, flat-nosed, bigmouthed creature, who yet always wore upon his scarred countenance a smiling, humorous air. It was told of Pag that, when he was born, a long while before – for his youth had passed – he was so ugly that his mother had thrown him out into the woods, fearing that his father, who was absent killing seals farther up the beach, would be angry with her for bearing such a son and purposing to tell him that the child had been stillborn.
As it chanced, when the father came back, he went to search for the infant’s bones, but in place of them found the babe still living, but with one eye dashed out against a stone and its face much scarred. Still, this being his first-born, and because he was a man with a merciful heart, he brought it home into the hut, and forced the mother to nurse it. This she did, like one who is frightened, though why she was frightened she would not say, nor would his father ever tell where and how he had found Pag. Thus it came about that Pag did not die, but lived, and because of what his mother had done to him, always was a hater of women; one, too, who lived much in the forest, for which reason, or some other, he was named “wolf-man.” Moreover, he grew up the cleverest of the tribe, for nature, which had made him ugly and deformed, gave him more wits than the rest of them, and a sharp tongue that he used to gibe with at the women.
Therefore they hated him also and made a plot against him, and when there came a time of scarcity, persuaded the chief of the tribe of that day, the father of Henga, that Pag was the cause of ill-fortune. So that chief drove out Pag to starve. But when Pag was dying for lack of food, Wi found him and brought him to his hut, where, although like the rest of her sex Aaka loved him little, he remained as a slave; for this was the law, that, if any saved a life, that life belonged to him. In truth, however, Pag was more than a slave, because, from the hour that Wi, braving the wrath of the women, who thought that they were rid of Pag and his gibes, and perchance the anger of the chief, had rescued him when he was starving in a season of bitter frost, Pag loved him more than a woman loves her firstborn, or a young man his one-day bride.
Thenceforward he was Wi’s shadow, ready to suffer all things for him, and even to refrain from sharp words and jests about Aaka or any other woman upon whom Wi looked with favour, though to do so he must bite a hole in his tongue. So Pag loved Wi and Wi loved Pag, for which reason Aaka, who was jealoushearted, came to hate him more than she had done at first.
There was trouble about this business of the saving of the life of Pag by Wi after he had been driven out to starve as an evil eyed and scurrilous fellow, but the chief, Henga’s father, a kindly natured man, when the matter came before him, said that, since twice Pag had been thrown out and brought back again, it was evident that the gods meant him to die in some other fashion. Only now that Wi had taken him, Wi must feed him and see that he hurt none. If he chose to keep a one-eyed wolf, it was his own business and that of no one else.
Shortly after this, Henga killed his father and became chief in place, and the matter of Pag was forgotten. So Pag stayed on with Wi and was beloved of him and by Wi’s children, but hated of Aaka.
Chapter 4
The Tribe
“A good pelt,” said Pag, pointing to the wolf with his red knife, “for, the spring being so late, this beast had not begun to shoot its hair. When I have brayed it as I know how, it will make a cloak for Foh. He needs one that is warm, even in the summer, for lately he has been coughing and spitting.”
“Yes,” answered Wi anxiously. “It has come upon him ever since he hid in the cold water because the black bear with the great teeth was after him, knowing that the beast hates water, for which,” he added viciously, “I swear that I will kill that bear. Also he grieves for his sister, Fo-a.”
“Aye, Wi,” snarled Pag, his one eye flashing with hate. “Foh grieves, Aaka grieves, you grieve, and I, Pag the Wolf-man, grieve, too. Oh, why did you make me come hunting with you that day when my heart was against it and, smelling evil, I wished to stop with Fo-a, whom Aaka let run off by herself just because I told her that she should keep the girl at home?”
“It was the will of the gods, Pag,” muttered Wi, turning his head away.
“The gods! What gods? I say it was the will of a brute with two legs – nay, of the great-toothed tiger himself of which our forefather told, living in a man’s skin, yes, of Henga, helped by Aaka’s temper. Kill that man tiger, Wi, and never mind the great black bear. Or, if you cannot, let me. I know a woman who hates him because he has put her away and made her serve another who has her place, and I can make good poison, very good poison – “
“Nay, it is not lawful,” said Wi, “and would bring a curse upon us. But it is lawful that I should kill him, and I will. I have been talking to the gods about it.”
“Oh! that is where the wolf’s head has gone – an offering, I see. And what did the gods say to you, Wi?”
“They gave me a sign. A stone fell from the brow of the ice, as Aaka said that it would if I was to fight Henga. It nearly hit me, but I had moved closer to the ice to look at the Sleeper, the greatest of the gods.”
“I don’t believe it is a god, Wi. I believe it is a beast of a sort we do not know, dead and frozen, and that the shadow behind it is a man that was hunting the beast when they both fell into the snow that turned to ice.”
Wi stared at him, for this indeed was a new idea.
“How can that be, Pag, seeing that the Sleeper and the Shadow have always been there, for our grandfathers knew them, and there is no such beast known? Also, except us, there are no other men.”
“Are you sure, Wi? The place is big. If you go to the top of that hill, you see other hills behind as far as the eye can look, and between them plains and woods; also, there is the sea, and there may be beaches beyond the sea. Why, then, should there not be other men? Did the gods make us alone? Would they not make more to play with and to kill?”
Wi shook his head at these revolutionary arguments, and Pag went on:
“As for the falling of the stone, it often happens when the heat of the sun melts the edge of the ice or makes it swell. And as for the groans and callings of the gods, does not ice crack when the frost is sharp, or when there is no frost at all and it begins to move of its own weight?”
“Cease, Pag, cease,” said Wi, stuffing his fingers into his ears. “No longer will I listen to such mad words. If the gods hear them, they will kill us.”
“If the people hear them, they may kill us because they walk in fear of what they cannot see and would save themselves at the cost of others. But for the gods – that!” and Pag snapped his fingers in the direction of the glacier, which, after all, is a very ancient gesture of contempt.
Wi was so overcome that he sat down upon a stone, unable to answer, and, that first of sceptics, Pag, went on:
“If I must have a god, who have found men quite bad enough to deal with, without one above them more evil than they, I would choose the sun. The sun gives life; when the sun shines, everything grows, and the creatures mate and the birds lay eggs and the seals come to bear their young and the flowers bloom. When there is no sun only frost and snow, then all these die or go away, and it is hard to live, and the wolves and bears raven and eat men, if they can catch them. Yes, the sun shall be my good god and the black
