Allan and the Ice-Gods. Генри Райдер Хаггард

over which he wandered. From a great height he had seen other beaches and woods, also mountains beyond a rocky, barren plain, but to him these were but a dreamland. At least, no men and women lived in them, because they had never heard their voices or seen the smoke of their fires, such as the tribe made to warm themselves by and for the cooking of their food. It was true that there were stories that such people existed and Pag, the cunning dwarf, thought so. However, Wi, being a man who dealt with facts, paid no heed to these tales. There below him lived the only people in the world, and if they were crushed, all would be finished.

      Well, if so, it would not matter very much, except in the case of Aaka, and, above all, of Foh his son, for of other women he thought little, while the creatures that furnished food, the seals and the birds and the fish, especially the salmon that came up the stream in spring, and the speckled trout, would be happier if they were gone.

      These speculations also tired him, a man of action who was only beginning to learn how to think. So he gave them up, as he had given up praying, and stared with his big, thoughtful eyes at the ice in front of him. The light was gathering now, very soon the sun should rise and he should see into the ice. Look! There were faces, grotesque faces, some of them vast, some tiny, that seemed to shift and change with the changes of the light and the play of the shadows. Doubtless, these were those of the lesser gods of whom probably there were a great number, all of them bad and cruel, and they were peering and mocking at him.

      Moreover, beyond them, a dim outline, was the great Sleeper, as he had always been, a mountain of a god with huge tusks and the curling nose much longer than the body of a man, and a head like a rock, and ears as big as the sides of a hut, and a small, cold eye that seemed to be fixed upon him, and behind all this, vanishing into the depths of the ice, an enormous body the height of three men standing on each other’s heads, perhaps. There was a god indeed, and, looking at him, Wi wondered whether one day he would awake and break out of the ice and come rushing down the mountain. That he might see him better, Wi rose from his knees and crept timidly to the face of the glacier to peer down a certain crevice in the ice. While he was thus engaged, the sun rose in a clear sky over the shoulder of the mountain and shone with some warmth upon the glacier for the first time that spring – or rather early sum mer. Its rays penetrated the cleft in the ice so that Wi saw more of the Sleeper than he had ever done.

      Truly, he was enormous, and look, behind him was something like the figure of a man of which he had often heard but never before seen so clearly. Or was it a shadow? Wi could not be sure, for just then a cloud floated over the face of the sun and the figure vanished. He waited for the cloud to pass away, and well was it for him that he did so, for just then a great rock which lay, doubtless, upon the extreme lip of the glacier, loosened from its last hold by the warmth of the sun, came thundering down the slope of the ice and, leaping over Wi, fell upon the spot where he had just been standing, making a hole in the frozen ground and crushing the wolf’s head to a pulp, after which, with mighty bounds, it vanished towards the beach.

      “The Sleeper has protected me,” said Wi to himself, as he turned to look after the vanishing rock. “Had I stayed where I was, I should have been as that wolf’s head.”

      Then, suddenly, he remembered that this stone had fallen in answer to his prayer; that it was the sign he had sought, and removed himself swiftly, lest another that he had not sought should follow after it.

      When he had run a few paces down the frozen slope, he came to a little bay hollowed in the mountainside, and sat down, knowing that there he was safe from falling stones. Confusedly, he began to think. What had he asked the gods? Was it that he must fight Henga if the stone fell, or that he must not fight him? Oh! now he remembered. It was that he must fight as Aaka wished him to do, and a cold trembling shook his limbs. To talk of fighting that raging giant was easy enough, but to do it was another matter. Yet the gods had spoken, and he dared not disobey the counsel that he had sought. Moreover, by sparing his life from the falling stone, surely they meant that he would conquer Henga. Or perhaps they only meant that they wished to see Henga tear him to pieces for their sport, for the gods loved blood, and the gods were cruel. Moreover, being evil themselves, would it not, perhaps, please them to give victory to the evil man?

      As he could not answer these questions, Wi rose and walked slowly toward the beach, reflecting that probably he had seen his last of the glacier and the Ice-gods who dwelt therein, he who was about to challenge Henga to fight to the death. Presently he drew near to the place where he had killed the wolf, and, looking up, was astonished to see that someone was skinning the beast. Indeed, his fingers tightened upon the haft of 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