LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066239350

Table of Contents

       IN THE MORNING OF TIME

       CHAPTER I

       THE WORLD WITHOUT MAN

       CHAPTER II

       THE KING OF THE TRIPLE HORN

       CHAPTER III

       THE FINDING OF FIRE

       CHAPTER IV

       THE CHILDREN OF THE SHINING ONE

       CHAPTER V

       THE PULLER-DOWN OF TREES

       CHAPTER VI

       THE BATTLE OF THE BRANDS

       CHAPTER VII

       THE RESCUE OF A-YA

       CHAPTER VIII

       THE BENDING OF THE BOW

       CHAPTER IX

       THE DESTROYING SPLENDOR

       CHAPTER X

       THE TERRORS OF THE DARK

       CHAPTER XI

       THE FEASTING OF THE CAVE FOLK

       CHAPTER XII

       ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS

       CHAPTER XIII

       THE FEAR

       CHAPTER XIV

       THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP

IN THE MORNING OF TIME

       Table of Contents

      1

      In The Morning of Time

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

THE WORLD WITHOUT MAN

       Table of Contents

      It lay apparently afloat on the sluggish, faintly discolored tide––a placid, horse-faced, shovel-nosed head, with bumpy holes for ears and immense round eyes of a somewhat anxious mildness.

      The anxiety in the great eyes was not without reason, for their owner had just arrived in the tepid and teeming waters of this estuary, and the creatures which he had already seen about him were both unknown and menacing. But the inshore shallows were full of water-weeds of a rankness and succulence far beyond anything he had enjoyed in his old habitat, and he was determined to secure himself a place here.

      From time to time, as some new monster came in sight, the ungainly head would shoot up amazingly to a distance of five or ten, or even fifteen feet, on a swaying pillar of a neck, in order to get a better view of the stranger. Then it would slowly sink back again to its repose on the water.

      The water at this point was almost fresh, because the estuary, though fully two miles wide, was filled 2 with the tide of the great river rolling slowly down from the heart of the continent. The further shore was so flat that nothing could be seen of it but an endless, pale green forest of giant reeds. But the nearer shore was skirted, at a distance of perhaps half a mile from the water, by a rampart of abrupt, bright, rust-red cliffs. The flat land between the waterside and the cliffs, except for the wide strip of beach, was clothed with an enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane and palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some species of bird conceived in a nightmare.

      Far out across the water one of these creatures was flapping slowly in from the sea. Its wings––eighteen feet across from tip to tip––were not the wings of a bird, but of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful, hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet were those of a lizard.

      As this startling shape came flapping shoreward, the head afloat upon the water eyed it with interest, but not, as it seemed, with any great apprehension. Yet it certainly looked formidable enough to excite misgivings in most creatures. Its flight was not the steady, even winging of a bird, but spasmodic and violent. It came on at a height of perhaps twenty feet above the sluggish tide, and its immense, circular eyes appeared to take no notice of the strange head that 3 watched it from the water’s surface. It seemed about to pass a little to one side, when suddenly, with a hoarse, hooting cry, it swerved and swooped, and struck at the floating head with open jaws.

      Swift as was that unexpected attack, the assailant struck nothing but a spot of foam where the head had disappeared. Simultaneously with the lightning disappearance, there was a sudden boiling of the water some eighty-odd feet away. But the

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