Before Adam Page #12

"Before Adam" by Jack London, published in 1907, is a unique blend of science fiction, evolutionary theory, and adventure. It explores the idea of genetic memory through a narrator who experiences vivid dreams of a prehistoric past.

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and over, all arms and legs it seemed, the shaft of the arrow
projecting from his chest and appearing and disappearing with each
revolution of his body.

Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing to the earth with
an audible thud and crunch, his body rebounding slightly and settling
down again. Still he lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his
hands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running forward with a stone
and hammering him on the head...and then I remember no more.

Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the dream, did I wake up
screaming with fright—to find, often, my mother or nurse, anxious and
startled, by my bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair and
telling me that they were there and that there was nothing to fear.

My next dream, in the order of succession, begins always with the
flight of Lop-Ear and myself through the forest. The Fire-Man and
Broken-Tooth and the tree of the tragedy are gone. Lop-Ear and I, in a
cautious panic, are fleeing through the trees. In my right leg is a
burning pain; and from the flesh, protruding head and shaft from either
side, is an arrow of the Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of
it pain me severely, but it bothered my movements and made it
impossible for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.

At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a tree. Lop-Ear went
right on. I called to him—most plaintively, I remember; and he stopped
and looked back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork and
examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but one way the flesh
resisted the barbed head, and the other way it resisted the feathered
shaft. Also, it hurt grievously, and I stopped him.

For some time we crouched there, Lop-Ear nervous and anxious to be
gone, perpetually and apprehensively peering this way and that, and
myself whimpering softly and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk,
and yet his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I take as
a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship that have helped make
man the mightiest of the animals.

Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the flesh, and I
angrily stopped him. Then he bent down and began gnawing the shaft of
the arrow with his teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both
hands so that it would not play about in the wound, and at the same
time I held on to him. I often meditate upon this scene—the two of us,
half-grown cubs, in the childhood of the race, and the one mastering
his fear, beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand
by and succor the other. And there rises up before me all that was
there foreshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias, of
life-saving crews and Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of
forlorn hopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, and of all
the men of earth, mighty of stature, whose strength may trace back to
the elemental loins of Lop-Ear and Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of
the Younger World.

When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, the shaft was
withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on, but this time it was he
that stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely. Some of the smaller
veins had doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a branch,
Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves. These he stuffed into the
wound. They accomplished the purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped.
Then we went on together, back to the safety of the caves.




CHAPTER VIII


Well do I remember that first winter after I left home. I have long
dreams of sitting shivering in the cold. Lop-Ear and I sit close
together, with our arms and legs about each other, blue-faced and with
chattering teeth. It got particularly crisp along toward morning. In
those chill early hours we slept little, huddling together in numb
misery and waiting for the sunrise in order to get warm.

When we went outside there was a crackle of frost under foot. One
morning we discovered ice on the surface of the quiet water in the eddy
where was the drinking-place, and there was a great How-do-you-do about
it. Old Marrow-Bone was the oldest member of the horde, and he had
never seen anything like it before. I remember the worried, plaintive
look that came into his eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive
look always came into our eyes when we did not understand a thing, or
when we felt the prod of some vague and inexpressible desire.) Red-Eye,
too, when he investigated the ice, looked bleak and plaintive, and
stared across the river into the northeast, as though in some way he
connected the Fire People with this latest happening.

But we found ice only on that one morning, and that was the coldest
winter we experienced. I have no memory of other winters when it was so
cold. I have often thought that that cold winter was a fore-runner of
the countless cold winters to come, as the ice-sheet from farther north
crept down over the face of the land. But we never saw that ice-sheet.
Many generations must have passed away before the descendants of the
horde migrated south, or remained and adapted themselves to the changed
conditions.

Life was hit or miss and happy-go-lucky with us. Little was ever
planned, and less was executed. We ate when we were hungry, drank when
we were thirsty, avoided our carnivorous enemies, took shelter in the
caves at night, and for the rest just sort of played along through
life.

We were very curious, easily amused, and full of tricks and pranks.
There was no seriousness about us, except when we were in danger or
were angry, in which cases the one was quickly forgotten and the other
as quickly got over.

We were inconsecutive, illogical, and inconsequential. We had no
steadfastness of purpose, and it was here that the Fire People were
ahead of us. They possessed all these things of which we possessed so
little. Occasionally, however, especially in the realm of the emotions,
we were capable of long-cherished purpose. The faithfulness of the
monogamic couples I have referred to may be explained as a matter of
habit; but my long desire for the Swift One cannot be so explained, any
more than can be explained the undying enmity between me and Red-Eye.

But it was our inconsequentiality and stupidity that especially
distresses me when I look back upon that life in the long ago. Once I
found a broken gourd which happened to lie right side up and which had
been filled with the rain. The water was sweet, and I drank it. I even
took the gourd down to the stream and filled it with more water, some
of which I drank and some of which I poured over Lop-Ear. And then I
threw the gourd away. It never entered my head to fill the gourd with
water and carry it into my cave. Yet often I was thirsty at night,
especially after eating wild onions and watercress, and no one ever
dared leave the caves at night for a drink.

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