Jack London. Before Adam -
15 >
It was a wild boar. He peered at me curiously. He grunted
once or twice and shifted his weight from one foreleg to the
other, at the same time moving his head from side to side and
swaying the ferns. Still I sat as one petrified, my eyes
unblinking as I stared at him, fear eating at my heart.
It seemed that this movelessness and silence on my part
was what was expected of me. I was not to cry out in the face
of fear. It was a dictate of instinct. And so I sat there and
waited for I knew not what. The boar thrust the ferns aside and
stepped into the open. The curiosity went out of his eyes, and
they gleamed cruelly. He tossed his head at me threateningly
and advanced a step. This he did again, and yet again.
Then I screamed...or shrieked--I cannot describe it, but
it was a shrill and terrible cry. And it seems that it, too, at
this stage of the proceedings, was the thing expected of me.
From not far away came an answering cry. My sounds seemed
momentarily to disconcert the boar, and while he halted and
shifted his weight with indecision, an apparition burst upon
us.
She was like a large orangutan, my mother, or like a
chimpanzee, and yet, in sharp and definite ways, quite
different. She was heavier of build than they, and had less
hair. Her arms were not so long, and her legs were stouter. She
wore no clothes--only her natural hair. And I can tell you she
was a fury when she was excited.
And like a fury she dashed upon the scene. She was
gritting her teeth, making frightful grimaces, snarling,
uttering sharp and continuous cries that sounded like "kh-ah!
kh-ah!" So sudden and formidable was her appearance that the
boar involuntarily bunched himself together on the defensive