CHAPTER IV - THE WALL OF THE WORLD

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions,

the cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance.

Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by

his mother's nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing.

Never, in his brief cave- life, had he encountered anything of which to be

afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote

ancestry through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had

received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it

had been passed down through all the generations of wolves that had gone

before. Fear! - that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor

exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear

was made. Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he

had already learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had

known; and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction.

The hard obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's

nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several

famines, had borne in upon him that all was not freedom in the world, that

to life there was limitations and restraints. These limitations and restraints

were laws. To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make for

happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely

classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after

such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and

restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and

in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept

away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light.

When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the

intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the

whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did

not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a- trembling with its

own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub

knew only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore

unknown and terrible - for the unknown was one of the chief elements that

went into the making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently. How

was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle?

It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression

of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no

accounting. But fear was accompanied by another instinct - that of

concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without

movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all appearances

dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the wolverine's

track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him with undue

vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a

great hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which

was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth

demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away

from the white wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make

for light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising

within him - rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every

breath he drew. In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away

by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the

entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall

seemed to recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided

with the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The

substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as

condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into what

had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the

light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.

Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside

which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an

immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He was

dazzled by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous

extension of space. Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to

the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of

objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it

again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its

appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of the

trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above

the trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain.

A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown.

He crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He

was very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him.

Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled

weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his

puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world.

Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot

to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by

growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to

notice near objects - an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun,

the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope itself,

that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave on

which he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never

experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he

stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave-lip,

so he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on

the nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over

and over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last.

It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him

some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi'd like any

frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he

yelped and ki-yi'd unceasingly. This was a different proposition from

crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now

the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good.

Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here

the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last

agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a

matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand

toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the

earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the

world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without

hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity

than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning

whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new

world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the

unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things

about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss- berry plant just

beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an

open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around the base of the

trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright. He cowered down

and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and

from a point of safety chattered back savagely.

This helped the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next

encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him,

he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the

end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made

was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight.

But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an

unconsciousclassification. There were live things and things not alive.

Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not alive remained

always in one place, but the live things moved about, and there was no

telling what they might do. The thing to expect of them was the

unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.

He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that

he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or

rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he

overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and

stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned under

him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that the

things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as was

his cave - also, that small things not alive were more liable than large

things to fall down or turn over. But with every mishap he was learning.

The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was adjusting himself. He

was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his

physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between

objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though

he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-

door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he

chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had

essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way

under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded

crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in

the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of seven

ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he

perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved.

He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was

a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth.

It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he was made aware

of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed together. There was a crunching

of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was

good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive

between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he

stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he licked his chops in

quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded

by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his

paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a

fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his