Chapter IV: Part 4

“But when we are fishing,” said Gaithel, “we have the net weighted at the bottom with stones to sink it, and the one end is held up in one canoe and the other in another, and the canoes paddle in ashore, dragging the net between them. Then some of us wade out into the water, and spear the fish or catch them with our hands if we can, and then the net is drawn in closer until we get the rest, but sometimes some of them get away.”

Then Gaithel took Tig back to the hut, and he stayed to talk to Dobran, and told him that he thought the village a very wonderful place; and he asked Dobran why it was that the fathers of the Lake People built their village on the water.

“Why,” said Dobran, “they built it thus that they might be safe from the attacks of wild beasts and from their enemies. As I told thee, they made the platform first, felling trees in the woods and piling them here, before ever they could set one pole of a hut. And with great labour they did this, building as large as they could; but even so, the space is too small.

“We are sorely crowded, as I said before; and now some of the younger men choose rather to build huts on the shore, hard by, where we have our cornland and the pasture for the cattle; though we who are older like the old ways best. Of course the wolves and such like are not so much to be feared as they were in our fathers’ days; and as for enemies--why, we have lived in peace many years and perhaps we have naught to fear. Nevertheless, I promise thee, if enemies should come to fight us, the folk who have built their houses and their byres and their sheepfolds away on the land there, with naught but a stockade around them, would speedily flee for shelter to our stronghold here on the water.”

Dobran’s wife, who was sitting beside her husband, was busily spinning yarn; and when Dobran had finished speaking, she began to hum a song as she drew the thread. She had a big bunch of wool fastened to the end of a stick beside her, and she drew out some hair from the wool and twisted it into a thread between her thumb and finger. Then she tied the end of this to the spindle, which was a pointed stick loaded about the middle with a ball of dried clay, and started twirling it round with her other hand. As the spindle went spinning round in the air, and dropping towards the ground, it drew the thread out longer, twisting it all the time. As soon as the spindle reached the ground, Dobran’s wife picked it up, wound the thread round it and set it spinning again; and so she went on until she had spun a good ball of yarn.

Outside the hut a daughter of Dobran’s, whose name was Eira, was sitting at the loom weaving cloth. Her loom was an upright wooden frame, and the main threads, called the warp, were stretched from the top of the loom to the bottom and kept taut by means of stone weights. In her hand Eira held a shuttle containing the cross-thread, called the woof, which she passed in and out through the warp, from side to side of the loom. After she had worked in five or six cross-lines in this way, and so had got a narrow piece of cloth woven, she stopped and picked up a thin, flat piece of wood, cut into teeth like a comb, and combed the web and pressed it down firmly. Her thread was finer and her cloth better than the women made in Tig’s village, and he stood and watched her. “Aye,” said Dobran, “she is a famous weaver. She shall give thee a girdle of her own weaving. Nay, now, she shall weave thee a shirt of three colours, and thou shalt come again and fetch it for thyself.”

On the next morning Tig rose early, and found that Dobran’s people were already astir. Eira and another girl were grinding corn on a big, flat rubbing stone; and afterwards Eira took the meal that they had ground to make cakes for breakfast.

Then, after they had eaten the morning meal, Tig bade farewell to his friends, the Lake People, and set off homeward. Some of the men paddled him ashore in a canoe, and guided him through the woods and set him on the way; and he returned to his father’s camp.

_Chapter the Twenty-fifth_

_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: A Talk about Ancient Lake-Dwellings_

WHEN Uncle John had finished reading, he asked the boys if they had ever heard before of people living in houses with water all round as a defence against their enemies?

“Yes, if you mean a single house,” Dick said, “you told me that your house here once had a moat all round it.”

“Yes,” said Uncle John, “so it had; and though the village of the Lake People was built many hundreds of years before ever there was a house like mine in all the country, yet the notion was the same. In the old days men felt safer with deep water all round them, than when there was only a stockade, or even a wall. The villages by the lakes in Switzerland that I told you of before, were built in that way over the water on piles.”

David wanted to know how the Lake People had managed to support the platform on which the huts were built--was it held up by straight piles, like a table with a lot of legs?

“No,” said Uncle John, “not in Dobran’s village, anyway. I will tell you what I know about it. Some time ago a farmer who lives near here had a boggy place on his farm. It lay in a hollow among his fields, and in winter or after a great deal of rain it became almost a lake. People used to say that once upon a time there had been a lake there, but it had got filled up with moss and peat. However, the farmer wanted to turn it into ploughing-land, so he set to work to drain it; his men dug drains and ran off all the water, and then they saw a large, low mound standing up out of the mud. And when they came to clear the mound away, they found that it was the remains of an ancient lake village that had lain hidden in the bog under the water for hundreds of years. I heard about it, so I went, and stayed all the time, day after day, while they were digging out the remains; and so I got a good notion of how those old people, that we have been reading about, used to make their lake-villages in this part of the country--for in other places they had other ways.”

“What did you find?” the boys all asked.

“Well, we didn’t find any huts; they had all gone to decay long before; but the great platform of tree-trunks was there, and its foundations and parts of what had been the gangway to the shore. And we found the old rubbish-heap, and we picked over and sifted every bit of it; and I will show you an arrow-head and some beads, and some pieces of pottery, that I picked out of the rubbish myself. In this rubbish were great numbers of bones of animals that the people had used for food. The bones were of deer and cattle and sheep and some of smaller animals, and some of birds. But the greatest find of all was a canoe. We found it lying buried in the mud, wonderfully preserved. We could see that it had been made, like Robinson Crusoe’s boat, out of the trunk of a tree, and hollowed out by fire, and hewn with stone axes.

“And the mound was cleared away from top to bottom, and very hard work this was; for it was solidly built of tree-trunks laid in rows like the sheaves in a corn-stack: there were hundreds of trees, though none of them very large. Then there were piles driven in upright to hold the others together, and great stones that had been sunk to keep the beams down: and at the bottom of all were bundles of brushwood and more large stones, which had been put down first for the foundations. And if you bear in mind that the people of the lake-village had had to chop down all those trees and lop off the branches with their stone axes, which, as Joe reminded us, were not the best sort of cutting tools, and bring every faggot and every stone and every beam across the water in their canoes, you will see it must have been a great piece of work for them. The farmer and his men had a stiff job to pull the mound to pieces and clear it away; but these old people, we may be sure, had a much harder task in building it.”

Joe said that, perhaps, they floated out the tree-trunks on the water--that would be easier than putting them on the canoes.

“That’s right,” said Uncle John. “When they had got the foundation of stones and faggots laid, they made rafts of the trees and towed them out and loaded them up with stones and so sank them upon the foundations; and then laid more trunks on these, until they got to the right height above the water.”

“Did you find any other things in the rubbish heap?” David asked.

“We found some bone harpoons for spearing fish, and a number of objects of stone, such as weights for sinking fishing nets, and some that were used, perhaps, as whorls for twisting thread in spinning, and some beads of jet and a number of bone needles; but not many arrows, and only two or three axe-heads, one of which was broken.”

“Why didn’t you find more weapons?” David asked; “I expect the people had many more, hadn’t they?” “I expect they had,” said Uncle John, “but I’m afraid I can’t tell you why no more were found. Perhaps the people went away to live somewhere else and took their belongings with them.”

“I wish we had been there when you were digging at the mound,” Dick said. “I suppose there isn’t another one anywhere about?”

“No,” said Uncle John. “I’m afraid there isn’t another one.”

_Chapter the Twenty-sixth_

_THE STORY OF TIG: How the Old Chief Died_

NOW it happened, when they all came home again from the hunting camp, that the old chief of the village fell ill. Caerig was his name, but the people always called him Old Chief, for he had been the head man of the village for many years, and they all honoured him because he had been a clever hunter in the past days and a brave fighter.

The women of the village attended to him in his sickness, and tried to cure him with the medicines made from wild plants which they gathered in the woods; but the medicines did no good, and Old Chief grew worse.

Then at last two sons of the old chief went a journey to a village some distance away where a Medicine Man lived, and they took presents to the Medicine Man and begged him to come to cure the old chief’s sickness: and the Medicine Man came. He was a very old man, and he had a great name for skill in curing diseases. He brought with him his wand of magic wood and a bone rattle, but no medicines, though it was said of him that he could make more powerful medicines than any that the women made. He went into the old chief’s hut, and sat by him for a long time without speaking. Then he got up and walked solemnly round the bed from left to right three times, making signs with his wand and shaking his rattle. Tig and some of the others were waiting and listening outside the hut, and only the old chief’s sons and some of the older men were allowed inside. Then the Medicine Man said that an evil spirit was troubling Old Chief, and unless he could scare it away, the chief would die. The Medicine Man began to chant a song, shaking his rattle and beating on the ground with his wand; and the old chief lay groaning in pain, and the people cried and groaned also. At last the Medicine Man said that no more could be done that night; but that on the morrow he would work a stronger spell against the evil spirit. But in the night Old Chief died.

Then in the morning the news spread about that the old chief was dead; and the women who had attended him in his sickness stood around the hut moaning and wailing, and went crying up and down the village. And all the people mourned for him. Then after two days they carried his body to the top of a hill beyond the village, and built a funeral pyre of faggots and burned his body in the fire. This was done according to the rule of the Medicine Men, of whom there were three present to take part in the funeral. They gathered the ashes together and put them into an urn and then carried the urn to a place that they had chosen. In the meantime the people had built up another great fire; and they brought an ox, and killed it and roasted it in the fire, and made a great feast on the hill-top beside the fire, and all the people sat down and feasted at the funeral feast of the old chief. Then the Medicine Men bade the people approach to lay the gifts in the grave. They brought food from the feast and set it in little vessels beside the urn, because they believed that the chief’s spirit would need food for refreshment in the spirit world; and they brought his spear and his axe and his bow and arrows and his shield, and laid them in the grave; and they brought his favourite dog and killed it there, and laid its body beside the urn, so that it might attend its master in the world of spirits. Then when this was done, the Medicine Men made the people bring stones to raise a cairn over the urn. First they laid large flat stones, building them like a little chamber about the urn; then they laid six large blocks in a circle all round, and set others within the circle and piled them up into a great heap. These stones they brought from the river bed in the valley and carried them up across the hill-side to build the cairn. The building of the cairn was a work of several days; and every day until the work was finished, the women mourned and wailed in the village at sunset.

At last, on the day that the cairn was finished, the men of the village met together in council to choose one to be chief in the place of Caerig. Then Arsan, the old man, stood up and said:

“Garff is the man among us who is fittest to be our chief; for he is an able man and skilful, whether for hunting or for battle; and he is a man wise in council and the master of many cattle. Shall we not do well to choose him to be our chief?”

And the men said, “We shall do well.”

Then Garff stood up and said, “It is too much honour that you do me, friends, for I am a plain man and little skilled in speaking. But if you choose me to be your leader, I will strive to do my best for the good of all, whether in the hunt or in battle.”

So they chose Garff to be chief, and from that day he was the head man among the people and took the chief place at the councils. And when any strangers from other villages came with messages, they were taken to Garff’s hut to deliver their message and to seek his protection.

_Chapter the Twenty-seventh_

_How Tig chose a Wife from among the Lake People_

AFTER his first visit to the Lake Village Tig went sometimes to see his friends there, always taking care to carry with him a present of game of his own killing, a hare or some birds, for Eira and her mother; for he was glad that they should see what a clever hunter he was; and Eira showed him how well she could cook the meat that he brought, and was pleased when he praised her cookery. Dobran and Gaithel took him out fishing, but Tig did not care much for this. However, one day they promised to show him better sport, for a party was going up into their hunting-grounds to hunt deer in a manner of their own.

They all started very early in the morning and marched up into the hills. Then the men spread their party out into a long line, curved like the letter C, and swept across the hill-side with their dogs. Then they closed in, and beat the woods until the hunters on one side started a herd of deer. The deer dashed across the woodland valley and tried to escape on the other side, but the men of the further line turned them back and drove them into the woods again.

So the hunters kept the deer moving forward, always within the line, until they drove them to a narrow place near the end of the valley, where there was a big trap, a high double fence among the trees, made in the shape of a long V. The hunters closed in on the deer and drove them in at the broad open end of the fence, and then drove them on and on until the deer were enclosed in the narrow end, where the ground was soft and boggy, so that they could not leap out.

Then some of the hunters climbed over the fence, and speared or clubbed the poor animals that were standing up to their knees in the soft soil, panting and terror-stricken. In this manner in one day the hunters got eleven head of deer; but Tig thought it was not such fine sport as stalking a stag on the hills, though at the time of the drive, when they were heading the deer down through the woods, it was exciting work.

Then they carried home the deer that they had killed, and they all spent two or three days in feasting.

Another day when Tig and Gaithel were in the woods, they came to a valley where a stream flowed quietly along and the trees grew on the banks near the water’s edge.

“This is the beavers’ valley,” said Gaithel, “they have their village here. They are our brothers, for they build their houses beside the water even as we do; but we hunt them and kill them although we do call them our brothers.”

The beavers’ home was in a pond. They had made the pond by laying a dam of logs across the stream to hold back the water; and there they had built their huts with round tops of interlaced branches that showed above the water. Tig saw where they had cut down many tall trees on the banks and gnawed them into logs with their strong teeth.

“Do you set traps for the beavers?” Tig asked.

“Yes, we trap them; we bait the traps with fresh wood--fresh sweet bark is what they like. Sometimes we hunt them in the winter, when their ponds are frozen over. We go and batter at the huts with clubs. Then the beavers rush out of their huts under the ice and make for holes that they have in the banks; but we try to head them off from these by banging on the ice, and make them come up to breathe at holes in the ice. They must come up after a time to get breath. Then we stand at the holes and try to spear them. We often scatter dry husks over the holes: the stuff floats on the water, and then the beavers cannot see us waiting by the holes, and we catch them if we are quick.”

“Have you many beavers about here?” Tig asked.

“There are not so many as there were once. My grandfather can remember when there used to be nine or ten beavers’ dams in these valleys where there are only three or four now.”

“They are getting scarce in our woods too,” said Tig, “we have hunted them so much.”

The next day Tig went home to his own village and got some of his neighbours to help him build a new hut and bring into it the necessary things. Then he went again to the Lake Village, taking presents for Eira’s father and mother, and he asked Eira to be his wife. Then they were married according to the custom of her people, and there was a great feast at the wedding, and the men ran races, and they all danced many dances. And afterwards Tig took Eira home to the new hut in his own village.

_Chapter the Twenty-eighth_

_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: The Boys’ Bows and Arrows_

WHEN the boys went out after this reading, they got their bows and arrows. By this time the bows were finished. Dick had given to each of the others two arrows out of his set that came from London. These were well made with blunt metal heads fitting like caps. Besides these Joe had made himself six arrows, and the other two four each. For heads they had nails, filed down flat on two sides to make them fit into the shaft, and sharpened at the point. The great difficulty had been to get straight sticks, and though they agreed that it was not a real hunter’s way of doing it, they had cut lengths from a thin piece of hard-wood board, with a fine saw, and then trimmed and sand-papered these to make them round and smooth. To fix in the heads they made a cut, deep enough to take the nail, and then wrapped it with fine string and glued this well over. When they had fixed the feathers, the arrows were complete, and each marked his own. Dick had a V for his mark, Joe a cut between two dots, and David a dot between two cuts. The gardener made them a target out of bands of straw, and they practised at it a good deal. But one day they made up their minds to try to shoot something that might be called “game,” and they went off to the heath. Each took a different way, but they agreed to meet at the hut afterwards, with whatever they should have bagged.

Joe went off to a place near the edge of the wood, where there were generally rabbits playing about, and his plan was to creep up near enough to get a shot at once, if he could do so without scaring them, but if not, to hide among the bushes and wait for them coming out of their burrows.

David crept through the furze looking out for birds. He saw an old blackbird hopping about under the bushes, and he shot at it; but it flew away with a great deal of noise, as if laughing at David, who had to spend a long time getting back his arrow from among a lot of prickly brambles. There were numbers of yellow-hammers perching about on the furze bushes and crying out: _A very, very little bit of bread and no chee-e-e-ese_, and a pair of bold little stone-chats that kept flying round calling _a-tick, a-tick_, but David did not want to shoot at them. Then a family of green woodpeckers, father and mother and four young ones, came flying across from the woods; and David was so keen on watching them that he forgot he was a hunter; so when he got to the hut he was empty-handed. He was the first in, but after a while Joe came, and he also had got nothing.

“I nearly shot a starling,” he said; “there was a flock of them running about on the grass, and I shot right into the middle of them. I wish I had got one, for it says in that book of mine that a starling is the best bird to get when you are learning to stuff, as it is easy to skin--I say, it would be fun to shoot a rabbit and skin it, and try to cure the skin!”

Just then Dick came in. He had his pockets stuffed out, and the others wanted to know what he had got. He said they were to make a fire and then he would show them; so they went out and collected sticks and made a fire in the fireplace outside the hut. Then Dick brought out of his pocket six potatoes, and said that was all his game. “I never saw anything to shoot at,” he said, “but the men in a field over there are taking up potatoes and they gave me these for twopence, and would have let me have more if I could have stowed them away. I thought we could roast them in the ashes.”

But Dick had something else to show. He had found some pieces of wool, torn off sheep’s fleeces, hanging to the thorn bushes on the heath, and had gathered them all up.

“To-morrow I shall go and try to get some more,” he said, “and when I have got enough, I shall make a spindle, if I can find out exactly what it ought to be like, and see if I can spin some yarn: and if I can spin the yarn, I shall rig up a loom and have a try at weaving a piece of cloth. There isn’t much chance of being able to do it right, of course, but it is good fun trying.”

_Chapter the Twenty-ninth_

_THE STORY OF TIG: How the Lake People brought Tidings of War_

ONE day when Tig was sitting at the door of his hut trimming sticks for arrows, he heard the dogs barking, so he went to the gate and looked out. He saw three men coming up the hill, and when they came nearer he saw that they were some of the Lake Village people, friends of his. He went out to meet them, and brought them into the village and took them to his father’s hut, because they said they had brought an important message.

But first, Gofa and some of the other women brought food and set it before the visitors, and they ate and drank. Then when Garff had called together the elder men of the village, he asked the leader of the party to give his message.

Then the man, whose name was Dileas, stood up and said:

“For many months past, O chief, our folk have been sorely molested by the people that dwell to the southward of our borders, across the waters of the big river. Their men have trespassed upon our hunting-grounds, and when we have resisted them, they have fought and several of our men have been slain. And now of late they have taken to hunting openly upon our side of the water, coming up the river in their canoes, in bands, and daring us to drive them back.

“Yet have we worse than this to tell. For nine days ago a party of their men attacked our cowherds, who were tending the cattle on the hill-side; and they drove off the cattle and slew one of the cowherds that was an old man, and carried off two young men to their village. But a young man who escaped, being a swift runner, fled home and brought us these tidings. And on the next day our chief sent me and these two, my companions, to the people across the big river, to make complaint of the matter. And we saw their chief, sitting with the old men of the tribe; and we spoke civilly to them, saying that doubtless the wrong was done by some of their young men that were headstrong and perhaps ignorant; and that if they would restore our cattle and release our brothers and make payment for the death of the other, and would swear by their gods to trouble us no more, then we would not seek vengeance for blood, but would be at peace with them and keep faith.

“But they gave us only harsh words, saying that our cowherds had fallen first upon their men, who were but seeking for some of their beasts that had strayed; that as for the cattle, they had taken them in fair fight and should keep them; and our brothers they should keep also to be slaves to them. And their chief boasted and said that his people are called the Warriors, and that warriors they be; that they are mightier than we, and are able to drive us into the hills and take away all our cattle, and take also our women and our young men to be their slaves. And their chief showed us his axe, the like of which we have never seen, for it was yellow and shining and of very great sharpness, and he said that with this axe he hath slain above threescore men. Then he sent us away, and we departed and came to our own village again, and brought these woeful tidings to our people.

“And yet worse remains still to be told. For we have deemed it prudent to send out spies to watch their village, and our spies have brought us word that the Warriors are going about their streets painted and arrayed for battle, and that the Medicine Men are making daily sacrifices to their gods, that their people may prosper in battle; and by these things we are assured that they will soon make war on us.

“And now, O Chief, we are come to seek help from you and your people; and we pray you to aid us to fight against the Warriors and drive them back across the water, lest they, having conquered us and burned our village, fall next upon your people and do the like to you.”

Then Garff looked round upon the elder men and said:

“Shall we not do amiss if we withhold help from these our friends in their need? Let us join our arms to theirs and fight side by side with them against the men who are their enemies and ours.”

And the men all said, “Yes, we will fight.”

Then Garff made an agreement with the Lake Men that they should return at once to their village, and set spies to watch the fords of the river and the village of the Warriors; and if an army should be seen to leave the village, then the Lake People were to light three beacon fires upon the top of the hill above their village, and he and his men would come to their aid.

And Garff sent Tig, with seven young men, to make a camp on the hills within sight of the Lake People’s hill, that they might watch by day and night for the signal. Then the three Lake Men departed and went back to their village.

So Tig and his companions packed their stores and took their arms, their best bows and all their war-arrows and their shields of wickerwork covered with hide; and pitched their camp up in the hills. They watched the hill, day and night, for the alarm-fire; and meantime they prepared themselves for battle, dyeing and painting their bodies with red paint and blue paint; also they exercised themselves in war-games and dances.

Early in the morning of the third day the men on the look-out saw three columns of smoke rising from the top of the hill far off. So Tig sent two of the young men who were swift runners to carry the news to Garff, and he sent Eira, and the other women who had been with them, home also; and he and his five companions set off to go to the Lake Village.

_Chapter the Thirtieth_

_How they Fought the Battle in the Wood_

WHEN Garff and his men reached the Lake Village, they found the people armed and ready. The Chief of the Lake People, whose name was Bran, came out to meet Garff, and he called him and some of his men into the council that they might make a plan of war. And he told Garff that his spies had seen the army of the Warriors muster at daybreak on the river bank. They had crossed in canoes, and had built a stockade on this side of the water, and dragged the canoes ashore. They had been seen fixing long poles to the canoes, which were light ones made of wicker and hide; and it was thought that they meant to carry some of the canoes over the hills to the lake, so that one band of their men might attack the island from the canoes, while another band should try to force the gangway.

Then one of the old men stood up and said:

“Surely this will be their plan! But how can we meet them better than here on our island, where the water and our good wall are our defence? Our fathers met their foes thus and beat them back. What is this talk that I hear of going forth to battle in the woods? If we leave our defences, we are lost.”

Then Bran said that it was the wish of some of the younger men to march out and try to take their enemies by surprise in the woods, and that he himself was in favour of this plan.

“Surely,” said Garff, “that is the right plan. If you had meant to stay at home and fight behind walls, you had not needed help from us; and we, too, might have taken our folks and our cattle and shut ourselves up in our hill-fort. No, leave some of your older men that can yet bear arms to stay by the village and defend it if need be. But let the rest of us go out and fall upon these Warriors suddenly in the woods; and let some of the young men go and watch the fords, to see that none of the enemy cross the river elsewhere and take us in the rear; but let us start without delay.”

So they marched at once; and since Bran was an old man and less skilled in warfare than Garff, he gave the command of all the men to him, and he himself marched behind.

When they had gone some distance through the forest, and had come to an open place upon the hill-side, Garff made the men halt and hide themselves in a thicket at the edge of the wood; and he sent Tig with two others to spy for the advance of the enemy. Tig and his companions crept away through the bushes and were gone for some time. At length they came back swiftly and cautiously, with news that they had seen a large band of the enemy in the wood below, all fully armed with bows and slings, and spears and axes and clubs, and carrying four canoes in their rear. So Garff set all his men in battle-line, and bade them lie still until the enemy should be well out into the open ground. Then, at a signal, they were to leap up suddenly and shoot a flight of arrows and rush upon the Warriors, every one marking his man.

Presently they heard voices and saw the figures of the leaders appear among the trees. The Warriors were sure of victory, and they had no thought of the Lake Men coming out to meet them; so they were marching carelessly along, thinking more of getting their canoes up the hill than of preparing to fight. They streamed out into the open, led by their chief who was carrying his axe on his shoulder. Garff waited till the band were well away from the shelter of the trees, and then he sprang to his feet with a great shout. At once his men leaped up, and sent a deadly shower of arrows at the enemy; and every man, as soon as he had shot, fitted another arrow and shot again. Many of the Warriors fell, and many were wounded, and they were thrown into great confusion. But their chief rushed down their ranks shouting to them not to give way, but to take their shields and advance. Then to gain time and to save his broken line, he dashed forward alone, holding up his arm. Garff signed to his men to cease shooting, and the chief of the Warriors came on shouting:

“Let one of you fight with me! If there be a man among you, let him come forth and fight with me!”

Then Garff strode out from among his men and went forward to meet the chief, who stood brandishing his axe, which glittered as he waved it in the sunlight. And the chief cried out:

“Ho! Ho! This is my axe! Skull-pecker is his name, for he has pecked open many a skull--ay, and split them in twain and eaten up the brains. Come on, come on! He will split thy skull even as the others, and slice thy flesh and chop up thy bones. Come on, come on!”

But when the chief saw Garff coming out to meet him, he stopped his boasting, for he saw that he had met as tough a fighter as himself.

Each man had thrown down his shield and each grasped his axe with both hands. Garff’s weapon was a battle-axe of stone, heavy and strong, but not so keen as the bronze axe of his enemy and not so deadly, unless he could get in a sweeping blow. The chief of the Warriors was taller than Garff, but not stronger, though Garff had the longer arms and was the more active of the two; also the chief had been wounded in the thigh by an arrow, and although he had tugged it out, he could not stop the flow of blood.

For a few seconds they faced one another without moving, and then the chief made a sudden leap forward and aimed a tremendous blow at Garff’s head. Garff leaped back to avoid the blow, and then rushed in and aimed a return stroke as his enemy’s axe swung round, and the chief leaped back. So they went on, striking and avoiding warily, until Garff began to give way, leaping backward at each attack and not striking again in return, for he saw that his enemy was spending his strength, and he meant to save his own. Never for a second did Garff cease to fix his eyes on his enemy’s eyes, and the two faced each other savagely. Then the chief rushed at Garff again in a fury, and struck with all his might. Garff avoided again, and jabbed upward with his axe-head to parry the blow, but he was not quick enough, and got a deep cut in the arm. Then the chief pressed hard upon him, thinking to end him with one blow; but Garff parried the stroke and gave a mighty spring, and before his enemy could recover, dealt him a blow on the right shoulder, so that he dropped his axe and fell prone. Then Garff picked up the bronze axe of the chief and drove it deep into his skull, then waved his own axe over his head and gave a great shout.

When the Warriors saw their leader fall, they uttered loud cries, and some of them rushed forward with spears and axes. But Tig leaped out, and Garff’s men and the Lake Men with him, and Garff waved the dripping axe, and they rushed upon the band and put them to flight and chased them through the woods, every one marking his man. And they killed many of them there and many by the river-side, and only those escaped who flung themselves into the river and swam across.

Then Garff and Bran called their men together, and they found that only five had been killed in the fight and seven wounded. And they sought out the bodies of their enemies that were fallen, and took their weapons and their necklaces and cut off their heads; and Garff cut off the head of the chief, and took his necklace of amber and his famous bronze axe, Skull-pecker; and so they all marched back in triumph, carrying their spoils and the heads of their enemies, to their own villages.

_Chapter the Thirty-first_

_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: How they dug out the Barrow_

“I AM afraid,” said Uncle John, when the chapter was finished, “that we shall not be able to have any more reading these holidays; for to-morrow and the next day I shall be away from home. There is one day left after that, as you know, but instead of the story I have planned an outing for us, which I have been trying to arrange ever since we read about the burial of the Old Chief. My plan is this. Up on the moor, beyond the place where we found the pit-dwellings, there is a barrow, as it is called, the burial mound of one of the old chiefs of the time that we have been reading about. The owner of the land, who is a friend of mine, intends to open the barrow; the work is to be begun to-morrow, and he has invited us to go and see what there is to be seen.”

So on the next day they all set off to the moor with a big hamper of provisions and a tea-kettle and a spade each. There were several mounds and barrows on the high parts of the moor, and in one place there were three huge standing stones marking what had once been a whole circle of stones.

They walked over the moor until they found the squire and his men. The men were already at work with picks and shovels, and had made a deep cutting in the side of the barrow. At first they had dug through a quantity of the heathery soil and gravel, but after a while they came to large stones; and digging these out and carrying them back out of the way was very hard work.

Uncle John rolled one aside and said to the boys:

“Can any of you find me another stone like this one anywhere on the moor round about?”

They looked at the stone, which was a smooth rounded boulder, and then searched the ground round about. But the only stones that were there were small and rough. “This one came from the bed of the stream down below there,” said Uncle John, “don’t you see it is water-worn. The men who built this barrow carried that stone and these others like it all the way up here on their shoulders.”

After they had had lunch, the work was begun again, the men pulling out the big stones one after another. At last they came to where several large flat stones were set on edge, leaning one against another. These were pulled away, and then there was discovered a little chamber right in the centre of the barrow, walled in with flat stones; and in the midst of this little chamber a large urn of baked earthenware. Before anything was moved, Uncle John brought the boys to look, and showed them how the floor of the little chamber had been strewn with fine white sand upon which the urn was set. Beside it were three smaller vessels all empty, and lying beside them were two flint arrow-heads, a small stone axe, and a hammer made out of the thick end of a red deer’s antler bored with a hole to fit a handle into. Uncle John lifted the urn carefully out and they all looked inside it. It was full of dust and ashes, and some bits of charred bone, and some chips and splinters of flint that had also been burned. These relics were all gathered carefully together to be taken to the squire’s house, and the workmen began to put away their tools.

As Uncle John and the boys walked home, Dick asked: “Did those people burn every one who died?”

“Perhaps not every one, but they did it very often.”

“Why did they?”

“That is a hard question for me to answer--it was part of their religion, I suppose; anyway perhaps they thought it the safest thing to do.”

“Did they always kill a man’s dog, too?”

“That I don’t know. In many cases no doubt they did, because dog’s bones have been found in the barrows; sometimes horses’ bones have been found too, showing that people thought their horses could follow them to the spirit-world, and sometimes, it is thought, that a man’s slaves and even his wife were taken to the grave and killed, so that their spirits might attend his after death.”

“How did they bore the holes in their axes and things?” David asked. “The hole in that hammer was as smooth as if it had been drilled.”

“I daresay it was drilled,” said Uncle John. “Not with a flint tool, perhaps, but most likely with quite a different thing--a hollow stick, like a tube, with the boring end wetted and dipped in sand. With a tool of that sort you can bore a hole in any stone, if you keep on at it long enough, just as you can fine down wood or metal with sandpaper.”

“I suppose you would twirl the stick between your hands and press hard on the top of it,” said David. “And if the stone were hard you would want fine, sharp sand,” said Dick.

“Is there any more about Tig in the book?” Joe asked.

“Yes, I believe there is more--he lived to be a very old man and became Chief in his time, and to him Garff bequeathed the wonderful bronze axe, Skull-pecker. He had much fighting to do; but he beat back his enemies and kept his people’s hunting-grounds and their cattle safe, as long as he lived.”

On the evening of the last day of the holidays Uncle John took the boys into his study and opened the drawer in the cabinet where his arrow-heads were.

“Now,” he said, “I want each of you to choose a flint out of this lot, and keep it as a reminder of what we have been reading about. Each one can have his pick in turn--Dick first, because he was here first, and Joe next and then David, as that is the order in which we met one another.” There were plenty to choose from, and they each chose one of the barbed war-arrows. Then Uncle John said:

“When I was a boy I used to know an old gentleman who had a flint arrow-head, and I used to wish he would give it to me. But no--he set great store by it and wore it on his watch-chain, mounted as a charm. He called it a fairy-bolt, because he said that it had been made and shot away by the fairies; and he thought it would bring him good luck all his life. I hope you are all pleased with your flints; and though, perhaps, they can’t bring you any good luck, at any rate you have learned something about them, and about the people who made and used them long ago, in this same country in which we live and now call England.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained. Differences in chapter titles between the table of contents and individual chapter headings for Chapters V, X, XV, XVIII, XXI, XXVI, and XXVII are preserved here.

The following apparent typographical errors were corrected:

Page 86, “villge” changed to “village.” (before anyone else in the village was born)

Page 126, “firtree” changed to “fir tree.” (sticks and pieces of dried fir tree wood)

Page 127, “it” changed to “if.” (if she did not want to use them all)