In the Beginning Read Online Free PDF Page A

splintered but did not give way. Other hunters did the same, with no better success. One, enraged, tried to force a way through using his arms and legs; but the thorns bit into his flesh and he fell back, discomfited.
    About that time the first stones were thrown. One struck a hunter on the side of his face and he yelped with pain. They saw that some of the enemy had clambered up on top of nearby huts, and from those vantage points were hurling stones across the hedge at the hunters. The stones were quite small, of a size to fit a man’s fist, but they threw them accurately. Dom’s leg was cut; the wound was not deep but the blood flowed freely.
    The hunters picked up some of the stones and threw them back, but the enemy, on top of the huts, had the advantage of height as those others had done on the hillside. And they were better throwers and had a better supply of missiles—others were passing stones up to them on the roofs while the hunters had to grub about in the grass, and as like as not be hit while doing so. After a time the hunters backed away, out of throwing range.
    They were not downcast, as they had been following the battle on the hillside, but angry. After all they had fought these men the previous day, and easily put them to flight. If they could only get at them, if they could get across the barrier of thorns, they would destroy them. And the barrier in itself was a mark of the enemy’s fear, a tribute to the might of the tribe.
    But first they must find a way of getting past the thorns. Led by Dom’s father the hunters circled the hedge. They learned that it went all the way round the village, without a break, and as they went round on the outside, the enemy kept abreast of them on the smaller circle within. Whenever one of the hunters ventured near, he was greeted by a volley of stones from the roof of the nearest hut.
    The village had been built close to the eastern slope of the valley. On that side the ground rose away from the hedge, at first gently and then steeply. Dom’s father led the hunters up the slope. Eventually they could look down over the top of the hedge and see the interior of the village.
    They had a clear view of the huts, and of many other things besides. In one corner there were cattle,thirty or forty of them, penned in by a smaller fence of thorns. There were fowls scratching in the dust, and like the cattle showing no fear of the people around them. They saw women and children as well as men. And they saw the fire. The smoke rose from a pit dug in the ground, and figures stood close by it, unconcerned. Dom saw with amazement that the figures were women, and as he watched, one of them bent forward, into the very smoke, and threw in branches of wood.
    Flame leaped up, tingeing the smoke with red, but although the hunters grunted with astonishment they were no longer alarmed. If such as these had no fear of fire, if their women even could stand right beside it, it would not frighten the hunters, either. What they felt was a renewal of rage at the sight of their foes walking about casually inside the defensive wall of thorns, and of the cattle which belonged to the tribe but which for the present were out of their reach.
    A hunter picked up a stone and hurled it down in the direction of the village. Others did the same, yelling insults as they did so. The slope was strewn with stones and large boulders; Dom took one andcast it down with all the force he could muster. But although an occasional stone rattled into the thorn hedge, it only did so after first bouncing along the ground. The distance was too great and none went into the village.
    â€œThey are cowards,” a hunter said, “but we cannot get at them. Let us go on down the valley. It does no good staying here.”
    â€œWe will stay here,” Dom’s father said.
    The hunters looked at him. His anger was very great and the one who had spoken quailed; but it was the enemy who had made him