CLOSE TO CRITICAL

I would gladly come back home and ask you whether you would come to help the cave people. The leader—his name means Swift, in their words; all their names mean something—became angry indeed. Apparently he expects people to do as he says without any question or hesitation. I had noticed that but had been a little slow in applying my knowledge, I fear. Anyway, I didn't see how he could expect you to obey his orders.

"Unfortunately, he does; and he decided from my answer that you and the other people of our village would probably refuse. When that happens, his first thought is the use of force; and from the moment I made my answer he began to plan an attack on our village, to carry you away with him whether you wanted to go or not.

"He ordered me to tell hini how to find our village, and when I refused he became angry again. The body of a dead goat that someone had brought in for food was lying nearby, and he picked it up and began to do terrible things to it with his knives. After a while he spoke to me again.

"You see what my knives are doing," he said. "If the goat were alive, it would not be killed by them; but it would not be happy. The same shall be done to you with the start of the new day, unless you guide my fighters to your village and its Teacher. It is too close to darkness now for you to escape; you have the night to think over what I have said. We start toward your village in the morning—or you will wish we had." He made two of his biggest fighters stay with me until the rain started. Even after all the time I'd been there no one ever stayed out of the caves after rainfall, so they left me alone when I lighted my fires.

"It took me a long time to decide what to do. If they killed me, they'd still find you sooner or later and you wouldn't be warned in time; if I went with them it might have been all right, but I didn't like some of the things Exploration; Expectation; Altercation 27

Swift had been saying. He seemed to feel things would be better if there were none of your own people left around after he captured you. That seemed to mean that no matter what I did I was going to be killed, but if I kept quiet I might be the only one. That was when I thought of traveling at night; I was just as likely to be killed, but at least I'd die in my sleep—and there was a little chance of getting away with it.

After all, a lot of animals that don't have caves or fire and don't wake up as early as some of the meat-eaters still manage to live.

"Then I got another idea; I thought of carrying fire with me. After all, we often carry a stick with one end burning for short distances when we're lighting the night fires; why couldn't I carry a supply of long sticks, and keep one burning all the time? Maybe the fire wouldn't be big enough to be a real protection, but it was worth trying. Anyway, what could I lose?

"I picked out as many of the longest sticks around as I could carry, piled them up, and waited until two of my three fires were drowned by raindrops. Then I picked up my sticks, lighted the end of one of them at the remaining fire, and started off as fast as I could.

"I was never sure whether those people stayed awake in their caves or not—as I said, water doesn't get up to them—but now I guess they don't. Anyway, no one seemed to notice me as I left.

"You know, traveling at night isn't nearly as bad as we always thought it would be. It's not too hard to dodge raindrops if you have enough light to see them coming, and you can carry enough wood to keep you in light for a long time. I must have made a good twenty miles, and I'd have gone farther if I hadn't made a very silly mistake. I didn't think to replenish my wood supply until I was burning my last stick, and then there wasn't anything long enough for my needs in the neighborhood. I didn't know the country at all; I'd started west instead of north to fool any of the cave people who saw me go. As 28