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Early next day it was taken down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest, who bore the name and acted the part of the god Quetzalcoatl, took a flint-tipped dart and hurled it into the breast of the dough-image, piercing it through and through. This was called "killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be eaten."
Their flint-tipped spears were elaborately carved and their necklaces were fashioned of shells and teeth. Some of the teeth were human. For perhaps thirty seconds we held the strained tableau, then I glanced over my shoulder. Between me and retreat stood a third figure. Compared to his gaudiness of decking, the raiment of the others was mean and sober.
At the first crash of contact the enemy were crushed back, the stone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears working havoc in the reeking masses. But, as the Chief had foreseen it would be, that forward rush was a mistake, exposing the flanks; and sheer weight of numbers presently forced the Hillmen back till their front was once more level with the jaws of the pass.
Stuart's horrified expression had faded considerably from his recollection. He thought only of that surprisingly tall, dark girl, whose eyes looked like coals, whose voice pierced him like a flint-tipped arrow. Ah, well, they would never quarrel again like that, he told himself. She loved him so, and would forgive him after he had talked quietly to her, and told her what an ass he was.
It is pre-eminently suitable for defence, and if the warriors of the past found that flint-tipped shafts of wood would keep the invader at bay, how much more easily could a modern army equipped with rifles of precision and machine guns adapt Nature to its advantage?
Already he had invented the bow with its flint-tipped arrow, the neatly chipped javelin-head, the bone harpoon, the barbed fish-hook, the axe, the lance, the dagger, and the needle. Already he had learnt how to decorate his implements with artistic skill, and to carve the handles of his knives with the figures of animals.
By this time they had left me, helpless as a log, and were standing round us in a sort of ring, talking together of slaying us, as I thought. I mind that the flint-tipped spears seemed cruel weapons. At last one of them said somewhat that pleased the rest, for they broke into a great laugh and clapped their hands. "Here is a word I can understand," said Harek, "and that is 'pixies."
It was a hearkening back in the age-dimmed mental fabric of Thor's race to the earliest days of man man, first of all, with the club; man with the spear hardened in fire; man with the flint-tipped arrow; man with the trap and the deadfall, and, lastly, man with the gun. Through all the ages man had been his one and only master.
One of the best portraits is that discovered in the old cave at Laugerie Basse by M. Elie Massénat, where a very early pre-Glacial man is represented in the act of hunting an aurochs, at which he is casting a flint-tipped javelin. In this, as in all other pictures of the same epoch, I regret to say that the ancient hunter is represented in the costume of Adam before the fall.
Bawr gave orders, rapid and concise; and the combatants lined out in a double rank along the front of the plateau some three or four paces behind the piles of wood. They were armed with stone-headed clubs, large or small, according to personal taste, and each carried at least three flint-tipped spears.
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