ing it. When it rained again, he appreciated,
for the first time, the comfort of shelter, and became a cave-dweller,
with a new god--a fetish, to which he transferred his allegiance and
obeisance because more powerful than his shadow.

From correlation of instincts, he now entered the age of stone. He no
longer played with shells and sticks, but with pebbles, which he
gathered, hoarded in piles, and threw at marks,--to be gathered
again,--seldom entering the woods but for food and the relaxation of
the hunt. But with his change of habits came a lessening of his cruelty
to defenseless creatures,--not that he felt pity: he merely found no
more amusement in killing and tormenting,--and in time he transferred
his antagonism to the sharks in the lagoon, their dorsal fins making
famous targets for his pebbles. He needed no experience with these
pirates to teach him to fear and hate them, and when he bathed--which
habit he acquired as a relief from the heat, and indulged daily--he
chose a pool near the rocks that filled at high tide, and in it learned
to swim, paddling like a dog.

And so the boy, blue-eyed and fair at the beginning, grew to early
manhood, as handsome an animal as the world contains, tall, straight,
and clean-featured, with steady eyes wide apart, and skin--the color of
old copper from sun and wind--covered with a fine, soft down, which at
the age of sixteen had not yet thickened on his face to beard and
mustache, though his wavy brown hair reached to his shoulders.

At this period a turning-point appeared in his life which gave an
impetus to his almost stagnant mental development--his food-supply
diminished and his pebble-supply gave out completely, forcing him to
wander. Pebble-throwing was his only amusement; pebble-gathering his
only labor; eating was neither. He browsed and nibbled at all hours of
the day, never knowing the sensation of a full stomach, and, until
lately, of an empty one. To this, perhaps, may be ascribed his
wonderful immunity from sickness. In collecting pebbles his method was
to carry as many as his hands would hold to a pile on the beach and go
back for more; and in the six years of his stone-throwing he had found
and thrown at the sharks every stone as small as his fist, within a
sector formed by the beach and the rocky wall to an equal distance
inland. The fruits, nuts, edible roots, and grasses growing in this
area had hitherto supported him, but would no longer, owing to a
droug