A SON OF THE AGES [Illustration: “His eyes were flaming and his teeth shone white.... We were alone to fight it out.”] A SON OF THE AGES THE REINCARNATIONS AND ADVENTURES OF SCAR, THE LINK _A story of Man from the Beginning_ BY STANLEY WATERLOO AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF AB” [Illustration] _Illustrated by Craig Johns_ GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1914 _Copyright, 1914, by_ DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_ _Copyright, 1914, by the_ FRANK A. MUNSEY CO. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction ix I. The Link 3 II. The Axemen 25 III. The Bowmen 48 IV. The Clansmen 63 V. The Boatmen 81 VI. The Sowers 101 VII. The Tamers 121 VIII. The Deluge 145 IX. The Kitchen-Middenites 165 X. The Lake-Dwellers 191 XI. The Armourers 212 XII. The Sailors 237 XIII. The Hercynian Forest 271 XIV. Alesia and the End 298 ILLUSTRATIONS “His eyes were flaming, and his teeth shone white.... We were alone to fight it out” _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE “With long poles thrust to the bottom, we guided the boats here and there about the shallow waters” 90 “I, too, would seek to learn what might be done to make the wind our servant” 246 “I am weakening and dying. The Valkyrie are circling in the sky” 324 INTRODUCTION A waste of waters heaved sullenly beneath a dismal canopy. Thin, slimy masses floated here and there about the shallows of a little cove or clung to its sodden beach. The cove led into a bay, which opened, in its turn, upon a vast and soundless sea. But a single reach of land, gray, flat, and lifeless and encircling partially the cove, was all of earth there was in sight. Close above and all about the huge and silent mystery and extending outward far into space, was a steaming world of vapour, condensed into enormous clouds beyond, an enshrouding curtain over all beneath. And ever this was smitten fiercely by the distant sun, whose rays could not yet fairly pierce the tremendous depths, yet shone through wanly here and there upon the sombre scheme, sombre in its awful lifelessness and silence, but with a promise, indefinable and yet assured, of life and light to come in the tremendous future.