Just then, the sims' shouts rose in-a goblin chorus of triumph.
Screams punctuated it, not al from an English throat. As Dale had promised, he did not die easily. Caleb Lucas sobbed.
'Come,' Wingfield said softly, his own voice breaking. 'Now we have but to save ourselves, any way we may.'
And So to bed
Sims made people
look at themselves and their place in nature differently from the way they had before.
They showed the link between humans and animals far more clearly than any creatures with which Euro peons had been familiar before.
Had there been no sims, had the Americas been populated by native humans, say, or only by animals-the development of the transformational theory of life might have been long delayed. This would have slowed the growth of several sciences, biology being, of course, the most obvious of them. Speculating on might-have-beens, however, is not the proper domain of history. The transformational theory of life was first put forward in I66I. After that, humans' view of their place in the world would never be the same
From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths May 4, I66I.
A fine bright morning. Small beer and radishes for to break my fast, then into London for this day.
The shambles on Newgaoe Street stinking unto
heaven, as is usual, but close to it my destination, the sim marketplace. Our servant Jane with too much for one body to do, and whilst I may not afford the hire of another man or maid, two sims shall go far to ease her burden.
Success also sure to gladden Elizabeth's heart, my wife being ever one to follow the dame Fashion, and sims all the go of late, though monstrous ugly. Them formerly not much seen here, but since the success of our Virginia and Plymouth colonies are much more often fetched to these shores from the wildernesses the said colonies front upon. They are also commenced to be bred on English soil, but no hope there for me, as I do require workers full-grown, not cubs or babes in arms or whatsoever the proper term may be.
The sim-sel er a vicious lout, near unhandsome as his wares. No, the truth for the diary: such were a slander on any man, as I saw on his conveying me to the creatures.
Have seen these sims before, surely, but briefly, and in their masters'
livery, the which by concealing their nakedness conceals as well much of their brutishness. The males are most of them well made, though lean as rakes from the ocean passage and, I warrant, poor victualing after. But al are so hairy as more to resemble rugs than men, and the same true for the females, their fur hiding such dubious charms as they may possess nigh as well as a smock of linen: nought here, God knows, for Elizabeth's jealousy to light on.
This so were the said females lovely of feature as so many Aphrodites.
They are not, nor do the males recall to mind Adonis. In both sexes the brow projects with a shelf of bone, and above it, where men do enjoy a forehead proud in its erectitude, is but an apish slope.
The nose broad and low, the mouth wide, the teeth nigh as big as a horse's (though shaped, it is not to be denied, like a man's, the jaw long, deep and devoid of chin. They stink.
The sim-sel er full of compliments on my coming hard on the arrival of the Gloucester from Plymouth, him having thereby replenished his stock in trade.
Then the price should also be not so dear, says I, and by God it did do my heart good to see the ferret-faced rogue discomfited.
Rogue as he was, though, he dickered with the best, for I paid full a guinea more for the pair of sims than I had looked to, spending in all 6s.4d. The coin once passed over (and bitten, for to ensure its verity), the sim-seller signed to those of his chattels I had bought that they were to go with me.
His gestures marvelous quick and clever, and those the sims answered with too. Again, I have seen somewhat of the like before.
Whilst coming to understand in time the speech of men, sims are without language of their own, having but a great variety of howls, grunts, and moans. Yet this gesture-speech, the which I am told is come from the signs of the deaf, they do readily learn, and often their masters answer back so, to ensure commands being properly grasped.
Am wild to learn it my own self, and shal . Meseems it is in its way a style of tachygraphy or short-hand such as I use to set down these pages. Having devised varying tachygraphic hands for friends and acquaintanoes, 'twill be amusing taking to a hand that is exactly what its name declares.
As I was leaving with my new charges, the sim-seller did bid me lead them by the gibbets on Shooter's Hil , there to see the bodies and members of felons and of sims as have run off from their masters. It wondered me they should have the wit to take the meaning of such display, but he assured me they should. And so, reckoning it good advice if true and no harm if a lie, I chivied them thither.
A filthy sight I found it, with the miscreants' flesh all shrunk to the bones. But boo! quoth my sims, and looked close upon the corpses of their own-kind, which by their hairiness and flat-skul ed heads do seem even more bestial dead than when animated with life.
Home then, and Elizabeth as delighted in my success as am I. An excellent dinner of a calf's head boiled with dumplings, and an abundance of buttered ale with sugar and cinnamon, of which in celebration we invited Jane to partake, and
she grew right giddy. Bread and leeks for the sims, and water, it being reported they grow undocile on stronger drink.
After much debate, though good-natured, it was decided to style the male Tom and the female Peg. Showed them to their pallets down cellar, and they took to them readily enough, as finer than what they were accustomed to.
So to bed, right pleased with myself despite the expense.
