"You can blow all you like, Cold," she said. "I want my people to suffer. Pain is not a pleasant thing, but it is only through pain that they will ever learn."
CHAPTER V
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
A cold wind blew through the valley where the Ape-Men lived, and the trees and bushes were brown and bare of fruit. The rays of the Sun, which used to come down straight and hot all day, now shone slantwise, because the Earth had been tipped over, and they seemed to have very little warmth. The days, too, were shorter, and the nights were longer, and cold. All the Ape-Men were obliged to huddle together in their beds of grass to keep warm. They did not know that Mother Nature had tipped over the Earth to make Winter and Summer, but they were very uncomfortable, and they did not like it.
But the worst thing of all was, that there was almost nothing to eat. Always before there had been some kind of fruit, or berries, all the year round. Now they were able to find only a few nuts, and the sweet bulbs which grew at the roots of certain plants, and the smaller animals got most of these. Even the nesting birds they sometimes caught and ate had gone where it was warmer. Pretty soon there was nothing to eat at all, and the Ape-Men were starving.
Adh, who had begun to think a little, puzzled about this for a long time, but could not understand it. Of course, if the Ape-People had stored up food, during the Summer, they would have had something to eat, when the cold weather came, but they had never thought of doing such a thing, because there had usually been enough to eat, before. Now they did not know what to do, and as they could no longer find any food in the valley, they gradually wandered off, down toward the low, hot jungle-lands from which they had come. Here they found things to eat, but they also found lions and great sabre-toothed tigers and other fierce beasts to eat them, and as they had long ago forgotten their old trick of living and sleeping and seeking safety from their enemies in the tree-tops, it was not long before they were all eaten up.
When the Sun saw this, he was very much surprised.