THE FIGHT WITH A MAMMOTH
The cave men did their best to get out of the way, at the same time striking with with their spears.
Ra worried a great deal about this fight. He was very angry with the beast because it had killed one of his brothers, and he could not understand why his spear had failed to pierce the elephant's hide. Its point, rubbed sharp on a rock, had always been strong enough to kill the largest fish, but now it was blunt and broken, and Ra did not like it any more.
As he sat in the sun before the cave, trying to cut a new point to his spear with a stone, an idea came into his head. Why could he not in some way fasten the stone to the end of his spear? The stone, he knew, was hard enough not to break against the toughest hide. It was a large and clumsy stone, however, and Ra soon saw that he could do nothing with it.
The thought pleased him, but he said nothing to any of his friends about it. Instead, he hurried off to a place on the shore of the lake where a few days before he had seen some very sharp flat stones, quite different from the clumsy bit of rock he had found near the cave.
He gathered several pieces of this stone, and amused himself by striking them against each other and breaking them. At last he got what he wanted, a flat, narrow piece, shaped something like the leaf of a tree, and about as long as his hand. The stone was very hard, and it took him hours to chip and rub it down until it had a sharp point. When at last it was done, he had another thing to think about. How was he to fasten the stone to the end of the spear?