The Mammoth who was with difficulty restraining his rising excitement at this unexpected news, looked quickly this way and that. “What? Where?” he eagerly demanded.
“Here right in front of your nose,” said Pic. “This piece of bone. There were flints too; but this bone is the treasure.”
Hairi seized it between the two lips of his trunk-tip and held it before his eyes for examination. “A bone?” he repeated in tones of overwhelming disappointment. His jaw dropped. His ears hung limp.
“I said it was probably a bone,” the Rhinoceros now broke in with an I-told-you-so air. “Did it have any meat on it?”
“No it was just as you see it,” Pic replied. “Remarkable is it not?”
Hairi regarded it with a look of intense disgust. Even Wulli began to share his lack of enthusiasm.
“Treasure, indeed,” the Mammoth sniffed.
“It might as well have been a piece of rotten wood,” the Rhinoceros added.
“You do not understand,” said Pic. “This bone is a tool. A man buried it. He used it to retouch his flints. See; he pressed off the tiny chips instead of hammering them.” He illustrated his remarks by applying one end of the bone to a flake; a most interesting explanation to all present except his two friends. Wulli stared with his blankest expression while the Mammoth stretched his neck and yawned: