I turned and saw the Old Man, and I knew what we were. I had one final crashing burst of dawn memory, and I saw our beginnings and our whole long story and why we would always have to fight men. All this I saw in the Old Man's face.
That face was like a great terrible mask. The cheeks were broad, the brow low and ridged, the brain case enormous. The chin was shallow, with a wide thick-lipped mouth; and the eyes were glittering oblongs of gray mica-sprinkled flint. Gray hair covered the massive forward-thrusting head thickly, and tufts of it boiled up from the collar of the white shirt on the barrel-sized chest.
Skagarach came up to me and saw my knowledge in my face. "Yes," he said, "There is the true strain of our race; there is the result of inbreeding over a number of generations. The true he of our people."
I growled. "No truer than I, Skagarach. His are the features, but mine is the memory and the dawn brain."
He laughed. He seemed to find humor in everything. "I foresee strife," he said quietly. "You're a headstrong beast, Cuff. Never mind! We thrive on strife. Do you know now who and what we are?"
"H. G. Wells called us the Grisly Folk."
"Yes. Cuff. You have it. We are the Neanderthals."
CHAPTER XII
Now you who read this: