All this she said in short, chattering words and with much gesticulation. It was an odd sort of incomplete speech. She helped me to my feet and I found that I could stand without much difficulty. I managed to hobble along by her side, leaning on her heavily. My wound ceased to pain me and my strength was fast returning. As for my dreams of cold and of other things, such as the great beast buried in the snow, they were but dreams, assuredly.
We came out upon a far extending shore, and there, magnificently coloured in blue and crimson by the sky and the setting sun, extending beyond all vision, heaved the mighty sea. How great was then the later named Mediterranean! Far back where now the desert is, lay its unseen southern shores, and the strand upon which we stood lay farther to the north than when existed kingdoms of later ages. The spectacle was wonderful, but all familiar to me.
We passed slowly along the shore until we reached a rocky place wherein was a little hollow in front of which was burning a fire replenished by my anxious mate while I had slept. Brands for the fire had been brought from our distant cave before my hurt had been received. Otter led me into the little opening and brought flesh of a boar from a hiding place in the rocks and roasted it in the fire and fed me to repletion. Then, having eaten herself as eats a healthy, omnivorous animal of the wild, she coiled down beside me in the little recess, after leaning logs and driftwood against the opening, as some defence against all prowling things. My weapons she placed at my hand.
I awoke in the morning astonishingly refreshed, and could limp about without the assistance of Otter, and with little pain. We must go inland to where were the ledges and where was our cave among the others. There I could rest easily until all my strength returned. So we took up the slow journey and entered the forest, plodding doggedly along the paths within its depths. We had with us some of the roasted boar’s flesh and ate of it when we were hungry.
On the journey we came upon a little open space where were great birds, the bustards, moving about, and I killed one with an arrow, rejoicing the while that I was so good a bowman. Otter carried the huge bird lightly, saying we should have the best of food when we reached our home. My dazedness of the day before, when I failed to recognize my weapons, was all gone now. Was not I, Scar, the greatest archer among my people? Was not Otter, my mate, the greatest in the water of them all? Yet, as to Otter, it had been but a little time since the Cave people had learned to swim. Like the monkeys, which we sometimes shot with arrows in the woods, the Cave men had ever dreaded the water. It was in the days of our great, great grandfathers, so the very old men told us, that the change came, and then by accident.
There had been a wide and deep creek close beside the caves in which our forefathers dwelt, and it had been a great barrier between the rocky country and good hunting grounds on the other side. One day my own great grandfather, when a young man, slipped upon a wet stone and fell into the water and was swept away and they did not even look for him, for in those days he who fell into deep water was drowned, and what good to seek for that which was gone? But my great grandfather caught hold of a piece of light driftwood, and though it would not lift him entirely, yet, with his chin upon it, his head was sustained above the water until he reached a shallow place where he could wade ashore. He came back to the caves and beat my great grandmother sorely, because she was eating when he returned. He brought back with him the bit of driftwood and thenceforth played in the water with it, tying it beneath his chin and making great strokes with his arms and legs until there came a day when he found, to his wonder, that he did not need the driftwood to sustain him, but could go about in the water as did the otter and the beaver, though never in a way to equal them. And others tried to do as he did, and, though some were drowned, in the end it came that all the Cave people, even the children, could swim. A great advantage was this in the hunt or on a journey of any kind. And among us all, at this time, my mate, my slender Otter, was swiftest in the water. So her name had come to her.
We travelled far this day and crossed many streams and I was nearly spent, when after nightfall we came upon ledges of tumbled rocks uprising near the river and in the midst of a dense wood, and there entered our own cave without arousing any of the people in the other caves. It was not a large cave, but was most comfortable. There was a great bed of moss covered with skins beside one of the brown walls, and from an ash-filled hollow at one side Otter uncovered still glowing embers. In front of this hollow were a lot of stones laid carefully, whereon meat could be roasted. Just inside the cave’s entrance, but not large enough to entirely fill it, was a round rock of sandstone, not too heavy, which Otter alone rolled into the opening. We sought the couch of moss and skins and slept at once, for each of us was weary.
I awoke, it seemed to me, almost well, for from flesh wounds we Cave men recovered swiftly. I awoke with a fragrance in my nostrils. Otter had already risen, and the bustard, cleanly plucked, was roasting on the stones before the fire my mate had built. We ate most of the big bird at that one meal, for we had slept long and were hungry. Then, with Otter beside me, I took my bow and bark quiver of arrows and limped outside the cave. We had hardly come into the sunlight when there came to our ears a shout and the twanging of a bowstring and, a moment later, around a turn in the ravine, appeared the Climber, often my companion in the hunt. He was shooting arrows upward and catching them as they fell, in mere sport, shouting meanwhile to arouse me, for he did not yet know that I had been lamed by the boar. We called to him and he clambered up to us and heard the story of my hunt, laughing only when he heard its issue, for we did not sympathize deeply in that age, though we would sometimes fight for each other valiantly enough. The Climber was armed as I with bow and spear and clad in the same way, with only a clout of skin about his middle. Despite his careless demeanour he had news to bring. Some of the Hill men had been seen lurking about at the foot of the wooded mountain slopes to the westward!
The Hill men were our natural enemies and had been so since a time beyond which none of the old men could remember. They were unlike us in their ways, existing chiefly on fruit and nuts and roots, which they stored in the mountain caves, where they lived, and they had no bows, carrying only stone axes and long spears. They hunted less than we, but were extremely strong and savage and their numbers made them dangerous. Many a wanderer of the Cave men had disappeared when these hairy savages of the hills had sometimes invaded our side of the river, and word of a threatened raid by them was but a signal for more than ordinary caution.
In a few days I was well again and the fight with the big boar something almost forgotten. There came, for a time, no incident in the life of our scattered group. We hunted and fished and fed well and were warm, for it was a good country and the climate mild. But for old Fang, the arrow-maker, there would have been a pleasant enough monotony to our existence. Fang was more vicious than any of the beasts in the wood; he seemed more like the Things we had never seen, but dreaded, the Things which whispered strangely when the wind blew through the forests at night and which roared and bellowed when the great storms came. He was not like the rest of us. He was the first monopolist, too, the world had ever known.