" cried Ugh-lomi exultant, and Eudena saw it was well. He put the
necklace on Eudena, and they ate and drank together. And after eating he
began to rehearse the whole story from the beginning, when Uya had cast
his eyes on Eudena, and Uya and Ugh-lomi, fighting in the forest, had
been chased by the bear, eking out his scanty words with abundant
pantomime, springing to his feet and whirling the stone axe round when
it came to the fighting. The last fight was a mighty one, stamping and
shouting, and once a blow at the fire that sent a torrent of sparks up
into the night. And Eudena sat red in the light of the fire, gloating on
him, her face flushed and her eyes shining, and the necklace Uya had
made about her neck. It was a splendid time, and the stars that look
down on us looked down on her, our ancestor--who has been dead now these
fifty thousand years.

II--THE CAVE BEAR

In the days when Eudena and Ugh-lomi fled from the people of Uya towards
the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet
chestnut and the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the
gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their
squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the
tribe, a full day's journey down the river, and up the mountains there
were none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that
ancient time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after
generation, from one squatting-place to another, from the
south-westward. And the animals that held the land, the hippopotamus and
rhinoceros of the river valleys, the horses of the grass plains, the
deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in the branches, the cattle
of the uplands, feared him but little--let alone the mammoths in the
mountains and the elephants that came through the land in the
summer-time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but the
rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw
but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all the weapons he had
against hoof and horn, tooth and claw?

Andoo, the huge cave bear, who lived in the cave up the gorge, had never
even seen a man in all his wise and respectable life, until midway
through one night, as he was prowling down the gorge along the cliff
edge, he saw the glare of Eudena's fire upon the ledge, and Eudena red
and shining, and Ugh-lomi, with a gigantic shadow mocking him upon the
white