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He lay still, like a barked log, sun-dappled, in the shadow of the trees. He was thinking. And Eudena had learnt, even when a little girl, that when Ugh-lomi became still like that, jaw-bone on fist, novel things presently began to happen.

It was an hour before the thinking was over; it was noon when the two little savages had found their way to the cliff brow that overhung the bears’ cave. And all the long afternoon they fought desperately with a great boulder of chalk; trundling it, with nothing but their unaided sturdy muscles, from the gully where it had hung like a loose tooth, towards the cliff top. It was full two yards about, it stood as high as Eudena’s waist, it was obtuse-angled and toothed with flints. And when the sun set it was poised, three inches from the edge, above the cave of the great cave bear.

In the cave conversation languished during that afternoon. The she-bear snoozed sulkily in her corner–for she was fond of pig and monkey–and Andoo was busy licking the side of his paw and smearing his face to cool the smart and inflammation of his wounds. Afterwards he went and sat just within the mouth of the cave, blinking out at the afternoon sun with his uninjured eye, and thinking.

“I never was so startled in my life,” he said at last. “They are the most extraordinary beasts. Attacking me!”

“I don’t like them,” said the she-bear, out of the darkness behind.

“A feebler sort of beast I never saw. I can’t think what the world is coming to. Scraggy, weedy legs…. Wonder how they keep warm in winter?”

“Very likely they don’t,” said the she-bear.

“I suppose it’s a sort of monkey gone wrong.”

“It’s a change,” said the she-bear.

A pause.

“The advantage he had was merely accidental,” said Andoo. “These things will happen at times.”

“I can’t understand why you let go,” said the she-bear.

That matter had been discussed before, and settled. So Andoo, being a bear of experience, remained silent for a space. Then he resumed upon a different aspect of the matter. “He has a sort of claw–a long claw that he seemed to have first on one paw and then on the other. Just one claw. They’re very odd things. The bright thing, too, they seemed to have–like that glare that comes in the sky in daytime–only it jumps about–it’s really worth seeing. It’s a thing with a root, too–like grass when it is windy.”

“Does it bite?” asked the she-bear. “If it bites it can’t be a plant.”

“No—-I don’t know,” said Andoo. “But it’s curious, anyhow.”

“I wonder if they are good eating?” said the she-bear.

“They look it,” said Andoo, with appetite–for the cave bear, like the polar bear, was an incurable carnivore–no roots or honey for him.

The two bears fell into a meditation for a space. Then Andoo resumed his simple attentions to his eye. The sunlight up the green slope before the cave mouth grew warmer in tone and warmer, until it was a ruddy amber.

“Curious sort of thing–day,” said the cave bear. “Lot too much of it, I think. Quite unsuitable for hunting. Dazzles me always. I can’t smell nearly so well by day.”

The she-bear did not answer, but there came a measured crunching sound out of the darkness. She had turned up a bone. Andoo yawned. “Well,” he said. He strolled to the cave mouth and stood with his head projecting, surveying the amphitheatre. He found he had to turn his head completely round to see objects on his right-hand side. No doubt that eye would be all right to-morrow.

He yawned again. There was a tap overhead, and a big mass of chalk flew out from the cliff face, dropped a yard in front of his nose, and starred into a dozen unequal fragments. It startled him extremely.

When he had recovered a little from his shock, he went and sniffed curiously at the representative pieces of the fallen projectile. They had a distinctive flavour, oddly reminiscent of the two drab animals of the ledge. He sat up and pawed the larger lump, and walked round it several times, trying to find a man about it somewhere….