It
was a great season in all that made a cave family's life something easy
and complacent and vastly promotive of the social amenities and the
advancement of art and literature--that is, they were not compelled to
make any sudden raid on others to assure the means of subsistence, and
there was time for the carving of bones and the telling of strange
stories of the past. The elders declared it one of the finest winters
they had ever known.
And so Old Mok and Ab worked well that winter and the youth acquired such
wisdom that his casual advice to Oak when the two were out together was
something worth listening to because of its confidence and ponderosity.
Concerning flint scraper, drill, spearhead, ax or bone or wooden haft,
there was, his talk would indicate, practically nothing for the boy to
learn. That was his own opinion, though, as he grew older, he learned to
modify it greatly. With his adviser he had made good weapons and some
improvements; yet all this was nothing. It was destined that an
accidental discovery should be his, the effect of which would be to
change the cave man's rank among living things. But the youth, just now,
was greatly content with himself. He was older and more modest when he
made his great discovery.
It was when the fire blazed out at night, when all had fed, when the
tired people lay about resting, but not ready yet for sleep, and the
story of the day's events was given, that Old Mok's ordinarily still
tongue would sometimes loosen and he would tell of what happened when he
was a boy, or of the strange tales which had been told him of the time
long past, the times when the Shell and Cave people were one, times when
there were monstrous things abroad and life was hard to keep.
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