The kiss, it is believed, had not fully developed itself in the
cave man's time, but there were substitutes. Then, releasing her, he said
gleefully and chucklingly, "follow me;" and they clambered down the bole
of the beech together until they reached the biggest and very lowest limb
of all. It was perhaps twenty feet above the ground. A little below their
dangling feet the hungry bears, hitherto more patient, now, with their
expected prey so close at hand, becoming desperately excited, ran about,
frothing and foaming and red-eyed, uprearing themselves in awful
nearness, at times, in their eagerness to reach the prey which they had
so awaited and which, to their intelligence, seemed about falling into
their jaws. They had so driven into trees before, and finally consumed
exhausted cave men and women. As bears went, they were doubtless logical
animals. They could not know that there had come into possession of this
particular pair of creatures of the sort they had occasionally eaten, a
trifling thing of wood and sinew string and flint point, which was
destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of
the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that
something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than
they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their
arteries might be cut, or their hearts pierced and that then they must
lie down and die? The well-thrown spear had been, in other ages, a vast
surprise to the carnivora of the period, but there was something yet to
learn.
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