And there came, before all this, a time when It stayed in the nest and I brought her food. And, one day, when I came back with eggs from the nest of a river duck, she held in her arms a tiny ape which was our child. It thrived amazingly, for well cared for were the child and It, my mate. And as a child, my young one ran about erect and smote things with his little stick. So it was, in a way, too, with the children of other apes of our kind. They also learned, though more slowly, to run about on their hind feet and to wield the little clubs they carried. But sometimes all we apes were in mortal terror, not of the bears and tigers and other dread things of the wood, but of that which came suddenly and made even the fierce beasts themselves fly whining to their dens and hiding-places. Nothing could help us in those awful hours, for there would be rumblings and growlings in the earth beneath us and it would lift itself up in vast, heaving waves, and would sometimes burst open in long rents, and flames and deadly fumes would issue, and great reaches of the forest would disappear and all within them perish, and, when the thundering and roaring ceased, the look of all the world about us would be changed. But these things would pass, though there would be left great fissures through which came sheets of fire which burned continuously; and when the cold came, as it did at times, we could go as near the fire as we dared, and then the cold would seem to go away. And the days went well for It and me, and other children came and were soon full grown, as was the way, and they took mates and there were many homes in the treetops. We became a strong people, my family and its kind, for we alone had the club. We yet lived much on fruits and nuts and roots and eggs and the shell-fish, but we ate more flesh now, for, as I have said, we had learned to hunt together and that brought an abundance. But there was ever the thing we should have dreaded more. Away to the north high mountains upreared themselves toward the sky, and through a mighty gorge in these the river came. Beyond the mountains was a vast lake. Sometimes the mountain crests would redden and they would vomit up fire when the upheavals we so feared came and the ground lifted up and split and the forests fell. Then, afterward, would come great storms and the river would be wider and deeper and darker and rush down fiercely, bearing tree trunks and the floating carcasses of wild things. But still we thought little of all this. We lived for each day, as it came, unknowingly.