I had been aroused by sounds quite apart from those which had come to my fancy with sleep on the heaped leaves beneath the beech tree. Most unlike either the sounds of the sea or of rude conflict were those which reached my ears as I came slowly to a sense of wakening being; they were of a kind all their own and having a quality much too significant and close and threatening. It was a snuffling, blowing sound which first aroused me as I lay with my eyes still closed, and at last a grunting and snort and rumble which was half a bellow, and a harsh pawing of the leaves and earth. My eyes opened most suddenly, and what they saw brought a feeling in the middle of me which was most uncomfortable. Within a yard of me, his head lowered, his nostrils quivering and his eyes gleaming, pawing the ground in what was fast becoming a rage at the thing before him, stood braced a monster aurochs! The aurochs was most enormous of all the beasts we knew and, when enraged, by far most to be dreaded, unless, it might be, the huge brown bear, though the bear himself never dared face the aurochs. Here was a situation for a man to awaken to, but after the first moment I was not alarmed. I knew the nature of the aurochs well. Had he been in pursuit of me, wounded, perhaps, by spear or arrow, nothing could have turned the monster from his wrath, but here the case was different. The beast had come upon me but by merest chance and, advancing only in curiosity upon this thing lying prone, had encountered the dreaded man-smell and had been so roused. I knew my need. I sprang to my feet with arms outflung, emitting a most unnatural and blood-curdling roar, and, even as I leaped, the startled brute, leviathan though he was, whirled as on a pivot with a hoarse bellow which was rather a bleat of fear, and went crashing into the forest whence I could hear the crackling of the bushes hundreds of yards away. I was all myself now, as assuredly I should be, after such a rude awakening. I stood there, comprehendingly, Scar, warrior and hunter, a strong man of the Cherusci, than whom there was not a braver tribe among the scores which occupied the vast Hercynian forest and took part in its fierce struggles. A world in itself, a world of its own great kind, was this Hercynian forest, extending boundlessly eastward from the Rhine River and north to the German Ocean, and south until it reached far toward the great sea of which we had slight knowledge, a huge and densely wooded land of varied nature of mountain, hill and plain and, near its shores, of deep rivers and endless marshes, but mostly vast and sullen forests in which ranged many wild beasts and which, because of its huge extent, sustained strong tribes and clans, who, though scattered widely in villages or roving bands, made, together, a great host.