Sometimes the hunters, venturing too far away, hampered in snow, would become exhausted and go to sleep, and when they did this they never woke. When we found them they would not answer, and we took their axes and left them. It came to me at last, that we must do as had done the beasts, and flee southward, where, perhaps, it would be warmer. Why had I not sooner seen the need? Why had our clan alone been reckless fools and failed to join the birds and beasts, and others of our own kind? The cold became more dreadful. The wind howled and swept away the snow, leaving bare the ice masses on mountains down which swift streams had once run. The great river was ice-locked and silent. An awful stillness came upon the world about us, so that our own cries sounded hoarse and loud. We were cold and starving and, at last, we were forced together in the cave of Hair and Gurr, where there was room for all who remained of us. We gathered much fuel and kept up a fire, about which we huddled, famished and desperate. The end seemed very near. One night, a storm fiercer than any we had ever known, raged down the valley. From the mouth of the cave we could see but the swirling drifts and hear only the roaring and shrieking of the wind. But at midnight it seemed to me I could distinguish another sound amid the unearthly clamour. It was different from the other noises, a bellowing in which was a note of fear. I had heard the trumpetings of the great mammoths once, and this somewhat recalled the sound, but it could not be. This was no haunt of the monster things, yet from somewhere up the gorge the sound continued, now higher or lower and sometimes moaning and most pitiful. Near morning it ceased entirely, but I must know what it meant. At daybreak I started up the gorge with four companions. We did not have far to go. Fighting our way through, we came to a mighty hollow in which the snow had drifted to a depth many times the height of a man, and there, plunged deeply, almost buried, was an enormous, brown, hairy mass. It was incredible; it could not be that there had come to us such salvation, but it was true. Here was a strayed mammoth, last of his gigantic kind in the accursed region, caught helpless in the pass and dead, now to our hands! With shouts of joy that were near to madness we hurled ourselves down upon the mountain of flesh, hewed frantically with our axes and cut out great chunks of meat and bore them to the cave, and there the whole starved company of us roasted and ate until we could eat no more. We could but eat and lie about and sleep and eat, and sleep again throughout all that day and night. And the next day, with much hewing and many burdened journeys, the whole of the vast body was stored within the cave. We were prisoners, but we had food and warmth. Soon all were strong again and there was almost merriment, for we were foolish.