Then to Droopeye came another fancy, for he was ever different from the rest of the tribe, in thinking of that which might be strange and new. There was a boy so pinched of face that he was called the Rat, and this Rat was so charmed by the noise that Droopeye made with his new things that he was hovering about constantly when the sounds were made. Him Droopeye taught to strum upon the sinew stretched across the gourd, and soon they would make the new and strange noises together and at night--that is, in the early night, when the hunters and others had returned to camp, and had eaten--there would always be a swift clustering around the players, though I cannot tell why this was so. The strumming noise seemed to touch the feet of those who listened, and they moved uneasily, and would often shout when the sounds came swiftly and regularly together in some way I had never heard before. Very odd it was to see them thus swaying together, sometimes clapping their hands as the sounds came, and at last they would caper and circle about, stepping as came the sounds, and all were delighted with it. So came what Droopeye said was the first music, and, whatever it may be, it assuredly was marvellous. Such a merry man was Droopeye, whose call I answered, and with whom I often went to the huts and caves of our little village by the lake in the hills. He had done a wonderful thing, but nothing so wonderful as that which Thin Legs and I did, and which proved so great a thing for all the tribe. Never before, so the old men said, had the Cave people been more quiet and prosperous; for we had a good region in which to live, the winters were not so white and hard as they were in the times of which the old men say their fathers’ forefathers told, and there were fewer of the great man-eating wild beasts. Very huge and dangerous were these beasts once, and even at this time it was not good to meet the great bear or the tree leopard, or the wolf pack, or even the huge lone wolf which sometimes crouches by the woodpaths at night, and springs out upon and tears the throat of the unwary. Once such a wolf sprang out upon me; but I throttled him, though my arms were torn, and I was sick and weak for many days. The teeth of the old wolf are very long; but I am strong, and my grip is crushing. We had not been at war with any other tribe since I was a youth, and we had not been driven away from the camping place by the great floods which sometimes came in the past times, and so we had thriven here, and had done many things. There were the boat and the barb!