There was excitement in the hunting. The huge and dangerous beasts of the past of which the old men prattled in the legends they related were now gone, but in this new land to which this vanguard of our race had come were others which did not exist in the region from which we had come, and which we soon learned to regard with caution. There was a monster, maned yellow beast called the lion, as large almost as the brown bear we feared in the country from which we had come, and there were leopards and bears of a kind new to us, and other beasts of prey not to be faced wisely single-handed. But there were deer in abundance, and the wild ox, the urus, and the aurochs, and we did not lack for meat. From such a village in such a region had come our party which had battled with the Goatskins. We were but warriors, dangerous raiders, perhaps the first among the Cave and Hut men, and this long march of ours was the greatest we had ever undertaken. Much we longed now for the women and the cakes made from the crushed grain, for now we must subsist on flesh alone, and such nuts and fruits as we might find upon our way, but we sought more plunder before returning. Fine skins we had taken and many trinkets such as women delight in, and such as were sometimes worn by the fighting men, but nowhere had we taken prizes of fine axes or spears or arrow-heads, for nowhere had we found weapons to compare with our own. We had met no force to equal us in any village we had found, and the word of our advance must have travelled fast and far, for many places where men lived, some in caves and some in huts of bark, we found abandoned, the people having fled into hiding in the forests. Only these puny creatures of the valley before us had assailed us fairly, relying upon their numbers, which were great. Weak as they were, they had beset us somewhat sorely and in the two fights ten of us had been killed and many others hurt. But we had killed scores of the Goatskins and we did not think they would dare to face us again. After a little rest we were to go down into the valley and ravage it, and then, with what we might find worth taking, we would return to our own people by the sea and have again the women and the grain cakes. We were joyous and boisterous of mood that day, feasting upon venison and lying idly about where the sun shone upon the mountainside. As for me, my strength had all returned.