The cave was well chosen. It was approached by a steep and narrow path. Only one enemy could attack at once, so the defenders were always able to roll down bowlders on him before he gained a footing. That was how they treated the lion, when he came thrashing his tail and roaring on the first morning to make them prisoners. They gave a rock a big shove and knocked him over like a ninepin. He was so hurt in his feelings that he sulked in bed for a week; for many more weeks he was easily tired. Seeing that he was the King of the Beasts and the President of their Conference, this made the animals the more indignant and the more determined that the Man and the dog must be punished. The next to attempt their capture were the elephant and the rhinoceros. They boasted that they weren't afraid of rocks; nevertheless they came together to back up each other's courage. Half way up the slope they stuck. They were too heavy for so steep a path. The ground crumbled from under them, the dog worried them, the Man struck them, and away they went, bumping down the hill, rolling over and over. They never stopped till they had reached the bottom, where they lay on their backs with their feet in the air, grunting and panting like a pair of upturned locomotives. At first the Man and the dog regarded the enmity they had aroused in the light of a huge joke; they got a good deal of fun out of fighting. But the sporting side of the affair ceased to appeal to them when they were compelled to recognize the seriousness of their predicament. They were absolutely cut off from supplies at a season when food was running short. They had to sneak out at night at the risk of capture to get anything to eat at all. They had a sick woman on their hands who cried not for food, but for delicacies. Instead of gathering strength, she grew steadily weaker. And then there was the matter of sleep; it was as scarce as food. They hardly snatched a wink of it. When they weren't on guard or fighting, they were soothing her fretfulness, foraging for her or thinking up some new method of keeping her warm. It was damp in the cave; sunlight rarely tiptoed farther than the entrance. It didn't take them long to discover that the hyena's coat had been as dearly purchased as the forbidden fruit that had lost them the garden. Peace, which they might have concluded in the early days, was now entirely out of the question. Even an offer to return the hyena's coat wouldn't have made any impression. They had carried hostilities too far; there wasn't an animal whom they had not wounded and who wasn't mad with them clean through from the point of his nose to the tip of his tail. Often and often, standing in the entrance to his cave, the Man would gaze longingly across the bronzy roof of the forest to the distant shining of the padlocked gates of Eden. He was farther than ever from the garden now with its tranquil blessedness. If only he hadn't learnt to steal!