"Take it back and throw it on the fire again!" she ordered angrily. The generous lump of steak, which she had hacked off for herself from the loin, had proved to be merely scorched on the outside, and she was disappointed. She stood fingering the raw mass with resentful aversion, while the old men and women, chattering gleefully and followed by the horde of children dragged the mangled carcase back to the fire, lifted it laboriously by all four legs, and managed to deposit it in the very midst of the flames. A shrill shout of triumph went up from the withered old throats at this achievement, and they all drew back to wait for the fire to do its wonderful work. But A-ya was impatient, and vaguely dissatisfied as she watched that crude roasting in the process. She stood brooding, eyeing the fire and turning her lump of raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitude of body was one she had caught from Grom, when he was groping for a solution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught his attitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive and receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it had been whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone head firmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of the fire, as far as it could go without burning the wood of the spear shaft. It took her a very few minutes to realize that her idea was nothing less than an inspiration. Moving the morsel backwards and forwards to keep it from charring, she found that it seemed to do best over a mass of hot coals rather than in a flame; and being a thin cut, it cooked quickly. When it was done she burnt her fingers with it, and her big red mouth as well; and her two boys, for whom she had torn off shreds too hot for herself to hold, danced up and down and wept loudly with the smart of it, to be instantly consoled by the savor. Noting the supreme success of A-ya's experiment, the spectators rushed in, dragged the carcase once more from the fire, and fell to hacking off suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one who could get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, was busy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding the excitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and came forward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched in the sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant Ook-ootsk, away in the green hollow nursing his honorable wounds, had no part in the rejoicing, in this revel of the First Cooked Food. The hot meat juices, modified by the action of the fire, were almost as stimulating as alcohol in the veins of these simple livers, and the revel grew to something like an orgie as the shriveled nerves of the elders began to thrill with new life. A-ya, seeing the carcase of the elk melt away like new snow under a spring sun, gave orders to skin and cut up the body of the first bear.