Bawr, the Chief, and Grom, his right hand and his counselor, stood upon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared down anxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyes to discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets and cane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of a cattle-farm. Here and there a battle raged between such small-brained brutes as the white rhinoceros and the cone-horned monster; but for the most part there was an apprehensive sort of truce, the different kinds of beasts keeping as far as possible to themselves. Further out in the plain pastured a herd of gigantic creatures such as neither Bawr nor Grom had ever seen before. A pair of rhinoceros looked like pygmies beside them. They were both tall and massive, of a dark mud-color, with colossal heads, no necks whatever, huge ears that flapped like wings, immensely long, up-curving tusks of gleaming yellow--mighty enough to carry a bison cradled in their curve--and it seemed to the astonished watchers on the ridge that from the snout of each monster grew a great snake, which reared itself into the air, and waved terribly, and pulled down the tops of trees for the monster's food. It was the Cave Man's first view of the Mammoth--which had not yet developed the shaggy coat it was later to grow on the cold sub-Artic plains. Recovering at length from his amazement, Bawr remarked: "They seem to have two tails, those new beasts--a little tail behind, in the usual place, and a very big tail in front, which they use as a hand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is they who are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?" Grom thought long before replying. "No," said he, "they are not flesh-eaters. See! They do not heed the other beasts. They eat trees. And they, too, seem restless. I think they are themselves driven. But what dreadful beings must be they who can drive them!" "If they are driven over us," muttered Bawr, "they will grind us and our fires into the dust." "It must be men," mused Grom aloud, "men far mightier than ourselves and so countless that the hordes of the Tree Men would seem a handful in comparison. Only men, or gods, and in swarms like locusts, could so drive all these mighty beasts before them as a child drives rabbits." "Before they come," said Bawr, dropping his great craggy chin upon his breast, "the People of the Caves will be trodden out. Whither can we escape from such foes? We will build great fires before the caves, and we will go down fighting, as befits men." He lifted his maned and massive head, and shook his great spear defiantly at the unknown doom that was coming up from the south. But Grom's eyes were sunken deep under his brows in brooding thought.