When the cave men saw him coming they did their best to get out of the way, at the same time striking with all their might at his huge sides with their spears. The spears, however, with their wooden points, while strong enough to pierce a fish, were of no use against the elephant's tough hide, and fell back blunted or broken. Ra, as he saw the great beast coming toward him, its little red eyes gleaming, its long trunk swinging to and fro, drove his spear with all his might at its flank but the point was splintered from the blow and he barely escaped with his life. Three of his companions were trampled to death by the savage creature as they tried to escape, and two more were seized in its great trunk and crushed. The cave men, frightened, ran back to their caves and sat there, helpless, until the animal, unable to find them, had eaten his fill of the leaves and fruit, and gone away, leaving a trail of stripped and broken bushes and trees behind him. [Illustration: THE FIGHT WITH A MAMMOTH The cave men did their best to get out of the way, at the same time striking with all their might at his huge sides with their spears.] Ra worried a great deal about this fight. He was very angry with the beast because it had killed one of his brothers, and he could not understand why his spear had failed to pierce the elephant's hide. Its point, rubbed sharp on a rock, had always been strong enough to kill the largest fish, but now it was blunt and broken, and Ra did not like it any more. As he sat in the sun before the cave, trying to cut a new point to his spear with a stone, an idea came into his head. Why could he not in some way fasten the stone to the end of his spear? The stone, he knew, was hard enough not to break against the toughest hide. It was a large and clumsy stone, however, and Ra soon saw that he could do nothing with it. The thought pleased him, but he said nothing to any of his friends about it. Instead, he hurried off to a place on the shore of the lake where a few days before he had seen some very sharp flat stones, quite different from the clumsy bit of rock he had found near the cave. He gathered several pieces of this stone, and amused himself by striking them against each other and breaking them. At last he got what he wanted, a flat, narrow piece, shaped something like the leaf of a tree, and about as long as his hand. The stone was very hard, and it took him hours to chip and rub it down until it had a sharp point. When at last it was done, he had another thing to think about. How was he to fasten the stone to the end of the spear?