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"
Who answers the hyæna?" growled Andoo, peering through the midnight
dimness at them, and then going to look at the cliff edge.
There was Ugh-lomi still telling his story, and the fire getting low,
and the scent of the burning hot and strong.
Andoo stood on the edge of the chalk cliff for some time, shifting his
vast weight from foot to foot, and swaying his head to and fro, with his
mouth open, his ears erect and twitching, and the nostrils of his big,
black muzzle sniffing. He was very curious, was the cave bear, more
curious than any of the bears that live now, and the flickering fire and
the incomprehensible movements of the man, let alone the intrusion into
his indisputable province, stirred him with a sense of strange new
happenings. He had been after red deer fawn that night, for the cave
bear was a miscellaneous hunter, but this quite turned him from that
enterprise.
"Ya-ha!" yelled the hyænas behind. "Ya-ha-ha!"
Peering through the starlight, Andoo saw there were now three or four
going to and fro against the grey hillside. "They will hang about me now
all the night ... until I kill," said Andoo. "Filth of the world!" And
mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge
until the dawn came to drive the hyæna scum home. And after a time they
vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney
beanfeasters, away in the beechwoods. Then they came slinking near
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