The herculean strength of the mastodon won, and essaying still deeper water, liberated from its treacherous footing, it reappeared, its head half emergent, swimming to the opposite shore. Ogga arose on his knees, his spear drawn tightly across his abdomen by both hands, and a smile lurking in his face still wove its intangible tracery of pleasure about his eyes.
And now the dramatic movement increased in interest. As Ogga looked the smile vanished from his eyes, a sudden keen excitement took its place, he leaped to his feet, his mouth opened as if he were about to speak, but no word or syllable or sound was heard. Moving stealthily, crouching, belly flat, upon the ground, to which in color it offered a deceptive resemblance, Ogga saw on the opposite bank towards which the disconcerted mastodon was now strenuously swimming, the hateful form of the tiger-cat, the smilodon, the sabre-toothed, the vagrant savage from the south.
Indeed the spectacle roused all the deeply seated, and through practice, exercised instincts of the hunter. He watched, and the color slowly ebbing from his cheeks again ebbed back, his hands clasping the useless spear rose and fell, the surges of his emotion broke in suspirations from his lips, the soul of the hunter realized the meaning of that animal encounter beneath the glacial skies.
The mastodon now clambered with frequent scrambles and awkward plunges up the opposite bank. Its footing, uncertain on the rolling stones and pebbles, dislodged from the terrace, hardly permitted it to make much progress. Still immersed in the water, its broad back glistening with drops of water enmeshed in its hairy hide, it stood still, rolling its long trunk between its tusks and emitting harsh cries of distress and recall.
The brown heap upon the scantily clothed upland, on the very verge of the incline up which the mastodon was endeavoring to rise, moved cautiously forward, and Ogga could see rising and falling in the long grass the sweeping tail of the cat; he could see the half opened jaws of the beast of prey exposing the murderous canine that descended from its upper jaw, curving backward, like a white stiletto; he could even discern that masked movement of the muscles which the cat so wonderfully controls and by which it slips along the ground with almost imperceptible creeping of its hidden feet. Ogga saw the whitish fur of its underside pressed out in thick folds as the animal hugged the earth with furtive malice.