"The man-apes had been given their first chance. There would be no second one; the future was, very literally, in their own hands. Moons waxed and waned; babies were born and sometimes lived; feeble, toothless thirty-year-olds died; the leopard took its toll in the night; the Others threatened daily across the river - and the tribe prospered. In the course of a single year, Moon-Watcher and his companions had changed almost beyond recognition."