As he looked off through the sunlit space he wondered what the story of this valley would be, and how many volumes it would fill, if the valley itself could tell it.
First of all, he knew, it would whisper of the creation of a world; it would tell of oceans torn and twisted and thrown aside--of those first strange eons of time when there was no night, but all was day; when weird and tremendous monsters stalked where he now saw the caribou drinking at the creek, and when huge winged creatures half bird and half beast swept the sky where he now saw an eagle soaring.
And then it would tell of The Change--of that terrific hour when the earth tilted on its axis, and night came, and a tropical world was turned into a frigid one, and new kinds of life were born to fill it.
It must have been long after that, thought Langdon, that the first bear came to replace the mammoth, the mastodon, and the monstrous beasts that had been their company.

And that first bear was the forefather of the grizzly he and Bruce were setting forth to kill the next day! So engrossed was Langdon in his thoughts that he did not hear a sound behind him.

And then something roused him.
It was as if one of the monsters he had been picturing in his imagination had let out a great breath close to him.

He turned slowly, and the next moment his heart seemed to stop its beating; his blood seemed to grow cold and lifeless in his veins.
Barring the ledge not more than fifteen feet from him, his great jaws agape, his head moving slowly from side to side as he regarded his trapped enemy, stood Thor, the King of the Mountains! And in that space of a second or two Langdon's hands involuntarily gripped at his broken rifle, and he decided that he was doomed!.