He did not know how old he was himself, although he did know that no person in his tribe had been alive when he was a young boy in the village.

He remembered the days when some of the old men, still alive, had been born; and, unlike him, they were now decrepit, shaken with palsy, blear-eyed, toothless of mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed.

All his own faculties remained unimpaired.

He even boasted a dozen worn fangs of teeth, gum-level, on which he could still chew.

Although he no longer had the physical endurance of youth, his thinking was as original and clear as it had always been.