to turn on his back, which motion necessarily
caused his legs to kick up helplessly in the air.

I actually laughed even in the very jaws of death!

But next minute, with a wild cry, I darted away into the interior of the
cave, leaving my unhappy comrades to their fate! This cavern was deep
and dreary. After about a hundred yards, I paused and looked around.

The whole floor, composed of sand and malachite, was strewn with bones,
freshly gnawed bones of reptiles and fish, with a mixture of mammalia.
My very soul grew sick as my body shuddered with horror. I had truly,
according to the old proverb, fallen out of the frying pan into the
fire. Some beast larger and more ferocious even than the shark-crocodile
inhabited this den.

What could I do? The mouth of the cave was guarded by one ferocious
monster, the interior was inhabited by something too hideous to
contemplate. Flight was impossible!

Only one resource remained, and that was to find some small hiding place
to which the fearful denizens of the cavern could not penetrate. I gazed
wildly around, and at last discovered a fissure in the rock, to which I
rushed in the hope of recovering my scattered senses.

Crouching down, I waited shivering as in an ague fit. No man is brave in
presence of an earthquake, or a bursting boiler, or an exploding
torpedo. I could not be expected to feel much courage in presence of the
fearful fate that appeared to await me.

An hour passed. I heard all the time a strange rumbling outside the
cave.

What was the fate of my unhappy companions? It was impossible for me to
pause to inquire. My own wretched existence was all I could think of.

Suddenly a groaning, as of fifty bears in a fight, fell upon my
ears--hisses, spitting, moaning, hideous to hear--and then I saw--

Never, were ages to pass over my head, shall I forget the horrible
apparition.

It was the Ape Gigans!

Fourteen feet high, covered with coarse hair, of a blackish brown, the
hair on the arms, from the shoulder to the elbow joints, pointing
downwards, while that from the wrist to the elbow pointed upwards, it
advanced. Its arms were as long as its body, while its legs were
prodigious. It had thick, long, and sharply pointed teeth--like a
mammoth saw.

It struck its breast as it came on smelling and sniffing, reminding me
of the stories we read in our early childhood of giants who ate the
Flesh of men and little boys!

Suddenly it stopped. My heart beat wi