ng of a simplified
language that had no need for aught but nouns and verbs, but such words
as it included were the same as those of the human beings of
Pellucidar. It was amplified by many gestures which filled in the
speech-gaps.

I asked them what they intended doing with me; but, like our own North
American Indians when questioned by a white man, they pretended not to
understand me. One of them swung me to his shoulder as lightly as if I
had been a shoat. He was a huge creature, as were his fellows,
standing fully seven feet upon his short legs and weighing considerably
more than a quarter of a ton.

Two went ahead of my bearer and three behind. In this order we cut to
the right through the forest to the foot of the hill where precipitous
cliffs appeared to bar our farther progress in this direction. But my
escort never paused. Like ants upon a wall, they scaled that seemingly
unscalable barrier, clinging, Heaven knows how, to its ragged
perpendicular face. During most of the short journey to the summit I
must admit that my hair stood on end. Presently, however, we topped
the thing and stood upon the level mesa which crowned it.

Immediately from all about, out of burrows and rough, rocky lairs,
poured a perfect torrent of beasts similar to my captors. They
clustered about, jabber-ing at my guards and attempting to get their
hands upon me, whether from curiosity or a desire to do me bodily harm
I did not know, since my escort with bared fangs and heavy blows kept
them off.

Across the mesa we went, to stop at last before a large pile of rocks
in which an opening appeared. Here my guards set me upon my feet and
called out a word which sounded like "Gr-gr-gr!" and which I later
learned was the name of their king.

Presently there emerged from the cavernous depths of the lair a
monstrous creature, scarred from a hundred battles, almost hairless and
with an empty socket where one eye had been. The other eye, sheeplike
in its mildness, gave the most startling appearance to the beast, which
but for that single timid orb was the most fearsome thing that one
could imagine.

I had encountered the black, hairless, long-tailed ape--things of the
mainland--the creatures which Perry thought might constitute the link
between the higher orders of apes and man--but these brute-men of
Gr-gr-gr seemed to set that theory back to zero, for there was less
similarity between the black ape-men and these creatures than th