His intentions were honourable he meant
to offer a full explanation, with apologies, but the girl did not wait;
at his first movement she swung round and fled through the trees, still
screaming.

The Missing Link sat down again with a sigh. Anyhow there must be a
residence near, he was not destined to perish in the bush; but the girl
would rush home with a shocking tale of some hideous monster in the
paddock, her male relations would come to hunt down that monster. Nickie
had had experience of such hunters; he remembered that they carried guns,
and that they were not disposed to delay shooting in order to argue with
a monkey about the sacredness of life.

Mr. Crips had a ready mind, and his peculiar career had taught him the
necessity of prompt action. With eager hands he pulled off his monkey
skin, rolled it up, and stuffed it into a hollow log, with the head-piece
and mask; and then with his singlet he rubbed the make-up off his face,
rubbing off a fair amount of hide in his eagerness. After this he set to
work tearing up the grass tufts, and creating evidence of a struggle. The
blood from a cut in his head came in most useful; he made as big a show
as possible with it. Nicholas Crips next lay down amid the ruin he had
wrought.

Nickie had not long to wait. About twenty minutes later he saw an elderly
man and a youth coming hurriedly through the trees, looking about them
eagerly. Each carried a gun. He sat up and beckoned, and they hastened to
him, not a little astonished to find a strange man clad only in torn
singlet and drawers lying there in the depths of the bush.

"Hullo, mate," said the elder man, "what's amiss?"

Nickie groaned aloud. "Horrible!" he gasped. "Horrible! Horrible!"

The man raised him. "I say, you've been knocked about," he said. "Have
you seen anythin'?"

Nickie nodded feebly. "Yes," he said, "a monkey, an orang-outang, or
something, as big as a man. An awful brute."

"Well, I'm blowed!" gaspe the man. "Then Nell was right. My daughter came
home in a fit; she said a monkey bigger'n me had chased her."

"It's true," murmured Nickie. "It chased me. We had a terrible fight. It
tore all my clothes off about a mile and a half back there near the
creek. I escaped, and it chased me here, and we fought again. I thought
my end had come, when it must have heard you, and it made off through the
bush towards the mountain, going like the wind."

"By cripes!" ejaculated the youth in an awed voice.