let's get up where they can see us," was Chet's answer to their
wondering looks; "let's show off our armament. How can he know how much
ammunition we have left? For that matter, he may be getting a little
short of shells himself, and he won't know that his solitary pistol is
the thing we are most afraid of."

"Good," Harkness agreed; "we will play a little good old-fashioned poker
with the gentleman, but don't overdo it, just casually let him see the
guns."

Schwartzmann, far across the open ground, must have seen them as plainly
as they saw him as they climbed the little hummock of rocks. He could
not fail to note the pistols in the men's belts, nor overlook the
significance of the weapon that gleamed brightly in the pilot's hand.
Chet saw him return his pistol to his belt as he backed slowly into the
shadows, and he knew that Schwartzmann had no wish for an exchange of
shots, even at long range, with so many guns against him. But from their
slight elevation he saw something else.

The grass was trampled flat all about their enclosure, but, beyond, it
stood half the height of a man; it was a sea of rippling green where the
light wind brushed across it. And throughout that sea that intervened
between them and the jungle Chet saw other ripples forming, little
quiverings of shaken stalks that came here and there until the whole
expanse seemed trembling.

"Down--and get ready for trouble!" he ordered crisply, then added as he
sprang for his own long bow: "Their commanding officer doesn't want to
mix it with us--not just yet--but the rest are coming, and there's a
million of them, it looks like."

* * * * *

The apes broke cover with all the suddenness of a covey of quail, but
they charged like wild, hungry beasts that have sighted prey. Only the
long spears in their bunchy fists and the shorter throwing spears that
came through the air marked them as primitive men.

The standing grass at the end of the clearing beyond their barricade was
abruptly black with naked bodies. To Chet, that charging horde was a
formless dark wave that came rolling up toward them; then, as suddenly
as the black wave had appeared, it ceased to be a mere mass and Chet saw
individual units. A black-haired one was springing in advance. The man
behind the barricade heard the twang of his bow as if it were a sound
from afar off; but he saw the arrow projecting from a barrel-shaped
chest, and the ape-man tottering