followed on, and the lumbering forms of
the great apes drifted further away from the sea, seemingly headed
toward some mutely agreed upon jungle rendezvous. Everything depended
for the time upon the return to health of Apeman. All other matters
depended upon that. Each in his own way, Manape and Ellen, realized
this. Caleb Barter had schemed better than he could possibly have
foreseen.

CHAPTER X

_Written in Dust_

As Apeman was borne deeper into the jungle in the great arms of the
she, what was more natural in the circumstances than that Ellen keep
close to her only remaining link with the world she had left--Manape,
the trained anthropoid of Caleb Barter? A natural thing, and one that
filled Manape with obvious pleasure.

Once she touched his hand, rested her own small one in his mighty palm
for a moment--and Bentley was afraid to return the pressure of her
palm with the hand of Manape, lest he crush every bone in her fingers.
Thereafter at intervals, while the whole aggregation drifted deeper
into the jungle, Ellen clung to Manape; depended upon him. Was it her
woman's intuition which told her that Manape was a safe guardian?

Bentley refused to dwell on that phase of this wild adventure however,
for there were other things to think about. It required many hours for
him to discover the truth, but he knew it at last. He, Manape-Bentley,
was the lord of the great apes! Before his capture, or before the
capture of Manape by Caleb Barter, Manape had been leader of these
apes. Now he had returned and was their ruler once more. Upstarts had
taken his place, and he had slain them--back there when Apeman had
tried to escape into the jungle with Ellen in his arms. To the apes
this must have seemed the way it was.

Bentley was putting things together, hoping and believing that they
made four--yet not sure but that he was forcing them to equal four
when in actuality they were five or six. If Manape--the original ape
of Barter's capture, whose body now was Bentley's--had been the leader
of the great apes, that explained why the animals remained constantly
in the vicinity of Barter's dwelling. Barter had needed them in his
plans, and had made certain their remaining near by making their
leader captive. And of course only an ape sufficiently intelligent to
rule other apes would have suited the evil scheme which must have been
growing for years in the mind of Caleb Barter. Barter had merely
waited with philosophic calmne