to complete his operation and cause his two patients to
feel no-ill effects, to be to all intents and purposes well in mind
and body--all within less than twelve hours? However, that does not
matter now. Something must be done. Since Caleb Barter was the only
man who could perform this unholy operation, he is the only one who
could repeat it restoring each of you to your proper earthly
casements. So we must play in with him. I suppose you've long since
decided that way, Lee?"

How strange it seemed to Ellen to discuss such matters with Manape.
But behind his brutish exterior was the brain of the man whom she
loved.

"And there is one other thing," Ellen almost whispered, and her face
flushed rosily. "No harm must come to the body of Lee, you understand?
He must never be permitted to do anything of which Lee Bentley of
after years may have cause to feel ashamed."

Manape nodded. He understood her, and despite the grotesquerie of the
whole thing there was something intimate and sweet about this
interchange. A man and woman loved. Just now that love was mentioned
more or less in the abstract, discussed on purely a mental basis--but
both Bentley and Ellen Estabrook were thinking of the future, and were
as frank with each other as they perhaps ever would be again.

* * * * *

Now the apes were beginning to stir themselves. It was time to be on
the move again. Eyes were turned toward Manape, who was plainly
intended to lead them further into the jungle. Ellen and the white
body of Bentley were already being accepted as a matter of course.

If the great apes wondered why their returned lord did not jabber with
them in the gibberish of the great apes, there was no way of telling,
for there was no way in which Manape could make himself understood,
nor any way the great apes could tell their thoughts to Manape.

Then, without warning, the blow fell.

The storm broke, and even as the uproar started Bentley was sure that
he could sense behind it the fine hand of Caleb Barter--still working
out his "experiment," with human beings and apes as the pawns.

The apes were on the move, entering a series of aisles through the
gloomy woods when the blow fell--in the shape of scores of nets, in
whose folds within a matter of seconds the great apes were fighting
and snarling helplessly. They expended their mighty strength to no
avail. They fought at ropes and thongs which they did not
understand--and