tter
pleased he would be--he wished that he might never see a human face
again. Men always brought him sorrow and misery.

The river suggested fishing and so he waddled upon its shores, catching
fish after a fashion of his own devising and eating them raw. When
night came he curled up in a great tree beside the stream--the one from
which he had been fishing during the afternoon--and was soon asleep.
Numa, roaring beneath him, awoke him. He was about to call out in
anger to his noisy neighbor when something else caught his attention.
He listened. Was there something in the tree beside himself? Yes, he
heard the noise of something below him trying to clamber upward.
Presently he heard the click of a crocodile's jaws in the waters
beneath, and then, low but distinct: "By George! The beggar nearly got
me." The voice was familiar.

Korak glanced downward toward the speaker. Outlined against the faint
luminosity of the water he saw the figure of a man clinging to a lower
branch of the tree. Silently and swiftly the ape-man clambered
downward. He felt a hand beneath his foot. He reached down and
clutched the figure beneath him and dragged it up among the branches.
It struggled weakly and struck at him; but Korak paid no more attention
than Tantor to an ant. He lugged his burden to the higher safety and
greater comfort of a broad crotch, and there he propped it in a sitting
position against the bole of the tree. Numa still was roaring beneath
them, doubtless in anger that he had been robbed of his prey. Korak
shouted down at him, calling him, in the language of the great apes,
"Old green-eyed eater of carrion," "Brother of Dango," the hyena, and
other choice appellations of jungle opprobrium.

The Hon. Morison Baynes, listening, felt assured that a gorilla had
seized upon him. He felt for his revolver, and as he was drawing it
stealthily from its holster a voice asked in perfectly good English,
"Who are you?"

Baynes started so that he nearly fell from the branch.

"My God!" he exclaimed. "Are you a man?"

"What did you think I was?" asked Korak.

"A gorilla," replied Baynes, honestly.

Korak laughed.

"Who are you?" he repeated.

"I'm an Englishman by the name of Baynes; but who the devil are you?"
asked the Hon. Morison.

"They call me The Killer," replied Korak, giving the English
translation of the name that Akut had given him. And then after a
pause during which the Hon. Morison attempted to