both girls, to give much sign. Gori pointed to a tree
some fifty feet away, which shot up to a great, foliage-crowned height.
They moved toward it, and in a moment were climbing, Gori first, the
girls after her, and Kirby last.

"Here we are," Ivana presently whispered, at the same time drawing
herself out on a limb just beneath one on which Gori and Nini had
crawled.

Kirby found himself hedged in by tasselated leaves through which he
could not see. The foliage thinned, however, and soon Ivana halted,
perched herself in a comfortable position. Kirby, making himself at ease
beside her, and seeing that Nini and Gori were in place, turned his eyes
slowly, expectantly downward.

* * * * *

At first, all that he saw from his bird's-eye perch, was a circular
clearing two hundred yards across, which was surrounded on all sides by
lowering jungle. In the exact center of the circle, like a splotch of
ink on gray paper, there gaped a deep hole which might have measured six
feet in diameter. Around this hole, eight poles as tall and stout as
telephone poles stood up in bristling array. The moonlight showed that
the whitish earth of the clearing was tamped smooth as though thousands
of creatures had danced or walked about there for centuries. But not a
living form was visible.

A grunt of disappointment escaped Kirby after that one look. When he
looked beyond the clearing, however, a change came to his feelings.

A quarter of a mile away, lights were twinkling--the same ones which had
been visible on the last stretch of the journey. And the moonlight
touched the little conical roofs of fully two hundred huts of the
ape-people. No sound was audible save the soughing of night wind in the
trees, the shrilling of insects. Nevertheless, there stole over Kirby
all at once a feeling that the great ape-village was crowded to
overflowing. What was more, he felt himself touched by an eery
sensation--familiar these days--of evil to come.

Ivana, seated with her rifle across her knees, stirred on the limb
beside him.

"Oh," she whispered suddenly, "I am afraid of this place!"

Kirby took her hand.

"I know. Maybe it is the sensation of all the legions of the apes herded
together so silently in their village. I wish we knew what to expect
from them. I wish--"

* * * * *

But he broke off, and called softly to Nini on the limb above. She
looked down with a drawn expre