applaud his resolution."

"By George, young fellah, you've put your hand on it!" said Lord John,
clapping me on the back. "How we never came to think of it before I
can't imagine! There's not more than an hour of daylight left, but if
you take your notebook you may be able to get some rough sketch of the
place. If we put these three ammunition cases under the branch, I will
soon hoist you on to it."

He stood on the boxes while I faced the trunk, and was gently raising
me when Challenger sprang forward and gave me such a thrust with his
huge hand that he fairly shot me into the tree. With both arms
clasping the branch, I scrambled hard with my feet until I had worked,
first my body, and then my knees, onto it. There were three excellent
off-shoots, like huge rungs of a ladder, above my head, and a tangle of
convenient branches beyond, so that I clambered onwards with such speed
that I soon lost sight of the ground and had nothing but foliage
beneath me. Now and then I encountered a check, and once I had to shin
up a creeper for eight or ten feet, but I made excellent progress, and
the booming of Challenger's voice seemed to be a great distance beneath
me. The tree was, however, enormous, and, looking upwards, I could see
no thinning of the leaves above my head. There was some thick,
bush-like clump which seemed to be a parasite upon a branch up which I
was swarming. I leaned my head round it in order to see what was
beyond, and I nearly fell out of the tree in my surprise and horror at
what I saw.

A face was gazing into mine--at the distance of only a foot or two.
The creature that owned it had been crouching behind the parasite, and
had looked round it at the same instant that I did. It was a human
face--or at least it was far more human than any monkey's that I have
ever seen. It was long, whitish, and blotched with pimples, the nose
flattened, and the lower jaw projecting, with a bristle of coarse
whiskers round the chin. The eyes, which were under thick and heavy
brows, were bestial and ferocious, and as it opened its mouth to snarl
what sounded like a curse at me I observed that it had curved, sharp
canine teeth. For an instant I read hatred and menace in the evil
eyes. Then, as quick as a flash, came an expression of overpowering
fear. There was a crash of broken boughs as it dived wildly down into
the tangle of green. I caught a glimpse of a hairy body like that of a
reddish pig, and then it