ther. Then one of
them stood out beside Challenger. You'll smile, young fellah, but 'pon
my word they might have been kinsmen. I couldn't have believed it if I
hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This old ape-man--he was their
chief--was a sort of red Challenger, with every one of our friend's
beauty points, only just a trifle more so. He had the short body, the
big shoulders, the round chest, no neck, a great ruddy frill of a
beard, the tufted eyebrows, the 'What do you want, damn you!' look
about the eyes, and the whole catalogue. When the ape-man stood by
Challenger and put his paw on his shoulder, the thing was complete.
Summerlee was a bit hysterical, and he laughed till he cried. The
ape-men laughed too--or at least they put up the devil of a
cacklin'--and they set to work to drag us off through the forest. They
wouldn't touch the guns and things--thought them dangerous, I
expect--but they carried away all our loose food. Summerlee and I got
some rough handlin' on the way--there's my skin and my clothes to prove
it--for they took us a bee-line through the brambles, and their own
hides are like leather. But Challenger was all right. Four of them
carried him shoulder high, and he went like a Roman emperor. What's
that?"

It was a strange clicking noise in the distance not unlike castanets.

"There they go!" said my companion, slipping cartridges into the second
double barrelled "Express." "Load them all up, young fellah my lad,
for we're not going to be taken alive, and don't you think it! That's
the row they make when they are excited. By George! they'll have
something to excite them if they put us up. The 'Last Stand of the
Grays' won't be in it. 'With their rifles grasped in their stiffened
hands, mid a ring of the dead and dyin',' as some fathead sings. Can
you hear them now?"

"Very far away."

"That little lot will do no good, but I expect their search parties are
all over the wood. Well, I was telling you my tale of woe. They got
us soon to this town of theirs--about a thousand huts of branches and
leaves in a great grove of trees near the edge of the cliff. It's
three or four miles from here. The filthy beasts fingered me all over,
and I feel as if I should never be clean again. They tied us up--the
fellow who handled me could tie like a bosun--and there we lay with our
toes up, beneath a tree, while a great brute stood guard over us with a
club in his hand. When I say 'we' I mean