." He shook his fist at the engine.

Smith laughed.

"Beans would suit a horse better, Roddy," he said. "Let's be thankful
the breakdown didn't happen while we were in the storm. That would
have been the end of us. Come on, we'll soon put things to rights.
This loss of time is getting very serious."

They set to work to discover the cause of the failure. As they
expected, the sparking plugs were completely clogged. Smith took these
down to the stream to give them a thorough cleaning, while Rodier
overhauled the other parts of the machine. When, after half-an-hour's
hard work, everything appeared to be in order again, they sat down to
snatch a meal, leaving the plugs to be replaced at the last moment.

While thus engaged, Smith scanned the surroundings with some
curiosity. The stream, in cutting its way through the hillside, had
hollowed it out in a gentle curve. The channel itself threaded the
base of a huge natural cutting, most of which was covered with trees,
only the middle part, where the torrent had laid bare a path, being
comparatively clear. All around were trees large and small, tall and
stunted, leafy and bare. As Smith's eye travelled upward, he noticed
about a hundred and fifty yards distant, almost at the top of the
gorge, a small ape-like form flitting across a part of the forest that
was a little thinner than the rest.

"See that, Roddy?" he said.

Rodier looked round.

"What, mister?"

"An ape, I fancy, perhaps an orang-outang. I know they infest the
forests of the Malayan archipelago, but I can't call to mind that
they're natives of New Guinea."

"All the natives of New Guinea are apes," said Rodier viciously. "At
Port Moresby they came round me like monkeys at the Zoo."

"There he is! Do you see him?"

Smith's hand stole mechanically to his hip pocket, where he kept his
revolver. Then he smiled, remembering that the chances of stopping an
orang-outang with a revolver bullet were about one in ten thousand.

"I don't see him, mister."

"He has disappeared. But, my word, Roddy, there's another, and
another--four or five; look at them, in the undergrowth yonder. I
don't like this. They're savage beasts if offended, and if they attack
us we shall be in rather a tight corner."

He rose, keeping his eye on the spot where the ape-like forms had
shown themselves for an instant, to vanish again. As his eye became
accustomed to the gloomy depths of the forest, he became still more
alarmed to se