“Well, what did they do?” I was enthralled by the strange story which my companion was whispering into my ear, while all the time his keen eyes were shooting in every direction and his hand grasping his cocked rifle.

“I thought it was the end of us, but instead of that it started them on a new line.  They all jabbered and chattered together.  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 Summerlee and myself.  Old Challenger was up a tree, eatin’ pines and havin’ the time of his life.  I’m bound to say that he managed to get some