Challenger’s quick brain had grasped the situation.  He seized the bewildered Summerlee by the arm, and they both ran towards us.  Two of their guards bounded after them and fell to two bullets from Lord John.  We ran forward into the open to meet our friends, and pressed a loaded rifle into the hands of each.  But Summerlee was at the end of his strength.  He could hardly totter.  Already the ape-men were recovering from their panic.  They were coming through the brushwood and threatening to cut us off.  Challenger and I ran Summerlee along, one at each of his elbows, while Lord John covered our retreat, firing again and again as savage heads snarled at us out of the bushes.  For a mile or more the chattering brutes were at our very heels.  Then the pursuit slackened, for they learned our power and would no longer face that unerring rifle.  When we had at last reached the camp, we looked back and found ourselves alone.

So it seemed to us; and yet we were mistaken.  We had hardly closed the thornbush door of our zareba, clasped each other’s hands, and thrown ourselves panting upon the ground beside our spring, when we heard a patter of feet and then a gentle, plaintive crying from outside our entrance.  Lord Roxton rushed forward, rifle in hand, and threw it open.  There, prostrate upon their faces, lay the little red figures of the four surviving Indians, trembling with fear of us and yet imploring our protection.  With an expressive sweep of his hands one of them pointed to the woods around them, and indicated that they were full of danger.  Then, darting forward, he threw his arms round Lord John’s legs, and rested his face upon them.

“By George!” cried our peer, pulling at his moustache in great perplexity, “I say—­what the deuce are we to do with these people?  Get up, little chappie, and take your face off my boots.”

Summerlee was sitting up and stuffing some tobacco into his old briar.

“We’ve got to see them safe,” said he.  “You’ve pulled us all out of the jaws of death.  My word! it was a good bit of work!”

“Admirable!” cried Challenger.  “Admirable!  Not only we as individuals, but European science collectively, owe you a deep debt of gratitude for what you have done.  I do not hesitate to say that the disappearance of Professor Summerlee and myself would have left an appreciable gap in modern zoological history.  Our young friend here and you have done most excellently well.”

He beamed at us with the old paternal smile, but European science would have been somewhat amazed could they have seen their chosen child, the hope of the future, with his tangled, unkempt head, his bare chest, and his tattered clothes.  He had one of the meat-tins between his knees, and sat with a large piece of cold Australian mutton between his fingers.  The Indian looked up at him, and then, with a little yelp, cringed to the ground and clung to Lord John’s leg.