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 was gone amid a swirl of leaves and branches.

“What’s the matter?” shouted Roxton from below.  “Anything wrong with you?”

“Did you see it?” I cried, with my arms round the branch and all my nerves tingling.

“We heard a row, as if your foot had slipped.  What was it?”

I was so shocked at the sudden and strange appearance of this ape-man that I hesitated whether I should not climb down again and tell my experience to my companions.  But I was already so far up the great tree that it seemed a humiliation to return without having carried out my mission.

After a long pause, therefore, to recover my breath and my courage, I continued my ascent.  Once I put my weight upon a rotten branch and swung for a few seconds by my hands, but in the main it was all easy climbing.  Gradually the leaves thinned around me, and I was aware, from the wind upon my face, that I had topped all the trees of the forest.  I was determined, however, not to look about me before I had reached the very highest point, so I scrambled on until I had got so far that the topmost branch was bending beneath my weight.  There I settled into a convenient fork, and, balancing myself securely, I found myself looking down at a most wonderful panorama of this strange country in which we found ourselves.