Nickie arose, he advanced a step.  His intentions were honourable he meant to offer a full explanation, with apologies, but the girl did not wait; at his first movement she swung round and fled through the trees, still screaming.

The Missing Link sat down again with a sigh.  Anyhow there must be a residence near, he was not destined to perish in the bush; but the girl would rush home with a shocking tale of some hideous monster in the paddock, her male relations would come to hunt down that monster.  Nickie had had experience of such hunters; he remembered that they carried guns, and that they were not disposed to delay shooting in order to argue with a monkey about the sacredness of life.

Mr. Crips had a ready mind, and his peculiar career had taught him the necessity of prompt action.  With eager hands he pulled off his monkey skin, rolled it up, and stuffed it into a hollow log, with the head-piece and mask; and then with his singlet he rubbed the make-up off his face, rubbing off a fair amount of hide in his eagerness.  After this he set to work tearing up the grass tufts, and creating evidence of a struggle.  The blood from a cut in his head came in most useful; he made as big a show as possible with it.  Nicholas Crips next lay down amid the ruin he had wrought.

Nickie had not long to wait.  About twenty minutes later he saw an elderly man and a youth coming hurriedly through the trees, looking about them eagerly.  Each carried a gun.  He sat up and beckoned, and they hastened to him, not a little astonished to find a strange man clad only in torn singlet and drawers lying there in the depths of the bush.

“Hullo, mate,” said the elder man, “what’s amiss?”

Nickie groaned aloud.  “Horrible!” he gasped.  “Horrible!  Horrible!”

The man raised him.  “I say, you’ve been knocked about,” he said.  “Have you seen anythin’?”

Nickie nodded feebly.  “Yes,” he said, “a monkey, an orang-outang, or something, as big as a man.  An awful brute.”

“Well, I’m blowed!” gaspe the man.  “Then Nell was right.  My daughter came home in a fit; she said a monkey bigger’n me had chased her.”

“It’s true,” murmured Nickie.  “It chased me.  We had a terrible fight.  It tore all my clothes off about a mile and a half back there near the creek.  I escaped, and it chased me here, and we fought again.  I thought my end had come, when it must have heard you, and it made off through the bush towards the mountain, going like the wind.”

“By cripes!” ejaculated the youth in an awed voice.

“Did he hurt yeh much?” asked the man.

“My ankle’s sprained, and I’ve got a broken rib and a cut head,” answered Nickie; “but losing my clothes is the worst.  What is a man to do without his clothes?”

“You get up to the house, Billy, and bring down my Sunday things,” said the settler.  “We’ll fix you up all right, mister,” he added, addressing Nickie the Kid, and Nickie smiled warily, and uttered feeble thanks.