"Shut up!" said the voice from the dark, and grunted.
I gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.

I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.

"It is a man," the voice repeated. "He comes to live with us?"

It was a thick voice, with something in it--a kind of whistling
overtone--that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was
strangely good.

The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something.
I perceived the pause was interrogative. "He comes to live with you,"
I said.

"It is a man. He must learn the Law."

I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black,
a vague outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticed
the opening of the place was darkened by two more black heads.
My hand tightened on my stick.

The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, "Say the words."
I had missed its last remark. "Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law,"
it repeated in a kind of sing-song.

I was puzzled.

"Say the words," said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures
in the doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.