through the ranks of the savages except the open sea behind him.

His predicament was indeed most serious when an idea occurred to
him that altered his smile to a broad grin. The warriors were
still some little distance away, advancing slowly, making, after
the manner of their kind, a frightful din with their savage yells
and the pounding of their naked feet upon the ground as they leaped
up and down in a fantastic war dance.

Then it was that the ape-man lifted his voice in a series of wild,
weird screams that brought the blacks to a sudden, perplexed halt.
They looked at one another questioningly, for here was a sound
so hideous that their own frightful din faded into insignificance
beside it. No human throat could have formed those bestial notes,
they were sure, and yet with their own eyes they had seen this
white man open his mouth to pour forth his awful cry.

But only for a moment they hesitated, and then with one accord they
again took up their fantastic advance upon their prey; but even
then a sudden crashing in the jungle behind them brought them once
more to a halt, and as they turned to look in the direction of this
new noise there broke upon their startled visions a sight that may
well have frozen the blood of braver men than the Wagambi.

Leaping from the tangled vegetation of the jungle's rim came a
huge panther, with blazing eyes and bared fangs, and in his wake
a score of mighty, shaggy apes lumbering rapidly toward them,
half erect upon their short, bowed legs, and with their long arms
reaching to the ground, where their horny knuckles bore the weight
of their ponderous bodies as they lurched from side to side in