d, but the woman whom he
had known as a German spy he had hated, though he never had found it
in his heart to slay her as he had sworn to slay all Huns. He had
attributed this weakness to the fact that she was a woman, although
he had been rather troubled by the apparent inconsistency of
his hatred for her and his repeated protection of her when danger
threatened.

With an irritable toss of his head he wheeled suddenly toward the
west as though by turning his back upon the fast disappearing plane
he might expunge thoughts of its passengers from his memory. At
the edge of the clearing he paused; a giant tree loomed directly
ahead of him and, as though actuated by sudden and irresistible
impulse, he leaped into the branches and swung himself with apelike
agility to the topmost limbs that would sustain his weight. There,
balancing lightly upon a swaying bough, he sought in the direction
of the eastern horizon for the tiny speck that would be the British
plane bearing away from him the last of his own race and kind that
he expected ever again to see.

At last his keen eyes picked up the ship flying at a considerable
altitude far in the east. For a few seconds he watched it speeding
evenly eastward, when, to his horror, he saw the speck dive suddenly
downward. The fall seemed interminable to the watcher and he
realized how great must have been the altitude of the plane before
the drop commenced. Just before it disappeared from sight its
downward momentum appeared to abate suddenly, but it was still
moving rapidly at a steep angle when it finally disappeared from
view behind the far hills.

For half a minute the ape-man stood noting distant landmarks that
he judged might be in the vicinity of the fallen plane, for no
sooner had he realized that these people were again in trouble than
his inherent sense of duty to his own kind impelled him once more
to forego his plans and seek to aid them.

The ape-man feared from what he judged of the location of the machine
that it had fallen among the almost impassable gorges of the arid
country just beyond the fertile basin that was bounded by the
hills to the east of him. He had crossed that parched and desolate
country of the dead himself and he knew from his own experience
and the narrow escape he had had from succumbing to its relentless
cruelty no lesser man could hope to win his way to safety from
any considerable distance within its borders. Vividly he recalled
the bleached