ul and
long-legged insects, things with unwieldy pincers and protruding eyes;
things covered with scaly armour; hybrids of beetles and scorpions. I
have a distinct recollection of one huge-jointed centipede making a
vicious grab at my leg; he failed to make his teeth meet in anything
tangible, and emitting a venomous hiss disappeared in a circular pit.

"Whilst I was the victim of this insect's ferocity the horizon had
become darkened by the shadowy outline of an enormous apish form. I
wanted to run away, but could not, and was compelled, sorely against my
will, to witness its approach. Never shall I forget the agonies of doubt
I endured during its advance. No man in a tiger's den, nor deer tied to
a tree awaiting its destroyer, could have suffered more than I did then,
and my terror increased tenfold when I recognized in the
monster--Neppon--a young gorilla that had been under my charge and had
given me no end of trouble when I was head keeper in the Zoological
Gardens at Berne.

"I never hated anything so much as I had hated that baboon. At my hands
it had undergone a thousand subtle torments. I had pinched it, poked it,
pulled its hair, frightened it by putting on masks and making all sorts
of queer noises, and finally I had secretly poisoned it. And now we
stood face to face without any bars between us. Never shall I forget the
look of intense satisfaction in its hideous eyes, as its gaze
encountered mine.

"In that strange forlorn world we faced each other; I, the tyrant once,
now the quarry. In the wildness of its glee it capered about like a mad
thing, executing the most exaggerated antics that augmented my terror.
Every second I anticipated an assault, and the knowledge of my fears
lent additional fierceness to its gambols. A sudden change in my
attitude at length made it cease. The use had returned to my limbs; my
muscles were quivering, and before it could stop me I had fled! The
wildest of chases then ensued. I ran with a speed that would have shamed
a record-beater on earth. With extraordinary nimbleness I vaulted over
titanic boulders of rocks; jumped across dykes of infinite depth,
scurried like lightning over tracts of rough, lacerating ground, and
never for one instant felt like flagging.

"Suddenly, to my horror, I came to an abrupt standstill, and the cry of
some hunted animal burst from my lips. Unwittingly I had run against a
huge wall of granite, and escape was now impossible. Again and again I