hem
in their blind fury turning upon and savagely attacking their fellows.
The manoeuvre was so successful that it was repeated with equally
satisfactory results.

Thus far the unwounded apes appeared to take little or no notice of the
havoc we were working among them; and I feel certain that none of them
connected that havoc with the appearance of the boat upon the scene; but
when the manoeuvre was repeated a third time, and still more of their
number fell dead or wounded, it seemed at last to dawn upon their
imperfect intelligence that the strange object with white sails, which
glided to and fro upon the water opposite them, must be somehow
associated with the casualties occurring among their companions, and
with yells of concentrated fury and eyes ablaze with deadly malice about
a dozen of them shambled down the beach into the water, and, striking
out, started to swim in pursuit of the boat.

Nothing could have better suited us than this senseless act of the great
anthropoids, for, although they swam fast, the boat could easily out-
distance them in the breeze then blowing, and I signed to Billy to edge
away toward a wider part of the channel, so that when they should
discover how impossible it was to overtake the boat they might have the
farther to swim, should any of them escape us and attempt to make their
way across to Cliff Island. But the precaution was unnecessary, for
when they were in the water and swimming we could do as we would with
them, and within a few minutes every ape that had started in pursuit of
the boat was slain.

By this time, however, others had also taken to the water, there being
now at least thirty of them swimming, some in pursuit of the boat while
others headed directly across the channel toward Cliff Island. This
necessitated an alteration of our plans, yet we still contrived to keep
the boat between the apes and the island, crossing and recrossing in
front of the brutes at a distance of five to ten yards, so that it was
impossible for us to miss them. Thus the slaughter went on until my
very soul revolted at such terrible destruction, for the brutes
continued to come on by dozens and scores until there seemed to be no
end of them. Most creatures would have had intelligence enough to
recognise eventually that their persistence meant death to them and
would have turned back, either discouraged or terrified, but the apes
seemed to be incapable of either emotion and pressed resolutel