very warily. Nickie had forgotten everything by this, however, and
sitting with his back to the tree was drowsing, and faintly asserting
that he was a king, the most mighty and dazzling' of all monarchs known
to man, when the valiant hunters fell upon him.

The rush came suddenly, and in a twinkling half-a-dozen clubs were
battering at Mahdi's unhappy head and thumping on his unfortunate ribs.
Every man wanted to get a lick at the monster, and every man got it.
Luckily, Nickie's skull was thick, and the Mahdi head-dress offered it
some protection, otherwise there would have been an instantaneous and
fatal termination to the artistic career of Nicholas Crips.

As it was, Nickie's senses were battered out of him, and within a few
minutes, he was so bound round with rope that he looked like a huge
Cocoon. Two saplings were cut, and suspended between these, and borne on
the shoulders of eight men, the Missing Link was carried back through the
township of 'Tween Bridges. The hunters shouted jubilantly, fired their
guns, and yelled triumphant songs as they went, and the whole of the
inhabitants turned out and made a triumphal march of it, pressing forward
to see the monstrous ape dangling between the saplings.

So Mahdi, the Missing Link, was brought home to the Museum of Marvels.
When Nickie was dumped on the floor of the tent, Madame Marve screamed
believing he was dead.

"We shot him first," Watkins explained, "an' then we got at him with our
sticks."

"Great heavens!" gasped the Professor, thought of manslaughter flashing
upon him. "You might have murdered him."

"He might 'ave murdered us," replied the veracious Watkins, "Why, his
struggles was somethin' awful, an' he roared like a lion an' bit an'
tore. It took ten of us t' down him, an' then he bit through Orton's leg,
all' knocked Billy Tett sick and 'epless. I reckon it's worth a flyer,
mister."

"But if he's killed--if he's killed!" cried the tremulous Professor.

Thunder and Madame Marve carried Nickie into he Mystic's tent; the cut
away the ropes that were choking him, and discovered that although gory
and bruised, he still lived and breathed, and then the Professor, always
quick to seize, an opportunity, stood the hunters a whole barrel of beer,
and till well on to daylight 'Tween Bridges was agitated by drink and
reiterations of the sensational story of the capture of the man-eating
Missing Link.

At sunrise, Bonypart returned to the show, contrite an