he
motioned to Chet that the man was all right.

The savage wadded a handful of leaves into a ball and pressed it against
the wound, and Chet improvised a first-aid bandage from Kreiss' ragged
blouse before they put him from sight in one of the shelters and ran to
rejoin Harkness and Diane on the rocks.

But the first wave was spent. There were no more snarling, white-toothed
faces above the barricade, and in the open space beyond were shambling
forms that hid themselves in the long grass while others dragged
themselves to the same concealment or lay limply inert on the open,
sunlit ground.

And within the enclosure one solitary ape-man forgot his bruised body
while he stamped up and down or whirled absurdly in a dance that
expressed his joy in victory.

"Better come down," said Chet. "Schwartzmann might take a shot at you,
although I think we are out of pistol range. We're lucky that isn't a
service gun he's got, but come down anyway, and we'll see what's next.
This time we've had the breaks, but there's more coming. Schwartzmann
isn't through."

But Schwartzmann was through for the day; Chet was mistaken in expecting
a second assault so soon. He posted Towahg as sentry, and, with Diane
and Harkness, threw himself before the door-flap of the shelter where
Kreiss had been hidden, and was now sitting up, his arm in a sling.

"Either you're a 'mighty hard man to kill,'" he told Kreiss, "or else
Towahg is a powerful medicine man."

"I am still in the fight," the scientist assured him. "I can't do any
more work with bow and arrow, but I can keep the rest of you supplied."

"We'll need you," Chet assured him grimly.

* * * * *

They ate in silence as the afternoon drew on toward evening.

Back by their little fire, with Towahg on guard, Chet shot an
appreciative glance at a white disk in the southern sky. "Still getting
the breaks," he exulted. "The moon is up; it will give us some light
after sunset, and later the Earth will rise and light things up around
here in good shape."

That white disk turned golden as the sun vanished where mountainous
clouds loomed blackly far across the jungle-clad hills. Then the quick
night blanketed everything, and the golden moon made black the fringe of
forest trees while it sent long lines of light through their waving,
sinuous branches, to cast moving shadows that seemed strangely alive on
the open ground. Muffled by the jungle-sea that absorb