med except for one of
their own spears. The curious covering on his body was flapping in the
breeze. Nothing here, surely, to hold a hunting-tribe in check.

The spear rose slowly in the air. What child of the tribe could not
have thrown it better! They came on faster now; the leader had almost
reached the place where the spear was dropping down. He must have
laughed, if laughter had yet been born in such a breast, at the futile
weapon dropping point first among the rocks.

One little shell, a scant three inches long, no thicker than the
stylus on milady's desk! But here was service ammunition, as Harkness
had said; and in the end of the lead a fulminate cap was buried--and a
grain of dense, gray dust!

* * * * *

There was no flame--only a concussion that cracked upon one's ears,
and flying rock fragments that filled the air with demoniac shrieks.
And then that sound was lost in the shriller cries of terror and pain
as the ape-men broke for the trees.

Harkness saw some of them who rose and fell again to rise no more, and
one who dragged himself slowly from the blast that had struck him
down. But his eyes came back to another spear in his hands, and his
fingers were tearing at the sinew wrapping.

The spear bent in his hands; the wood was flexible and springy. It was
Diane who offered the next suggestion. She, too, was working at
another spear--what wonder if her breath came fast!--but her eyes were
alight, and her mind was at work.

"Make a bow!" she exclaimed. "A bow and arrow, Walter! We are fighting
primitive men, so we can't scorn primitive weapons." She stopped with
a little exclamation of pain; the sharp tip of the flint had cut her
hand.

Chet's spearhead was unloosed. He tried the spring of the shaft.
"Bully girl, Diane!" he said, and fell to gouging out a notch with the
sharp flint near the end of the shaft.

The sinew made a string. Three slender sticks lying about whose ends
had been sharpened for use on the meat: they would do for arrows. Each
arrow must be notched and headed with an explosive shell, and there
were many of them.

Chet sprang to his feet at last. Forgotten was the fatigue that had
numbed him. A wild figure, his clothes in rags, his short, curling
hair no longer blond, his face a mottling of brown and black, where
only here and there the white skin dared show through--he executed an
intricate dance-step with a bed of lava for a floor, while he
sho