once more on a lounge in the Savage Club and look out on the drab
solidity of the Embankment. I know that it will seem then to be some
wild nightmare, some delirium of fever. Yet I will set it down now,
while it is still fresh in my memory, and one at least, the man who lay
in the damp grasses by my side, will know if I have lied.

A wide, open space lay before us--some hundreds of yards across--all
green turf and low bracken growing to the very edge of the cliff.
Round this clearing there was a semi-circle of trees with curious huts
built of foliage piled one above the other among the branches. A
rookery, with every nest a little house, would best convey the idea.
The openings of these huts and the branches of the trees were thronged
with a dense mob of ape-people, whom from their size I took to be the
females and infants of the tribe. They formed the background of the
picture, and were all looking out with eager interest at the same scene
which fascinated and bewildered us.

In the open, and near the edge of the cliff, there had assembled a
crowd of some hundred of these shaggy, red-haired creatures, many of
them of immense size, and all of them horrible to look upon. There was
a certain discipline among them, for none of them attempted to break
the line which had been formed. In front there stood a small group of
Indians--little, clean-limbed, red fellows, whose skins glowed like
polished bronze in the strong sunlight. A tall, thin white man was
standing beside them, his head bowed, his arms folded, his whole
attitude expressive of his horror and dejection. There was no
mistaking the angular form of Professor Summerlee.

In front of and around this dejected group of prisoners were several
ape-men, who watched them closely and made all escape impossible.
Then, right out from all the others and close to the edge of the cliff,
were two figures, so strange, and under other circumstances so
ludicrous, that they absorbed my attention. The one was our comrade,
Professor Challenger. The remains of his coat still hung in strips
from his shoulders, but his shirt had been all torn out, and his great
beard merged itself in the black tangle which covered his mighty chest.
He had lost his hat, and his hair, which had grown long in our
wanderings, was flying in wild disorder. A single day seemed to have
changed him from the highest product of modern civilization to the most
desperate savage in South America. Beside h