otruding and shaggy paunch. Again the beast caught the
missile in its lightning clutch; but in the next instant it threw up
its long arms, without a sound, and fell backwards out of the tree.
A-ya, who had been the first to reach the ground, had drawn her bow
and shot upwards with sure aim. The shaft had caught the great ape
under the center of the jaw, far back at the throat, and pierced
straight up to the brain.

Surprised at seeing their leader fall with so little apparent reason,
the other apes halted for a moment in their onset, chattering noisily.
In that moment Grom swung himself to the ground. As he reached it both
Mo and Loob discharged their arrows. Another ape fell from his perch,
but caught himself on a lower branch and hung there writhing; while a
third, with a shaft half buried in his paunch, fled back yelling into
the tree-top. Then the adventurers snatched up their fallen weapons
from the ground and made for the open as fast as they could run. And
the apes, with a hellish uproar of barks and screams, came swarming
after them through the lower branches.

At this point, fortunately for the travelers, the jungle was already
thinning, and they had a chance to show their speed. The raging
blue-faces were speedily distanced, and the fugitives ran out
breathless upon the sunny savannah. Here, feeling themselves safe,
they halted to look back. The lower branches all along the edge of the
grass were thronged with leaping brown forms, and gnashing blue masks,
and red-rimmed, devilish eyes. But not one of the great beasts, for
all their rage, seemed willing to venture forth into the open.

"There must be something out here that they fear greatly," commented
Grom, peering warily about him. But there was nothing in sight to
suggest any danger, and he led the way onward through the rank grass
at a long, leisurely trot.

II

For the most part the grass grew hardly waist high; but here and there
were patches, perhaps an acre or so in extent, where it was more cane
than grass and rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. To such
patches, which might serve as lurking-places to unknown monsters, Grom
gave a wide berth. He had a vivid remembrance of that colossal head,
with the awful dead eyes, which had reared itself through the leafage
to stare up at him.

In spite of the strange and enormous trails which crossed their path
at times; in spite of occasional massive swayings and crashings in the
deep beds of can