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 herself down-wind from the huge creature. Then she hid in a clump of heavy bush and watched, holding the rifle ready for instant use.

Slowly the monster advanced across the clearing, sniffing at the ground from time to time, as though following spoor by scent. Scarcely had the great anthropoid taken a dozen steps into the clearing before another of his kind followed from the jungle, and then another and another, until five of the ferocious beasts were in plain sight of the terrified girl crouching in her hiding-place with the heavy rifle ready for instant use.

To her consternation she saw that the apes were pausing in the center of the clearing. They came together in a little knot, where they stood looking backward, as though in expectation of the coming of others of their tribe.

Jane wished that they would go on, for she knew that at any moment some little, eddying gust of wind might carry her scent down to their nostrils, and then what would the protection of her rifle amount to in the face of those gigantic muscles and mighty fangs?

Her eyes moved back and forth between the apes and the edge of the jungle toward which they were gazing until at last she perceived the object