thoughtless now of the danger from Kerchak; but when she

gathered the wee, mangled form to her bosom life had left it.

With low moans, she sat cuddling the body to her; nor did

Kerchak attempt to molest her. With the death of the babe his

fit of demoniacal rage passed as suddenly as it had seized him.

Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundred

and fifty pounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding,

his eyes bloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flat

nose; his ears large and thin, but smaller than most of his kind.

His awful temper and his mighty strength made him supreme

among the little tribe into which he had been born some

twenty years before.

Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the

mighty forest through which he roved that dared contest his

right to rule, nor did the other and larger animals molest him.

Old Tantor, the elephant, alone of all the wild savage life,

feared him not--and he alone did Kerchak fear. When Tantor

trumpeted, the great ape scurried with his fellows high

among the trees of the second terrace.

The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an

iron hand and bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families,

each family consisting of an adult male with his females and

their young, numbering in all some sixty or seventy apes.

Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat,

meaning broken nose, and the child she had seen dashed to

death was her first; for she was but nine or ten years old.

Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful--a

splendid, clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead,

which denoted more intelligence than most of her kind

possessed. So, also, she had a great capacity for mother love

and mother sorrow.

But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of a

species closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent;

which, with the strength of their cousin, made her kind the

most fearsome of those awe-inspiring progenitors of man.