I know not why nor how I did it. In the past I would have tried but blindly to seize upon the grisly brute, and so die grappling and seeking to bite, but some new and sudden impulse, some fierce, unconscious repetition of what I had just been doing in mere wantonness, impelled my tautened nerves and muscles and, even as he sprang, I swung the club with all my recovered strength, and, there in mid-air, it crashed down upon the fearsome head. It crashed as do the trees when the winds break them, and the big body dropped as it came hurtling against me and felling me--but the jaws seized not. I leaped to my feet for flight, but the monster only lay there heaving. Then I went mad, mad as the sick jackal. I swung the club again and again and brought it down upon the evil head until the skull was crushed to pulp. I was my old self no more. I ran out from the gorge and leaped up and down and howled across the waste and the river and toward all the forest in wild triumph. I was the king of the apes! I could kill as never ape had killed before! There were fewer things to fear in all the world. I had learned to use the club! It was wonderful. I howled daringly all the way homeward to my nest, and smote many things with my great weapon as I passed. I climbed the tree carrying it in my teeth, and could scarcely sleep for exultation. I was a new creature. I had found that which made me so. I came down in the morning, bearing my club with me. Ever after that I carried it, and I may tell now, that as time passed, since I could not hold it constantly in my mouth, this club-carrying made me walk more and more on my hind legs until it became, unconsciously, a habit with me. Now I went more recklessly about my food-seeking. I met a herd of the wild hogs, a big sow with pigs, and ran among them and slew a pig with my club and then leaped into a tree, for the charging mother was too fearsome for me, even with my weapon. Then she and her living litter went away and I came down and ate my breakfast from the pig. It was good. So, for days, I ranged through the wood and by the river, but all was not yet well. Something sank within me. Now I know what it was. I wanted It. Still, I was jubilant over my club. I was vain and drunken with the power I had. Another ape rose in the path ahead of me, an ape as big as I was, and I roared and ran at him, I know not why. I was not angry and did not want to hurt him, but I wanted to smite something alive. It had been good to hit the wolf. The ape stood his ground until I was almost upon him, then, amazed and alarmed by the whirling of the club, he leaped for a tree trunk and I struck him furiously on the haunches as he scrambled upward. He fled shrieking through the treetops.