"Look out!" I warned Stringer. He swung round in the direction I pointed, and for one awful half-minute there was a dead silence, as the whole five of us stood watching one another for the first sign of attack. Revolvers in hand, Stringer and I came together and commenced backing towards the cage. But before we could reach it, the newcomer was after us on all fours--running along the ground like a bent old man, with incredible speed and ungainliness. We didn't wait the hundredth part of a second. Nor, thank heaven, did we fire. I don't believe we could have hit the brute had we tried. We simply turned, rushed pell mell for our shelter, scrambled inside, slammed the trap doors to, and retreated to the farthest corner. With an ear-splitting roar, the monster flung itself at the bars, bending them and shaking the whole cage with the force of its impact. "Quick!" I cried. "Turn on that blooming gas!" There was no time to bother about gas masks. I picked up the nearest tube, held my breath, and thrust the projector right between the hideous brute's open jaws. They came together with a horrible crunch, there was a choking splutter of rage, and a moment later the poor wretch had followed its predecessors' swift flight to the realms of sleep. Heaving a deep sigh, I shouted to Stringer: "This is our busy day!" The next second I saw Stringer, the gorilla, the cage and the whole jungle spin round, turn a somersault and begin converging in on me. I thought: "We're nose-diving . . . side-slipping. . . . Now for the crash! . . . Ugh!" I shut my eyes tightly, terrified by the sudden drumming of blood in my ears, and felt all sensation of touch slipping from my limbs and body. The sounds of the outside world grew fewer and fainter, and I heard the beating of my heart quieten down into a little murmur of weary contentment. "This is death!" I thought, without fear or excitement. Then I seemed to leave the falling aeroplane and ascend rapidly into space. I saw the stars winking at me in a pitch black sky and performing phantasmagoric dances; but presently these, too, disappeared and I was alone in an infinite void, without light, or sound, or movement. In some strange way I still had the power of thought, but every vestige of sensation had been taken from me. "Is this life after death?" I asked myself dispassionately. My mind struggled with the problem, trying its utmost to achieve some form of activity. But it had no eyes, no hands, no limbs, no ears, no nose, no mouth, with which to accomplish anything. It was steam without the engine, electricity without the motor, energy without the necessary mechanism for transmitting it to power, soul without the body. "Let me die outright!" I prayed. "Annihilation is better than this mere mentality afloat in nothing. . . ." A little twinkle of light showed itself in the utter darkness. Then another, and another. And again the stars came into being.