"Gran'pa!" I said. "You and your confounded _monkey_ tricks will end in disaster one of these bright days. Why you couldn't have acquainted us of your approach is beyond me. You might have known that we were on the alert--ready to shoot at almost anything." He removed his gorilla mask, mopped his brow and gave a forced laugh. "Perhaps it was rather foolish of me," he admitted. "But I'd been watching you all from behind that bush for some minutes, and I couldn't resist a little practical joke. . . . Phew! That was a near thing, George! I thought my last day had come." He looked very shaky (served him right) and we had to take him over to the cage and give him a sip of brandy. I also had one, and so did Stringer. We all felt better after that, and Stringer and I took off our anthropoid heads and escorted Gran'pa on a tour of inspection. The enraged prisoners of war roared at us more defiantly than ever, now that their suspicions were confirmed. Their attempts at escape became prodigious and their language frightful. "We got these two birds with one stone, so to speak," I shouted. "Did you, by jove?" he cried. He looked at them more closely and a shadow of pain seemed to flit over his features. "You've knocked them about a lot, George. Was it necessary?" "_We_ didn't do it. They did it themselves. Fighting!" I explained things to him in detail. "No 'fluence?" he inquired of Stringer. "No time for it!" "H'm! Still, we might try a little of it now, to quieten them. . . ." "Anything to stop this infernal row," agreed Stringer. So, once more--but this time in the heart of the African jungle--Stringer brought his great mental powers to bear on the gorilla. He stood as near as he dared to the largest and noisiest of our captives, focussed his compelling gaze on its wicked little eyes, and made domineering noises in the back of his throat. The great brute quavered, fought a brief struggle for mental mastery, and then began shifting its gaze hither and thither in a vain endeavor to escape that burning, penetrating, hypnotic glare. "Keep it up!" I said. "He's giving way!" "_Tchah!_" cried Stringer. The poor animal gave a shiver, let up a little whimper of shame and submission, and suddenly grew resigned to its fate. At the psychological moment Stringer stretched forth a hand, rested it on the monster's head and pressed downwards. The victory of mind over matter was complete. Five minutes later, the other two had been similarly pacified. But when the stretcher bearers arrived from the aerodrome the three brutes began to recover their evil tempers again, and we had great difficulty in placing them on their portable beds. The negroes were scared and refused to help us. Finally, however, Gran'pa, and Stringer and I each took charge of a stretcher and persuaded three of the blacks to catch hold of the opposite ends. Thus we carried our roaring burdens along the narrow jungle pathway which led to the place of embarkation.