I kept a careful watch on its every movement and once, when it looked vindictively upwards at our 'plane, I shook my fist at it threateningly, waved my arms, and tried in every way I could to distract its attention. But it was useless. It turned its face away with supreme contempt and merely renewed its efforts with more enthusiasm than ever. It wrenched, and twisted, and strained; and suddenly something seemed to give way. After that, it kept very still for a while. "What's happened?" I thought. "Has it kinked a muscle, broken a bone, or . . . ?" My mental query was answered by the dramatic appearance of first one free arm and then another. The scene was strangely reminiscent of one of those turns at a music hall, when a man undertakes to escape from a complexity of knotted ropes in so many minutes. It thrilled me by its cleverness; but it scared me by its dangerous possibilities. In an instant I had my revolver out and kept the brute covered. As long as it remained quiet, it was safe; but the moment it got out of that seat it would be a dead gorilla. I saw Newland glance round at me and take in the whole situation. He brought the machine a little closer to the other and, as he did so, the gorilla grew alarmed, raised its hands in the air and sought for a hold amidst the struts. "My God! The controls!" I thought, swiftly. "If it touches one of those, Oakley's done!" I took a steady aim, pressed my finger to the trigger and fired three times in rapid succession. But I was too late. The gorilla was hit at the precise moment that it had grabbed one of the thin wires on which so much depends when a man is in mid-air. Down went the great roaring machine--spinning round and round like a falling leaf in an autumn gale. For over two thousand feet it must have dropped. And then, I saw a little brown speck fall out into space. The machine nose-dived, flattened out, switchbacked, and gradually began to ascend into the blue heavens again. "Good old Oakley!" I thought. "You're a marvel, man!" As he came up, so we glided down to meet him, until at last I could wave my handkerchief as a sign of approval and welcome. He answered my signal with a raised arm (and probably a quiet smile of triumph, had I been able to see it!) and once more we continued our journey homewards. We met with no further exciting adventures, and half-an-hour later we alighted at the Corisco aerodrome and transferred our cargo from aeroplane to ship. There, the liberation of the monsters was accomplished with cunning simplicity. A large cage, capable of holding about thirty gorillas, had been erected, together with a sort of annex, which connected with the former by means of a sliding door. In this smaller cage we placed the first gorilla, loosened his bonds a little (without actually untying them), and then placed him with his back to the bars. In this way we were able to remove his handcuffs from the outside.