In the late dusk of evening the car pulled off the road and rattled over a field full of boulders and stopped at the top of a high cliff overlooking the sea. We all got out and stretched our cramped legs. Bill Cuff walked along the edge of the foreland until he came to a trace of path. He called to us and we followed him down the nearly-sheer face of the promontory, myself trying not to look at the dark foam spattered sea so far beneath our feet. At the base of the promontory was a beach. It had looked tiny from above; I found that it was large, for the ocean had long ago hollowed out a great cavelike place in the rock, and the beach ran back under the land for several hundred feet. There were dim blue searchlights set up at intervals, which would not have been seen from any distance; no ship would come closer than a mile to the coast here, and so the presence of Old Companions in the cavern would be kept secret. Old Companions.... Great God! What a horde swarmed in that hidden hole, across that rock-canopied beach! There were about two hundred of them. The majority were duplicates, in breadth of frame and depth of chest, of Trutch and Vance. The faces were handsome or ugly, grotesque or plain, yet all held the concentrated savagery of my four escorts. Many had arms longer than normal. Some were so deformed that their gait as they crossed the sand on various errands was almost that of an ape that swings along on its knuckles. Again, several were tall and personable, like Bill Cuff. They were all dressed darkly, in gray broadcloth or black wool jackets, crepe-soled shoes, no ties and no hats evident. Some of them were carrying things--submachine guns, handguns, even hand grenades--from broken crates to the six big boats that lined the water's edge. Others were giving orders in voices that were almost without exception gruff and barking. And everywhere I looked I caught the stare of gray eyes: eyes that took the blue glow of the searchlights and threw it back condensed and changed, so that from many dark faces there gleamed at me thin ovals of orange and crimson and green luminescence. Now I knew for sure that the tale of the recrudescent apemen was no fable. Now the focused animal hatred of this pack washed over me like an unclean sea-wave full of crawling horrors and I realized fully and beyond a doubt that Bill Cuff's story was true, and that here in this cavern might well be the start of the finish of the human race. "Where's Nessa?" I asked Skagarach. I spoke to him rather than to my cousin because I had a plan and this could well be the start of it. "She's back there, I suppose," he said, gesturing to the rear of the beach. "First come and see the boats." He led me toward the dockless rim of the sea, and Bill Cuff came after us, glowering at him. I'd presumed he would hate any assumption of authority on Skagarach's part. The thing they called the primal rage bubbled near the surface in Bill Cuff.