It was a terrible thought, and knowing what a powerful weapon the hunger-strike had been in the happy, pre-war days of the suffragette, we were naturally alarmed.
"I'm strongly of the opinion," continued Gran'pa, "that it's time we packed up what we have got—and went. We shall never capture eighty-seven of the brutes."
I pointed out to him that, although no actual census had been taken of the anthropoid apes, a learned professor had once estimated their numbers as 200,000 chimpanzees, 200,000 gibbons, 50,000 orangs and 30,000 gorillas—the whole population being confined to the jungle lands of the equatorial zone, which was less than a fifteenth part of the earth's surface.
"You must admit," I added, "that twenty-two gorillas out of thirty thousand is rather a poor show."
"Thirty thousand!" he exclaimed, "I should put it at about thirty dozen, from what we've seen—or haven't seen—of them!"
"Anyway, eighty-seven into twenty-two won't go."
"If you knock off sixty-five, it will!" he retaliated.
"It's hard lines on the old chaps you're going to 'knock off.'"
"That's their business. We've done our best. If we caught the whole lot of the anthropoids in existence—and such a thing may happen any day if gland-grafting becomes popular—we should still find we hadn't enough to satisfy everyone. There wouldn't even be sufficient glands for the septuagenarians in England alone. I believe that there are about one thousand five hundred million human beings on the earth, George—an absolute glut of people—and possibly thirty millions of them are ripe for monkey glands. The demand for the latter, at any rate, will always be fifty times greater than the supply. In our case it will be only four times greater. That's logic, isn't it?"
"Yes," I admitted. "Cold, hard logic for men who have travelled seven thousand miles for—nothing."