"The Bushmen were cowering in fear too; and still Hector, heedless of us all, called to the baboons; and their grunts came back in reply. And now the brutes were turning back towards us, and a thrill of fear came to me too, for there were at least a hundred of them, and a combined attack would have made short work of us, notwithstanding our Winchesters. I unslung mine; but John was before me a shot rang out, and the big leader flung up its long arms and fell dead. The troop halted, and then, before I could shoot, Hector sprang to where we knelt aiming and ordered us imperiously and passionately to stop. 'You fools!' he shrieked, 'you have spoiled all! How can I ever gain their confidence, how can I ever learn their speech and gain the proof of all that Darwin taught, if you murder them? Already from these Bushmen I have learnt much, and can make these wild men [he used the native expression quite naturally] understand, but much more is needed. Put up your guns: they shall come back!' Whilst we paused irresolute the baboons, picking up their fallen leader, made off across the mountain, in silence and with never a response to Hector's calls.
"From that time our leader's conduct became even stranger in fact he was as a man obsessed. He rarely spoke to us, but spent his whole time with the Bushmen, wandering away into the mountains and the thick jungle bordering the river, refusing our company, and no longer even carrying a rifle in a country at that time teeming with wild animals. His sole desire was to come into contact with the baboons, but for some days we saw nothing of them. He offered the Bushmen all sorts of rewards if they could capture and bring in a young one, but they had wild tales of raids by these strange beasts; of native women and children carried off by them, and becoming wild like their captors. At length, however, Hector's promises had effect: one evening the two Bushmen returned to camp dragging between them a half-grown baboon. It was surly, vicious, and so strong that they could scarce master it, but within twenty-four hours Hector had the animal subject to his will, and now the Bushmen were neglected for this strange new companion. That he could make himself understood to it was perfectly obvious; and they would wander away together, grunting and clicking all the time.
"The heat all this time was terrific, and the thought often came to me that possibly Hector had had a touch of sunstroke. Even his craze for finding a proof of Darwin's theory could, I thought, scarcely explain his half-mad conduct! He ate but little; his habits, once so precise, became careless and in fact almost brutal; and his brother's pained remonstrance with him only made matters worse. 'The Proof! the Proof!' he would answer us, fiercely and angrily; 'I am getting nearer to it every day. What matters what you think or care! But this one is too young. I must have an old one. He will tell me!' John and I had serious thoughts of taking him out of the wilderness by force; but whilst we hesitated the end came.
"One night, after a day of terrific heat, we were lying under a thorn tree on the hot sand, and hoping for the rain that had been threatening but would not fall. There was a moon; but its light was fitful, and the dark thunder-clouds occasionally obscured it. Away over the Tatas Berg Mountains the lightning was flickering, and John and I lay watching it, and wishing the storm would break for us too. Suddenly we heard the bark of a baboon from a peak near us. It was answered from the other side, and soon a harsh chorus resounded on either hand. We listened. They seemed to be narrowing in upon us. Klaas crept near us. 'Master,' he whispered in a frightened voice, 'they will kill us all or worse!' We looked at each other in the gloom. It might well be, and we had better be prepared. Without a word we rose and hurried to the tent, and there made ready our rifles. Then the same thought came simultaneously to us. Should we speak to Hector? He had of late used the smaller tent, a short distance away from our own his companion, the cursed baboon! We hurried towards it. It was empty. 'Hector! Hector!' John called out, softly at first, then loudly, frantically. But no answer came, except that now the mocking din of the baboons seemed to jeer at us. They appeared to be gathered near us, all together. As we ran towards the sound the moon burst through a rift in the clouds. There ahead of us, stark naked, and running swiftly towards the baboons, we saw the figure of Hector, his body gleaming white in the moonbeams, and by his side the grey figure of his baboon companion.
"We shouted, as over rocks and through scrub and thorns we ran and scrambled, gaining upon the fugitive. When he was but fifty yards ahead, he paused and turned, and the moonlight gleamed upon his gilded teeth as he laughed at us in maniac mockery. Then, even as we sprang towards him, a grey circle surged round him, and together they came towards us. For a time we were hard set to beat them off. When our Winchesters were empty a ring of dead lay around us, and then the moon was blotted out and dense darkness fell as the thunderstorm burst over us. Between the peals of thunder we could hear the hoarse barks of the main troop getting farther and farther away, but to follow was impossible. We expected to find the mangled body of Hector in the morning. Daylight showed no trace of him, however, and though we spent months searching the locality we never saw him again."
Jason stopped, and knocked his pipe out on his boot. I thought his tale was finished. "Horrible! horrible!" I said. "Little wonder you hate baboons! What became of his brother?"
"Wait!" said Jason, "that is only the first chapter of my story. John went back to England a morose, sad man. The incident had deeply affected me also, and we had become the closest of friends. Old Klaas came to Cape Town with us, and as we saw John waving to us from the fast receding mailboat the Hottentot said something I never forgot. 'Master,' he said, 'his brother I do not think he is dead! Something worse has happened to him: Klaas believes he is there in that strange place the Hottentots have all heard of there in the Tatas Berg, in the baboons' secret place.'
"Well, ten more, fifteen years passed, and I often heard from John. He had thrown up sport, and strangely enough had devoted himself entirely to the same scientific research that had been his brother's bane. Then his letters became fewer and fewer, and I heard nothing for many months when one day he walked into my room in Cape Town. He had just arrived from England, and after our first warm greeting he asked me eagerly if I were free to accompany him again to the scene of our awful experience. I was free enough, but reluctant. Why revive the horrors of that awful night! But he persuaded me, and a month later we were in the same region, and moreover had found old Klaas alive and hearty. John had become proficient in the Bushman and Hottentot tongues, as his brother had been; though where and how he had studied them I never knew. Would he, too, I wondered, try to obtain the Proof, as his poor mad brother had done? And when we first came in contact with the baboons I watched him closely. But he betrayed no madness only an intense interest in and hatred of them. Peculiarly enough, I thought at the time, although he shot the smaller ones mercilessly I never saw him shoot at the huge beasts we often saw watching us from the peaks. He must have noticed me watching him, for one day he turned and looked me full in the face, sadly and wistfully, as though reading my thoughts: 'No, no, Jason; never fear, old friend; I shall never seek the proof as Hector did. And yet, and yet, it is there!' I soon found that all his inquiries among the natives tended in one direction: he sought the whereabouts of the secret place of the baboons in which they all believed. But none could tell him, till one day in the wild and remote region between the Great Fish River and the Tatas Mountains we came upon Jantje, an old Hottentot, who told us that he had seen the place. He had been hunting for honey in the almost inaccessible mountains of that wild spot, and had one day found himself in a narrow gorge, looking down into what appeared to be a large crater. The sides were precipitous except at one spot where a narrow and tortuous canon made it possible to enter. And here, he assured us, was the stronghold of the baboons. Huge ones bigger than men, he told us and hundreds of them. And for a new gun and some powder and shot he would take us to the place. But he would not enter!
"Jantje got his gun; and three days later John, myself, and Klaas stood upon a mountain-top and looked into the spot he had described. It was at least five hundred feet deep, and perhaps a hundred yards across the bottom, which was flat and sandy. Even as we first looked into the place the baboons, several hundred strong, were surging through the gorge of which Jantje had spoken, away towards their feeding-ground by the Groot River. We watched them through our glasses. Many of them were of a man's size, and they were not like the ordinary baboon.
"John was all excitement. 'We will wait till they are clear away, and then we'll go down,' he said. I warned him that there were sure to be some left behind. But he was insistent. We were well armed, he urged, and he could see none. He badly wanted to see the place, and at last I consented. We each had a hundred rounds of ammunition, and if it came to a fight the three of us Klaas was also well armed could almost exterminate them. So, leaving the old man behind, we ventured down the narrow cleft clinging, scrambling, and occasionally using the rope. At length we stood in the open arena.