Then the creature stood up, balancing on its absurd bandy legs, a spear in its hand--a flint-pointed spear of crude workmanship.
At full sight of the face, Stern shrank for a moment.
“I've known savages, as such,” thought he. “I understand them. I know animals. They're animals, that's all. But this creature--merciful Heaven!”
And at the realization that it was neither beast nor man, the engineer's blood chilled within his veins.
Yet he forced himself still to look and to observe, unseen. There was practically no forehead at all. The nose was but a formless lump of cartilage, the ears large and pendulous and hairy. Under heavy brow-ridges, the dull, lackluster eyes blinked stupidly, bloodshot and cruel. As the mouth closed, Stern noted how the under incisors closed up over the upper lip, showing a gleam of dull yellowish ivory; a slaver dripped from the doglike corner of the mouth.
Stern shivered, and drew back.
He realized now that he was in the presence of an unknown semi-human type, different in all probability from any that had ever yet existed. It was less their bestiality that disgusted him, than their utter, hopeless, age-long degeneration from the man-standard.
What race had they descended from? He could not tell. He thought he could detect a trace of the Mongol in the region of the eye, in the cheek-bones and the general contour of what, by courtesy, might be called the face. There were indications, also, of the negroid type, still stronger. But the color--whence could that have come? And the general characteristics, were not these distinctly simian?
Again he looked. And now one of the pot-bellied little horrors, shambling and bulbous-kneed, was scratching its warty, blue hide with its black claws as it trailed along through the forest. It looked up, grinning and jabbering; Stern saw the teeth that should have been molars. With repulsion he noted that they were not flat-crowned, but sharp like a dog's. Through the blue lips they clearly showed.
“Nothing herbivorous here,” thought the scientist. “All flesh--food of--who knows what sort!”