"I'm immune!" cried Fitzhugh Parr aloud; and, in the early dawn that now crept into the grove, his sleeping companions began to wake and rise and gape at him.
He gaped back, with the shocked fascination that any intelligent person would feel at viewing such reconstructions of his ancestors. At almost the first glance he saw that the newest evolutionary thought was correct—these were simian, but not apes. Ape and man, as he had often heard, sprang from the same common fore-father, low-browed, muzzle-faced, hairy. Such were these, in varying degrees of intensity. None wore clothes. Grinning mouths exhibited fanglike teeth, bare chests broadened powerfully, clumsy hands with short, ineffectual thumbs made foolish gestures. But the feet, for instance, were not like hands, they were flat pedestals with forward-projecting toes. The legs, though short, were powerful. Man's father, decided Parr, must have had something of the bear about his appearance ... and the most bearlike of the twenty or thirty beast-men heaved himself erect and came slouching across toward Parr.
This thing had once been a giant of a man, and remained a giant of an animal. None of the others present were nearly as large, nor were any of the men who had driven Parr forth. Six feet six towered this hair-thicketed ogre, with a chest like a drayhorse, and arms as thick as stovepipes. One hand—the thumb had trouble opposing the great cucumber fingers—flourished a club almost as long as Parr's whole body.
"I—boss," thundered this monster impressively. "Throw down stick."
Parr had risen, his own club poised for defense. The giant's free hand pointed to the weapon. "Throw down," it repeated, with a growl as bearlike as the body.
"Not me," said Parr, and ducked away from the tree-trunk against which he might be pinned. "What's the idea? I didn't do anything to you—"
"I—boss," said his threatener again. "Nobody fight me."
"True, true," chorused the others sycophantically. "Ling, he boss—throw down club, you new man."
Parr saw what they meant. With the other community, the newest and therefore most advanced individual ruled. In this more primitive society, the strongest held sway until a stronger displaced him. The giant called Ling was by no means the most human-seeming creature there, but he was plainly the ruler and plainly meant so to continue. Parr was no coward, but he was no fool. As the six-foot bludgeon whirled upward between him and the sky, he cast down his own stick in token of surrender.
"No argument, Ling," he said sensibly.