For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already the

cliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of

break to encourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled.

Late in the afternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm

water upon the sluggishly moving surface of which floated

countless millions of tiny green eggs surrounded by a light scum

of the same color, though of a darker shade. Their past

experience of Caspak had taught them that they might expect to

come upon a stagnant pool of warm water if they followed the

stream to its source; but there they were almost certain to find

some of Caspak's grotesque, manlike creatures. Already since

they had disembarked from the U-33 after its perilous trip

through the subterranean channel beneath the barrier cliffs had

brought them into the inland sea of Caspak, had they encountered

what had appeared to be three distinct types of these creatures.

There had been the pure apes--huge, gorillalike beasts--and those

who walked, a trifle more erect and had features with just a

shade more of the human cast about them. Then there were men

like Ahm, whom they had captured and confined at the fort--Ahm,

the club-man. "Well-known club-man," Tyler had called him. Ahm

and his people had knowledge of a speech. They had a language,

in which they were unlike the race just inferior to them, and

they walked much more erect and were less hairy: but it was

principally the fact that they possessed a spoken language and

carried a weapon that differentiated them from the others.

All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In

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