I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.

“It is a man,” the voice repeated. “He comes to live with us?”

It was a thick voice, with something in it⁠—a kind of whistling overtone⁠—that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was strangely good.

The ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived the pause was interrogative. “He comes to live with you,” I said.

“It is a man. He must learn the law.”

I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black, a vague outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticed the opening of the place was darkened by two more black heads. My hand tightened on my stick.