darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness that grunted “Hey!” as I came in, and my ape-man stood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split coconut to me as I crawled into the other corner and squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as serenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation and the nearly intolerable closeness of the den. The little pink sloth-creature stood in the aperture of the hut, and something else with a drab face and bright eyes came staring over its shoulder.
“Hey!” came out of the lump of mystery opposite. “It is a man.”
“It is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “a man, a man, a five-man, like me.”
“Shut up!” said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my coconut amid an impressive stillness.
I peered hard into the blackness,