It was not a difficult wall to climb, at least not
difficult for the ape-man.
But he found the bulky and awkward headdress a considerable handicap
and so he laid it aside upon the ground at the foot of the wall.
Nimbly he ascended to find the windows of the second floor not only
barred but curtained within. He did not delay long at the second
floor since he had in mind an idea that he would find the easiest
entrance through the roof which he had noticed was roughly dome
shaped like the throneroom of Ko-tan. Here there were apertures.
He had seen them from the ground, and if the construction of the
interior resembled even slightly that of the throneroom, bars would
not be necessary upon these apertures, since no one could reach
them from the floor of the room.
There was but a single question: would they be large enough to
admit the broad shoulders of the ape-man.
He paused again at the third floor, and here, in spite of the
hangings, he saw that the interior was lighted and simultaneously
there came to his nostrils from within a scent that stripped from
him temporarily any remnant of civilization that might have remained
and left him a fierce and terrible bull of the jungles of Kerchak.
So sudden and complete was the metamorphosis that there almost
broke from the savage lips the hideous challenge of his kind, but
the cunning brute-mind saved him this blunder.
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