A deadly terror took hold of me when I saw their troop advancing.  After witnessing their cruelty, I thought they were going to engage in a wholesale slaughter.

The hunters, all of them gorillas, led the advance.  I noticed that they had abandoned their weapons, which gave me little hope.  Behind them came the loaders and beaters, among whom there was a more or less equal number of gorillas and chimpanzees.  The hunters seemed to be the masters and their manner was not unlike the aristocrats of old Russia.  They did not appear to be ill-disposed and chatted among themselves as cheerfully as you could wish....

In fact, I am now so accustomed to the paradoxes of this planet that I wrote the preceding sentence without thinking of the silliness it represents.  And yet it's the truth!   The gorillas had the manners of the aristocrats of old Russia.  They chatted together happily in an articulate language, and each moment their faces expressed human sentiments, not a trace of which I'd found in Novaya.  Alas!  What had become of Novaya?  I shuddered as I recalled the bloodstained alley.  I now understood her emotion at the sight of our chimpanzee.  There existed a fierce hatred between the two peoples.  To realize this one only had to see the attitude of the captive men at the apes' approach.  They struggled frenziedly, thrashing out with hands and feet, gnashed their teeth, foamed at the mouth, and gnawed furiously at the strings of the net.

Without paying attention to all this hubbub, the hunter gorillas---I caught myself calling them the nobility---gave some orders to their servants.  Some big carts, rather low-lying and totally caged in, were lined up on a track on the other side of the net.  Into these we were bundled, ten or more to a vehicle; a fairly lengthy operation, for the prisoners struggled desperately.  Two servant gorillas, their hands encased in leather gloves to protect them from bites, took hold of the prisoners one by one, freed them from the trap, and flung them into the cages, the doors of which were then shut fast, while the nobles directed the operation leaning negligently on their walking sticks.

When my turn finally came, I tried to draw attention to myself by speaking.  But no sooner had I opened my mouth than one of the apes, apparently mistaking my action for menace, brutally stuffed his enormous glove into my face.  I was forcibly silenced and tossed like a gunnysack into a cage together with a dozen men and women who were still too agitated to pay me any mind.

When we were all loaded inside, one of the servants checked the lock on each cage and went to report to his master.  The latter gave a signal, and a roar of engines echoed through the forest.  The carts began to move forward, each one towed by a kind of tractor driven by an ape.  I could distinctly see the driver of the vehicle behind mine.  He was a chimpanzee.  From time to time he made sarcastic remarks at us, and when the engines slowed down, I could hear him humming a rather melancholy little tune not altogether lacking in harmony.

This first stage was so short that I had barely time to recover my senses.   After driving for a quarter of an hour along a rough track, the convoy came to a halt on a stretch of open ground in front of a house, a rustic sort of affair, constructed of huge timbers.  It might pass on Earth for a monstrous ski chalet.  It was at the edge of the forest; beyond it I could see a plain covered with crops that looked like cereals.

The house, with its red-tiled roof, green shutters and an inscription on a panel at the entrance, looked like an inn.  I realized at once it was a meeting place for the hunt, a hunting lodge, if you like.  The she-apes had come here to wait for their lords and masters, who presently arrived in private cars along the same track we had taken.  The lady gorillas sat around in armchairs chatting together in the shade of some big trees that resembled palms.  One of them was sipping a drink through a straw.

As soon as the vehicles were parked, the females drew nearer, curious to see the results of the hunt, and especially the game that had been shot, which some gorillas, protected by aprons, were extracting from two big vans to display in the shade of the trees.

It was a classical hunting scene.  Here again the apes worked methodically.  They placed the blood-stained bodies on their backs, side by side in a long row as if along a chalk line.  Then, while the she-apes uttered little cries of admiration, they applied themselves to beautifying the game.  They stretched the arms down along the sides of the bodies and opened the hands with the palms facing upward.  They straightened the legs, arranging the joints so as to give each body a less corpselike appearance, corrected a clumsily twisted limb, and reduced the contraction of a neck.  Then they carefully smoothed down the hair, especially the women's, as some hunters will smooth down the coat of feathers of an animal they have just shot dead.

I fear that I cannot convey the grotesque and diabolical quality this scene held for me.  Have I adequately stressed the absolutely and totally simian appearance of these apes, apart from the expression in their eyes?  Have I described how these she-gorillas, also dressed in sports clothes but with great elegance, jostled each other to view the best specimens and point them out while congratulating their lords and masters?  Have I said that one of them, taking a small pair of scissors out of her bag, leaned over a body, snipped off a lock of brown hair, curled it around her finger, and then, with the others soon following her example, pinned it onto her wide-brimmed straw hat?

The exhibition of the game was soon finished:  3 rows of corpses laid out carefully, men and women alternately, the latter displaying a line of golden breasts to the monstrous sphere ablaze in the sky.  Looking away in horror, I noticed a new figure, carrying an oblong box fixed to a tripod.  A chimpanzee, no less!  I quickly recognized him as the photographer making a pictorial record of these trophies for simian posterity.  The session lasted for more than one-fourth of an hour, the gorillas having themselves photographed first individually, in good poses, some of them placing one foot on top of one their victims with a triumphant air; then a compact group, each of them putting an arm around his neighbor's shoulder.  The she-gorillas in turn were then photographed and assumed graceful postures in front of the slaughter, with their decorated hats well to the fore.127Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw158E37i69

This scene was imbued with a horror incomprehensible to the normal mind.  My blood boiled, but I succeeded for some time in keeping myself under wraps.  But when I noticed the body on which one of these females had sat down to take a more sensational picture, when I recognized the face of the corpse stretched out among the others the boyish almost childish features of my luckless companion, Denis Petrov, it was no longer possible to contain myself.  My emotions exploded in an outlandish manner, in keeping with the grotesque aspect of this macabre scene.  I gave way to a fit of wild hilarity, bursting out in hysterical laughter.

I had not thought of my companions in the cage.  I was utterly incapable of thinking!  the tumult unleashed by my laughter reminded me of their proximity, which was no doubt as dangerous for me as that of the apes.  Menacing hands were stretched in my direction.  I realized the peril and stifled my laughter by burying my head in my arms.  I am not sure, however, that I should have avoided being strangled and torn to pieces if some of the apes, alarmed by the din, had not re-established order with a few thrusts of their pikes.  The gorillas made their way in small groups towards the house, chatting merrily together, while the photographer gathered up his equipment after taking a few shots of our cages.  

We men, however, had not been neglected.  I had no idea of the fate the apes had in store for us, but it was clearly their policy to look after us.  Before vanishing into the inn, one of the nobles gave some instructions to a gorilla who seemed to be a team leader.  The latter came over to us, assembled his subordinates, and presently the servants brought us something to eat in basins and some buckets of water to drink.  The food consisted of a kind of gruel.  I was not hungry but was determined to eat in order to keep up my strength.  I approached one of the receptacles around which several prisoners were squatting.  I did like they did and stretched out a timid hand.  They gave me a surly look but, the food being ample, did not try to stop me.  It was a thick mash with a cereal base that did not taste bad.  I swallowed several handfuls without displeasure.

Our menu was, moreover, enriched by the goodwill of our guards.  Now that the hunt was over, these beaters, who had so frightened me, proved to be less unpleasant so long as we behaved ourselves.  They walked up and down in front of the cages and threw us some fruit from time to time, deriving great amusement from the stampeded these offerings never failed to provoke.  I even witnessed a scene that gave me food for thought.  A little girl had caught a piece of fruit in the air, when her neighbor rushed at her to snatch it away.  One of the gorillas then brandished his pike, poked it through the bars, and pushed the man back as hard as he could; then he put another bit of fruit in the same child's hand.  I thus realized that these creatures were capable of pity after all.

When the meal was over, the team leader and his assistants set about rearranging the convoy by transferring some of the captives from one cage to another.   Apparently, they were making some kind of selection, but on what basis I could not tell.  Finding myself placed in a group of extremely handsome men and women, I tried to persuade myself that this was because we were the most remarkable subjects, deriving a better consolation from the thought that the apes, at first glance, had judged me worthy of being included in an elite.

I was shocked and overjoyed to see Novaya among my new companions.  She had escaped the massacre!  O' great heaven of Chang-Er, I give you many thanks!  It was with her, above all, in mind that I had scrutinized the victims at great length, dreading the possible sight of her lovely body among the pile of corpses.  I felt as if I had recovered a being that was dear to me and, losing my head once again, I rushed over to her, opening my arms wide.  I shouldn't have done that; my gesture terrified her.  Had she forgotten, then, of our intimacy of the night before?  Was such a marvelous physique not animated by any kind of brain?  I felt downcast to see her shrink away at my approach, her hands extended like claws as if to scratch me, which she would likely have done if I had persisted.

Yet when I checked myself, she calmed down fairly fast.  She lay down in a corner of the cage and I followed her example with a sigh.  All the other captives had done likewise.  They now looked listless, prostrate, and resigned to their fate.

Outside, the apes were making ready for the convoy to move off.  A tarpaulin was stretched over our cage and fastened halfway down the sides in order to let some light in.  Orders were issued; the engines started.  I found myself traveling at high speed towards an unknown destination, terrified by the thought of the fresh horrors that awaited me on Silauro, the planet of the apes.