It was easy to see that Gran'pa's reference to Brooklands could mean one of only two things—motoring or aeroplaning. But I never expected what actually followed.

The old man—or should I say the young one?—came home one evening in a state of feverish excitement.

"I've been flying, George!" he announced buoyantly.

"Skylarking?" I asked, "or really leaving the earth for the air?"

"Flying!" he emphasized, flapping his hands and arms about. "This afternoon I went to Bournemouth and back ... for a little trial spin."

"A trial spin?" I echoed, wondering what bigger project he had in view.

He nodded and drew in a great breath.

It was spring, and the windows were open, and the air was like wine. Gran'pa seemed to be half intoxicated.

"By the Lord Harry!" he exclaimed. "It's the greatest thing I've done. We left Brooklands at two sharp and were back at a quarter to five—with two loops and a nose-dive en route. I've fixed up another jaunt on Sunday—with you and Molly. And next week I'm popping over to Rome and back. If the journey's satisfactory, I intend buying the machine."

"Doing what?" I gasped.

His eyes twinkled as he watched Molly and me, and with an exaggerated nonchalance, he lit his pipe and sat down on the edge of the dining-room table—the very embodiment of a vigorous, middle-aged man, at least fifty years younger than himself....

"I've a specification here, somewhere," he said, fumbling in his breast pocket, and presently drawing out a scrap of paper. "Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce. The most reliable combination in the world, George, ... Just read that through and tell me what you think of it."

I read through a specification which might have been Yiddish, so little did it enlighten me.

"It looks as if it will cost a fortune," I observed.

"Not at all! In fact, I'm getting three brand new ones."

I tried to pass some comment on this amazing man's new outbreak, but could not. I was literally tongue-tied. It was the most stupendous exhibition of idiocy I had ever encountered. One might conceivably buy three motor cars; but, three aeroplanes ...!

"What in heaven's name do you intend doing with them?" I managed to say at last. "Is it to be the nucleus of a new Air Force?"

"No! Just a little private venture—for the public good!"

"D'you mean there's a machine for each of us?" I asked, with a feeble attempt at humor.

"If you like to put it that way, George...."

It was very evident that he had some tremendous scheme afoot, and the tantalizing air of secrecy he maintained rather annoyed me.

"Why be so secretive?" I asked. "Surely you can tell us all exactly what you intend doing."

He blew out a cloud of smoke and sat there as unruffled as a sphinx."Ever thought of foreign travel?" he queried, mildly.

"I have. We all have! But certainly not by aeroplane."

"Ah! You're still very conservative, George. You should move with the times. You don't think that, now I've got my youth back, I'm going to be content with fussy old steamers and railway trains, do you? I want to fly—soar!—get above the world and look down on it. Besides," he added slyly, "there aren't any trains where I'm going...."

I knew that he wanted me to fire a volley of questions at him. But I didn't! I sat and waited.

So did Gran'pa.

Presently he said:

"You've read Robert Louis Stevenson, George?"

"I have!"

"D'you like treasure hunting yarns?"

"I do!"

"But you don't think there's much scope for that sort of thing nowadays?"

"I don't think there ever was—except in books," I answered, peevishly.

"You're a frightful sceptic, George. It's through living in London all your life. A dull, blasÉ place!... Lot of noise and bustle—and talk—but nothing ever happens!"

He puffed away at his pipe for a few moments, and then resumed, with the air of some politician portraying a world which needs reforming: "All that's got to be changed. Humanity in the mass moves very slowly. If you want things done, you must rely on the individual who can elbow his way out of the rut." He gazed at me with inspiration in his eyes."George," he said quietly. "I believe I'm one of those individuals. Already, I'm the first man to travel backwards through life. There was that convict they experimented on in America, of course, but one never heard any more of him. Possibly he died. In any case he was only sixty or so. I was ninety-five...."

"Was ...?" I murmured.

He chuckled.

"How old am I now?" He stood up and smote his chest. "How old do I look and feel?"

"About forty-five, I should say."

"Not a day older! Not a day.... Well, that's the first step away from the rut. Then there's this—the greatest of all. Treasure hunting in aeroplanes!"

"Where? And what?" I asked, involuntarily—knowing full well that he was gloating over my curiosity.

He waited awhile before he continued.

Then he suddenly disclosed his scheme in all its fascinating glory. It staggered me—at first by its utter absurdity; then by its alarming possibility; and, finally, by its sheer plausibility. It was gigantic, gruesome, grotesque; and yet, to hear Gran'pa talk, it was so transparently simple that it made me wonder why no one had thought of it before.

"Ever since these new glands have been in full working order," he said, "I can't help feeling that others ought to be given an opportunity of regaining their youth. There must be hundreds of old men like myself who are still looking backwards in the way I used to: Ah! if only I had my life to live over again! It's the saddest, the most wistful cry in the world, George—that 'might-have-been!' You can't appreciate it at your age, with your eyes on the future. But picture yourself when you are seventy—seventy-five—eighty—always gazing backwards. There's no tragedy in life until you're old—and then it's the eternal tragedy of that might-have-been! I've lived through it all. I know.... The time I must have spent just sitting ... and thinking.... Always the same refrain. Might have been!... Might have been!..."

His gaze was directed towards the fire now—that strange picture-factory of the past and the future—and I could see that he was very deeply moved.

"When I spoke of treasure hunting just now you probably thought of hidden chests of jewels and coins, of tattered and torn scraps of paper with complicated directions and cabalistic signs written on them—all that paraphernalia of fictitious adventure.... As if gold were the most important thing in life!"

"It's handy at times," I commented.

"Would my fortune be of any value to me if I were dead?"

"No!... I believe that it serves no useful purpose in the next world."

He chuckled to himself. "So you come to the basic fact that the greatest 'treasure' I've found so far has been ..."

"By Jove!" I exclaimed. "You mean Glands!"

"I do! I'm going gland-hunting!"

He allowed time for the announcement to penetrate into my startled brain.

"... Gorillas?" I asked, at last.

"Yes ...!"

"It's absurd! You couldn't get enough of them to do any good. You might shoot half-a-dozen in a whole year, and ..."

"Who said 'shoot'? I want them alive, man, not dead!""Have you ever read anything about gorillas?" I asked, quietly.

"A great deal during the last few weeks. They're easily the most ferocious and terrifying beasts in the world. Du Chaillu says that the gorilla is the monarch of the African forest—that no other animal on earth dare face it when it is enraged. Practically every game hunter of any standing agrees on this point. Even a man armed with a modern gun runs grave risks in an encounter with a gorilla. If the bullet misses ..." Gran'pa shrugged his shoulders.

"And yet you stand there," I said, "and tell me that you intend capturing them!"

"That's the whole charm of the thing. We have to devise some method, George, of not only getting them in large quantities, but of getting them alive and well. Every gorilla killed will represent the death sentence of some human being—the loss of a new lease of life. That's a terrible thought, George. It means a very great responsibility...."

"Nonsense! People have been dying from old age ever since the world began."

"So they have from lock-jaw, and consumption, and malaria, and a thousand other complaints."

"That's no comparison. Death from old age is inevitable and ..."

"Is it? What about me?"

"But sooner or later ..." I said bluntly.

"Yes! I expect I shall ... sooner or later. But the chief thing is that I haven't yet. I might have died of diphtheria nearly fifty years ago; but medical science saved me. I might have died of malaria once—but for quinine. Everyone who has reached my age—or only half of it—has probably been saved at least once in his life. But it's only a probability, George. In the majority of cases one cannot tell for certain. With these glands, however, it is different. I know that I've been rescued from death as surely as when a life buoy is thrown to a drowning man. When the liner sinks in mid-ocean it's the number of floatable commodities that determine the number of the saved. A man who destroyed a life buoy at such a moment would be guilty of murder. And that's precisely the attitude we must adopt towards this gorilla hunt. A gorilla shot dead in the heart of Africa is a man murdered somewhere at home. We must catch them alive...."

"I suppose it's possible," I said. "Otherwise, how did they get our friend Alfred—and the one in the Zoo?"

"Naturally it's been done before, but not on a big enough scale. I very much doubt if more than fifty or sixty of them have been captured alive during the last century. That's much too slow for us. We shall want them ... in hundreds a month, at least...."

"Sort of round them up, like rebels," I suggested.

"Flippantly put," he answered, dryly, "but substantially correct."

The insight required for such a gigantic undertaking was so utterly beyond me that I simply could not treat the matter seriously.

"I don't quite understand the aeroplane part," I said. "Do you intend flying over the jungle and lassoing them—or, what?"

"Don't be feeble, George. The aeroplanes are merely for getting there. Where it took weeks for other men to travel a hundred miles through the African jungle, we shall manage it in as many hours. We could leave Gaboon at eight in the morning, say ..."

"Where on earth is Gaboon?"He treated the interruption—which was actually inspired by a genuine thirst for knowledge—with contempt.

"You'll find it on any map of Equatorial Africa," he answered quietly. "As I was saying, we could leave there at eight in the morning and be in the heart of the gorilla country by ten o'clock at the latest. I intend making Gaboon the headquarters."

It is extraordinary that I was not in the least astounded at the easy and casual way in which Gran'pa was unfolding his plan of campaign. My initial amazement once over, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for a man to take gorilla-hunting aeroplane trips in Africa. It was as if Gran'pa had merely said: "We'll make New York our headquarters and motor over to West Point, Atlantic City and other spots of interest."

For over two hours he sat there talking, joking, speculating; and every query I raised was demolished swiftly and easily. There was little doubt whatever that he had studied the matter very thoroughly. He knew the country, the climate, the facilities for obtaining guides, the habits and haunts of the gorillas, and even their "language."

When I showed symptoms of unbelief at this last item of knowledge, he was evidently pleased with himself.

"I've been to Garner's works for that," he said. "You must remember Garner. He was the explorer who for nearly four months lived in a wire cage in one of the African forests. He says that both the chimpanzee and the gorilla have a definite language of twenty words or more. They have vocal expressions for 'food,' 'good'—in a sort of 'Thank-you!' sense—'discomfort,' 'drink,' 'illness,' and even 'death.' Take this for instance."

Gran'pa threw back his head, drew in his breath and imitated a weird animal cry, as near as possible to the exclamation:

"Ugh—h—h...." (trailing off in a long drawn aspirate sound).

"That," he explained, "means 'food.'"

He made a few more noises, preceded by facial contortions and deep breathing exercises—which seemed to be the necessary preliminary to this new ape language.

"There's a sound, too," he explained, "by means of which they call one another. It goes like this: '?..?..?!'" (My powers of representation fail me.)

"That may come in quite handy, George. Don't you think so?"

"Very!" I said. "If you have it right."

"I've tried it!" he laughed.

"On a live ape, d'you mean? When?"

"At the Zoo!"

"But ..."

"I tried it on the chimpanzee—and it worked! At first, he looked as if he knew quite well what it meant, but wouldn't bother to reply. So I repeated it twice! He hesitated. Then he got up, came over to me and commenced tugging at my sleeve and making peculiar little noises in the back of his throat. Most astonishing thing I've ever seen, George. The keeper—quite an intelligent fellow—was flabbergasted. Said he'd never seen anything like it before."

"You mean you actually went in the cage?"

"Yes!... I also gave the 'alarm' signal—and what do you think the brute did!"

"Heaven above knows!""Rushed into the corner of the cage and hid himself under the straw...."

I was impressed. Whatever other little weaknesses Gran'pa had, he never lied, and never exaggerated.

Already, I was beginning to feel sorry for these Monarchs of the African Forests. What chance had the poor wretches against a man like this, with all the resources of civilization behind him? And yet ...

"Granting all these possibilities," I said. "Supposing we do get to Gaboon with our aeroplanes and our monkey-language system in full working order. And supposing we do actually capture a few hundred of the brutes alive. What then? You can't bring them back to headquarters by aeroplane...."

"Why not?"

"Oh ... I don't know! It sounds so utterly damned silly."

"Not half so silly and impossible as some of the everyday exploits in the war. It's child play compared with 'planing through a tornado of bursting shells, or fighting battles a couple of miles up."

"I suppose it is...."

Every argument I produced as to the unreasonableness of his schemes was squashed in an instant.

"Well," I said, at last. "We have our apes—by the hundred. What then? It's their glands you want; the brutes themselves, as far as you're concerned, are merely perambulating depositories for the Elixir of Life. You keep them alive simply to keep their glands alive. A dead gland is useless, and ..."

"Wait a moment, young man! Ever heard of cold storage?"

"It's the curse of the modern mutton trade," I observed."Possibly! Many scientists, however, consider it possible to keep the thyroid gland active for at least three or four days after its removal—if the thing is packed in ice. That'll help a great deal. I intend shipping the apes to Walfisch Bay, and then taking the glands by 'plane to a convenient spot in the Kalahari Desert—one of the healthiest places in the world. It is there that we shall establish the great Hospital for the Rejuvenation of the Aged."

I grew reckless in my concessions to the plausibility of the scheme.

"So far so good," I said. "We've accomplished even this. But what about the patients? How many old men do you seriously think are going to risk their lives by setting out on such an insane quest for youth? There aren't a dozen men in England to-day who'd do anything half as wild—especially old men of seventy—or eighty. All they want then is peace—peace in which to end their days. That's the great cry of the aged. And therein lies the final weakness of the whole thing, Gran'pa. The idea is good, the plot is excellent, the adventure thrilling, the ..."

"Don't you worry, George!" he cried. "That's where, as a last resource, the Press Campaign comes in. If necessary, I shall boom this rejuvenescence of mine as nothing on earth has ever been boomed before. I am willing to be photographed, interviewed, filmed, and leading-articled until we're simply swamped with applications. You don't understand human nature. The will to live comes before everything. If there is no response from Englishmen I shall appeal to America, although I would rather not experiment on my own countrymen until I've gained more practical knowledge."

So the last stronghold of my long line of objections was razed to the ground, and the discussion of this momentous fight against death drew to a close. Was there ever a madder and more useless scheme than this wretched monkey hunting for the aged? Like most young men of this generation, I had very little respect for mere age. Everywhere one turned one saw old men in charge of the world—men of fifty and upwards. They monopolized all the best positions in the Government, in business, in literature, in law, on town councils, in the Civil Service, and in the army. They kept out the young and ambitious by sneering at their inexperience and hot-headedness; they scoffed at their love affairs; they even tried to arrange their marriages; and—most iniquitous of all—they arranged wars in which the young fought and died through the folly and greed of their forebears.

If only one could reduce the life span instead of lengthening it—bring it down to fifty, say! If only one could speed up life by removing the brake of the ancient, the doddering and the incapable, who hung on to their jobs to the eternal detriment of the young! If only one could make life fuller and quicker—instead of emptier and slower ...

Was it right for me to sacrifice the men of my own generation in this manner? Was it dignified? Was it noble?

I thought the matter out carefully. And in the end I came to the conclusion that it simply did not matter. After all, the most Gran'pa and I could hope to do was to save a few hundred of the old criminals. If we caught all the gorillas in the whole of Africa, it would be no more than a mere drop in the ocean. At the Continental spas alone what does one see? The middle-aged, the old and ancient, crawling about in useless thousands.... All the monkeys in the world couldn't save more than a tenth per cent. of them.

And yet the thing might grow. There were other animals, perhaps, which might contribute. Already, the goat provided valuable thyroid extracts. Why not still others? Suppose the system was extended, and thousands of animals were bred solely for their glandular possibilities! In the course of a lifetime one man probably consumes dozens of sheep, oxen and pigs, and yet in some mysterious way arrangements have been made for a constant supply of these beasts. Why then should provision not be made for, say, a couple of pairs of glands per life. If man wants a commodity he usually gets it—sooner or later. He wanted tame dog, and he got it. To-day, there must be millions of them on the earth. Science might be clever enough some day to breed special gland-bearing animals, whose prime function would be the salvation of the aged. It might take generations or centuries to accomplish the miracle, but ultimately ...

The thought staggered me—and I returned to my monkeys. If we didn't start the business someone else would.

And so, at last, I gave way.

"To blazes with the Civil Service...." I thought. "Why should I moulder in an office when there are so many more interesting places in the world?"

I found a map of Africa and discovered Gaboon and its principal port of Libreville. It might have looked an outlandish spot, but at any rate it looked exciting. I liked the shape of the river mouth; the country to the east; the proximity of the Equator, which ran only a few miles to the south; and the way the great blue sea spread out to the west.I found Walfisch Bay and the Kalahari. And then I looked at the tiny patch of dirt which we call England. I thought of the tedious train journey from north to south of this island, and I measured the distance on the same scale map of Africa. As I did so the immensity of our task suddenly smote me in all its glory. It was uncanny to think that all those thousands of miles away lay the great African jungles; that at this precise moment, while I was peacefully smoking my pipe in Richmond, there was another land in which the gorilla and the chimpanzee roamed and fought and died; and that presently we should commence invading their fastnesses and enlisting their services in aid of the aged and decrepit of our own race.

I tried to picture the place—the tall trees, the ghostly undergrowth, the sodden marshes, the hot, dripping climate, the wicked and cunning little eyes which would watch us from the tree tops and the bushes as we went on our errand of mercy. I tried to visualize native villages and long, meandering rivers infested with crocodiles and hippopotami. I feebly attempted to imagine what a herd of wild elephants looked like. Did the porcupine erect its quills when angry and the lion slink away at the sight and smell of you? What were the prevalent diseases in this new land of hope and glory? Would the natives welcome us, or pursue and torture and devour us? How much cheap jewelry and beads should we require to bribe them to help us? Did they bother about such things now, or had they moved with the times and installed picture palaces and gramophones in their chief villages?

Even when I retired to bed that night I still went on speculating. My poor, civilized brain was troubled with vague, terrorizing dreams, manufactured no doubt from all I had ever read and heard of the grotesque, the hideous and the cruel. I was pursued by cannibals, bitten by mosquitoes, mauled by tigers, nibbled by swarms of ants, and trampled on by wild elephants. But I never saw a single gorilla! Monkeys I saw galore—little black-faced chattering creatures, hanging by their tails from branches high overhead; also a horrid dog-faced baboon pursuing Gran'pa (bearded and old and withered again!) down a narrow pathway which led to the sea. But not a single gorilla! It was very astonishing. Was it an omen, I wondered?

I got up in the morning feeling that I knew Africa through and through. But when I looked out of the bedroom window the illusion was dispelled immediately. I saw the garden in all its spring glory—the daffodils and tulips, the plum blossoms, the green carpet of the lawn sprinkled with white daisies, and then—Gran'pa, walking and talking very earnestly in the sunshine with a little, ferocious-looking man in a coat with a fur collar.

I watched them curiously, until they disappeared round the bend of the path, and then I commenced dressing.

When I arrived downstairs Gran'pa and his companion were in the dining-room chattering away like a couple of sparrows.

"Ah, George!" cried Gran'pa. "I quite forgot to tell you about Mr. Stringer. He's come down from Scotland by the night train. I wrote and asked him to make straight for Airesdale Avenue the moment he arrived, and have breakfast with us. I wanted you to see him before you went to town this morning. We're spending the day at the Zoo, and then going on to Bristol this evening to see Boswell's Menagerie there."I extended my hand towards Mr. Stringer, wondering what on earth it was all about, and, as his fingers closed on mine and our eyes met, a peculiar thrill seemed to travel up my arm and backbone, culminating in a sudden tremor in the base of my skull. When he dropped my hand, however, he still kept his eyes fixed on me for a second or two. Never in all my life had I felt such a burning, penetrating gaze. It reached out like a ray of light, half-dazzled me, and probed into every nook and corner of my brain.

Suddenly, that unearthly sensation of being a frozen microbe under a microscope was gone again, and I felt the blood come pumping back into my ears—thud! ... thud! ...

"You noticed it, George?" cried Gran'pa.

"I ... er ... certainly ... noticed something," I stammered.

"Good! Mr. Stringer possesses one of the least known but most potent forces in nature. He calls himself a hypnotist and mental healer, but I prefer the older term, Animal Magnetism. I have great hopes of Mr. Stringer—when we reach Africa...."