Nickie had forgotten everything by this, however, and sitting with his back to the tree was drowsing, and faintly asserting that he was a king, the most mighty and dazzling' of all monarchs known to man, when the valiant hunters fell upon him.
The rush came suddenly, and in a twinkling half-a-dozen clubs were battering at Mahdi's unhappy head and thumping on his unfortunate ribs.
Every man wanted to get a lick at the monster, and every man got it.
Luckily, Nickie's skull was thick, and the Mahdi head-dress offered it some protection, otherwise there would have been an instantaneous and fatal termination to the artistic career of Nicholas Crips.
As it was, Nickie's senses were battered out of him, and within a few minutes, he was so bound round with rope that he looked like a huge Cocoon.

Two saplings were cut, and suspended between these, and borne on the shoulders of eight men, the Missing Link was carried back through the township of 'Tween Bridges.

The hunters shouted jubilantly, fired their guns, and yelled triumphant songs as they went, and the whole of the inhabitants turned out and made a triumphal march of it, pressing forward to see the monstrous ape dangling between the saplings.
So Mahdi, the Missing Link, was brought home to the Museum of Marvels.
When Nickie was dumped on the floor of the tent, Madame Marve screamed believing he was dead.
"We shot him first," Watkins explained, "an' then we got at him with our sticks." "Great heavens!" gasped the Professor, thought of manslaughter flashing upon him.

"You might have murdered him." "He might 'ave murdered us," replied the veracious Watkins, "Why, his struggles was somethin' awful, an' he roared like a lion an' bit an' tore.

It took ten of us t' down him, an' then he bit through Orton's leg, all' knocked Billy Tett sick and 'epless.