“Maybe it isn’t a good idea to shoot it,” suggested Kim as the Land-Rover started to catch up with the fleeing beast.

“Why not?” demanded Jason, firing off a shot, which hit a rock behind the creature with a loud, metallic ping.

“Looks close enough to human to maybe be murder in the eyes of the cops,” suggested Kim.

“Don’t be stupid!” replied Jason.   “Whatever it is it’s no man.”

“Some kind of crazy hermit maybe?” suggested Mark Blythe.   Although not concerned about killing the creature, he was afraid Kim was right that they might get into trouble with Jim Kane or Bear Ross for shooting it.

“Hermit, like Hell!” replied Jason Melville, firing off two shots in quick succession as they caught up enough to see the creature clearly in the spotlight.   “It’s got stringy hair as thick as rope, half a metre long.   No human could ever grow body hair like that — not even a lifelong hermit!”

“It’s some kind of ape!” shouted Don from the cabin.

“Ape-man more like it, by the looks of it,” corrected Mark.

“Still it’s not a man!” insisted Jason.   He lined up the creature in his rifle sight just as the spotlight suddenly went well wide of the mark, allowing the beast to vanish into the darkness momentarily.

“What the Hell are you playing at?” demanded Jason.   Looking round he saw Kim kneeling down looking through a large, wooden supplies box.

“Looking for my spare roll of film,” explained Kim.

“Come on for God’s sake!” cursed Jason as Kim continued to rummage round for a while before locating a gold Kodak box.

Kim unloaded the used roll of film, carefully put it away in the gold box, and then loaded the new roll into the camera.   Only then did he stand and start to handle the floodlight again with his left hand, scouring round the forest of wattles, pines, and blue gums for the fleeing ape-man.

“You’ve lost him, you bastard!” cursed Jason, as Kim started clicking away with the camera again.

“What are you…?” began Jason, before realising that Kim had caught the creature in the spotlight beam again.   Hefting his rifle, he started to fire shot after shot at the racing ape-man as Kim Monroe snapped away with his camera and Mark Blythe stood back watching, unsure now whether they should be trying to shoot the creature, which he still feared might be some kind of hermit.