 9 The Nightmare The blacks of the village of Mabonga the chief were feasting while above them in large trees at Tarzan of the Apes, grim, terrible, empty, and envious. Hunting had proved poor that day, for there are lean days as well as fat ones for even the greatest of the jungle hunters. Often times Tarzan went empty for more than a full sun, and he had passed through entire moons during which he had been but barely able to stave off starvation, but such times were infrequent. There once had been a period of sickness among the grass-eaters which had left the plains almost bare of game for several years, and again the great cats had increased so rapidly and so overrun the country that their prey, which was also Tarzan's, had been frightened off for a considerable time. But for the most part Tarzan had fed well always. Today, though, he had gone empty, one misfortune following another as rapidly as he raised new query, so that now as he sat perched in the tree above the feasting blacks he experienced all the pangs of famine and his hatred for his lifelong enemies waxed strong in his breast. It was tantalizing indeed to sit there hungry while these Gomangani filled themselves so full of food that their stomach seemed almost upon the point of bursting and with elephant steaks at that. It was true that Tarzan and Tantor were the best of friends, and that Tarzan never yet had tasted of the flesh of the elephant, but the Gomangani evidently had slain one, and as they were eating of the flesh of their kill Tarzan was assailed by no doubts as to the ethics of his doing likewise should he have the opportunity. Had he known that the elephant had died of sickness several days before the blacks discovered the carcass he might not have been so keen to partake of the feast, for Tarzan of the apes was no carrion-eater. Hunger, however, may blunt the most epicurian taste, and Tarzan was not exactly an epicure. What he was at this moment was a very hungry wild beast whom caution was holding in leash, for the great cooking-pot in the center of the village was surrounded by black warriors through whom not even Tarzan of the apes might hope to pass unharmed. It would be necessary, therefore, for the watcher to remain there hungry until the blacks had gorged themselves to stupor, and then, if they had left any scraps to make the best meal he could from such. But to the impatient Tarzan it seemed that the greedy gomen-gani would rather burst than leave the feast before the last morsel had been devoured. For a time they broke the monotony of eating by executing portions of a hunting-dance, a maneuver which sufficiently stimulated digestion to permit them to fall too once more with renewed vigor, but with the consumption of appalling quantities of elephant meat and native bear they presently became too loggy for physical exertion of any sort, some reaching a stage where they no longer could rise from the ground but lay conveniently close to the great cooking-pot, stuffing themselves into unconsciousness. It was well past midnight before Tarzan even could begin to see the end of the orgy. The blacks were now falling asleep rapidly, but a few still persisted. From before their condition Tarzan had no doubt but that he easily could enter the village and snatch a handful of meat from before their noses, but a handful was not what he wanted, nothing less than a stomachful with a lay than gnawing craving of that great emptiness. He must therefore have ample time to forage in peace. But at last but a single warrior remained true to his ideals, an old fellow whose once wrinkled belly was now as smooth and as tight as the head of a drum. With evidences of great discomfort and even pain he would crawl toward the pot and drag himself slowly to his knees, from which position he could reach into the receptacle and seize a piece of meat. Then he would roll over on his back with a loud groan and lie there while he slowly forced the food between his teeth and down into his gorged stomach. It was evident to Tarzan that the old fellow would eat until he died or until there was no more meat. The ape-man shook his head in disgust. What foul creatures were these goman gany? Yet of all the jungle folk they alone resembled Tarzan closely in form. Tarzan was a man, and they too must be some manner of men, just as the little monkeys and the great apes and bold gany, the gorilla, were quite evidently of one great family, though differing in size in appearance and customs. Tarzan was ashamed, for of all the beasts of the jungle then man was the most disgusting, man and dango, the hyena. Only man and dango ate until they swelled up like a dead rat. Tarzan had seen dango eat his way into the carcass of a dead elephant, and then continued to eat so much that he had been unable to get out of the hole through which he had entered. Now he could readily believe that man, given the opportunity, would do the same. Man, too, was the most unlovely of creatures, with his skinny legs and his big stomach, his filed teeth and his thick red lips. Man was disgusting. Tarzan's gaze was riveted upon the hideous old warrior wallowing in filth beneath him. There the thing was struggling to its knees to reach for another morsel of flesh. It groaned aloud in pain, and yet it persisted in eating, eating, ever eating. Tarzan could endure it no longer, neither his hunger nor his disgust. Silently he slipped to the ground with the bowl of the great tree between himself and the feastar. The man was still kneeling, bent almost double in agony, before the cooking pot. His back was toward the eight man. Swiftly and noiselessly Tarzan approached him. There was no sound as steel fingers closed about the black throat. The struggle was short, for the man was old and already half stupefied from the effects of the gorging and the beer. Tarzan dropped the inert mass and scooped several large pieces of meat from the cooking pot, enough to satisfy even his great hunger. Then he raised the body of the feastar and shoved it into the vessel. When the other blacks awoke they would have something to think about, Tarzan grinned. As he turned toward the tree with his meat, he picked up a vessel containing beer and raised it to his lips, but at the first taste he spat the stuff from his mouth and tossed the primitive tankard aside. He was quite sure that even dangle would draw the line at such filthy tasting drink as that, and his contempt for man increased with the conviction. Tarzan swung off into the jungle some half mile or so before he paused to partake of his stolen food. He noticed that it gave forth a strange and unpleasant odor, but assumed that this was due to the fact that it had stood in a vessel of water above a fire. Tarzan was, of course, unaccustomed to cooked food. He did not like it, but he was very hungry and had eaten a considerable portion of his haul before it was really borne in upon him that the stuff was nauseating. It required far less than he had imagined it would to satisfy his appetite. Throwing the balance to the ground he curled up in a convenient crotch and sought slumber. But slumber seemed difficult to woo. Ordinarily Tarzan of the apes was asleep as quickly as a dog after it curled itself upon a hearth rug before a roaring blaze. But tonight he squirmed and twisted, for at the pit of his stomach was a peculiar feeling that resembled nothing more closely than an attempt upon the part of the fragments of the elephant meat reposing there to come out into the night and search for their elephant. But Tarzan was adamant. He gritted his teeth and held them back. He was not to be robbed of his meal after waiting so long to obtain it. He had succeeded in dozing when the roaring of a lion awoke him. He set up to discover that it was broad daylight. Tarzan rubbed his eyes. Could it be that he had really slept? He did not feel particularly refreshed as he should have after a good night's sleep. A noise attracted his attention and he looked down to see a lion standing at the foot of the tree, gazing hungrily at him. Tarzan made a face at the king of beasts. Where at, Numa, greatly to the eight-man surprise, started to climb up into the branches toward him. Now never before had Tarzan seen a lion climb a tree. Yet for some unaccountable reason he was not greatly surprised that this particular lion should do so. As the lion climbed slowly toward him Tarzan sought higher branches. But to his chagrin he discovered that it was with the utmost difficulty that he could climb at all. Again and again he slipped back, losing all that he had gained, while the lion kept steadily at his climbing, coming ever closer and closer to the eight-man. Tarzan could see the hungry light in the yellow-green eyes. He could see the slaver on the drooping jowls, and the great fangs agape to seize and destroy him. Clawing desperately the eight-man at last succeeded in gaining a little up on his pursuer. He reached the more slender branches far aloft, where he well knew no lion could follow. Yet on and on came devil-faced Numa. It was incredible. But it was true. Yet what most amazed Tarzan was that though he realized the incredibility of it all, he at the same time accepted it as a matter of course. First that a lion should climb at all, and second that he should enter the upper terraces where even Sheeta the panther dared not venture. To the very top of a tall tree the eight-man clawed his awkward way, and after him came Numa the lion moaning dismally. At last Tarzan stood balanced upon the very utmost pinnacle of a swaying branch high above the forest. He could go no farther. Below him the lion came steadily upward, and Tarzan of the apes realized that at last the end had come. He could not do battle upon a tiny branch with Numa the lion, especially with such a Numa, to which swaying branches two hundred feet above the ground provided as substantial footing as the ground itself. Nearer and nearer came the lion. Another moment and he could reach up with one great paw and drag the eight-man downward to those awful jaws. A whoring noise above his head caused Tarzan to glance apprehensively upward. A great bird was circling close above him. He never had seen so large a bird in all his life, yet he recognized it immediately, for had he not seen it hundreds of times in one of the books in the little cabin by the landlocked bay, the moss-grown cabin that with its contents was the sole heritage left by his dead and unknown father to the young Lord Greystoke. In the picture book the great bird was shown flying far above the ground with a small child in its talons, while beneath a distracted mother stood with uplifted hands. The lion was already reaching forth a talon paw to seize him when the bird swooped and buried no less formidable talons in Tarzan's back. The pain was numbing, but it was with a sense of relief that the eight-man felt himself snatched from the clutches of Numa. With a great whoring of wings the bird rose rapidly until the forest lay far below. It made Tarzan sick and dizzy to look down upon it from so great a height, so he closed his eyes tight and held his breath. Higher and higher climbed the huge bird. Tarzan opened his eyes. The jungle was so far away that he could only see a dim green blur below him. But just above, and quite close, was the sun. Tarzan reached out his hands and warmed them, for they were very cold. Then a sudden madness seized him. Where was the bird taking him? Was he to submit thus passively to a feathered creature, however enormous? Was he, Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter, to die without striking a blow in his own defense? Never. He snatched the hunting-blade from his G-string, and thrusting upward drove it once, twice, thrice, into the breast above him. The mighty wings fluttered a few more times spasmodically. The talons relaxed their hold, and Tarzan of the Apes fell hurtling downward toward the distant jungle. It seemed to the ape-man that he fell for many minutes before he crashed through the leafy verger of the treetops. The smaller branches broke his fall so that he came to rest for an instant upon the very branch upon which he had sought slumber the previous night. For an instant he toppled there in a frantic attempt to regain his equilibrium. But at last he rolled off, yet clutching wildly. He succeeded in grasping the branch and hanging on. Once more he opened his eyes, which he had closed during the fall. Again it was night. With all his old agility he clambered back to the crotch from which he had toppled. Below him a lion roared, and looking downward Tarzan could see the yellow-green eyes shining in the moonlight as they bore hungrily upward through the darkness of the jungle night toward him. The ape-man gasped for breath, cold sweat stood out from every pore. There was a great sickness at the pit of Tarzan's stomach. Tarzan of the Apes had dreamed his first dream. For a long time he sat watching for Numa to climb into the tree after him and listening for the sound of the great wings from above. For to Tarzan of the Apes his dream was a reality. He could not believe what he had seen and yet, having seen even these incredible things, he could not disbelieve the evidence of his own perceptions. Never in all his life had Tarzan's senses deceived him badly, and so naturally he had great faith in them. Each perception which ever had been transmitted to Tarzan's brain had been, with varying accuracy, a true perception. He could not conceive of the possibility of apparently having passed through such a weird adventure in which there was no grain of truth. That a stomach disordered by decayed elephant flesh, a lion roaring in the jungle, a picture book, and sleep could have so truly portrayed all the clear cut details of what he had seemingly experienced was quite beyond his knowledge. Yet he knew that Numa could not climb a tree. He knew that there existed in the jungle no such bird as he had seen, and he knew too that he could not have fallen a tiny fraction of the distance he had hurtled downward and lived. To say the least he was a very puzzled Tarzan as he tried to compose himself once more for slumber, a very puzzled and a very nauseated Tarzan. As he thought deeply upon the strange occurrences of the night he witnessed another remarkable happening. It was indeed quite preposterous, yet he saw it all with his own eyes. It was nothing less than Hista the Snake, breathing his sinuous and slimy way up the bowl of the tree below him. Hista, with the head of the old man Tarzan had shoved into the cooking pot, the head and the round, tight, black, distended stomach. As the old man's frightful face, with upturned eyes, set and glassy, came close to Tarzan, the jaws open to seize him. The eight men struck furiously at the hideous face, and as he struck the apparition disappeared. Tarzan sat straight up upon his branch, trembling in every limb, wide-eyed and panting. He looked all around him with his king-jungle-trained eyes, but he saw not of the old man, with the body of Hista the Snake, but on his naked thigh the eight men saw a caterpillar drop from a branch above him. With a grimace he flicked it off into the darkness beneath. And so the night wore on, dream following dream, nightmare following nightmare, until the distracted eight men started like a frightened deer at the rustling of the wind and the trees about him, or leaped to his feet as the uncanny laugh of a hyena burst suddenly upon a momentary jungle silence. But at last the tardy morning broke, and a sick and feverish Tarzan wound sluggishly through the dank and gloomy mazes of the forest in search of water. His whole body seemed on fire, a great sickness surged upward to his throat. He saw a tangle of almost impenetrable thicket, and like the wild beast he was, he crawled into it to die alone and unseen, safe from the attacks of predatory carnivora. But he did not die. For a long time he wanted to, but presently nature and an outraged stomach relieved themselves in their own therapeutic manner. The eight men broke into a violent perspiration and then fell into a normal and untroubled sleep which persisted well into the afternoon. When he awoke he found himself weak but no longer sick. Once more he sought water, and after drinking deeply took his way slowly toward the cabin by the sea. In times of loneliness and trouble it had long been his custom to seek there the quiet and restfulness which he could find nowhere else. As he approached the cabin and raised the crude latch which his father had fashioned so many years before, too small bloodshot eyes watched him from the concealing foliage of the jungle close by. From beneath shaggy, beatling brows they glared maliciously upon him, maliciously and with a keen curiosity. Then Tarzan entered the cabin and closed the door after him. Here with all the world shut out from him he could dream without fear of interruption. He could curl up and look at the pictures in the strange things which were books. He could puzzle out the printed word he had learned to read without knowledge of the spoken language it represented. He could live in a wonderful world of which he had no knowledge beyond the covers of his beloved books. Numa and Sabor might prowl about close to him. The elements might rage in all their fury, but here at least Tarzan might be entirely off his guard in a delightful relaxation which gave him all his faculties for the uninterrupted pursuit of this greatest of all his pleasures. Today he turned to the picture of the huge bird which bore off the little Tarmingani in its talons. Tarzan puckered his brows as he examined the colored print. Yes, this was the very bird that had carried him off the day before, for to Tarzan the dream had been so great a reality that he still thought another day and a night had passed since he had lain down in the tree to sleep. But the more he thought upon the matter, the less positive he was as to the verity of the seeming adventure through which he had passed, yet where the real had ceased and the unreal commenced he was quite unable to determine. Had he really then been to the village of the blacks at all? Had he killed the old Gomangani? Had he eaten of the elephant meat? Had he been sick? Tarzan scratched his tussled black head and wondered. It was all very strange, yet he knew that he never had seen Numa climb a tree or Hista with the head and belly of an old black man whom Tarzan already had slain. Finally with a sigh he gave up trying to fathom the unfathomable. Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that something had come into his life that he never before had experienced, another life which existed when he slept and the consciousness of which was carried over into his waking hours. Then he began to wonder if some of these strange creatures which he met in his sleep might not slay him, for at such times Tarzan of the apes seemed to be a different Tarzan, sluggish, helpless, and timid, wishing to flee his enemies as fled bar of the deer most fearful of creatures. Thus with a dream came the first faint tinge of a knowledge of fear, a knowledge which Tarzan, awake, had never experienced, and perhaps he was experiencing what his early forebears passed through and transmitted to posterity in the form of superstition first and religion later, for they as Tarzan had seen things at night which they could not explain by the daylight standards of sense perception or of reason, and so had built for themselves a weird explanation which included grotesque shapes possessed of strange and uncanny powers to whom they finally came to attribute all those inexplicable phenomena of nature which with each recurrence filled them with awe, with wonder, or with terror. And as Tarzan concentrated his mind on the little bugs upon the printed page before him, the active recollection of the strange adventures presently merged into the text of that which he was reading, a story of Bulgani, the gorilla in captivity. There was a more or less lifelike illustration of Bulgani in colors and in a cage with many remarkable-looking Tarmin-gani standing against a rail and peering curiously at the snarling brute. Tarzan wondered, not a little, as he always did, at the odd and seemingly useless array of colored plumage which covered the bodies of the Tarmin-gani. It always caused him to grin at trifle when he looked at these strange creatures. He wondered if they so covered their bodies from shame of their hairlessness or because they thought the odd things they wore added any to the beauty of their appearance. Particularly was Tarzan amused by the grotesque headdresses of the pictured people. He wondered how some of the she's succeeded in balancing theirs in an upright position, and he came as near to laughing aloud as he ever had, as he contemplated the funny little round things upon the heads of the he's. Slowly the eight-man picked out the meaning of the various combinations of letters on the printed page, and as he read the little bugs, for as such he always thought of the letters, commenced to run about in a most confusing manner, blurring his vision and befuddling his thoughts. Twice he brushed the back of a hand smartly across his eyes, but only for a moment could he bring the bugs back to coherent and intelligible form. He had slept ill the night before, and now he was exhausted from loss of sleep, from sickness and from the slight fever he had had, so that it became more and more difficult to fix his attention or to keep his eyes open. Tarzan realized that he was falling asleep, and just as the realization was borne in upon him, and he had decided to relinquish himself to an inclination which had assumed almost the proportions of a physical pain, he was aroused by the opening of the cabin door. Turning quickly toward the interruption, Tarzan was amazed for a moment to see Bull King large in the doorway the huge and hairy form of Bulgani the Gorilla. Now there was scarcely a denizen of the great jungle with whom Tarzan would rather not have been cooped up inside the small cabin than Bulgani the Gorilla, yet he felt no fear, even though his quick eye noted that Bulgani was in the throes of that jungle madness which seizes upon so many of the fiercer males. Ordinarily the huge gorillas avoid conflict, hide themselves from the other jungle folk, and are generally the best of neighbors, but when they are attacked or the madness seizes them there is no jungle denizen so bold and fierce as to deliberately seek a quarrel with them. But for Tarzan there was no escape. Bulgani was glowering at him from red-rimmed wicked eyes. In a moment he would rush in and seize the ape man. Tarzan reached for the hunting-knife where he had lain it upon the table beside him, but as his fingers did not immediately locate the weapon he turned a quick glance in search of it. As he did so his eyes fell upon the book he had been looking at which still lay open at the picture of Bulgani. Tarzan found his knife but he merely fingered it idly and grinned in the direction of the advancing gorilla. Not again would he be fooled by empty things which came while he slept. In a moment no doubt Bulgani would turn into Pamba the Rat with the head of Tantor the Elephant. Tarzan had seen enough of such strange happenings recently to have some idea as to what he might expect. But this time Bulgani did not alter his form as he came slowly toward the young ape man. Tarzan was a bit puzzled, too, that he felt no desire to rush frantically to some place of safety as had been the sensation most conspicuous in the other of his new and remarkable adventures. He was just himself now, ready to fight if necessary, but still sure that no flesh and blood gorilla stood before him. The thing should be fading away into thin air by now, thought Tarzan, or changing into something else. Yet it did not. Instead it loomed clear-cut and real as Bulgani himself, the magnificent dark coat glistening with life and health in a bar of sunlight which shot across the cabin through the high window behind the young Lord Grey Stoke. This was quite the most realistic of his sleep adventures, thought Tarzan, as he passively awaited the next amusing incident. And then the gorilla charged, two mighty calloused hands seized upon the ape man. Great fangs were bared close to his face, a hideous growl burst from the cavernous throat and hot breath fan Tarzan's cheek, and still he sat grinning at the apparition. Tarzan might be fooled once or twice, but not for so many times in succession. He knew that this Bulgani was no real Bulgani, for had he been he never could have gained entrance to the cabin, since only Tarzan knew how to operate the latch. The gorilla seemed puzzled by the strange passivity of the hairless ape. He paused an instant with his jaws snarling close to the other's throat. Then he seemed suddenly to come to some decision. Whirling the ape man across a hairy shoulder as easily as you or I might lift a babe in arms, Bulgani turned and dashed out into the open, racing toward the great trees. Now indeed was Tarzan sure that this was a sleep-adventure, and so grinned largely as the giant gorilla bore him unresisting away. Presently reasoned Tarzan he would awaken and find himself back in the cabin where he had fallen asleep. He glanced back at the thought and saw the cabin door standing wide open. This would never do, always had he been careful to close and latch it against wild intruders. Man who the monkey would make sad habit there among Tarzan's treasures should he have access to the interior for even a few minutes. The question which arose in Tarzan's mind was a baffling one. Where did sleep-adventures end and reality commence? How was he to be sure that the cabin door was not really open? Everything about him appeared quite normal. There were none of the grotesque exaggerations of his former sleep-adventures. It would be better then to be upon the safe side and make sure that the cabin door was closed. It would do no harm even if all that seemed to be happening were not happening at all. Tarzan essayed to slip from Bulgani's shoulder, but the great beast only growled ominously and gripped him tighter. With a mighty effort the ape-man wrenched himself loose, and as he slid to the ground the dream gorilla turned ferociously upon him, seized him once more and buried great fangs in a sleek brown shoulder. The grin of derision faded from Tarzan's lips as the pain and the hot blood aroused his fighting instincts. A sleep or awake this thing was no longer a joke. Biting, tearing, and snarling the two rolled over upon the ground. The gorilla now was frantic with insane rage. Again and again he loosed his hold upon the ape-man's shoulder in an attempt to seize the jugular, but Tarzan of the apes had fought before with creatures who struck first for the vital vein, and each time he wriggled out of harm's way as he strobe to get his fingers upon his adversary's throat. At last he succeeded, his great muscles tensed and knotted beneath his smooth hide, as he forced with every ounce of his mighty strength to push the hairy torso from him, and as he choked Bulgani and strained him away his other hand crept slowly upward between them until the point of the hunting knife rested over the savage heart. There was a quick movement of the steel-fewed wrist and the blade plunged to its goal. Bulgani, the gorilla, voiced a single frightful shriek, tore himself loose from the grasp of the ape-man, rose to his feet, staggered a few steps, and then plunged to earth. There were a few spasmodic movements of the limbs, and the brute was still. Tarzan of the apes stood looking down upon his kill, and as he stood there he ran his fingers through his slick black shock of hair. Presently he stooped and touched the dead body. Some of the red life-blood of the gorilla crimsoned his fingers. He raised them to his nose and sniffed. Then he shook his head and turned toward the cabin. The door was still open. He closed it and fastened the latch. Returning toward the body of his kill he again paused and scratched his head. If this was a sleep-adventure what then was reality? How was he to know the one from the other? How much of all that had happened in his life had been real and how much unreal? He placed a foot upon the prostrate form and raising his face to the heavens gave voice to the kill-cry of the bull-ape. Far in the distance a lion answered, it was very real and yet he did not know. Puzzled he turned away into the jungle. No, he did not know what was real and what was not, but there was one thing that he did know. Never again would he eat of the flesh of Tantor the Elephant. END OF CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 THE BATTLE FOR TICA The day was perfect. A cool breeze tempered the heat of the equatorial sun. Peace had rained within the tribe for weeks, and no alien enemy had trespassed upon its preserves from without. To the eight mind all this was sufficient evidence that the future would be identical with the immediate past, that Utopia would persist. The sentinels now from habit become a fixed tribal custom, either relaxed their vigilance or entirely deserted their posts as the whims seized them. The tribe was far scattered in search of food. Thus may peace and prosperity undermine the safety of the most primitive community, even as it does that of the most cultured. Even the individuals became less watchful and alert so that one might have thought Numa and Saber and Sheeta entirely deleted from the scheme of things. The shees and the balloos roamed unguarded through the selen jungle while a greedy male's forage far afield, and thus it was that Tica and Ghazan, her balloo, hunted upon the extreme southern edge of the tribe with no great male near them. Still farther south there moved through the forest a sinister figure, a huge bull-ape maddened by solitude and defeat. A week before he had contended for the kingship of a tribe far distant, now battered and still sore, he roamed the wilderness and outcast. Later he might return to his own tribe and submit to the will of the hairy brute he had attempted to dethrone. But for the time being he dared not do so, since he had sought not only the crown, but the wives as well of his lord and master. It would require an entire moon at least to bring forgetfulness to him he had wronged, and so Tug wandered a strange jungle, grim, terrible, hate-filled. It was in this mental state that Tug came unexpectedly upon a young shee feeding alone in the jungle, a stranger shee, live and strong and beautiful beyond compare. Tug caught his breath and slunk quickly to one side of the trail where the dense foliage of the tropical underbrush concealed him from Tica while permitting him to feast his eyes upon her loveliness. But not alone were they concerned with Tica, they roved the surrounding jungle in search of the bulls and cows and balus of her tribe, though principally for the bulls. When one covets a shee of an alien tribe one must take into consideration the great fierce hairy guardians who seldom wander far from their wards and who will fight a stranger to death in protection of the mate or offspring of a fellow precisely as they would fight for their own. Tug could see no sign of any ape other than the strange shee and a young baloo playing nearby. His wicked, bloodshot eyes half closed as they rested upon the charms of the former, as for the baloo one snap of those great jaws upon the back of its little neck would prevent it from raising any unnecessary alarm. Tug was a fine big male resembling in many ways Tica's mate Tug. Each was in his prime and each was wonderfully muscled, perfectly fanged and as horrifyingly ferocious as the most exacting and particular shee could wish. Had two been of her own tribe Tica might as readily have yielded to him as to Tug when her mating time arrived. But now she was Tug's and no other male could claim her without first defeating Tug in personal combat. And even then Tica retained some rights in the matter. If she did not favor a correspondent she could enter the list with her rightful mate and do her part toward discouraging his advances. A part two which would prove no mean assistance to her lord and master, for Tica, even though her fangs were smaller than a male's, could use them to excellent effect. Just now Tica was occupied in a fascinating search for beetles to the exclusion of all else. She did not realize how far she and Gasson had become separated from the balance of the tribe, nor were her defensive senses upon the alert as they should have been. Months of immunity from danger under the protecting watchfulness of the centuries which Tarzan had taught the tribe to post had lulled them all into a sense of peaceful security based on that fallacy which has wrecked many enlightened communities in the past and will continue to wreck others in the future. That because they have not been attacked they never will be. Tug, having satisfied himself that only the she and her Balu were in the immediate vicinity, crept stealthily forward. Tica's back was toward him when he finally rushed upon her. But her senses were at last awakened to the presence of danger and she wheeled to face the strange bull just before he reached her. Tug halted a few paces from her. His anger had fled before the seductive feminine charms of the stranger. He made conciliatory noises, a species of clucking sound with his broad, flat lips, that were too not greatly dissimilar to that which might be produced in an ausculatory solo. But Tica only bared her fangs and growled. Little Gasson started to run toward his mother, but she warned him away with a quick CREOG, telling him to run high into a tall tree. Evidently Tica was not favorably impressed by her new suitor. Tug realized this and altered his methods accordingly. He swelled his giant chest, beat upon it with his callous knuckles, and swaggered to and fro before her. I am Tug, he boasted, look at my fighting fangs, look at my great arms and my mighty legs. With one bite I can slay your biggest bull. Alone I have slain Sheetah. I am Tug, Tug wants you. Then he waited for the effect, nor did he have long to wait. Tica turned with a swiftness which belied her great weight, and bolted in the opposite direction. Tug, with an angry growl, leaped in pursuit. But the smaller, lighter female was too fleet for him. He chased her for a few yards, and then, foaming and barking, he halted, and beat upon the ground with his hard fists. From the tree above him Little Gasson looked down and witnessed the stranger bull's discomforture. Being young and thinking himself safe above the reach of the heavy mail, Gasson screamed an ill-timed insult at their tormentor. Tug looked up. Tica had halted at a little distance. She would not go far from her baloo. That Tug quickly realized and as quickly determined to take advantage of. He saw that the tree in which the young ape squatted was isolated, and that Gasson could not reach another without coming to earth. He would obtain the mother through her love for her young. He swung himself into the lower branches of the tree. Little Gasson ceased to insult him, his expression of devil-tree chains to one of apprehension, which was quickly followed by fear as Tug commenced to ascend toward him. Tica screamed to Gasson to climb higher, and the little fellow scampered upward among the tiny branches which would not support the weight of the great bull, but nevertheless Tug kept on climbing. Tica was not fearful. She knew that he could not ascend far enough to reach Gasson, so she sat at a little distance from the tree and applied jungle of probrium to him. Being a female, she was a past master of the art. But she did not know the malevolent cunning of Tug's little brain. She took it for granted that the bull would climb as high as he could toward Gasson, and then finding that he could not reach him, resumed his pursuit of her, which she knew would prove equally fruitless. So sure was she of the safety of her baloo and her own ability to take care of herself that she did not voice the cry for help which would soon have brought the other members of the tribe flocking to her side. Tug slowly reached the limit to which he dared risk his great weight to the slender branches. Gasson was still fifteen feet above him. The bull braced himself and seized the main branch in his powerful hands. Then he commenced shaking it vigorously. Tica was appalled. Suddenly she realized what the bull proposed. Gasson clung far out upon a swaying limb. At the first shake he lost his balance, though he did not quite fall, clinging still with his forehands. But Tug redoubled his efforts. The shaking produced a violent snapping of the limb to which the young ape clung. Tica saw all too plainly what the outcome must be, and forgetting her own danger in the depth of her mother-love, rushed forward to ascend the tree and give battle to the fearsome creature that menaced the life of her little one. But before ever she reached the bull, Tug had succeeded by violent shaking of the branch to loosen Gasson's hold. With a cry the little fellow plunged down through the foliage, clutching futilely for a new hold and alighted with a sickening thud at his mother's feet where he lay silent and motionless. Moning Tica stooped to lift the still form in her arms, but at the same instant Tug was upon her. Struggling and biting she fought to free herself, but the giant muscles of the great bull were too much for her lesser strength. Tug struck and choked her repeatedly until finally, half unconscious, she lapsed into quasi-submission. Then the bull lifted her to his shoulder and turned back to the trail toward the south from whence he had come. On the ground lay the quiet form of little Gasson. He did not moan, he did not move. The sun rose slowly toward Meridian. A mangy thing, lifting its nose to scent the jungle breeze, crept through the underbrush. It was dango the hyena. Presently its ugly muzzle broke through some nearby foliage and its cruel eyes fastened upon Gasson. Early that morning Tarzan of the Apes had gone to the cabin by the sea, where he passed many an hour at such times as the tribe was ranging in the vicinity. On the floor lay the skeleton of a man, all that remained of the former Lord Grey Stoke, lay as it had fallen some twenty years before when Kurchak the Great Ape had thrown it lifeless there. Long cents had the termites and the small rodents picked clean the sturdy English bones. For years Tarzan had seen it lying there, giving it no more attention than he gave the countless thousand bones that strewed his jungle haunts. On the bed another smaller skeleton reposed and the youth ignored it as he ignored the other. How could he know that the one had been his father, the other his mother? The little pile of bones in the rude cradle fashioned with such loving care by the former Lord Grey Stoke meant nothing to him, that one day that little skull was to help prove his right to a proud title was as far beyond his ken as the satellites of the Sons of Orion. To Tarzan they were bones, just bones. He did not need them, for there was no meat left upon them, and they were not in his way, for he knew no necessity for a bed, and the skeleton upon the floor he easily could step over. Today he was restless. He turned the pages first of one book and then of another. He glanced at pictures which he knew by heart and tossed the books aside. He rummaged for the thousandth time in the cupboard. He took out a bag which contained several small round pieces of metal. He had played with them many times in the years gone by, but always he replaced them carefully in the bag and the bag in the cupboard, upon the very shelf where first he had discovered it. In strange ways did heredity manifest itself in the ape-man. Come of an orderly race he himself was orderly without knowing why. The apes drop things wherever they are interested in them waned in the tall grass or from the high flung branches of the trees. What they dropped they sometimes found again by accident. But not so the ways of Tarzan. For his few belongings he had a place, and scrupulously he returned each thing to its proper place when he was done with it. The round pieces of metal in the little bag always interested him. Raised pictures were upon either side, the meaning of which he did not quite understand. The pieces were bright and shiny. It amused him to arrange them in various figures upon the table. Hundreds of times had he played thus. Today while so engaged he dropped a lovely yellow piece, an English sovereign, which rolled beneath the bed where lay all that was mortal of the once-beautiful Lady Alice. True to form Tarzan at once dropped to his hands and knees and searched beneath the bed for the lost gold piece. Strange as it might appear he had never before looked beneath the bed. He found the gold piece and something else he found too. A small wooden box with a loose cover. Bringing them both out he returned the sovereign to its bag and the bag to its shelf within the cupboard. Then he investigated the box. It contained a quantity of cylindrical bits of metal, cone shaped at one end and flat at the other, with a projecting rim. They were all quite green and dull, coated with years of verdigree. Tarzan removed a handful of them from the box and examined them. He rubbed one upon another and discovered that the green came off, leaving a shiny surface for two-thirds of their length and a dull gray over the cone-shaped end. Finding a bit of wood he rubbed one of the cylinders rapidly and was rewarded by a lustrous sheen which pleased him. At his side hung a pocket pouch taken from the body of one of the numerous black warriors he had slain. Into this pouch he put a handful of the new play things, thinking to polish them at his leisure. Then he replaced the box beneath the bed, and finding nothing more to amuse him left the cabin and started back in the direction of the tribe. Shortly before he reached them he heard a great commotion ahead of him, the loud screams of sheaves and balloos, the savage angry barking and growling of the great bulls. Instantly he increased his speed for the krigos that came to his ears warned him that something was amiss with his fellows. While Tarzan had been occupied with his own devices in the cabin of his dead sire, Tog, Tika's mighty mate, had been hunting a mile to the north of the tribe. At last his belly filled he had turned lazily back toward the clearing where he had last seen the tribe, and presently commenced passing its members scattered alone or in twos or threes. Nowhere did he see Tika or Gazan, and soon he began inquiring of the other apes where they might be, but none had seen them recently. Now the lore orders are not highly imaginative. They do not, as you and I, paint vivid menzel pictures of things which might have occurred, and so Tog did not now apprehend that any misfortune had overtaken his mate in their offspring. He merely knew that he wished to find Tika, that he might lie down in the shade and have her scratch his back while his breakfast digested. But though he called to her and searched for her and asked each whom he met he could find no trace of Tika nor of Gazan either. He was beginning to become peeved, and had about made up his mind to chastise Tika for wandering so far afield when he wanted her. He was moving south along a game-trail, his calloused soles and knuckles giving forth no sound, when he came upon dango at the opposite side of a small clearing. The eater of Caryon did not see Tog, for all his eyes were for something which lay in the grass beneath a tree, something upon which he was sneaking with the cautious stealth of his breed. Tog always cautious himself, as it be whose one to be who fares up and down the jungle and desires to survive, swung noiselessly into a tree where he could have a better view of the clearing. He did not fear dango, but he wanted to see what it was that dango stalk. In a way possibly he was actuated as much by curiosity as by caution. And when Tog reached a place in the branches from which he could have an unobstructed view of the clearing, he saw dango already sniffing at something directly beneath him, something which Tog instantly recognized as the lifeless form of his little Gazan. With a cry so frightful, so bestial, that it momentarily paralyzed the startled dango, the great ape launched his mighty bulk upon the surprised hyena, with a cry and a snarl dango crushed to earth, turned to terrorities assailant, but as effectively might a sparrow turn upon a hawk. Tog's great and gnarled fingers closed upon the hyena's throat and back, his jaws snapped once on the mangy neck, crushing the vertebrae, and then he hurled the dead body contemptuously aside. Again he raised his voice in the call of the bull-ape to its mate, but there was no reply. Then he leaned down to sniff at the body of Gazan. In the breast of this savage hideous beast there beat a heart which was moved, however slightly, by the same emotions of paternal love which affect us. Even had we no actual evidence of this, we must know it still, since only thus might be explained the survival of the human race in which the jealousy and selfishness of the bulls would, in the earliest stages of the race, have wiped out the young as rapidly as they were brought into the world, had not God implanted in the savage bosom that paternal love which evidences itself most strongly in the protective instinct of the male. In Tog the protective instinct was not alone highly developed, but affection for his offspring as well. For Tog was an unusually intelligent specimen of these great man-like apes which the natives of the Gobi speak of in whispers, but which no white man ever had seen, or if seeing lived to tell of until Tarzan of the apes came among them. And so Tog felt sorrow as any other father might feel sorrow at the loss of a little child. To you, little Gazan, might have seen a hideous and repulsive creature, but to Tog and Tikka he was as beautiful and as cute as is your little Mary or Johnny or Elizabethan to you. And he was their firstborn, their only baloo, and a he, three things which might make a young ape the apple of any fond father's eye. For a moment Tog sniffed at the quiet little form. With his muzzle and his tongue he smoothed and caressed the rumpled coat. From his savage lips broke a low moan, but quickly upon the heels of sorrow came the overmastering desire for revenge. Leaping to his feet he screamed out a volley of krigaws, punctuated from time to time by the blood-freezing cry of an angry, challenging bull, a rage-mad bull with the blood less strong upon him. Answering his cries came the cries of the tribe as they swung through the trees toward him. It was these that Tarzan heard on his return from his cabin, and in reply to them he raised his own voice and hurried forward with increased speed until he fairly flew through the middle terraces of the forest. When at last he came upon the tribe he saw their members gathered about Tog and something which lay quietly upon the ground. Dropping among them Tarzan approached the center of the group. Tog was stiff, roaring out his challenges, but when he saw Tarzan he ceased and stooping picked up gas in his arms and held him out for Tarzan to see. Of all the bulls of the tribe, Tog held affection for Tarzan only. Tarzan he trusted and looked up to as one wiser and more cunning. To Tarzan he came now, to the playmate of his Balu days, the companion of innumerable battles of his maturity. When Tarzan saw the still form in Tog's arms a low growl broke from his lips, for he too loved Tika's little Balu. "'Who did it?' he asked. "'Where is Tika?' "'I do not know,' replied Tog. "'I found him lying here with dango about to feed upon him, but it was not dango that did it. There are no fang marks upon him.' Tarzan came closer and placed an ear against Gazan's breast. "'He is not dead,' he said. "'Maybe he will not die.' He pressed through the crowd of apes and circled once about them, examining the ground step by step. Suddenly he stopped, and placing his nose close to the earth, sniffed. Then he sprang to his feet, giving a peculiar cry. Tog and the others pressed forward, for the sound told him that the hunter had found the spore of his quarry. "'A stranger bull has been here,' said Tarzan. "'It was he that hurt Gazan. He has carried off Tika. Tog and the other bulls commenced a roar and threatened, but they did nothing. Had the stranger bull been within sight, they would have torn him to pieces, but it did not occur to them to follow him. "'If the three bulls had been watching around the tribe, this would not have happened,' said Tarzan. "'Such things will happen as long as you do not keep the three bulls watching for an enemy. The jungle is full of enemies, and yet you let your shees and your balloos feed where they will, alone and unprotected. Tarzan goes now. He goes to find Tika and bring her back to the tribe. The idea appealed to the other bulls. "'We will all go,' they cried. "'No,' said Tarzan, "'you will not go. You cannot take shees and balloos when we go out to hunt and fight. You must remain to guard them, or you will lose them all.' They scratched their heads. The wisdom of his advice was dawning upon them, but at first they had been carried away by the new idea, the idea of following up an enemy offender to rest his prize from him and punish him. The community instinct was ingrained in their characters through ages of custom. They did not know why they had not thought to pursue and punish the offender. They could not know that it was because they had as yet not reached a mental plane which would permit them to work as individuals. In times of stress the community instinct sent them huddling into a compact herd where the great bulls, by the weight of their combined strength and ferocity, could best protect them from an enemy. The idea of separating to do battle with a foe had not yet occurred to them. It was too foreign to custom, too inimical to community interest, but to Tarzan it was the first and most natural thought. His senses told him that there was but a single bull connected with the attack upon Tikka and Degasin. A single enemy did not require the entire tribe for his punishment. Two swift bulls could quickly overhaul him and rescue Tikka. In the past no one ever had thought to go forth in search of the sheaves that were occasionally stolen from the tribe. If Numa, Sabor, Sheeta, or a wandering bully from another tribe, chance to carry off a maid or a matron while no one was looking, that was the end of it. She was gone. That was all. The bereaved husband, if the victim chance to have been mated, growled around for a day or two and then, if he were strong enough, took another mate within the tribe, and if not, wandered far into the jungle on the chance of stealing one from another community. In the past Tarzan of the Apes had condoned this practice for the reason that he had had no interest in those who had been stolen, but Tikka had been his first love, and Tikka's balu held a place in his heart such as a balu of his own would have held. Just once before had Tarzan wished to follow and revenge. That had been years before when Kulonga, the son of Mabonga the chief, had slain Kayla. Then single-handed Tarzan had pursued and avenged. Now, though to a lesser degree, he was moved by the same passion. He turned toward Tog. Leave Ghazan with Mamga, he said. She is old, and her fangs are broken, and she is no good, but she can take care of Ghazan until we return with Tikka, and if Ghazan is dead when we come back, he turned to address Mamga, I will kill you too. Where are we going? asked Tog. We are going to get Tikka, replied the eight man, and kill the bull who has stolen her. Come! He turned again to the spore of the stranger bull which showed plainly to his train senses, nor did he glance back to note if Tog followed. The latter laid Ghazan in Mamga's arms with a parting, if he dies Tarzan will kill you, and he followed after the brown-skinned figure that already was moving at a slow trot along the jungle trail. No other bull of the tribe of Kerchak was so good a trailer as Tarzan, for his train senses were aided by a high order of intelligence. His judgment told him the natural trail for a quarry to follow, so that he need but note the most apparent marks upon the way, and today the trail of Tog was as plain to him as type upon a printed page to you or me. Following close behind the lithe figure of the eight man came the huge and shaggy bull-ape. No words passed between them. They moved as silently as two shadows among the myriad shadows of the forest. Alert as his eyes and ears was Tarzan's patrician nose. The spore was fresh, and now that they had passed from the range of the strong ape-order of the tribe he had little difficulty in following Tug and Tikka by scent alone. Tikka's familiar scent spore told both Tarzan and Tog that they were upon her trail, and soon the scent of Tug became as familiar as the other. They were progressing rapidly when suddenly dense clouds overcast the sun. Tarzan accelerated his pace. Now he fairly flew along the jungle trail, or where Tug had taken to the trees followed nimbly as a squirrel along the bending, undulating pathway of the foliage branches, swinging from tree to tree as Tug had swung before them, but more rapidly because they were not handicapped by a burden such as Tug's. Tarzan felt that they must be almost upon the quarry, for the scent spore was becoming stronger and stronger when the jungle was suddenly shot by livid lightning and a deafening roar of thunder reverberated through the heavens and the forest until the earth trembled and shook. Then came the rain, not as it comes to us of the temperate zones, but as a mighty avalanche of water, a deluge which spilled tons instead of drops upon the bending forest giants and the terrified creatures which haunt their shade. And the rain did what Tarzan knew that it would do. It wiped the spore of the quarry from the face of the earth. For a half hour the torrents fell, then the sun burst forth, dueling the forest with a million scintillant gems. But today the ape-man, usually alert to the changing wonders of the jungle, saw them not. Only the fact that the spore of Tikka and her abductor was obliterated found lodgement in his thoughts. Even among the branches of the trees there are well-worn trails, just as there are trails upon the surface of the ground. But in the trees they branch and cross more often, since the way is more open than among the dense undergrowth at the surface. Along one of these well-marked trails Tarzan and Tug continued after the rain had ceased, because the ape-man knew that this was the most logical path for the thief to follow. But when they came to a fort they were at a loss. Here they halted, while Tarzan examined every branch and leaf which might have been touched by the fleeing ape. He sniffed the bowl of the tree, and with his keen eyes he sought to find upon the bark some sign of the way the quarry had taken. It was slow work, and all the time Tarzan knew the bowl of the alien tribe was forging steadily away from them, gaining precious minutes that might carry him to safety before they could catch up with him. First along one fork he went, and then another, applying every test that his wonderful jungle-craft was cognizant of, but again and again he was baffled, for the scent had been washed away by the heavy downpour in every exposed place. For a half hour Tarzan and Tog searched, and till at last upon the bottom of a broad leaf Tarzan's keen nose caught the faint trace of the scent spore of Tug, where the leaf had brushed a hairy shoulder as the great ape passed through the foliage. Once again the Tug took up the trail, but it was slow work now, and there were many discouraging delays when the spore seemed lost beyond recovery. To you or me there would have been no spore, even before the coming of the rain, except possibly where Tug had come to earth and followed a game-trail. In such places the imprint of a huge hand-like foot and the knuckles of one great hand were sometimes plain enough for an ordinary mortal to read. Tarzan knew from these and other indications that the ape was yet carrying Tikka, the depth of the imprint of his feet indicated a much greater weight than that of any of the larger bolts, for they were made under the combined weight of Tug and Tikka, while the fact that the knuckles of but one hand touched the ground at any time showed that the other hand was occupied in some other business, the business of holding the prisoner to a hairy shoulder. Tarzan could follow in sheltered places the changing of the burden from one shoulder to another, as indicated by the deepening of the foot imprint upon the side of the load and the changing of the knuckle imprints from one side of the trail to the other. There were stretches along the surface paths where the ape had gone for considerable distances entirely erect upon his hind feet, walking as a man walks, but the same might have been true of any of the great anthropoids of the same species, for unlike the chimpanzee and the gorilla, they walk without the aid of their hands quite as readily as with. It was such things, however, which helped to identify to Tarzan and to Tug the appearance of the abductor, and with his individual scent characteristic already indelibly impressed upon their memories, they were in a far better position to know him when they came upon him, even should he have disposed of Tikka before, than is a modern sleuth with his photographs and Bertilin measurements equipped to recognize a fugitive from civilized justice, but with all their high strung and delicately attuned perceptive faculties the two bulls of the tribe of Kerchak were often sore-pressed to follow the trail at all, and at best were so delayed that in the afternoon of the second day they still had not overhauled the fugitive. The scent was now strong for it had been made since the rain, and Tarzan knew that it would not be long before they came upon the thief and his loot. Above them, as they crept stealthily forward, chattered Manu, the monkey, and his thousand fellows, squawked and screamed the brazen-throated birds of plumage, buzzed and hummed the countless insects amid the rustling of the forest leaves, and as they passed a little gray beard, squeaking and scolding upon a swaying branch, looked down and saw them. Instantly the scolding and squeaking ceased, and off tore the long-tailed mite as though sheath of the panther had been endowed with wings and was in close pursuit of him. To all appearances he was only a very much frightened little monkey fleeing for his life. There seemed nothing sinister about him. And what of Tikka, during all this time, was she at last resigned to her fate and accompanying her new mate in the proper humility of a loving and tractable spouse? A single glance at the pair would have answered these questions to the utter satisfaction of the most captious. She was torn and bleeding from many wounds inflicted by the sullen toogh in his vain efforts to subdue her to his will. And toogh too was disfigured and mutilated, but with stubborn ferocity he still clung to his now useless prize. On through the jungle he forced his way in the direction of the stamping ground of his tribe. He hoped that his king would have forgotten his treason, but if not he was still resigned to his fate. Any fate would be better than suffering longer the sole companionship of this frightful shee, and then too he wished to exhibit his captive to his fellows. Maybe he could wish her on the king. It is possible that such a thought urged him on. At last they came upon two bulls feeding in a park-like grove. A beautiful grove dotted with huge boulders, half embedded in the rich loam, mute monuments possibly to a forgotten age when mighty glaciers rolled their slow course, where now a torrid sun beats down upon a tropic jungle. The two bulls looked up, bearing long fighting fangs as toogh appeared in the distance. The latter recognized the two as friends. It is toogh, he growled. Toogh has come back with a new shee. The apes waited his nearer approach. Tika turned a snarling fanged face toward them. She was not pretty to look upon, yet through the blood and hatred upon her countenance they realized that she was beautiful, and they envied Toogh. Alas they did not know Tika. As they squatted, looking at one another, their race through the trees toward them a long-tailed little monkey with gray whiskers. He was a very excited little monkey when he came to a halt upon the limb of a tree directly overhead. Two strange bulls come, he cried. One is a mangany, the other a hideous ape without hair upon his body. They follow the spore of Toogh. I saw them. The four apes turned their eyes backward along the trail Toogh had just come. Then they looked at one another for a minute. Come, said the larger of Toogh's two friends. We will wait for the strangers in the thick bushes beyond the clearing. He turned and waddled away across the open place, the others following him. The little monkey danced about, all excitement. His chief diversion in life was to bring about bloody encounters between the larger denizens of the forest that he might sit in the safety of the trees and witness the spectacles. He was a glutton for gore, was this little whiskered grey monkey, so long as it was the gore of others, a typical fight fan was the grey beard. The apes hid themselves in the shrubbery beside the trail along which the two stranger bulls would pass. Tika trembled with excitement. She had heard the words of Manu, and she knew that the hairless ape must be Tarzan, while the other was doubtless Toogh. Never in her wildest hopes had she expected sucker of this sort. Her one thought had been to escape and find her way back to the tribe of Kerchak, but even this had appeared to her practically impossible, so closely did Toogh watch her. As Toogh and Tarzan reached the grove where Toogh had come upon his friends, the ape scent became so strong that both knew the quarry was but a short distance ahead, and so they went even more cautiously, for they wished to come upon the thief from behind, if they could, and charge him before he was aware of their presence. That a little grey whiskered monkey had forestalled them they did not know, nor that three pairs of savagized were already watching their every move and waiting for them to come within reach of itching paws and slavering jowls. On they came across the grove, and as they entered the path leading into the dense jungle beyond, a sudden Kriogh shilled out close before them, a Kriogh in the familiar voice of Tika. The small brains of Toogh and his companions had not been able to foresee that Tika might betray them, and now that she had they went wild with rage. Toogh struck the shea mighty blow that felled her, and then the three rushed forth to do battle with Tarzan and Toogh. The little monkey danced upon his perch and screamed with delight, and indeed he might well be delighted, for it was a lovely fight. There were no preliminaries, no formalities, no introductions. The five bulls merely charged and clinched. They rolled in the narrow trail into the thick verger beside it. They bet and clawed and scratched and struck, and all the while they kept up the most frightful chorus of growlings and barkings and roaring. In five minutes they were torn and bleeding, and the little greybeard leaped high, shrilling his primate bravows, but always his attitude was thumbs down. He wanted to see something killed. He did not care whether it were friend or foe. It was blood he wanted, blood and death. Toogh had been set upon by Toogh and another of the apes while Tarzan had the third, a huge brute with the strength of a buffalo. Never before had Tarzan's assailant beheld so strange a creature as this slippery, hairless bull with which he battled. Sweat and blood covered Tarzan's sleek brown hide. Again and again he slipped from the clutches of the great bull, and all the while he struggled to free his hunting-knife from the scabbard in which it had stuck. At length he succeeded. A brown hand shot out and clutched a hairy throat. Another flew upward, clutching the sharp blade. Three swift, powerful strokes and the bull relaxed with a groan, falling limp beneath his antagonist. Instantly Tarzan broke from the clutches of the dying bull and sprang to Toogh's assistance. Toogh saw him coming and wheeled to meet him. In the impact of the charge Tarzan's knife was wrenched from his hand and then Toogh closed with him. Now was the battle even, two against two, while on the verge Tika now recovered from the blow that had felled her, slunk waiting for an opportunity to aid. She saw Tarzan's knife and picked it up. She never had used it, but knew how Tarzan used it. Always had she been afraid of the thing which dealt death to the mightiest of the jungle people with the ease that Tarzan's great tusks dealt death to Tantor's enemies. She saw Tarzan's pocket pouch torn from his side, and with the curiosity of an ape that even danger and excitement cannot entirely dispel, she picked this up too. Now the bulls were standing, the clenches had been broken, blood streamed down their sides. Their faces were crimsoned with it. Little Greybeard was so fascinated that at last he had even forgotten to scream and dance, but sat rigid with the light in the enjoyment of the spectacle. Back across the grove Tarzan and Tog forced their adversaries. Tika followed slowly. She scarce knew what to do. She was lame and sore and exhausted from the frightful ordeal through which she had passed, and she had the confidence of her sex in the prowess of her mate and the other bull of her tribe. They would not need the help of a she in their battle with these two strangers. The roars and screams of the fighters reverberated through the jungle, awakening the echoes in the distant hills. From the throat of Tarzan's antagonist had come a score of CREOGS, and now for behind came the reply he had awaited. Into the grove barking and growling came a score of huge bull apes, the fighting men of Tug's tribe. Tika saw them first and screamed a warning to Tarzan and Tog. Then she fled past the fighters toward the opposite side of the clearing, fear for a moment claiming her, nor can one censure her after the frightful ordeal from which she was still suffering. Down upon them came the great apes. In a moment Tarzan and Tog would be torn to shreds. That would later form the peace-day resistance of the savagery orgy of a dumb dumb. Tika turned a glance back. She saw the impending fate of her defenders, and their sprung to life in her savage bosom the spark of martyrdom that some common forebearer had transmitted the like to Tika, the wild ape, and the glorious women of a higher order who have invited death for their men. With a shrill scream she ran toward the battlers who were rolling in a great mass at the foot of one of the huge boulders which dotted the grove. But what could she do? The knife she held she could not use to advantage because of her lesser strength. She had seen Tarzan throw missiles, and she had learned this with many other things from her childhood playmate. She sought for something to throw, and at last her fingers touched upon the hard objects in the pouch that had been torn from the ape-man. Tearing the receptacle open she gathered a handful of shiny cylinders, heavy for their size they seemed to her, and good missiles. With all her strength she hurled them at the apes battling in front of the granite boulder. The result surprised Tika quite as much as it did the apes. There was a loud explosion which deafened the fighters, and a puff of acrid smoke never before had one there heard such a frightful noise. Screaming with terror the stranger bulls leaped to their feet and fled back toward the stamping grounds of their tribe, while Tog and Tarzan slowly gathered themselves together at a rose, lame and bleeding to their feet. They too would have fled had they not seen Tika standing there before them, the knife and the pocket pouch in her hands. What was it? asked Tarzan. Tika shook her head. I hurled these things at the stranger bulls. And she held forth another handful of the shiny metal cylinders with the dull gray cone-shaped ends. Tarzan looked at them and scratched his head. What are they? asked Tog. I do not know, said Tarzan. I found them. The little monkey with the gray beard halted among the trees a mile away and huddled, terrified, against a branch. He did not know that the dead father of Tarzan of the apes, reaching back out of the past across the span of twenty years, had saved his son's life, nor did Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, know it either. CHAPTER XI A JUNGLE JOKE Time seldom hung heavily upon Tarzan's hands, even when there is sameness there cannot be monotony if most of the sameness consists in dodging death first in one form and then in another, or in inflicting death upon others. There is a spice to such an existence, but even this Tarzan of the apes varied in activities of his own invention. He was full grown now, with the grace of a Greek god, and the thews of a bull, and by all the tenets of apedom should have been sullen, morose, and brooding. But he was not. His spirits seemed not to age at all. He was still a playful child, much to the discomforture of his fellow apes. They could not understand him or his ways, for with maturity they quickly forgot their youth and its pastimes. Nor could Tarzan quite understand them. It seemed strange to him that a few moons since he had roped hog about an ankle and dragged him, screaming through the tall jungle grasses, and then rolled and tumbled in good-natured mimic battle when the young ape had freed himself, and that today when he had come up behind the same tog and pulled him over backward upon the turf, instead of the playful young ape, a great snarling beast had whirled and leaped for his throat. Easily Tarzan eluded the charge, and quickly Tog's anger banished, though it was not replaced with playfulness. Yet the ape-man realized that Tog was not amused, nor was he amusing. The big bull seemed to have lost whatever sense of humor he once may have possessed. With a grunt of disappointment, young Lord Grastote turned to other fields of endeavor. A strand of black hair fell across one eye. He brushed it aside with the palm of a hand and a toss of his head. It suggested something to do, so he sought his quiver which lay cast in the hollow bowl of a lightening ribbon tree. Removing the arrows he turned the quiver upside down, emptying upon the ground the contents of its bottom, his few treasures. Among them was a flat bit of stone and a shell which he had picked up from the beach near his father's cabin. With great care he rubbed the edge of the shell back and forth upon the flat stone, until the soft edge was quite fine and sharp. He worked much as a barber does who hones a razor, and with every evidence of similar practice. But his proficiency was the result of years of painstaking effort. Unaided he had worked out a method of his own for putting an edge upon the shell. He even tested it with the ball of his thumb, and when it met with his approval he grasped a wisp of hair which fell across his eyes, grasped it between the thumb and first finger of his left hand, and sawed upon it with the sharpened shell until it was severed. All around his head he went until his black shock was rudely bobbed with a ragged bang in front. For the appearance of it he cared nothing, but in the matter of safety and comfort it meant everything. A lock of hair falling in one's eyes at the wrong moment might mean all the difference between life and death, while straggly strands hanging down one's back were most uncomfortable, especially when wet with dew or rain or perspiration. As Tarzan labored at his tensorial task, his active mind was busy with many things. He recalled his recent battle with Bolgani the gorilla, the wounds of which were but just healed. He pondered the strange sleep adventures of his first dreams, and he smiled at the painful outcome of his last practical joke upon the tribe when dressed in the height of Numa the lion he had come roaring upon them only to be leaped upon and almost killed by the great bulls whom he had taught how to defend themselves from an attack of their ancient enemy. His hair lopped off to his entire satisfaction, and seeing no possibility of pleasure in the company of the tribe, Tarzan swung leisurely into the trees and set off in the direction of his cabin. But when partway there his attention was attracted by a strong sense for coming from the north. It was the scent of the Gomangani. Curiosity, that best-developed common heritage of man and ape, always prompted Tarzan to investigate where the Gomangani were concerned. There was that about them which aroused his imagination. Possibly it was because of the diversity of their activities and interests. The apes lived to eat and sleep and propagate. The same was true of all the other denizens of the jungle, save the Gomangani. These black fellows danced and sang, scratched around in the earth from which they had cleared the trees and underbrush. They watched things grow, and when they had ripened they cut them down and put them in straw-thatched huts. They made bows and spears and arrows, poison, cooking pots, things of metal to wear around their arms and legs. If it hadn't been for their black faces, their hideously disfigured features, and the fact that one of them had slain Kayla, Tarzan might have wished to be one of them. At least he sometimes thought so. But always at the thought there rose within him a strange revulsion of feeling which he could not interpret or understand. He simply knew that he hated the Gomangani, and that he would rather be Hista the snake than one of these. But their ways were interesting, and Tarzan never tired of spying upon them, and from them he learned much more than he realized, though always his principal thought was of some new way in which he could render their lives miserable. The baiting of the blacks was Tarzan's chief divertissement. Tarzan realized now that the blacks were very near, and that there were many of them, so he went silently and with great caution. Noiselessly he moved through the lush grasses of the open spaces, and where the forest was dense, swung from one swaying branch to another, or leaped lightly over tangled masses of fallen trees where there was no way through the loritaruses, and the ground was choked and impassable. And so presently he came with insight of the black warriors of Mabonga the chief. They were engaged in a pursuit with which Tarzan was more or less familiar, having watched them at it upon other occasions. They were placing and baiting a trap for Numa the Lion. In a cage upon wheels they were tying a kid, so fastening it that when Numa seized the unfortunate creature the door of the cage would drop behind him making him a prisoner. These things the blacks had learned in their old home before they escaped through the untracked jungle to their new village. Formerly they had dwelt in the Belgian Congo until the cruelties of their heartless oppressors had driven them to seek the safety of unexplored solitudes beyond the boundaries of Leopold's domain. In their old life they often had trapped animals for the agents of European dealers, and had learned from them certain tricks such as this one which permitted them to capture even Numa without injuring him and to transport him in safety and with comparative ease to their village. No longer was there a white market for their savage wares, but there was still a sufficient incentive for the taking of Numa alive. First was the necessity for ridding the jungle of man-eaters, and it was only after depredations by these grim and terrible scourges that a lion-hunt was organized. Secondarily was the excuse for an orgy of celebration was the hunt successful and the fact that such feats were rendered doubly pleasurable by the presence of a live creature that might be put to death by torture. Tarzan had witnessed these cruel rites in the past. Being himself more savage than the savage warriors of the Gomongani, he was not so shocked by the cruelty of them as he should have been. Yet they did shock him. He could not understand the strange feeling of revulsion which possessed him at such times. He had no love for Numa the lion, yet he bristled with rage when the blacks inflicted upon his enemy such indignities and cruelties as only the mind of the one creature molded in the image of God can conceive. Upon two occasions he had freed Numa from the trap before the blacks had returned to discover the success or failure of their venture. He would do the same to-day. That he decided immediately he realized the nature of their intentions. Leaving the trap in the center of a broad elephant trail near the drinking-hole, the warriors turned back toward their village. On the morrow they would come again. Tarzan looked after them, upon his lips an unconscious sneer, the heritage of unguessed caste. He saw them file along the broad trail, beneath the overhanging verger of leafy branch, and looped in festoon creepers, brushing ebb and shoulders against gorgeous blooms which, inscrutable nature, has seen fit to lavish most profusely farthest from the eye of man. As Tarzan watched through narrowed lids, the last of the warriors disappear beyond the turn in the trail, his expression altered to the urge of a newborn thought. A slow grim smile touched his lips. He looked down upon the frightened, bleating kid, advertising in its fear and its innocence, its presence and its helplessness. Dropping to the ground, Tarzan approached the trap and entered, without disturbing the fibre cord which was adjusted to drop the door at the proper time, he loosened the living bait, tucked it under an arm, and stepped out of the cage. With his hunting-knife he quieted the frightened animal, severing its jugular. Then he dragged it, bleeding along the trail down to the drinking-hole, the half-smile persisting upon his ordinarily grave face. At the water's edge the ape-man stooped, and with hunting-knife and quick-strong fingers deftly removed the dead kid's viscera. Scraping a hole in the mud he buried these parts which he did not eat, and swinging the body to his shoulder, took to the trees. For a short distance he pursued his way in the wake of the Black Warriors, coming down presently to bury the meat of his kill where it would be safe from the depredations of Dango the hyena, or the other meat-eating beasts and birds of the jungle. He was hungry. Had he been all-beast he would have eaten, but his man-mind could entertain urges even more potent than those of the belly, and now he was concerned with an idea which kept a smile upon his lips and his eyes sparkling in anticipation. An idea it was which permitted him to forget that he was hungry. The meat safely cashed, Tarzan trotted along the elephant trail after the Gomangani. Two or three miles from the cage he overtook them, and then he swung into the trees and followed above and behind them, waiting his chance. Among the Blacks was Roba Kega, the witch-doctor. Tarzan hated them all, but Roba Kega he especially hated. As the Blacks filed along the winding path, Roba Kega, being lazy, dropped behind. This Tarzan noted, and it filled him with satisfaction, his being radiated aggrim and terrible content. Like an angel of death he hovered above the unsuspecting Black. Roba Kega, annoying that the village was by a short distance ahead, sat down to rest. Rest well, O Roba Kega, it is thy last opportunity. Tarzan crept stealthily among the branches of the tree above the well-fed, self-satisfied witch-doctor. He made no noise that the dull ears of man could hear above the sowing of the gentle jungle breeze among the undulating foliage of the upper terraces, and when he came close above the Black man he halted, well concealed by leafy branch and heavy creeper. Roba Kega sat with his back against the bowl of a tree facing Tarzan. The position was not such as the waiting beast of prey desired, and so with the infinite patience of the wild hunter the eight men crouched motionless and silent as a graven image until the fruit should be ripe for the plucking. A poisonous insect buzzed angrily out of space. It loitered, circling, close to Tarzan's face. The eight men saw and recognized it. The virus of its sting spelled death for lesser things than he. For him it would mean days of anguish. He did not move. His glittering eyes remained fixed upon Roba Kega after acknowledging the presence of the winged torture by a single glance. He heard and followed the movements of the insect with his keen ears, and then he felt it alight upon his forehead. No muscle twitched, for the muscles of such as he are the servants of the brain. Down across his face crept the horrid thing over nose and lips and chin. Upon his throat it paused, and turning retraced its steps. Tarzan watched Roba Kega. Now not even his eyes moved. So motionless, he crouched, that only death might counterpart his movelessness. The insect crawled upward over the nut brown cheek and stopped with its antenna brushing the lashes of his lower lid. Your eye would have started back, closing our eyes, and striking at the thing. But you and I, or the slaves, not the masters of our nerves, had the thing crawled upon the eyeball of the ape-man. It is believable that he could yet have remained wide-eyed and rigid. But it did not. For a moment it loitered there close to the lower lid. Then it rose and buzzed away. Down toward Roba Kega it buzzed, and the black man heard it, saw it, struck at it, and was stung upon the cheek before he killed it. Then he rose with a howl of pain and anger, and as he turned upon the trail toward the village of Mabonga the Chief, his broad black back was exposed to the silent thing waiting above him, and as Roba Kega turned, a live figure shot outward and downward from the tree above upon his broad shoulders, the impact of the springing creature carried Roba Kega to the ground. He felt strong jaws close upon his neck, and when he tried to scream, steel fingers throttled his throat. The powerful black warrior struggled to free himself, but he was as a child in the grip of his adversary. Presently Tarzan released his grip upon the other's throat, but each time that Roba Kega essayed a scream, the cruel fingers choked him painfully. At last the warrior desisted. Then Tarzan half rose and kneeled upon his victim's back, and when Roba Kega struggled to arise, the ape-man pushed his face down into the dirt of the trail. With a bit of the rope that had secured the kid, Tarzan made Roba Kega's wrist secure behind his back. Then he rose and jerked his prisoner to his feet, faced him back along the trail, and pushed him on ahead. Not until he came to his feet did Roba Kega obtain a square look at his assailant. When he saw that it was the white devil-god, his heart sank within him, and his knees trembled. But as he walked along the trail, ahead of his captor, and was neither injured nor molested, his spirit slowly rose, so that he took heart again. Possibly the devil-god did not intend to kill him after all. Had he not had little Taibo in his power for days without harming him, and had he not spared Momaya, Taibo's mother, when he easily might have slain her? And then they came upon the cage which Roba Kega, with the other black warriors of the village of Mabonga the Chief, had placed and baited for Numa. Roba Kega saw that the bait was gone, though there was no lion within the cage, nor was the door dropped. He saw, and he was filled with wonder not unmixed with apprehension. It entered his dull brain, that in some way this combination of circumstances had a connection with his presence there as the prisoner of the white devil-god. Nor was he wrong. Tarzan pushed him roughly into the cage, and in another moment Roba Kega understood. Cold sweat broke from every pore of his body. He trembled as with a hue, for the eight man was binding him securely in the very spot the kid had previously occupied, the which doctor pleaded first for his life, and then for a death less cruel. But he might as well have saved his pleas for Numa, since already they were directed toward a wild beast who understood no word of what he said. But his constant jabbering not only annoyed Tarzan, who worked in silence, but suggested that later the black might raise his voice in cries for succor. So he stepped out of the cage, gathered a handful of grass and a small stick, and returning jammed the grass into Roba Kega's mouth, laid the stick crosswise between his teeth, and fastened it there with the thong from Roba Kega's loincloth. Now could the which doctor but roll his eyes and sweat. Thus Tarzan left him. The eight man went first to the spot where he had cast the body of the kid. Digging it up he ascended into a tree and proceeded to satisfy his hunger. What remained he again buried. Then he swung away through the trees to the water hole, and going to the spot where fresh cold water bubbled from between two rocks he drank deeply. The other beast might wade in and drink stagnant water, but not Tarzan of the apes. In such matters he was fastidious. From his hands he washed every trace of the repugnant scent of the Gomengani, and from his face the blood of the kid. Rising he stretched himself not unlike some huge lazy cat, climbed into a nearby tree, and fell asleep. When he awoke it was dark, though a faint luminosity still tinned the western heavens. A lion moaned and coughed as it strode through the jungle toward water. It was approaching the drinking-hole. Tarzan grinned sleepily, changed his position, and fell asleep again. When the blacks of Mabonga the chief reached their village they discovered that Rabacaga was not among them. When several hours had elapsed they decided that something had happened to him, and it was the hope of the majority of the tribe that whatever had happened to him might prove fatal. They did not love the witch doctor. Love and fear seldom are playmates, but a warrior is a warrior, and so Mabonga organized a searching party, that his own grief was not unassuageable might have been gathered from the fact that he remained at home and went to sleep. The young warriors whom he sent out remained steadfast to their purpose for a fully half an hour, when, unfortunately for Rabacaga, upon so slight a thing may the fate of a man rest, a honey bird attracted the attention of the searchers and led them off for the delicious store it previously had marked down for betrayal, and Rabacaga's doom was sealed. When the searchers returned empty-handed Mabonga was wroth, but when he saw the great store of honey they brought with them his rage subsided. Already Tabuto, young, agile, and evil-minded, with face hideously painted, was practicing the black art upon a sick infant in the fond hope of succeeding to the office and perquisites of Rabacaga. Tonight the women of the old witch doctor would moan and howl. Tomorrow he would be forgotten, such as life, such as fame, such as power, in the center of the world's highest civilization, or in the depths of the black primeval jungle. Always everywhere man is man, nor has he altered greatly beneath his veneers since he scurried into a hole between two rocks to escape the Tyrannosaurus six million years ago. The morning following the disappearance of Rabacaga the warriors set out with Mabonga the Chief to examine the trap they had set for Numa. Long before they reached the cage they heard the roaring of a great lion and guessed that they had made a successful bag, so it was with shouts of joy that they approached the spot where they should find their captive. Yes, there he was, a great magnificent specimen, a huge black-maned lion. The warriors were frantic with delight. They leaped into the air and uttered savage cries, hoarse victory cries, and then they came closer, and the cries died upon their lips, and their eyes went wide so that the whites showed all around their irises and their pendulous lower lips drooped with their drooping jaws. They drew back in terror at the site within the cage, the mauled and mutilated corpse of what had, yesterday, been Rabacaga, the witch doctor. The captured lion had been too angry and frightened to feed upon the body of his kill, but he had vented upon it much of his rage until it was a frightful thing to behold. From his perch in a nearby tree, Tarzan of the apes, Lord Greystoke, looked down upon the black warriors and grinned. Once again his self-pride in his ability as a practical joker asserted itself. It had lain dormant for some time following the painful mauling he had received that time he leaped among the apes of Kerchak, clothed in the skin of Numa, but this joke was a decided success. After a few moments of terror the blacks came closer to the cage, rage taking the place of fear, rage and curiosity. How had Rabacaga happened to be in the cage? Where was the kid? There was no sign nor remnant of the original bait. They looked closely and they saw to their horror that the corpse of their erstwhile fellow was bound with the very cord with which they had secured the kid. Who could have done this thing? They looked at one another. Tabuto was the first to speak. He had come hopefully out with the expedition that morning. Somewhere he might find evidence of the death of Rabacaga. Now he had found it, and he was the first to find an explanation. The White Devil God, he whispered, it is the work of the White Devil God. No one contradicted Tabuto, for indeed who else could have been but the great hairless ape they all so feared, and so their hatred of Tarzan increased again with an increased fear of him, and Tarzan sat in his tree and hugged himself. No one there felt sorrow because of the death of Rabacaga, but each of the blacks experienced a personal fear of the ingenious mind which might discover for any of them a death equally horrible to that which the witch doctor had suffered. It was a subdued and thoughtful company which dragged the captive lion along the broad elephant path back to the village of Mabonga the Chief, and it was with a sigh of relief that they finally rolled it into the village and closed the gates behind them. Each had experienced the sensation of being spied upon from the moment they left the spot where the trap had been set, though none had seen or heard ought to give tangible food to his fears. At the sight of the body within the cage with the lion the women and the children of the village set up a most frightful lamentation, working themselves into a joyous hysteria which far transcended the happy misery derived by their more civilized prototypes who make a business of dividing their time between the movies and the neighborhood funerals of friends and strangers, especially strangers. From a tree overhanging the palisade Tarzan watched all that passed within the village. He saw the frenzied women tantalizing the great lion with sticks and stones. The cruelty of the blacks toward a captive always induced in Tarzan a feeling of angry contempt for the gomen gany. Had he attempted to analyze this feeling he would have found it difficult, for during all his life he had been accustomed to sights of suffering and cruelty. He himself was cruel. All the beasts of the jungle were cruel, but the cruelty of the blacks was of a different order. It was the cruelty of wanton torture of the helpless, while the cruelty of Tarzan and the other beasts was the cruelty of necessity or of passion. Perhaps had he known it he might have credited this feeling of repugnance at the sight of unnecessary suffering to heredity, to the germ of British love of fair play which had been bequeathed to him by his father and his mother. But of course he did not know, since he still believed that his mother had been Kayla the great ape. And just in proportion as his anger rose against the gomen gany his savage sympathy went out to Numa the lion, for though Numa was his lifetime enemy there was neither bitterness nor contempt in Tarzan's sentiments toward him. In the ape man's mind therefore the determination formed to thwart the blacks and liberate the lion. But he must accomplish this in some way which would cause the gomen gany the greatest chagrin and discomforture. As he squatted there watching the proceeding beneath him he saw the warriors seize upon the cage once more and drag it between two huts. Tarzan knew that it would remain there now until evening, and that the blacks were planning a feast and orgy in celebration of their capture. When he saw that two warriors were placed beside the cage and that these drove off the women and children and young men who would have eventually tortured Numa to death he knew that the lion would be safe until he was needed for the evening's entertainment when he would be more cruel he unscientifically tortured for the edification of the entire tribe. Now Tarzan preferred to bait the blacks in as theatrical manner as his fertile imagination could evolve. He had some half-formed conception of their superstitious fears and of their special dread of night, and so he decided to wait until darkness fell and the blacks partially worked to hysteria by their dancing and religious rites before he took any steps toward the freeing of Numa. In the meantime he hoped an idea adequate to the possibilities of the various factors at hand would occur to him, nor was it long before one did. He had swung off through the jungle to search for food when the plan came to him. At first it made him smile a little and then looked dubious, for he still retained a vivid memory of the dire results that had followed the carrying out of a very wonderful idea along almost identical lines. Yet he did not abandon his intention, and a moment later food temporarily forgotten he was swinging through the middle terraces in rapid flight toward the stamping ground of the tribe of Kerchak the Great Ape. As was his want he alighted in the midst of the little band without announcing his approach, say, by a hideous scream just as he sprang from a branch above them. Fortunate are the apes of Kerchak that their kind is not subject to heart failure, for the methods of Tarzan subjected them to one severe shock after another, nor could they ever accustom themselves to the ape-man's peculiar style of humor. Now when they saw who it was they merely snarled and grumbled angrily for a moment, and then resumed their feeding or their napping which he had interrupted, and he, having had his little joke, made his way to the Hall of Tree where he kept his treasure's head from the inquisitive eyes and fingers of his fellows and the mischievous little manoos. Here he withdrew a closely rolled hide, the hide of Numa with the head-on, a clever bit of primitive curing and mounting which had once been the property of the witch Dr. Rabakaga until Tarzan had stolen it from the village. With this he made his way back through the jungle toward the village of the blacks, stopping to hunt and feed upon the way, and in the afternoon even napping for an hour, so that it was already dusk when he entered the great tree which overhung the palisade and gave him a view of the entire village. He saw that Numa was still alive and that the guards were even dozing beside the cage. A lion is no great novelty to a black man in the lion country, and the first keen edge of their desire to worry the brute having worn off, the villagers paid little or no attention to the great cat, preferring now to await the grand event of the night. No was it long after dark before the festivities commenced, to the beating of Tom Tom's, a lone warrior crouched half doubled, leaped into the firelight in the center of a great circle of other warriors, behind whom stood or squatted the women and the children. The dancer was painted and armed for the hunt, and his movements and gestures suggested the search for the spore of game. Bending low, sometimes resting for a moment on one knee, he searched the ground for signs of the quarry. Again he poised, statuesque, listening. The warrior was young and lithe and graceful. He was full muscled and arrow straight. The firelight glistened upon his ebb and body, and brought out into bold relief the grotesque designs painted upon his face, breasts, and abdomen. Presently he bent low to the earth, then leaped high in the air. Every line of face and body showed that he had struck the scent. Immediately he leaped toward the circle of warriors about him, telling them of his find and summoning them to the hunt. It was all in pantomime, but so truly done that even Tarzan could follow it all to the least detail. He saw the other warriors grasp their hunting spears and leap to their feet to join in the graceful, stealthy, stalking dance. It was very interesting, but Tarzan realized that if he was to carry his design to a successful conclusion he must act quickly. He had seen these dances before and knew that after the stalk would come the game at bay and then the kill, during which Numa would be surrounded by warriors and unapproachable. With the lion's skin under one arm the ape-man dropped to the ground in the dense shadows beneath the tree and then circled beneath the huts until he came out directly in the rear of the cage in which Numa paced nervously to and fro. The cage was now unguarded, the two warriors having left it to take their places among the other dancers. Behind the cage Tarzan adjusted the lion's skin about him, just as he had upon that memorable occasion when the apes of Kurchak, failing to pierce his disguise, had all but slain him. Then on hands and knees he crept forward, emerged from between the two huts, and stood a few paces back of the dusky audience, whose whole attention was centered upon the dancers before them. Tarzan saw that the blacks had now worked themselves to a proper pitch of nervous excitement to be ripe for the lion. In a moment the ring of spectators would break at a point nearest the caged lion and the victim would be rolled into the center of the circle. It was for this moment that Tarzan waited. At last it came, a signal was given by Mabranga the chief, at which the women and children immediately in front of Tarzan rose and moved to one side, leaving a broad path opening toward the caged lion. At the same instant Tarzan gave voice to the low, crouching roar of an angry lion, and slunk slowly forward through the open lane toward the frenzied dancers. A woman saw him first and screamed. Instantly there was a panic in the immediate vicinity of the ape man. The strong light from the fire fell full upon the lion's head, and the blacks leaped to the conclusion, as Tarzan had known they would, that their captive had escaped his cage. With another roar Tarzan moved forward. The dancing warriors paused but an instant. They had been hunting a lion securely housed within a strong cage, and now that he was at liberty among them an entirely different aspect was placed upon the matter. Their nerves were not attuned to this emergency. The women and children already had fled to the questionable safety of the nearest huts, and the warriors were not long in following their example, so that presently Tarzan was left in sole possession of the village street. But not for long, nor did he wish to be left thus long alone. It would not comport with his scheme. Presently a head peered forth from a nearby hut, and then another, and another, until a score or more of warriors were licking out upon him, waiting for his next move, waiting for the lion to charge, or to attempt to escape from the village. Their spears were ready in their hands against either a charge or a bolt for freedom. And then the lion rose erect upon its hind legs. The tawny skin dropped from it, and there stood revealed before them in the fire-light the straight young figure of the white devil-god. For an instant the blacks were too astonished to act, they feared this apparition fully as much as they did Numa, yet they would gladly have slain the thing could they quickly enough have gathered together their wits, but fear and superstition and a natural mental density held them paralyzed while the eight men stooped and gathered up the lion's skin. They saw him turn then and walked back into the shadows at the far end of the village. Not until then did they gain courage to pursue him, and when they had come in force with brandy spears and loud war cries the quarry was gone. Not an instant did Tarzan pause in the tree. Throwing the skin over a branch he leaped again into the village upon the opposite side of the great bowl, and diving into the shadow of a hut, ran quickly to where lay the caged lion. Springing to the top of the cage he pulled upon the cord which raised the door, and a moment later a great lion in the prime of his strength and vigor leaped out into the village. The warriors returning from a futile search for Tarzan saw him step into the firelight. Ah, there was the devil-god again up to his old trick. Did he think he could twice fool the men of Mabrunga the chief the same way and so short a time? They would show him, for long they had waited for such an opportunity to rid themselves forever of this fearsome jungle demon. As one they rushed forward with raised spears. The women and the children came from the hut to witness the slaying of the devil-god. The lion turned blazing eyes upon them and then swung about toward the advancing warriors, with shouts of savage joy and triumph they came toward him, menacing him with their spears. The devil-god was theirs. And then with a frightful roar Numa the lion charged. The men of Mabrunga the chief met Numa with ready spears and screams of railery. In a solid mass of muscled ebony they waited the coming of the devil-god. Yet beneath their brave exteriors lurked a haunting fear that all might not be quite well with them. That this strange creature could yet prove invulnerable to their weapons and inflict upon them full punishment for their effrontery. The charging lion was all too lifelike. They saw that in the brief instant of the charge. But beneath the tawny hide they knew was hid the soft flesh of the white man. And how could that withstand the assault of many war-spears? In their forefront stood a huge young warrior in the full arrogance of his might and his youth. Afraid not he. He laughed as Numa bored down upon him. He laughed and couched his spear, setting the point for the broad breast. And then the lion was upon him. A great paw swept away the heavy war-spear, splintering it as the hand of man might splinter a dry twig. Down went the black his skull crushed by another blow. And then the lion was in the midst of the warriors, clawing and tearing to right and left. Not for long did they stand their ground. But a dozen men were mauled before the others made good their escape from those frightful talons and gleaming fangs. In terror the villagers fled hither and thither. No hut seemed to sufficiently secure asylum with Numa ranging within the palisade. From one to another fled the frightened blacks, while in the center of the village Numa stood glaring and growling above his kills. At last a tribesman flung wide the gates of the village and sought safety amid the branches of the forest trees beyond. Like sheep his fellows followed him until the lion and his dead remained alone in the village. From the nearer trees the men of Mabonga saw the lion lure his great head and seize one of his victims by the shoulder and then with slow and stately tread moved down the village street past the open gates and on into the jungle. They saw and shuttered and from another tree Tarzan of the apes saw and smiled. A full hour elapsed after the lion had disappeared with his feast before the blacks ventured down from the trees and returned to their village. Wide eyes rolled from side to side and naked flesh contracted more to the chill of fear than to the chill of the jungle night. It was he all the time, murmured one, it was the devil God. He changed himself from a lion to a man and back again into a lion, whispered another, and he dragged Muiza into the forest and is eating him, said a third, shuddering, we are no longer safe here, wailed a fourth, let us take our belongings and search for another village site far from the haunts of the wicked devil God. But with mourning came renewed courage, so that the experiences of the preceding evening had little other effect than to increase their fear of Tarzan and strengthen their belief in his supernatural origin. And thus waxed the fame and the power of the ape-man in the mysterious haunts of the savage jungle where he ranged mightiest of beasts because of the man-mind which directed his giant muscles and his flawless courage.