The Return Of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
1 The Affair on the Liner
2 Forging Bonds of Hate and ----?
3 What Happened in the Rue Maule
4 The Countess Explains
5 The Plot That Failed
6 A Duel
7 The Dancing Girl of Sidi Aissa
8 The Fight in the Desert
9 Numa "El Adrea"
10 Through the Valley of the Shadow
11 John Caldwell, London
12 Ships That Pass
13 The Wreck of the "Lady Alice"
14 Back to the Primitive
15 From Ape to Savage
16 The Ivory Raiders
17 The White Chief of the Waziri
18 The Lottery of Death
19 The City of Gold
20 La
21 The Castaways
22 The Treasure Vaults of Opar
23 The Fifty Frightful Men
24 How Tarzan Came Again to Opar
25 Through the Forest Primeval
26 The Passing of the Ape-Man

Chapter I

The Affair on the Liner

"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath
her breath.

"Eh?" questioned the count, turning toward his young wife.
"What is it that is magnificent?" and the count bent his eyes
in various directions in quest of the object of her admiration.

"Oh, nothing at all, my dear," replied the countess, a slight
flush momentarily coloring her already pink cheek. "I was but
recalling with admiration those stupendous skyscrapers, as
they call them, of New York," and the fair countess settled
herself more comfortably in her steamer chair, and resumed
the magazine which "nothing at all" had caused her to let
fall upon her lap.

Her husband again buried himself in his book, but not
without a mild wonderment that three days out from New
York his countess should suddenly have realized an
admiration for the very buildings she had but recently
characterized as horrid.

Presently the count put down his book. "It is very tiresome,
Olga," he said. "I think that I shall hunt up some
others who may be equally bored, and see if we cannot find
enough for a game of cards."

"You are not very gallant, my husband," replied the young
woman, smiling, "but as I am equally bored I can forgive you.
Go and play at your tiresome old cards, then, if you will."

When he had gone she let her eyes wander slyly to the figure
of a tall young man stretched lazily in a chair not far distant.

"MAGNIFIQUE!" she breathed once more.

The Countess Olga de Coude was twenty. Her husband forty.
She was a very faithful and loyal wife, but as she had had
nothing whatever to do with the selection of a husband,
it is not at all unlikely that she was not wildly and
passionately in love with the one that fate and her titled
Russian father had selected for her. However, simply because
she was surprised into a tiny exclamation of approval at sight
of a splendid young stranger it must not be inferred therefrom
that her thoughts were in any way disloyal to her spouse.
She merely admired, as she might have admired a particularly
fine specimen of any species. Furthermore, the young man
was unquestionably good to look at.

As her furtive glance rested upon his profile he rose to leave
the deck. The Countess de Coude beckoned to a passing steward.
"Who is that gentleman?" she asked.

"He is booked, madam, as Monsieur Tarzan, of Africa,"
replied the steward.

"Rather a large estate," thought the girl, but now her
interest was still further aroused.

As Tarzan walked slowly toward the smoking-room he
came unexpectedly upon two men whispering excitedly just
without. He would have vouchsafed them not even a passing
thought but for the strangely guilty glance that one of them
shot in his direction. They reminded Tarzan of melodramatic
villains he had seen at the theaters in Paris. Both were very
dark, and this, in connection with the shrugs and stealthy
glances that accompanied their palpable intriguing, lent still
greater force to the similarity.

Tarzan entered the smoking-room, and sought a chair a
little apart from the others who were there. He felt in no
mood for conversation, and as he sipped his absinth he let
his mind run rather sorrowfully over the past few weeks of
his life. Time and again he had wondered if he had acted
wisely in renouncing his birthright to a man to whom he
owed nothing. It is true that he liked Clayton, but--ah, but
that was not the question. It was not for William Cecil Clayton,
Lord Greystoke, that he had denied his birth. It was for
the woman whom both he and Clayton had loved, and whom a
strange freak of fate had given to Clayton instead of to him.

That she loved him made the thing doubly difficult to bear,
yet he knew that he could have done nothing less than he
did do that night within the little railway station in the far
Wisconsin woods. To him her happiness was the first consideration
of all, and his brief experience with civilization and civilized
men had taught him that without money and position life to
most of them was unendurable.

Jane Porter had been born to both, and had Tarzan taken
them away from her future husband it would doubtless have
plunged her into a life of misery and torture. That she would
have spurned Clayton once he had been stripped of both his
title and his estates never for once occurred to Tarzan, for
he credited to others the same honest loyalty that was so
inherent a quality in himself. Nor, in this instance, had he erred.
Could any one thing have further bound Jane Porter to her
promise to Clayton it would have been in the nature
of some such misfortune as this overtaking him.

Tarzan's thoughts drifted from the past to the future.
He tried to look forward with pleasurable sensations to his
return to the jungle of his birth and boyhood; the cruel, fierce
jungle in which he had spent twenty of his twenty-two years.
But who or what of all the myriad jungle life would there
be to welcome his return? Not one. Only Tantor, the elephant,
could he call friend. The others would hunt him or
flee from him as had been their way in the past.

Not even the apes of his own tribe would extend the hand
of fellowship to him.

If civilization had done nothing else for Tarzan of the
Apes, it had to some extent taught him to crave the society
of his own kind, and to feel with genuine pleasure the
congenial warmth of companionship. And in the same ratio
had it made any other life distasteful to him. It was difficult
to imagine a world without a friend--without a living thing
who spoke the new tongues which Tarzan had learned to
love so well. And so it was that Tarzan looked with little
relish upon the future he had mapped out for himself.

As he sat musing over his cigarette his eyes fell upon a
mirror before him, and in it he saw reflected a table at which
four men sat at cards. Presently one of them rose to leave,
and then another approached, and Tarzan could see that he
courteously offered to fill the vacant chair, that the game
might not be interrupted. He was the smaller of the two whom
Tarzan had seen whispering just outside the smoking-room.

It was this fact that aroused a faint spark of interest in
Tarzan, and so as he speculated upon the future he watched
in the mirror the reflection of the players at the table
behind him. Aside from the man who had but just entered the
game Tarzan knew the name of but one of the other players.
It was he who sat opposite the new player, Count Raoul
de Coude, whom at over-attentive steward had pointed out as
one of the celebrities of the passage, describing him as a
man high in the official family of the French minister of war.

Suddenly Tarzan's attention was riveted upon the picture
in the glass. The other swarthy plotter had entered, and was
standing behind the count's chair. Tarzan saw him turn and
glance furtively about the room, but his eyes did not rest for
a sufficient time upon the mirror to note the reflection of
Tarzan's watchful eyes. Stealthily the man withdrew something
from his pocket. Tarzan could not discern what the object was,
for the man's hand covered it.

Slowly the hand approached the count, and then, very deftly,
the thing that was in it was transferred to the count's pocket.
The man remained standing where he could watch the
Frenchman's cards. Tarzan was puzzled, but he was all
attention now, nor did he permit another detail of the
incident to escape him.

The play went on for some ten minutes after this, until
the count won a considerable wager from him who had
last joined the game, and then Tarzan saw the fellow back
of the count's chair nod his head to his confederate.
Instantly the player arose and pointed a finger at the count.

"Had I known that monsieur was a professional card sharp
I had not been so ready to be drawn into the game," he said.

Instantly the count and the two other players were upon
their feet.

De Coude's face went white.

"What do you mean, sir?" he cried. "Do you know to whom
you speak?"

"I know that I speak, for the last time, to one who cheats
at cards," replied the fellow.

The count leaned across the table, and struck the man full
in the mouth with his open palm, and then the others closed
in between them.

"There is some mistake, sir," cried one of the other players.
"Why, this is Count de Coude, of France."
"If I am mistaken," said the accuser, "I shall gladly apologize;
but before I do so first let monsieur le count explain
the extra cards which I saw him drop into his side pocket."

And then the man whom Tarzan had seen drop them there
turned to sneak from the room, but to his annoyance he
found the exit barred by a tall, gray-eyed stranger.

"Pardon," said the man brusquely, attempting to pass to one side.

"Wait," said Tarzan.

"But why, monsieur?" exclaimed the other petulantly.
"Permit me to pass, monsieur."

"Wait," said Tarzan. "I think that there is a matter in here
that you may doubtless be able to explain."

The fellow had lost his temper by this time, and with a low
oath seized Tarzan to push him to one side. The ape-man
but smiled as he twisted the big fellow about and, grasping
him by the collar of his coat, escorted him back to the table,
struggling, cursing, and striking in futile remonstrance.
It was Nikolas Rokoff's first experience with the muscles that
had brought their savage owner victorious through encounters
with Numa, the lion, and Terkoz, the great bull ape.

The man who had accused De Coude, and the two others who
had been playing, stood looking expectantly at the count.
Several other passengers had drawn toward the scene of the
altercation, and all awaited the denouement.

"The fellow is crazy," said the count. "Gentlemen, I implore
that one of you search me."

"The accusation is ridiculous." This from one of the players.

"You have but to slip your hand in the count's coat pocket
and you will see that the accusation is quite serious," insisted
the accuser. And then, as the others still hesitated to do so:
"Come, I shall do it myself if no other will," and he stepped
forward toward the count.

"No, monsieur," said De Coude. "I will submit to a search
only at the hands of a gentleman."

"It is unnecessary to search the count. The cards are in
his pocket. I myself saw them placed there."

All turned in surprise toward this new speaker, to behold
a very well-built young man urging a resisting captive toward
them by the scruff of his neck.

"It is a conspiracy," cried De Coude angrily. "There are no
cards in my coat," and with that he ran his hand into his
pocket. As he did so tense silence reigned in the little group.
The count went dead white, and then very slowly he withdrew
his hand, and in it were three cards.

He looked at them in mute and horrified surprise, and slowly
the red of mortification suffused his face. Expressions of
pity and contempt tinged the features of those who looked
on at the death of a man's honor.

"It is a conspiracy, monsieur." It was the gray-eyed stranger
who spoke. "Gentlemen," he continued, "monsieur le count
did not know that those cards were in his pocket. They were
placed there without his knowledge as he sat at play.
From where I sat in that chair yonder I saw the reflection of it
all in the mirror before me. This person whom I just intercepted
in an effort to escape placed the cards in the count's pocket."

De Coude had glanced from Tarzan to the man in his grasp.

"MON DIEU, Nikolas!" he cried. "You?"

Then he turned to his accuser, and eyed him intently for a moment.

"And you, monsieur, I did not recognize you without your
beard. It quite disguises you, Paulvitch. I see it all now.
It is quite clear, gentlemen."

"What shall we do with them, monsieur?" asked Tarzan.
"Turn them over to the captain?"

"No, my friend," said the count hastily. "It is a personal
matter, and I beg that you will let it drop. It is sufficient
that I have been exonerated from the charge. The less we have
to do with such fellows, the better. But, monsieur, how can
I thank you for the great kindness you have done me?
Permit me to offer you my card, and should the time come
when I may serve you, remember that I am yours to command."

Tarzan had released Rokoff, who, with his confederate,
Paulvitch, had hastened from the smoking-room. Just as he
was leaving, Rokoff turned to Tarzan. "Monsieur will have
ample opportunity to regret his interference in the affairs
of others."

Tarzan smiled, and then, bowing to the count, handed him
his own card.

The count read:

M. JEAN C. TARZAN

"Monsieur Tarzan," he said, "may indeed wish that he had
never befriended me, for I can assure him that he has won
the enmity of two of the most unmitigated scoundrels in all
Europe. Avoid them, monsieur, by all means."

"I have had more awe-inspiring enemies, my dear count," replied
Tarzan with a quiet smile, "yet I am still alive and unworried.
I think that neither of these two will ever find the means to harm me."

"Let us hope not, monsieur," said De Coude; "but yet it will
do no harm to be on the alert, and to know that you have made
at least one enemy today who never forgets and never forgives,
and in whose malignant brain there are always hatching new
atrocities to perpetrate upon those who have thwarted or
offended him. To say that Nikolas Rokoff is a devil would
be to place a wanton affront upon his satanic majesty."

That night as Tarzan entered his cabin he found a folded
note upon the floor that had evidently been pushed beneath
the door. He opened it and read:

M. TARZAN:

Doubtless you did not realize the gravity of your offense,
or you would not have done the thing you did today.
I am willing to believe that you acted in ignorance and
without any intention to offend a stranger. For this reason
I shall gladly permit you to offer an apology, and on receiving
your assurances that you will not again interfere in affairs
that do not concern you, I shall drop the matter.

Otherwise--but I am sure that you will see the wisdom of
adopting the course I suggest.
Very respectfully,
NIKOLAS ROKOFF.

Tarzan permitted a grim smile to play about his lips for a
moment, then he promptly dropped the matter from his mind,
and went to bed.

In a nearby cabin the Countess de Coude was speaking to her husband.

"Why so grave, my dear Raoul?" she asked. "You have been
as glum as could be all evening. What worries you?"

"Olga, Nikolas is on board. Did you know it?"

"Nikolas!" she exclaimed. "But it is impossible, Raoul.
It cannot be. Nikolas is under arrest in Germany."

"So I thought myself until I saw him today--him and that
other arch scoundrel, Paulvitch. Olga, I cannot endure his
persecution much longer. No, not even for you. Sooner or later
I shall turn him over to the authorities. In fact, I am half
minded to explain all to the captain before we land. On a
French liner it were an easy matter, Olga, permanently to
settle this Nemesis of ours."

"Oh, no, Raoul!" cried the countess, sinking to her knees
before him as he sat with bowed head upon a divan. "Do not
do that. Remember your promise to me. Tell me, Raoul, that
you will not do that. Do not even threaten him, Raoul."

De Coude took his wife's hands in his, and gazed upon
her pale and troubled countenance for some time before he
spoke, as though he would wrest from those beautiful eyes
the real reason which prompted her to shield this man.

"Let it be as you wish, Olga," he said at length. "I cannot
understand. He has forfeited all claim upon your love, loyalty,
or respect. He is a menace to your life and honor, and the
life and honor of your husband. I trust you may never regret
championing him."

"I do not champion him, Raoul," she interrupted vehemently.
"I believe that I hate him as much as you do, but--Oh, Raoul,
blood is thicker than water."

"I should today have liked to sample the consistency of
his," growled De Coude grimly. "The two deliberately
attempted to besmirch my honor, Olga," and then he told her
of all that had happened in the smoking-room. "Had it
not been for this utter stranger, they had succeeded, for who
would have accepted my unsupported word against the damning
evidence of those cards hidden on my person? I had almost
begun to doubt myself when this Monsieur Tarzan dragged
your precious Nikolas before us, and explained the
whole cowardly transaction."

"Monsieur Tarzan?" asked the countess, in evident surprise.

"Yes. Do you know him, Olga?"

"I have seen him. A steward pointed him out to me."

"I did not know that he was a celebrity," said the count.

Olga de Coude changed the subject. She discovered suddenly
that she might find it difficult to explain just why
the steward had pointed out the handsome Monsieur Tarzan
to her. Perhaps she flushed the least little bit, for was
not the count, her husband, gazing at her with a strangely
quizzical expression. "Ah," she thought, "a guilty
conscience is a most suspicious thing."

Chapter 2

Forging Bonds of Hate and ----?

It was not until late the following afternoon that Tarzan
saw anything more of the fellow passengers into the midst
of whose affairs his love of fair play had thrust him.
And then he came most unexpectedly upon Rokoff and Paulvitch
at a moment when of all others the two might least
appreciate his company.

They were standing on deck at a point which was temporarily
deserted, and as Tarzan came upon them they were in
heated argument with a woman. Tarzan noted that she was
richly appareled, and that her slender, well-modeled figure
denoted youth; but as she was heavily veiled he could not
discern her features.

The men were standing on either side of her, and the
backs of all were toward Tarzan, so that he was quite close
to them without their being aware of his presence.
He noticed that Rokoff seemed to be threatening, the woman
pleading; but they spoke in a strange tongue, and he could
only guess from appearances that the girl was afraid.

Rokoff's attitude was so distinctly filled with the threat of
physical violence that the ape-man paused for an instant just
behind the trio, instinctively sensing an atmosphere of danger.
Scarcely had he hesitated ere the man seized the woman
roughly by the wrist, twisting it as though to wring a promise
from her through torture. What would have happened next
had Rokoff had his way we may only conjecture, since he
did not have his way at all. Instead, steel fingers gripped his
shoulder, and he was swung unceremoniously around, to meet
the cold gray eyes of the stranger who had thwarted him
on the previous day.

"SAPRISTI!" screamed the infuriated Rokoff. "What do you
mean? Are you a fool that you thus again insult Nikolas Rokoff?"

"This is my answer to your note, monsieur," said Tarzan,
in a low voice. And then he hurled the fellow from him with
such force that Rokoff lunged sprawling against the rail.

"Name of a name!" shrieked Rokoff. "Pig, but you shall die
for this," and, springing to his feet, he rushed upon Tarzan,
tugging the meanwhile to draw a revolver from his hip
pocket. The girl shrank back in terror.

"Nikolas!" she cried. "Do not--oh, do not do that. Quick,
monsieur, fly, or he will surely kill you!" But instead of
flying Tarzan advanced to meet the fellow. "Do not make a
fool of yourself, monsieur," he said.

Rokoff, who was in a perfect frenzy of rage at the humiliation
the stranger had put upon him, had at last succeeded in drawing
the revolver. He had stopped, and now he deliberately raised
it to Tarzan's breast and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell
with a futile click on an empty chamber--the ape-man's hand
shot out like the head of an angry python; there was a quick
wrench, and the revolver sailed far out across the ship's
rail, and dropped into the Atlantic.

For a moment the two men stood there facing one another. Rokoff
had regained his self-possession. He was the first to speak.

"Twice now has monsieur seen fit to interfere in matters
which do not concern him. Twice he has taken it upon himself
to humiliate Nikolas Rokoff. The first offense was overlooked
on the assumption that monsieur acted through ignorance,
but this affair shall not be overlooked. If monsieur
does not know who Nikolas Rokoff is, this last piece of
effrontery will insure that monsieur later has good reason
to remember him."

"That you are a coward and a scoundrel, monsieur," replied
Tarzan, "is all that I care to know of you," and he
turned to ask the girl if the man had hurt her, but she had
disappeared. Then, without even a glance toward Rokoff and
his companion, he continued his stroll along the deck.

Tarzan could not but wonder what manner of conspiracy
was on foot, or what the scheme of the two men might be.
There had been something rather familiar about the
appearance of the veiled woman to whose rescue he had just
come, but as he had not seen her face he could not be sure
that he had ever seen her before. The only thing about her
that he had particularly noticed was a ring of peculiar
workmanship upon a finger of the hand that Rokoff had
seized, and he determined to note the fingers of the women
passengers he came upon thereafter, that he might discover
the identity of her whom Rokoff was persecuting, and learn
if the fellow had offered her further annoyance.

Tarzan had sought his deck chair, where he sat speculating
on the numerous instances of human cruelty, selfishness, and
spite that had fallen to his lot to witness since that day in
the jungle four years since that his eyes had first fallen
upon a human being other than himself--the sleek, black
Kulonga, whose swift spear had that day found the vitals of
Kala, the great she-ape, and robbed the youth, Tarzan, of
the only mother he had ever known.

He recalled the murder of King by the rat-faced Snipes;
the abandonment of Professor Porter and his party by the
mutineers of the ARROW; the cruelty of the black warriors
and women of Mbonga to their captives; the petty jealousies of
the civil and military officers of the West Coast colony that
had afforded him his first introduction to the civilized world.

"MON DIEU!" he soliloquized, "but they are all alike.
Cheating, murdering, lying, fighting, and all for things that
the beasts of the jungle would not deign to possess--money
to purchase the effeminate pleasures of weaklings. And yet
withal bound down by silly customs that make them slaves to
their unhappy lot while firm in the belief that they be the
lords of creation enjoying the only real pleasures of existence.
In the jungle one would scarcely stand supinely aside while
another took his mate. It is a silly world, an idiotic world,
and Tarzan of the Apes was a fool to renounce the freedom and
the happiness of his jungle to come into it."

Presently, as he sat there, the sudden feeling came over
him that eyes were watching from behind, and the old
instinct of the wild beast broke through the thin veneer of
civilization, so that Tarzan wheeled about so quickly that the
eyes of the young woman who had been surreptitiously regarding
him had not even time to drop before the gray eyes
of the ape-man shot an inquiring look straight into them.
Then, as they fell, Tarzan saw a faint wave of crimson creep
swiftly over the now half-averted face.

He smiled to himself at the result of his very uncivilized and
ungallant action, for he had not lowered his own eyes when
they met those of the young woman. She was very young,
and equally good to look upon. Further, there was something
rather familiar about her that set Tarzan to wondering
where he had seen her before. He resumed his former position,
and presently he was aware that she had arisen and was
leaving the deck. As she passed, Tarzan turned to watch her,
in the hope that he might discover a clew to satisfy his mild
curiosity as to her identity.

Nor was he disappointed entirely, for as she walked away
she raised one hand to the black, waving mass at the nape
of her neck--the peculiarly feminine gesture that admits
cognizance of appraising eyes behind her--and Tarzan saw
upon a finger of this hand the ring of strange workmanship
that he had seen upon the finger of the veiled woman a short
time before.

So it was this beautiful young woman Rokoff had been
persecuting. Tarzan wondered in a lazy sort of way whom
she might be, and what relations one so lovely could have
with the surly, bearded Russian.

After dinner that evening Tarzan strolled forward, where
he remained until after dark, in conversation with the second
officer, and when that gentleman's duties called him elsewhere
Tarzan lolled lazily by the rail watching the play of
the moonlight upon the gently rolling waters. He was
half hidden by a davit, so that two men who approached
along the deck did not see him, and as they passed Tarzan
caught enough of their conversation to cause him to fall in
behind them, to follow and learn what deviltry they were up
to. He had recognized the voice as that of Rokoff, and had
seen that his companion was Paulvitch.

Tarzan had overheard but a few words: "And if she screams
you may choke her until--" But those had been enough to
arouse the spirit of adventure within him, and so he kept the
two men in sight as they walked, briskly now, along the deck.
To the smoking-room he followed them, but they merely
halted at the doorway long enough, apparently, to assure
themselves that one whose whereabouts they wished to
establish was within.

Then they proceeded directly to the first-class cabins upon
the promenade deck. Here Tarzan found greater difficulty
in escaping detection, but he managed to do so successfully.
As they halted before one of the polished hardwood doors,
Tarzan slipped into the shadow of a passageway not a dozen
feet from them.

To their knock a woman's voice asked in French: "Who is it?"

"It is I, Olga--Nikolas," was the answer, in Rokoff's now
familiar guttural. "May I come in?"

"Why do you not cease persecuting me, Nikolas?" came
the voice of the woman from beyond the thin panel.
"I have never harmed you."

"Come, come, Olga," urged the man, in propitiary tones;
"I but ask a half dozen words with you. I shall not harm you,
nor shall I enter your cabin; but I cannot shout my message
through the door."

Tarzan heard the catch click as it was released from the
inside. He stepped out from his hiding-place far enough to
see what transpired when the door was opened, for he could
not but recall the sinister words he had heard a few moments
before upon the deck, "And if she screams you may choke her."

Rokoff was standing directly in front of the door. Paulvitch
had flattened himself against the paneled wall of the corridor
beyond. The door opened. Rokoff half entered the room, and
stood with his back against the door, speaking in a low whisper
to the woman, whom Tarzan could not see. Then Tarzan heard the
woman's voice, level, but loud enough to distinguish her words.

"No, Nikolas," she was saying, "it is useless. Threaten as you
will, I shall never accede to your demands. Leave the room,
please; you have no right here. You promised not to enter."

"Very well, Olga, I shall not enter; but before I am done
with you, you shall wish a thousand times that you had
done at once the favor I have asked. In the end I shall win
anyway, so you might as well save trouble and time for me,
and disgrace for yourself and your--"

"Never, Nikolas!" interrupted the woman, and then Tarzan
saw Rokoff turn and nod to Paulvitch, who sprang quickly
toward the doorway of the cabin, rushing in past Rokoff, who
held the door open for him. Then the latter stepped quickly out.
The door closed. Tarzan heard the click of the lock as
Paulvitch turned it from the inside. Rokoff remained standing
before the door, with head bent, as though to catch the words
of the two within. A nasty smile curled his bearded lip.

Tarzan could hear the woman's voice commanding the fellow to
leave her cabin. "I shall send for my husband," she cried.
"He will show you no mercy."

Paulvitch's sneering laugh came through the polished panels.

"The purser will fetch your husband, madame," said the man.
"In fact, that officer has already been notified that you
are entertaining a man other than your husband behind the
locked door of your cabin."

"Bah!" cried the woman. "My husband will know!"

"Most assuredly your husband will know, but the purser
will not; nor will the newspaper men who shall in some
mysterious way hear of it on our landing. But they will
think it a fine story, and so will all your friends when they
read of it at breakfast on--let me see, this is Tuesday--yes,
when they read of it at breakfast next Friday morning.
Nor will it detract from the interest they will all feel when
they learn that the man whom madame entertained is a Russian
servant--her brother's valet, to be quite exact."

"Alexis Paulvitch," came the woman's voice, cold and fearless,
"you are a coward, and when I whisper a certain name
in your ear you will think better of your demands upon me
and your threats against me, and then you will leave my
cabin quickly, nor do I think that ever again will you, at
least, annoy me," and there came a moment's silence in
which Tarzan could imagine the woman leaning toward the
scoundrel and whispering the thing she had hinted at into
his ear. Only a moment of silence, and then a startled oath
from the man--the scuffling of feet--a woman's scream--
and silence.

But scarcely had the cry ceased before the ape-man had
leaped from his hiding-place. Rokoff started to run, but
Tarzan grasped him by the collar and dragged him back.
Neither spoke, for both felt instinctively that murder was
being done in that room, and Tarzan was confident that Rokoff
had had no intention that his confederate should go that
far--he felt that the man's aims were deeper than that--deeper
and even more sinister than brutal, cold-blooded murder.
Without hesitating to question those within, the ape-man
threw his giant shoulder against the frail panel, and in a
shower of splintered wood he entered the cabin, dragging
Rokoff after him. Before him, on a couch, the woman lay,
and on top of her was Paulvitch, his fingers gripping the
fair throat, while his victim's hands beat futilely at his face,
tearing desperately at the cruel fingers that were forcing the
life from her.

The noise of his entrance brought Paulvitch to his feet,
where he stood glowering menacingly at Tarzan. The girl
rose falteringly to a sitting posture upon the couch.
One hand was at her throat, and her breath came in little gasps.
Although disheveled and very pale, Tarzan recognized her
as the young woman whom he had caught staring at him on
deck earlier in the day.

"What is the meaning of this?" said Tarzan, turning to Rokoff,
whom he intuitively singled out as the instigator of the outrage.
The man remained silent, scowling. "Touch the button, please,"
continued the ape-man; "we will have one of the ship's
officers here--this affair has gone quite far enough."

"No, no," cried the girl, coming suddenly to her feet.
"Please do not do that. I am sure that there was no real
intention to harm me. I angered this person, and he lost
control of himself, that is all. I would not care to have the
matter go further, please, monsieur," and there was such a
note of pleading in her voice that Tarzan could not press
the matter, though his better judgment warned him that
there was something afoot here of which the proper
authorities should be made cognizant.

"You wish me to do nothing, then, in the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing, please," she replied.

"You are content that these two scoundrels should continue
persecuting you?"

She did not seem to know what answer to make, and
looked very troubled and unhappy. Tarzan saw a malicious
grin of triumph curl Rokoff's lip. The girl evidently was in
fear of these two--she dared not express her real desires
before them.

"Then," said Tarzan, "I shall act on my own responsibility.
To you," he continued, turning to Rokoff, "and this includes
your accomplice, I may say that from now on to the end of
the voyage I shall take it upon myself to keep an eye on
you, and should there chance to come to my notice any
act of either one of you that might even remotely annoy this
young woman you shall be called to account for it directly
to me, nor shall the calling or the accounting be pleasant
experiences for either of you.

"Now get out of here," and he grabbed Rokoff and
Paulvitch each by the scruff of the neck and thrust them
forcibly through the doorway, giving each an added impetus
down the corridor with the toe of his boot. Then he turned
back to the stateroom and the girl. She was looking at him
in wide-eyed astonishment.

"And you, madame, will confer a great favor upon me if you
will but let me know if either of those rascals troubles
you further."

"Ah, monsieur," she answered, "I hope that you will not
suffer for the kind deed you attempted. You have made a
very wicked and resourceful enemy, who will stop at nothing
to satisfy his hatred. You must be very careful indeed,
Monsieur--"

"Pardon me, madame, my name is Tarzan."

"Monsieur Tarzan. And because I would not consent to
notify the officers, do not think that I am not sincerely
grateful to you for the brave and chivalrous protection you
rendered me. Good night, Monsieur Tarzan. I shall never
forget the debt I owe you," and, with a most winsome smile
that displayed a row of perfect teeth, the girl curtsied to
Tarzan, who bade her good night and made his way on deck.

It puzzled the man considerably that there should be two
on board--this girl and Count de Coude--who suffered
indignities at the hands of Rokoff and his companion, and yet
would not permit the offenders to be brought to justice.
Before he turned in that night his thoughts reverted many
times to the beautiful young woman into the evidently tangled
web of whose life fate had so strangely introduced him.
It occurred to him that he had not learned her name.
That she was married had been evidenced by the narrow gold
band that encircled the third finger of her left hand.
Involuntarily he wondered who the lucky man might be.

Tarzan saw nothing further of any of the actors in the
little drama that he had caught a fleeting glimpse of until
late in the afternoon of the last day of the voyage. Then he
came suddenly face to face with the young woman as the
two approached their deck chairs from opposite directions.
She greeted him with a pleasant smile, speaking almost
immediately of the affair he had witnessed in her cabin two
nights before. It was as though she had been perturbed by a
conviction that he might have construed her acquaintance
with such men as Rokoff and Paulvitch as a personal
reflection upon herself.

"I trust monsieur has not judged me," she said, "by the
unfortunate occurrence of Tuesday evening. I have suffered
much on account of it--this is the first time that I
have ventured from my cabin since; I have been ashamed,"
she concluded simply.

"One does not judge the gazelle by the lions that attack
it," replied Tarzan. "I had seen those two work before--in
the smoking-room the day prior to their attack on you, if I
recollect it correctly, and so, knowing their methods, I am
convinced that their enmity is a sufficient guarantee of the
integrity of its object. Men such as they must cleave only
to the vile, hating all that is noblest and best."

"It is very kind of you to put it that way," she replied,
smiling. "I have already heard of the matter of the card
game. My husband told me the entire story. He spoke
especially of the strength and bravery of Monsieur Tarzan,
to whom he feels that he owes an immense debt of gratitude."

"Your husband?" repeated Tarzan questioningly.

"Yes. I am the Countess de Coude."

"I am already amply repaid, madame, in knowing that I
have rendered a service to the wife of the Count de Coude."

"Alas, monsieur, I already am so greatly indebted to you
that I may never hope to settle my own account, so pray
do not add further to my obligations," and she smiled so
sweetly upon him that Tarzan felt that a man might easily
attempt much greater things than he had accomplished, solely
for the pleasure of receiving the benediction of that smile.

He did not see her again that day, and in the rush of
landing on the following morning he missed her entirely,
but there had been something in the expression of her eyes
as they parted on deck the previous day that haunted him.
It had been almost wistful as they had spoken of the
strangeness of the swift friendships of an ocean crossing,
and of the equal ease with which they are broken forever.

Tarzan wondered if he should ever see her again.

Chapter 3

What Happened in the Rue Maule

On his arrival in Paris, Tarzan had gone directly to
the apartments of his old friend, D'Arnot, where the
naval lieutenant had scored him roundly for his decision
to renounce the title and estates that were rightly his
from his father, John Clayton, the late Lord Greystoke.

"You must be mad, my friend," said D'Arnot, "thus lightly
to give up not alone wealth and position, but an opportunity
to prove beyond doubt to all the world that in your veins
flows the noble blood of two of England's most honored
houses--instead of the blood of a savage she-ape. It is
incredible that they could have believed you--Miss Porter
least of all.

"Why, I never did believe it, even back in the wilds of
your African jungle, when you tore the raw meat of your
kills with mighty jaws, like some wild beast, and wiped your
greasy hands upon your thighs. Even then, before there was
the slightest proof to the contrary, I knew that you were
mistaken in the belief that Kala was your mother.

"And now, with your father's diary of the terrible life
led by him and your mother on that wild African shore;
with the account of your birth, and, final and most
convincing proof of all, your own baby finger prints upon the
pages of it, it seems incredible to me that you are willing
to remain a nameless, penniless vagabond."

"I do not need any better name than Tarzan," replied the
ape-man; "and as for remaining a penniless vagabond, I
have no intention of so doing. In fact, the next, and let us
hope the last, burden that I shall be forced to put upon your
unselfish friendship will be the finding of employment for me."

"Pooh, pooh!" scoffed D'Arnot. "You know that I did not
mean that. Have I not told you a dozen times that I have
enough for twenty men, and that half of what I have is
yours? And if I gave it all to you, would it represent even
the tenth part of the value I place upon your friendship,
my Tarzan? Would it repay the services you did me in Africa?
I do not forget, my friend, that but for you and your
wondrous bravery I had died at the stake in the village
of Mbonga's cannibals. Nor do I forget that to your self-
sacrificing devotion I owe the fact that I recovered from the
terrible wounds I received at their hands--I discovered later
something of what it meant to you to remain with me in the
amphitheater of apes while your heart was urging you on to
the coast.

"When we finally came there, and found that Miss Porter
and her party had left, I commenced to realize something of
what you had done for an utter stranger. Nor am I trying to
repay you with money, Tarzan. It is that just at present you
need money; were it sacrifice that I might offer you it were
the same--my friendship must always be yours, because our
tastes are similar, and I admire you. That I cannot command,
but the money I can and shall."

"Well," laughed Tarzan, "we shall not quarrel over the money.
I must live, and so I must have it; but I shall be more
contented with something to do. You cannot show me your
friendship in a more convincing manner than to find
employment for me--I shall die of inactivity in a short while.
As for my birthright--it is in good hands. Clayton is not
guilty of robbing me of it. He truly believes that he
is the real Lord Greystoke, and the chances are that he will
make a better English lord than a man who was born and
raised in an African jungle. You know that I am but half
civilized even now. Let me see red in anger but for a moment,
and all the instincts of the savage beast that I really
am, submerge what little I possess of the milder ways of
culture and refinement.

"And then again, had I declared myself I should have
robbed the woman I love of the wealth and position that
her marriage to Clayton will now insure to her. I could
not have done that--could I, Paul?

"Nor is the matter of birth of great importance to me,"
he went on, without waiting for a reply. "Raised as I have
been, I see no worth in man or beast that is not theirs by
virtue of their own mental or physical prowess. And so I
am as happy to think of Kala as my mother as I would be
to try to picture the poor, unhappy little English girl who
passed away a year after she bore me. Kala was always kind
to me in her fierce and savage way. I must have nursed at
her hairy breast from the time that my own mother died.
She fought for me against the wild denizens of the forest,
and against the savage members of our tribe, with the
ferocity of real mother love.

"And I, on my part, loved her, Paul. I did not realize
how much until after the cruel spear and the poisoned arrow
of Mbonga's black warrior had stolen her away from me. I
was still a child when that occurred, and I threw myself
upon her dead body and wept out my anguish as a child
might for his own mother. To you, my friend, she would
have appeared a hideous and ugly creature, but to me she
was beautiful--so gloriously does love transfigure its object.
And so I am perfectly content to remain forever the son of
Kala, the she-ape."

"I do not admire you the less for your loyalty," said
D'Arnot, "but the time will come when you will be glad
to claim your own. Remember what I say, and let us hope
that it will be as easy then as it is now. You must bear in
mind that Professor Porter and Mr. Philander are the only
people in the world who can swear that the little skeleton
found in the cabin with those of your father and mother was
that of an infant anthropoid ape, and not the offspring of
Lord and Lady Greystoke. That evidence is most important.
They are both old men. They may not live many years longer.
And then, did it not occur to you that once Miss Porter
knew the truth she would break her engagement with Clayton?
You might easily have your title, your estates, and the
woman you love, Tarzan. Had you not thought of that?"

Tarzan shook his head. "You do not know her," he said.
"Nothing could bind her closer to her bargain than some
misfortune to Clayton. She is from an old southern family in
America, and southerners pride themselves upon their loyalty."

Tarzan spent the two following weeks renewing his former
brief acquaintance with Paris. In the daytime he haunted
the libraries and picture galleries. He had become an
omnivorous reader, and the world of possibilities that were
opened to him in this seat of culture and learning fairly
appalled him when he contemplated the very infinitesimal
crumb of the sum total of human knowledge that a single
individual might hope to acquire even after a lifetime of
study and research; but he learned what he could by day,
and threw himself into a search for relaxation and amusement
at night. Nor did he find Paris a whit less fertile field
for his nocturnal avocation.

If he smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much
absinth it was because he took civilization as he found it,
and did the things that he found his civilized brothers
doing. The life was a new and alluring one, and in addition
he had a sorrow in his breast and a great longing which he
knew could never be fulfilled, and so he sought in study and
in dissipation--the two extremes--to forget the past and
inhibit contemplation of the future.

He was sitting in a music hall one evening, sipping his
absinth and admiring the art of a certain famous Russian
dancer, when he caught a passing glimpse of a pair of evil
black eyes upon him. The man turned and was lost in the
crowd at the exit before Tarzan could catch a good look at
him, but he was confident that he had seen those eyes before
and that they had been fastened on him this evening
through no passing accident. He had had the uncanny feeling
for some time that he was being watched, and it was in
response to this animal instinct that was strong within him
that he had turned suddenly and surprised the eyes in the
very act of watching him.

Before he left the music hall the matter had been forgotten,
nor did he notice the swarthy individual who stepped
deeper into the shadows of an opposite doorway as Tarzan
emerged from the brilliantly lighted amusement hall.

Had Tarzan but known it, he had been followed many times
from this and other places of amusement, but seldom if
ever had he been alone. Tonight D'Arnot had had another
engagement, and Tarzan had come by himself.

As he turned in the direction he was accustomed to taking
from this part of Paris to his apartments, the watcher across
the street ran from his hiding-place and hurried on ahead
at a rapid pace.

Tarzan had been wont to traverse the Rue Maule on his
way home at night. Because it was very quiet and very
dark it reminded him more of his beloved African jungle
than did the noisy and garish streets surrounding it.
If you are familiar with your Paris you will recall the
narrow, forbidding precincts of the Rue Maule. If you are
not, you need but ask the police about it to learn that in
all Paris there is no street to which you should give a
wider berth after dark.

On this night Tarzan had proceeded some two squares through
the dense shadows of the squalid old tenements which line
this dismal way when he was attracted by screams and cries
for help from the third floor of an opposite building.
The voice was a woman's. Before the echoes of her first
cries had died Tarzan was bounding up the stairs and
through the dark corridors to her rescue.

At the end of the corridor on the third landing a door
stood slightly ajar, and from within Tarzan heard again the
same appeal that had lured him from the street.
Another instant found him in the center of a dimly-lighted room.
An oil lamp burned upon a high, old-fashioned mantel, casting
its dim rays over a dozen repulsive figures. All but one
were men. The other was a woman of about thirty. Her face,
marked by low passions and dissipation, might once have
been lovely. She stood with one hand at her throat, crouching
against the farther wall.

"Help, monsieur," she cried in a low voice as Tarzan
entered the room; "they were killing me."

As Tarzan turned toward the men about him he saw the
crafty, evil faces of habitual criminals. He wondered that
they had made no effort to escape. A movement behind him
caused him to turn. Two things his eyes saw, and one of
them caused him considerable wonderment. A man was
sneaking stealthily from the room, and in the brief glance
that Tarzan had of him he saw that it was Rokoff.
But the other thing that he saw was of more immediate interest.
It was a great brute of a fellow tiptoeing upon him from
behind with a huge bludgeon in his hand, and then, as
the man and his confederates saw that he was discovered,
there was a concerted rush upon Tarzan from all sides.
Some of the men drew knives. Others picked up chairs, while the
fellow with the bludgeon raised it high above his head in a
mighty swing that would have crushed Tarzan's head had it
ever descended upon it.

But the brain, and the agility, and the muscles that had coped
with the mighty strength and cruel craftiness of Terkoz and
Numa in the fastness of their savage jungle were not to be so
easily subdued as these apaches of Paris had believed.

Selecting his most formidable antagonist, the fellow with
the bludgeon, Tarzan charged full upon him, dodging the
falling weapon, and catching the man a terrific blow on the
point of the chin that felled him in his tracks.

Then he turned upon the others. This was sport. He was
reveling in the joy of battle and the lust of blood. As though
it had been but a brittle shell, to break at the least rough
usage, the thin veneer of his civilization fell from him, and
the ten burly villains found themselves penned in a small
room with a wild and savage beast, against whose steel
muscles their puny strength was less than futile.

At the end of the corridor without stood Rokoff, waiting
the outcome of the affair. He wished to be sure that Tarzan
was dead before he left, but it was not a part of his plan to
be one of those within the room when the murder occurred.

The woman still stood where she had when Tarzan entered,
but her face had undergone a number of changes with
the few minutes which had elapsed. From the semblance of
distress which it had worn when Tarzan first saw it, it had
changed to one of craftiness as he had wheeled to meet the
attack from behind; but the change Tarzan had not seen.

Later an expression of surprise and then one of horror
superseded the others. And who may wonder. For the
immaculate gentleman her cries had lured to what was to have
been his death had been suddenly metamorphosed into a
demon of revenge. Instead of soft muscles and a weak
resistance, she was looking upon a veritable Hercules gone mad.

"MON DIEU!" she cried; "he is a beast!" For the strong,
white teeth of the ape-man had found the throat of one of
his assailants, and Tarzan fought as he had learned to fight
with the great bull apes of the tribe of Kerchak.

He was in a dozen places at once, leaping hither and
thither about the room in sinuous bounds that reminded
the woman of a panther she had seen at the zoo. Now a wrist-
bone snapped in his iron grip, now a shoulder was wrenched
from its socket as he forced a victim's arm backward and upward.

With shrieks of pain the men escaped into the hallway as
quickly as they could; but even before the first one staggered,
bleeding and broken, from the room, Rokoff had seen enough
to convince him that Tarzan would not be the one to lie
dead in that house this night, and so the Russian had
hastened to a nearby den and telephoned the police that a
man was committing murder on the third floor of Rue Maule, 27.
When the officers arrived they found three men groaning
on the floor, a frightened woman lying upon a filthy bed, her
face buried in her arms, and what appeared to be a well-
dressed young gentleman standing in the center of the room
awaiting the reenforcements which he had thought the footsteps
of the officers hurrying up the stairway had announced
--but they were mistaken in the last; it was a wild beast
that looked upon them through those narrowed lids and steel-
gray eyes. With the smell of blood the last vestige of
civilization had deserted Tarzan, and now he stood at bay, like a
lion surrounded by hunters, awaiting the next overt act, and
crouching to charge its author.

"What has happened here?" asked one of the policemen.

Tarzan explained briefly, but when he turned to the woman
for confirmation of his statement he was appalled by her reply.

"He lies!" she screamed shrilly, addressing the policeman.
"He came to my room while I was alone, and for no good
purpose. When I repulsed him he would have killed me had
not my screams attracted these gentlemen, who were passing
the house at the time. He is a devil, monsieurs; alone he has
all but killed ten men with his bare hands and his teeth."

So shocked was Tarzan by her ingratitude that for a moment
he was struck dumb. The police were inclined to be a little
skeptical, for they had had other dealings with this
same lady and her lovely coterie of gentlemen friends.
However, they were policemen, not judges, so they decided to
place all the inmates of the room under arrest, and let another,
whose business it was, separate the innocent from the guilty.

But they found that it was one thing to tell this well-
dressed young man that he was under arrest, but quite
another to enforce it.

"I am guilty of no offense," he said quietly. "I have but
sought to defend myself. I do not know why the woman has
told you what she has. She can have no enmity against me,
for never until I came to this room in response to her cries
for help had I seen her."

"Come, come," said one of the officers; "there are judges
to listen to all that," and he advanced to lay his hand upon
Tarzan's shoulder. An instant later he lay crumpled in a
corner of the room, and then, as his comrades rushed in upon
the ape-man, they experienced a taste of what the apaches
had but recently gone through. So quickly and so roughly
did he handle them that they had not even an opportunity
to draw their revolvers.

During the brief fight Tarzan had noted the open window
and, beyond, the stem of a tree, or a telegraph pole--he
could not tell which. As the last officer went down, one of
his fellows succeeded in drawing his revolver and, from
where he lay on the floor, fired at Tarzan. The shot missed,
and before the man could fire again Tarzan had swept the
lamp from the mantel and plunged the room into darkness.

The next they saw was a lithe form spring to the sill of
the open window and leap, panther-like, onto the pole across
the walk. When the police gathered themselves together and
reached the street their prisoner was nowhere to be seen.

They did not handle the woman and the men who had
not escaped any too gently when they took them to the
station; they were a very sore and humiliated detail of police.
It galled them to think that it would be necessary to report
that a single unarmed man had wiped the floor with the
whole lot of them, and then escaped them as easily as
though they had not existed.

The officer who had remained in the street swore that no
one had leaped from the window or left the building from
the time they entered until they had come out. His comrades
thought that he lied, but they could not prove it.

When Tarzan found himself clinging to the pole outside the
window, he followed his jungle instinct and looked below for
enemies before he ventured down. It was well he did, for
just beneath stood a policeman. Above, Tarzan saw no one,
so he went up instead of down.

The top of the pole was opposite the roof of the building,
so it was but the work of an instant for the muscles that
had for years sent him hurtling through the treetops of his
primeval forest to carry him across the little space between
the pole and the roof. From one building he went to another,
and so on, with much climbing, until at a cross street he
discovered another pole, down which he ran to the ground.

For a square or two he ran swiftly; then he turned into a
little all-night cafe and in the lavatory removed the
evidences of his over-roof promenade from hands and clothes.
When he emerged a few moments later it was to saunter
slowly on toward his apartments.

Not far from them he came to a well-lighted boulevard which
it was necessary to cross. As he stood directly beneath
a brilliant arc light, waiting for a limousine that was
approaching to pass him, he heard his name called in a sweet
feminine voice. Looking up, he met the smiling eyes of Olga de
Coude as she leaned forward upon the back seat of the machine.
He bowed very low in response to her friendly greeting.
When he straightened up the machine had borne her away.

"Rokoff and the Countess de Coude both in the same
evening," he soliloquized; "Paris is not so large, after all."

Chapter 4

The Countess Explains

"Your Paris is more dangerous than my savage jungles,
Paul," concluded Tarzan, after narrating his adventures
to his friend the morning following his encounter with
the apaches and police in the Rue Maule. "Why did they
lure me there? Were they hungry?"

D'Arnot feigned a horrified shudder, but he laughed at the
quaint suggestion.

"It is difficult to rise above the jungle standards and reason
by the light of civilized ways, is it not, my friend?" he
queried banteringly.

"Civilized ways, forsooth," scoffed Tarzan. "Jungle standards
do not countenance wanton atrocities. There we kill for
food and for self-preservation, or in the winning of mates
and the protection of the young. Always, you see, in
accordance with the dictates of some great natural law.
But here! Faugh, your civilized man is more brutal than
the brutes. He kills wantonly, and, worse than that, he
utilizes a noble sentiment, the brotherhood of man, as a
lure to entice his unwary victim to his doom. It was in
answer to an appeal from a fellow being that I hastened
to that room where the assassins lay in wait for me.

"I did not realize, I could not realize for a long time
afterward, that any woman could sink to such moral depravity
as that one must have to call a would-be rescuer to death.
But it must have been so--the sight of Rokoff there and
the woman's later repudiation of me to the police make
it impossible to place any other construction upon her acts.
Rokoff must have known that I frequently passed through
the Rue Maule. He lay in wait for me--his entire scheme
worked out to the last detail, even to the woman's story in
case a hitch should occur in the program such as really did
happen. It is all perfectly plain to me."

"Well," said D'Arnot, "among other things, it has taught
you what I have been unable to impress upon you--that
the Rue Maule is a good place to avoid after dark."

"On the contrary," replied Tarzan, with a smile, "it has
convinced me that it is the one worth-while street in all
Paris. Never again shall I miss an opportunity to traverse it,
for it has given me the first real entertainment I have had
since I left Africa."

"It may give you more than you will relish even without
another visit," said D'Arnot. "You are not through with the
police yet, remember. I know the Paris police well enough
to assure you that they will not soon forget what you did
to them. Sooner or later they will get you, my dear Tarzan,
and then they will lock the wild man of the woods up behind
iron bars. How will you like that?"

"They will never lock Tarzan of the Apes behind iron bars,"
replied he, grimly.

There was something in the man's voice as he said it that
caused D'Arnot to look up sharply at his friend. What he
saw in the set jaw and the cold, gray eyes made the young
Frenchman very apprehensive for this great child, who could
recognize no law mightier than his own mighty physical
prowess. He saw that something must be done to set Tarzan
right with the police before another encounter was possible.

"You have much to learn, Tarzan," he said gravely. "The
law of man must be respected, whether you relish it or no.
Nothing but trouble can come to you and your friends
should you persist in defying the police. I can explain it to
them once for you, and that I shall do this very day, but
hereafter you must obey the law. If its representatives say
`Come,' you must come; if they say `Go,' you must go.
Now we shall go to my great friend in the department and
fix up this matter of the Rue Maule. Come!"

Together they entered the office of the police official a half
hour later. He was very cordial. He remembered Tarzan from
the visit the two had made him several months prior in the
matter of finger prints.

When D'Arnot had concluded the narration of the events
which had transpired the previous evening, a grim smile was
playing about the lips of the policeman. He touched a button
near his hand, and as he waited for the clerk to respond to
its summons he searched through the papers on his desk
for one which he finally located.

"Here, Joubon," he said as the clerk entered. "Summon these
officers--have them come to me at once," and he handed the
man the paper he had sought. Then he turned to Tarzan.

"You have committed a very grave offense, monsieur," he
said, not unkindly, "and but for the explanation made by
our good friend here I should be inclined to judge you harshly.
I am, instead, about to do a rather unheard-of-thing.
I have summoned the officers whom you maltreated last night.
They shall hear Lieutenant D'Arnot's story, and then I shall
leave it to their discretion to say whether you shall be
prosecuted or not.

"You have much to learn about the ways of civilization.
Things that seem strange or unnecessary to you, you must
learn to accept until you are able to judge the motives
behind them. The officers whom you attacked were but doing
their duty. They had no discretion in the matter. Every day
they risk their lives in the protection of the lives or
property of others. They would do the same for you. They are
very brave men, and they are deeply mortified that a single
unarmed man bested and beat them.

"Make it easy for them to overlook what you did.
Unless I am gravely in error you are yourself a very
brave man, and brave men are proverbially magnanimous."

Further conversation was interrupted by the appearance
of the four policemen. As their eyes fell on Tarzan,
surprise was writ large on each countenance.

"My children," said the official, "here is the gentleman
whom you met in the Rue Maule last evening. He has come
voluntarily to give himself up. I wish you to listen
attentively to Lieutenant D'Arnot, who will tell you a part
of the story of monsieur's life. It may explain his attitude
toward you of last night. Proceed, my dear lieutenant."

D'Arnot spoke to the policemen for half an hour. He told
them something of Tarzan's wild jungle life. He explained
the savage training that had taught him to battle like a
wild beast in self-preservation. It became plain to them
that the man had been guided by instinct rather than reason in
his attack upon them. He had not understood their intentions.
To him they had been little different from any of the various
forms of life he had been accustomed to in his native jungle,
where practically all were his enemies.

"Your pride has been wounded," said D'Arnot, in conclusion.
"It is the fact that this man overcame you that hurts the most.
But you need feel no shame. You would not make apologies
for defeat had you been penned in that small room with an
African lion, or with the great Gorilla of the jungles.

"And yet you were battling with muscles that have time
and time again been pitted, and always victoriously, against
these terrors of the dark continent. It is no disgrace to
fall beneath the superhuman strength of Tarzan of the Apes."

And then, as the men stood looking first at Tarzan and
then at their superior the ape-man did the one thing which
was needed to erase the last remnant of animosity which
they might have felt for him. With outstretched hand he
advanced toward them.

"I am sorry for the mistake I made," he said simply. "Let
us be friends." And that was the end of the whole matter,
except that Tarzan became a subject of much conversation
in the barracks of the police, and increased the number of
his friends by four brave men at least.

On their return to D'Arnot's apartments the lieutenant
found a letter awaiting him from an English friend, William
Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke. The two had maintained a
correspondence since the birth of their friendship on that
ill-fated expedition in search of Jane Porter after her theft
by Terkoz, the bull ape.

"They are to be married in London in about two months,"
said D'Arnot, as he completed his perusal of the letter.
Tarzan did not need to be told who was meant by "they."
He made no reply, but he was very quiet and thoughtful
during the balance of the day.

That evening they attended the opera. Tarzan's mind was
still occupied by his gloomy thoughts. He paid little or no
attention to what was transpiring upon the stage. Instead he
saw only the lovely vision of a beautiful American girl, and
heard naught but a sad, sweet voice acknowledging that his
love was returned. And she was to marry another!

He shook himself to be rid of his unwelcome thoughts, and
at the same instant he felt eyes upon him. With the instinct
that was his by virtue of training he looked up squarely
into the eyes that were looking at him, to find that they
were shining from the smiling face of Olga, Countess de
Coude. As Tarzan returned her bow he was positive that
there was an invitation in her look, almost a plea.
The next intermission found him beside her in her box.

"I have so much wished to see you," she was saying.
"It has troubled me not a little to think that after the
service you rendered to both my husband and myself no adequate
explanation was ever made you of what must have seemed
ingratitude on our part in not taking the necessary steps to
prevent a repetition of the attacks upon us by those two men."

"You wrong me," replied Tarzan. "My thoughts of you
have been only the most pleasant. You must not feel that
any explanation is due me. Have they annoyed you further?"

"They never cease," she replied sadly. "I feel that I must
tell some one, and I do not know another who so deserves
an explanation as you. You must permit me to do so. It may
be of service to you, for I know Nikolas Rokoff quite well
enough to be positive that you have not seen the last of him.
He will find some means to be revenged upon you. What I
wish to tell you may be of aid to you in combating any
scheme of revenge he may harbor. I cannot tell you here, but
tomorrow I shall be at home to Monsieur Tarzan at five."

"It will be an eternity until tomorrow at five," he said, as
he bade her good night.
From a corner of the theater Rokoff and Paulvitch saw
Monsieur Tarzan in the box of the Countess de Coude, and
both men smiled.

At four-thirty the following afternoon a swarthy, bearded
man rang the bell at the servants' entrance of the palace of
the Count de Coude. The footman who opened the door raised
his eyebrows in recognition as he saw who stood without.
A low conversation passed between the two.

At first the footman demurred from some proposition
that the bearded one made, but an instant later something
passed from the hand of the caller to the hand of the
servant. Then the latter turned and led the visitor by a
roundabout way to a little curtained alcove off the apartment
in which the countess was wont to serve tea of an afternoon.

A half hour later Tarzan was ushered into the room,
and presently his hostess entered, smiling, and with
outstretched hands.

"I am so glad that you came," she said.

"Nothing could have prevented," he replied.

For a few moments they spoke of the opera, of the topics
that were then occupying the attention of Paris, of the
pleasure of renewing their brief acquaintance which had had
its inception under such odd circumstances, and this brought
them to the subject that was uppermost in the minds of both.

"You must have wondered," said the countess finally, "what
the object of Rokoff's persecution could be. It is very simple.
The count is intrusted with many of the vital secrets of the
ministry of war. He often has in his possession papers that
foreign powers would give a fortune to possess--secrets
of state that their agents would commit murder and
worse than murder to learn.

"There is such a matter now in his possession that would
make the fame and fortune of any Russian who could
divulge it to his government. Rokoff and Paulvitch are
Russian spies. They will stop at nothing to procure this
information. The affair on the liner--I mean the matter of the
card game--was for the purpose of blackmailing the knowledge
they seek from my husband.

"Had he been convicted of cheating at cards, his career
would have been blighted. He would have had to leave the
war department. He would have been socially ostracized.
They intended to hold this club over him--the price of an
avowal on their part that the count was but the victim of the
plot of enemies who wished to besmirch his name was to have
been the papers they seek.

"You thwarted them in this. Then they concocted the
scheme whereby my reputation was to be the price, instead
of the count's. When Paulvitch entered my cabin he explained
it to me. If I would obtain the information for them
he promised to go no farther, otherwise Rokoff, who stood
without, was to notify the purser that I was entertaining a
man other than my husband behind the locked doors of my
cabin. He was to tell every one he met on the boat, and
when we landed he was to have given the whole story to the
newspaper men.
"Was it not too horrible? But I happened to know something
of Monsieur Paulvitch that would send him to the gallows
in Russia if it were known by the police of St. Petersburg.
I dared him to carry out his plan, and then I leaned
toward him and whispered a name in his ear. Like that"--and
she snapped her fingers--"he flew at my throat as a madman.
He would have killed me had you not interfered."

"The brutes!" muttered Tarzan.

"They are worse than that, my friend," she said.
"They are devils. I fear for you because you have gained
their hatred. I wish you to be on your guard constantly.
Tell me that you will, for my sake, for I should never forgive
myself should you suffer through the kindness you did me."

"I do not fear them," he replied. "I have survived grimmer
enemies than Rokoff and Paulvitch." He saw that she knew
nothing of the occurrence in the Rue Maule, nor did he
mention it, fearing that it might distress her.

"For your own safety," he continued, "why do you not turn
the scoundrels over to the authorities? They should make
quick work of them."

She hesitated for a moment before replying.

"There are two reasons," she said finally. "One of them
it is that keeps the count from doing that very thing.
The other, my real reason for fearing to expose them, I have
never told--only Rokoff and I know it. I wonder," and
then she paused, looking intently at him for a long time.

"And what do you wonder?" he asked, smiling.

"I was wondering why it is that I want to tell you the
thing that I have not dared tell even to my husband.
I believe that you would understand, and that you could tell
me the right course to follow. I believe that you would not
judge me too harshly."

"I fear that I should prove a very poor judge, madame,"
Tarzan replied, "for if you had been guilty of murder I
should say that the victim should be grateful to have met
so sweet a fate."

"Oh, dear, no," she expostulated; "it is not so terrible as that.
But first let me tell you the reason the count has for not
prosecuting these men; then, if I can hold my courage, I
shall tell you the real reason that I dare not. The first is
that Nikolas Rokoff is my brother. We are Russians.
Nikolas has been a bad man since I can remember. He was
cashiered from the Russian army, in which he held a captaincy.
There was a scandal for a time, but after a while it was
partially forgotten, and my father obtained a position for him
in the secret service.

"There have been many terrible crimes laid at Nikolas' door,
but he has always managed to escape punishment. Of late
he has accomplished it by trumped-up evidence convicting
his victims of treason against the czar, and the Russian
police, who are always only too ready to fasten guilt of
this nature upon any and all, have accepted his version
and exonerated him."

"Have not his attempted crimes against you and your
husband forfeited whatever rights the bonds of kinship might
have accorded him?" asked Tarzan. "The fact that you are his
sister has not deterred him from seeking to besmirch your honor.
You owe him no loyalty, madame."

"Ah, but there is that other reason. If I owe him no loyalty
though he be my brother, I cannot so easily disavow the
fear I hold him in because of a certain episode in my life of
which he is cognizant.

"I might as well tell you all," she resumed after a pause,
"for I see that it is in my heart to tell you sooner or later.
I was educated in a convent. While there I met a man whom
I supposed to be a gentleman. I knew little or nothing about
men and less about love. I got it into my foolish head that
I loved this man, and at his urgent request I ran away with him.
We were to have been married.

"I was with him just three hours. All in the daytime and
in public places--railroad stations and upon a train.
When we reached our destination where we were to have been
married, two officers stepped up to my escort as we descended
from the train, and placed him under arrest. They took me
also, but when I had told my story they did not detain me,
other than to send me back to the convent under the care of
a matron. It seemed that the man who had wooed me was no
gentleman at all, but a deserter from the army as well as
a fugitive from civil justice. He had a police record in
nearly every country in Europe.

"The matter was hushed up by the authorities of the convent.
Not even my parents knew of it. But Nikolas met the man
afterward, and learned the whole story. Now he threatens
to tell the count if I do not do just as he wishes me to."

Tarzan laughed. "You are still but a little girl. The story
that you have told me cannot reflect in any way upon your
reputation, and were you not a little girl at heart you would
know it. Go to your husband tonight, and tell him the whole
story, just as you have told it to me. Unless I am much mistaken
he will laugh at you for your fears, and take immediate steps
to put that precious brother of yours in prison
where he belongs."

"I only wish that I dared," she said; "but I am afraid.
I learned early to fear men. First my father, then Nikolas,
then the fathers in the convent. Nearly all my friends fear
their husbands--why should I not fear mine?"

"It does not seem right that women should fear men,"
said Tarzan, an expression of puzzlement on his face.
"I am better acquainted with the jungle folk, and there it
is more often the other way around, except among the black men,
and they to my mind are in most ways lower in the scale than
the beasts. No, I cannot understand why civilized women
should fear men, the beings that are created to protect them.
I should hate to think that any woman feared me."

"I do not think that any woman would fear you, my friend,"
said Olga de Coude softly. "I have known you but a short
while, yet though it may seem foolish to say it, you are
the only man I have ever known whom I think that I should
never fear--it is strange, too, for you are very strong.
I wondered at the ease with which you handled Nikolas and
Paulvitch that night in my cabin. It was marvellous."
As Tarzan was leaving her a short time later he wondered
a little at the clinging pressure of her hand at parting,
and the firm insistence with which she exacted a promise
from him that he would call again on the morrow.

The memory of her half-veiled eyes and perfect lips as she
had stood smiling up into his face as he bade her good-by
remained with him for the balance of the day. Olga de
Coude was a very beautiful woman, and Tarzan of the Apes
a very lonely young man, with a heart in him that was in
need of the doctoring that only a woman may provide.

As the countess turned back into the room after Tarzan's
departure, she found herself face to face with Nikolas Rokoff.

"How long have you been here?" she cried, shrinking away from him.

"Since before your lover came," he answered, with a nasty leer.

"Stop!" she commanded. "How dare you say such a thing
to me--your sister!"

"Well, my dear Olga, if he is not your lover, accept my
apologies; but it is no fault of yours that he is not.
Had he one-tenth the knowledge of women that I have you
would be in his arms this minute. He is a stupid fool, Olga.
Why, your every word and act was an open invitation to him,
and he had not the sense to see it."

The woman put her hands to her ears.

"I will not listen. You are wicked to say such things as that.
No matter what you may threaten me with, you know that I
am a good woman. After tonight you will not dare to annoy
me, for I shall tell Raoul all. He will understand, and then,
Monsieur Nikolas, beware!"

"You shall tell him nothing," said Rokoff. "I have this affair
now, and with the help of one of your servants whom I may trust
it will lack nothing in the telling when the time comes that the
details of the sworn evidence shall be poured into your husband's
ears. The other affair served its purpose well--we now have
something tangible to work on, Olga. A real AFFAIR--
and you a trusted wife. Shame, Olga," and the brute laughed.

So the countess told her count nothing, and matters were
worse than they had been. From a vague fear her mind was
transferred to a very tangible one. It may be, too, that
conscience helped to enlarge it out of all proportion.

Chapter 5

The Plot That Failed

For a month Tarzan was a regular and very welcome
devotee at the shrine of the beautiful Countess de Coude.
Often he met other members of the select little coterie that
dropped in for tea of an afternoon. More often Olga found
devices that would give her an hour of Tarzan alone.

For a time she had been frightened by what Nikolas had
insinuated. She had not thought of this big, young man
as anything more than friend, but with the suggestion
implanted by the evil words of her brother she had grown to
speculate much upon the strange force which seemed to attract
her toward the gray-eyed stranger. She did not wish to
love him, nor did she wish his love.

She was much younger than her husband, and without having
realized it she had been craving the haven of a friendship
with one nearer her own age. Twenty is shy in exchanging
confidences with forty. Tarzan was but two years
her senior. He could understand her, she felt. Then he was
clean and honorable and chivalrous. She was not afraid of
him. That she could trust him she had felt instinctively
from the first.

From a distance Rokoff had watched this growing intimacy
with malicious glee. Ever since he had learned that
Tarzan knew that he was a Russian spy there had been
added to his hatred for the ape-man a great fear that he
would expose him. He was but waiting now until the moment
was propitious for a master stroke. He wanted to rid himself
forever of Tarzan, and at the same time reap an ample revenge
for the humiliations and defeats that he had suffered
at his hands.

Tarzan was nearer to contentment than he had been since
the peace and tranquility of his jungle had been broken in
upon by the advent of the marooned Porter party. He enjoyed
the pleasant social intercourse with Olga's friends, while
the friendship which had sprung up between the fair countess
and himself was a source of never-ending delight. It broke
in upon and dispersed his gloomy thoughts, and served as a
balm to his lacerated heart.

Sometimes D'Arnot accompanied him on his visits to the
De Coude home, for he had long known both Olga and the
count. Occasionally De Coude dropped in, but the
multitudinous affairs of his official position and the
never-ending demands of politics kept him from home
usually until late at night.

Rokoff spied upon Tarzan almost constantly, waiting for the
time that he should call at the De Coude palace at night,
but in this he was doomed to disappointment. On several
occasions Tarzan accompanied the countess to her home
after the opera, but he invariably left her at the entrance
--much to the disgust of the lady's devoted brother.

Finding that it seemed impossible to trap Tarzan through
any voluntary act of his own, Rokoff and Paulvitch put their
heads together to hatch a plan that would trap the ape-man
in all the circumstantial evidence of a compromising position.

For days they watched the papers as well as the movements
of De Coude and Tarzan. At length they were rewarded.
A morning paper made brief mention of a smoker that was
to be given on the following evening by the German minister.
De Coude's name was among those of the invited guests.
If he attended this meant that he would be absent from
his home until after midnight.

On the night of the banquet Paulvitch waited at the curb
before the residence of the German minister, where he could
scan the face of each guest that arrived. He had not long
to wait before De Coude descended from his car and passed him.
That was enough. Paulvitch hastened back to his quarters,
where Rokoff awaited him. There they waited until after
eleven, then Paulvitch took down the receiver of their telephone.
He called a number.

"The apartments of Lieutenant D'Arnot?" he asked, when
he had obtained his connection.

"A message for Monsieur Tarzan, if he will be so kind as
to step to the telephone."

For a minute there was silence.

"Monsieur Tarzan?"

"Ah, yes, monsieur, this is Francois--in the service of
the Countess de Coude. Possibly monsieur does poor Francois
the honor to recall him--yes?

"Yes, monsieur. I have a message, an urgent message from
the countess. She asks that you hasten to her at once--she
is in trouble, monsieur.

"No, monsieur, poor Francois does not know. Shall I
tell madame that monsieur will be here shortly?

"Thank you, monsieur. The good God will bless you."

Paulvitch hung up the receiver and turned to grin at Rokoff.

"It will take him thirty minutes to get there. If you
reach the German minister's in fifteen, De Coude should arrive
at his home in about forty-five minutes. It all depends
upon whether the fool will remain fifteen minutes after he
finds that a trick has been played upon him; but unless I am
mistaken Olga will be loath to let him go in so short a time
as that. Here is the note for De Coude. Hasten!"

Paulvitch lost no time in reaching the German minister's.
At the door he handed the note to a footman. "This is for the
Count de Coude. It is very urgent. You must see that it is
placed in his hands at once," and he dropped a piece of silver
into the willing hand of the servant. Then he returned
to his quarters.

A moment later De Coude was apologizing to his host as he
tore open the envelope. What he read left his face white and
his hand trembling.

MONSIEUR LE COUNT DE COUDE:

One who wishes to save the honor of your name takes this
means to warn you that the sanctity of your home is this
minute in jeopardy.

A certain man who for months has been a constant visitor
there during your absence is now with your wife. If
you go at once to your countess' boudoir you will find
them together.
A FRIEND.

Twenty minutes after Paulvitch had called Tarzan, Rokoff
obtained a connection with Olga's private line. Her maid
answered the telephone which was in the countess' boudoir.

"But madame has retired," said the maid, in answer to Rokoff's
request to speak with her.

"This is a very urgent message for the countess' ears
alone," replied Rokoff. "Tell her that she must arise and
slip something about her and come to the telephone. I shall
call up again in five minutes." Then he hung up his receiver.
A moment later Paulvitch entered.

"The count has the message?" asked Rokoff.

"He should be on his way to his home by now," replied Paulvitch.

"Good! My lady will be sitting in her boudoir, very much
in negligee, about now. In a minute the faithful Jacques will
escort Monsieur Tarzan into her presence without announcing him.
It will take a few minutes for explanations. Olga will
look very alluring in the filmy creation that is her night-
dress, and the clinging robe which but half conceals the
charms that the former does not conceal at all. Olga will be
surprised, but not displeased.

"If there is a drop of red blood in the man the count
will break in upon a very pretty love scene in about fifteen
minutes from now. I think we have planned marvelously, my
dear Alexis. Let us go out and drink to the very good
health of Monsieur Tarzan in some of old Plancon's
unparalleled absinth; not forgetting that the Count de Coude
is one of the best swordsmen in Paris, and by far the best
shot in all France."

When Tarzan reached Olga's, Jacques was awaiting him at
the entrance.

"This way, Monsieur," he said, and led the way up the broad,
marble staircase. In another moment he had opened a door,
and, drawing aside a heavy curtain, obsequiously bowed
Tarzan into a dimly lighted apartment. Then Jacques vanished.

Across the room from him Tarzan saw Olga seated before
a little desk on which stood her telephone. She was tapping
impatiently upon the polished surface of the desk. She had
not heard him enter.

"Olga," he said, "what is wrong?"

She turned toward him with a little cry of alarm.

"Jean!" she cried. "What are you doing here?
Who admitted you? What does it mean?"

Tarzan was thunderstruck, but in an instant he realized
a part of the truth.

"Then you did not send for me, Olga?"

"Send for you at this time of night? MON DIEU! Jean, do
you think that I am quite mad?"

"Francois telephoned me to come at once; that you were
in trouble and wanted me."

"Francois? Who in the world is Francois?"

"He said that he was in your service. He spoke as though
I should recall the fact."

"There is no one by that name in my employ. Some one
has played a joke upon you, Jean," and Olga laughed.

"I fear that it may be a most sinister `joke,' Olga," he replied.
"There is more back of it than humor."

"What do you mean? You do not think that--"

"Where is the count?" he interrupted.

"At the German ambassador's."

"This is another move by your estimable brother.
Tomorrow the count will hear of it. He will question
the servants. Everything will point to--to what Rokoff
wishes the count to think."

"The scoundrel!" cried Olga. She had arisen, and come close
to Tarzan, where she stood looking up into his face.
She was very frightened. In her eyes was an expression that the
hunter sees in those of a poor, terrified doe--puzzled--questioning.
She trembled, and to steady herself raised her hands to his
broad shoulders. "What shall we do, Jean?" she whispered.
"It is terrible. Tomorrow all Paris will read of
it--he will see to that."

Her look, her attitude, her words were eloquent of the age-
old appeal of defenseless woman to her natural protector--man.
Tarzan took one of the warm little hands that lay on his
breast in his own strong one. The act was quite involuntary,
and almost equally so was the instinct of protection that
threw a sheltering arm around the girl's shoulders.

The result was electrical. Never before had he been so close
to her. In startled guilt they looked suddenly into each
other's eyes, and where Olga de Coude should have been
strong she was weak, for she crept closer into the man's arms,
and clasped her own about his neck. And Tarzan of the Apes?
He took the panting figure into his mighty arms, and covered
the hot lips with kisses.

Raoul de Coude made hurried excuses to his host after he
had read the note handed him by the ambassador's butler.
Never afterward could he recall the nature of the excuses
he made. Everything was quite a blur to him up to the
time that he stood on the threshold of his own home.
Then he became very cool, moving quietly and with caution.
For some inexplicable reason Jacques had the door open before
he was halfway to the steps. It did not strike him at the
time as being unusual, though afterward he remarked it.

Very softly he tiptoed up the stairs and along the gallery
to the door of his wife's boudoir. In his hand was a
heavy walking stick--in his heart, murder.

Olga was the first to see him. With a horrified shriek she
tore herself from Tarzan's arms, and the ape-man turned just
in time to ward with his arm a terrific blow that De Coude
had aimed at his head. Once, twice, three times the heavy
stick fell with lightning rapidity, and each blow aided in the
transition of the ape-man back to the primordial.

With the low, guttural snarl of the bull ape he sprang for
the Frenchman. The great stick was torn from his grasp and
broken in two as though it had been matchwood, to be flung aside
as the now infuriated beast charged for his adversary's throat.
Olga de Coude stood a horrified spectator of the terrible
scene which ensued during the next brief moment, then
she sprang to where Tarzan was murdering her husband--
choking the life from him--shaking him as a terrier might
shake a rat.

Frantically she tore at his great hands. "Mother of
God!" she cried. "You are killing him, you are killing him!
Oh, Jean, you are killing my husband!"

Tarzan was deaf with rage. Suddenly he hurled the body
to the floor, and, placing his foot upon the upturned breast,
raised his head. Then through the palace of the Count de
Coude rang the awesome challenge of the bull ape that has
made a kill. From cellar to attic the horrid sound searched
out the servants, and left them blanched and trembling.
The woman in the room sank to her knees beside the body
of her husband, and prayed.

Slowly the red mist faded from before Tarzan's eyes.
Things began to take form--he was regaining the perspective of
civilized man. His eyes fell upon the figure of the kneeling woman.
"Olga," he whispered. She looked up, expecting to see the
maniacal light of murder in the eyes above her.
Instead she saw sorrow and contrition.

"Oh, Jean!" she cried. "See what you have done. He was
my husband. I loved him, and you have killed him."

Very gently Tarzan raised the limp form of the Count de
Coude and bore it to a couch. Then he put his ear to the
man's breast.

"Some brandy, Olga," he said.

She brought it, and together they forced it between his lips.
Presently a faint gasp came from the white lips.
The head turned, and De Coude groaned.

"He will not die," said Tarzan. "Thank God!"

"Why did you do it, Jean?" she asked.

"I do not know. He struck me, and I went mad. I have
seen the apes of my tribe do the same thing. I have never
told you my story, Olga. It would have been better had you
known it--this might not have happened. I never saw my father.
The only mother I knew was a ferocious she-ape. Until I was
fifteen I had never seen a human being. I was twenty before
I saw a white man. A little more than a year ago I was a
naked beast of prey in an African jungle.

"Do not judge me too harshly. Two years is too short a time
in which to attempt to work the change in an individual that
it has taken countless ages to accomplish in the white race."

"I do not judge at all, Jean. The fault is mine.
You must go now--he must not find you here when he
regains consciousness. Good-by."

It was a sorrowful Tarzan who walked with bowed head
from the palace of the Count de Coude.

Once outside his thoughts took definite shape, to the end
that twenty minutes later he entered a police station not
far from the Rue Maule. Here he soon found one of the
officers with whom he had had the encounter several weeks
previous. The policeman was genuinely glad to see again
the man who had so roughly handled him. After a moment
of conversation Tarzan asked if he had ever heard of
Nikolas Rokoff or Alexis Paulvitch.

"Very often, indeed, monsieur. Each has a police record,
and while there is nothing charged against them now, we
make it a point to know pretty well where they may be found
should the occasion demand. It is only the same precaution
that we take with every known criminal. Why does monsieur ask?"

"They are known to me," replied Tarzan. "I wish to see
Monsieur Rokoff on a little matter of business. If you can
direct me to his lodgings I shall appreciate it."

A few minutes later he bade the policeman adieu, and,
with a slip of paper in his pocket bearing a certain address
in a semirespectable quarter, he walked briskly toward the
nearest taxi stand.

Rokoff and Paulvitch had returned to their rooms, and were
sitting talking over the probable outcome of the evening's
events. They had telephoned to the offices of two of the
morning papers from which they momentarily expected
representatives to hear the first report of the scandal
that was to stir social Paris on the morrow.

A heavy step sounded on the stairway. "Ah, but these
newspaper men are prompt," exclaimed Rokoff, and as a knock
fell upon the door of their room: "Enter, monsieur."

The smile of welcome froze upon the Russian's face as
he looked into the hard, gray eyes of his visitor.

"Name of a name!" he shouted, springing to his feet,
"What brings you here!"

"Sit down!" said Tarzan, so low that the men could barely
catch the words, but in a tone that brought Rokoff to his
chair, and kept Paulvitch in his.

"You know what has brought me here," he continued, in
the same low tone. "It should be to kill you, but because
you are Olga de Coude's brother I shall not do that--now.

"I shall give you a chance for your lives. Paulvitch does
not count much--he is merely a stupid, foolish little tool,
and so I shall not kill him so long as I permit you to live.
Before I leave you two alive in this room you will have done
two things. The first will be to write a full confession of
your connection with tonight's plot--and sign it.

"The second will be to promise me upon pain of death that you
will permit no word of this affair to get into the newspapers.
If you do not do both, neither of you will be alive when I
pass next through that doorway. Do you understand?"
And, without waiting for a reply: "Make haste; there is ink
before you, and paper and a pen."

Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to
show how little he feared Tarzan's threats. An instant later
he felt the ape-man's steel fingers at his throat, and Paulvitch,
who attempted to dodge them and reach the door, was
lifted completely off the floor, and hurled senseless into a
corner. When Rokoff commenced to blacken about the face
Tarzan released his hold and shoved the fellow back into
his chair. After a moment of coughing Rokoff sat sullenly
glaring at the man standing opposite him. Presently Paulvitch
came to himself, and limped painfully back to his chair
at Tarzan's command.

"Now write," said the ape-man. "If it is necessary to handle
you again I shall not be so lenient."

Rokoff picked up a pen and commenced to write.

"See that you omit no detail, and that you mention every
name," cautioned Tarzan.

Presently there was a knock at the door. "Enter," said Tarzan.

A dapper young man came in. "I am from the MATIN,"
he announced. "I understand that Monsieur Rokoff has
a story for me."

"Then you are mistaken, monsieur," replied Tarzan.
"You have no story for publication, have you, my dear Nikolas."

Rokoff looked up from his writing with an ugly scowl
upon his face.

"No," he growled, "I have no story for publication--now."

"Nor ever, my dear Nikolas," and the reporter did not see
the nasty light in the ape-man's eye; but Nikolas Rokoff did.

"Nor ever," he repeated hastily.

"It is too bad that monsieur has been troubled," said Tarzan,
turning to the newspaper man. "I bid monsieur good
evening," and he bowed the dapper young man out of the
room, and closed the door in his face.

An hour later Tarzan, with a rather bulky manuscript in his
coat pocket, turned at the door leading from Rokoff's room.

"Were I you I should leave France," he said, "for sooner
or later I shall find an excuse to kill you that will not in
any way compromise your sister."

Chapter 6

A Duel

D'Arnot was asleep when Tarzan entered their apartments
after leaving Rokoff's. Tarzan did not disturb him, but
the following morning he narrated the happenings of
the previous evening, omitting not a single detail.

"What a fool I have been," he concluded. "De Coude and
his wife were both my friends. How have I returned their
friendship? Barely did I escape murdering the count. I have
cast a stigma on the name of a good woman. It is very probable
that I have broken up a happy home."

"Do you love Olga de Coude?" asked D'Arnot.

"Were I not positive that she does not love me I could not
answer your question, Paul; but without disloyalty to her I
tell you that I do not love her, nor does she love me. For an
instant we were the victims of a sudden madness--it was not
love--and it would have left us, unharmed, as suddenly as
it had come upon us even though De Coude had not returned.
As you know, I have had little experience of women. Olga
de Coude is very beautiful; that, and the dim light and the
seductive surroundings, and the appeal of the defenseless for
protection, might have been resisted by a more civilized
man, but my civilization is not even skin deep--it does not go
deeper than my clothes.

"Paris is no place for me. I will but continue to stumble
into more and more serious pitfalls. The man-made
restrictions are irksome. I feel always that I am a prisoner.
I cannot endure it, my friend, and so I think that I shall go
back to my own jungle, and lead the life that God intended
that I should lead when He put me there."

"Do not take it so to heart, Jean," responded D'Arnot.
"You have acquitted yourself much better than most
`civilized' men would have under similar circumstances.
As to leaving Paris at this time, I rather think that
Raoul de Coude may be expected to have something to say
on that subject before long."

Nor was D'Arnot mistaken. A week later on Monsieur Flaubert
was announced about eleven in the morning, as D'Arnot and
Tarzan were breakfasting. Monsieur Flaubert was an
impressively polite gentleman. With many low bows he delivered
Monsieur le Count de Coude's challenge to Monsieur Tarzan.
Would monsieur be so very kind as to arrange to have
a friend meet Monsieur Flaubert at as early an hour as
convenient, that the details might be arranged to the mutual
satisfaction of all concerned?

Certainly. Monsieur Tarzan would be delighted to place
his interests unreservedly in the hands of his friend,
Lieutenant D'Arnot. And so it was arranged that D'Arnot
was to call on Monsieur Flaubert at two that afternoon,
and the polite Monsieur Flaubert, with many bows, left them.

When they were again alone D'Arnot looked quizzically at Tarzan.

"Well?" he said.

"Now to my sins I must add murder, or else myself be killed,"
said Tarzan. "I am progressing rapidly in the ways of
my civilized brothers."

"What weapons shall you select?" asked D'Arnot.
"De Coude is accredited with being a master with the sword,
and a splendid shot."

"I might then choose poisoned arrows at twenty paces,
or spears at the same distance," laughed Tarzan.
"Make it pistols, Paul."

"He will kill you, Jean."

"I have no doubt of it," replied Tarzan. "I must die some day."

"We had better make it swords," said D'Arnot. "He will be
satisfied with wounding you, and there is less danger of a
mortal wound."
"Pistols," said Tarzan, with finality.

D'Arnot tried to argue him out of it, but without avail,
so pistols it was.

D'Arnot returned from his conference with Monsieur Flaubert
shortly after four.

"It is all arranged," he said. "Everything is satisfactory.
Tomorrow morning at daylight--there is a secluded spot on
the road not far from Etamps. For some personal reason
Monsieur Flaubert preferred it. I did not demur."

"Good!" was Tarzan's only comment. He did not refer to
the matter again even indirectly. That night he wrote several
letters before he retired. After sealing and addressing them
he placed them all in an envelope addressed to D'Arnot.
As he undressed D'Arnot heard him humming a music-hall ditty.

The Frenchman swore under his breath. He was very unhappy,
for he was positive that when the sun rose the next
morning it would look down upon a dead Tarzan. It grated
upon him to see Tarzan so unconcerned.

"This is a most uncivilized hour for people to kill each
other," remarked the ape-man when he had been routed out of
a comfortable bed in the blackness of the early morning hours.
He had slept well, and so it seemed that his head scarcely
touched the pillow ere his man deferentially aroused him.
His remark was addressed to D'Arnot, who stood fully
dressed in the doorway of Tarzan's bedroom.

D'Arnot had scarcely slept at all during the night. He was
nervous, and therefore inclined to be irritable.

"I presume you slept like a baby all night," he said.

Tarzan laughed. "From your tone, Paul, I infer that you
rather harbor the fact against me. I could not help it, really."

"No, Jean; it is not that," replied D'Arnot, himself
smiling. "But you take the entire matter with such
infernal indifference--it is exasperating. One would
think that you were going out to shoot at a target,
rather than to face one of the best shots in France."

Tarzan shrugged his shoulders. "I am going out to expiate
a great wrong, Paul. A very necessary feature of the expiation
is the marksmanship of my opponent. Wherefore, then, should
I be dissatisfied? Have you not yourself told me that Count
de Coude is a splendid marksman?"

"You mean that you hope to be killed?" exclaimed D'Arnot,
in horror.

"I cannot say that I hope to be; but you must admit that
there is little reason to believe that I shall not be killed."

Had D'Arnot known the thing that was in the ape-man's
mind--that had been in his mind almost from the first
intimation that De Coude would call him to account on the
field of honor--he would have been even more horrified than
he was.

In silence they entered D'Arnot's great car, and in
similar silence they sped over the dim road that leads
to Etamps. Each man was occupied with his own thoughts.
D'Arnot's were very mournful, for he was genuinely fond
of Tarzan. The great friendship which had sprung up between
these two men whose lives and training had been so widely
different had but been strengthened by association, for
they were both men to whom the same high ideals of manhood,
of personal courage, and of honor appealed with equal force.
They could understand one another, and each could be proud
of the friendship of the other.

Tarzan of the Apes was wrapped in thoughts of the past;
pleasant memories of the happier occasions of his lost
jungle life. He recalled the countless boyhood hours that
he had spent cross-legged upon the table in his dead father's
cabin, his little brown body bent over one of the fascinating
picture books from which, unaided, he had gleaned the secret
of the printed language long before the sounds of
human speech fell upon his ears. A smile of contentment
softened his strong face as he thought of that day of days
that he had had alone with Jane Porter in the heart of his
primeval forest.

Presently his reminiscences were broken in upon by the
stopping of the car--they were at their destination.
Tarzan's mind returned to the affairs of the moment.
He knew that he was about to die, but there was no fear of
death in him. To a denizen of the cruel jungle death is
a commonplace. The first law of nature compels them to
cling tenaciously to life--to fight for it; but it does
not teach them to fear death.

D'Arnot and Tarzan were first upon the field of honor. A
moment later De Coude, Monsieur Flaubert, and a third
gentleman arrived. The last was introduced to D'Arnot and
Tarzan; he was a physician.

D'Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert spoke together in whispers
for a brief time. The Count de Coude and Tarzan stood apart
at opposite sides of the field. Presently the seconds
summoned them. D'Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert had examined
both pistols. The two men who were to face each other a
moment later stood silently while Monsieur Flaubert recited
the conditions they were to observe.

They were to stand back to back. At a signal from Monsieur
Flaubert they were to walk in opposite directions,
their pistols hanging by their sides. When each had proceeded
ten paces D'Arnot was to give the final signal--then they
were to turn and fire at will until one fell, or each had
expended the three shots allowed.

While Monsieur Flaubert spoke Tarzan selected a cigarette
from his case, and lighted it. De Coude was the personification
of coolness--was he not the best shot in France?

Presently Monsieur Flaubert nodded to D'Arnot, and
each man placed his principal in position.

"Are you quite ready, gentlemen?" asked Monsieur Flaubert.

"Quite," replied De Coude.

Tarzan nodded. Monsieur Flaubert gave the signal. He
and D'Arnot stepped back a few paces to be out of the line
of fire as the men paced slowly apart. Six! Seven! Eight!
There were tears in D'Arnot's eyes. He loved Tarzan very much.
Nine! Another pace, and the poor lieutenant gave the
signal he so hated to give. To him it sounded the doom
of his best friend.

Quickly De Coude wheeled and fired. Tarzan gave a little start.
His pistol still dangled at his side. De Coude hesitated,
as though waiting to see his antagonist crumple to the ground.
The Frenchman was too experienced a marksman not to know that
he had scored a hit. Still Tarzan made no move to raise his pistol.
De Coude fired once more, but the attitude of the ape-man--the
utter indifference that was so apparent in every line of the
nonchalant ease of his giant figure, and the even unruffled
puffing of his cigarette--had disconcerted the best marksman
in France. This time Tarzan did not start, but again De Coude
knew that he had hit.

Suddenly the explanation leaped to his mind--his antagonist
was coolly taking these terrible chances in the hope
that he would receive no staggering wound from any of
De Coude's three shots. Then he would take his own time
about shooting De Coude down deliberately, coolly, and in
cold blood. A little shiver ran up the Frenchman's spine.
It was fiendish--diabolical. What manner of creature was this
that could stand complacently with two bullets in him, waiting
for the third?

And so De Coude took careful aim this time, but his nerve
was gone, and he made a clean miss. Not once had Tarzan
raised his pistol hand from where it hung beside his leg.

For a moment the two stood looking straight into each
other's eyes. On Tarzan's face was a pathetic expression
of disappointment. On De Coude's a rapidly growing
expression of horror--yes, of terror.

He could endure it no longer.

"Mother of God! Monsieur--shoot!" he screamed.

But Tarzan did not raise his pistol. Instead, he advanced
toward De Coude, and when D'Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert,
misinterpreting his intention, would have rushed between
them, he raised his left hand in a sign of remonstrance.

"Do not fear," he said to them, "I shall not harm him."

It was most unusual, but they halted. Tarzan advanced
until he was quite close to De Coude.

"There must have been something wrong with monsieur's
pistol," he said. "Or monsieur is unstrung. Take mine,
monsieur, and try again," and Tarzan offered his pistol, butt
foremost, to the astonished De Coude.

"MON DIEU, monsieur!" cried the latter. "Are you mad?"

"No, my friend," replied the ape-man; "but I deserve to die.
It is the only way in which I may atone for the wrong I have
done a very good woman. Take my pistol and do as I bid."

"It would be murder," replied De Coude. "But what wrong
did you do my wife? She swore to me that--"

"I do not mean that," said Tarzan quickly. "You saw all
the wrong that passed between us. But that was enough to
cast a shadow upon her name, and to ruin the happiness of
a man against whom I had no enmity. The fault was all
mine, and so I hoped to die for it this morning. I am
disappointed that monsieur is not so wonderful a marksman
as I had been led to believe."

"You say that the fault was all yours?" asked De Coude eagerly.

"All mine, monsieur. Your wife is a very pure woman.
She loves only you. The fault that you saw was all mine.
The thing that brought me there was no fault of either the
Countess de Coude or myself. Here is a paper which will quite
positively demonstrate that," and Tarzan drew from his pocket
the statement Rokoff had written and signed.

De Coude took it and read. D'Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert
had drawn near. They were interested spectators of this
strange ending of a strange duel. None spoke until De
Coude had quite finished, then he looked up at Tarzan.

"You are a very brave and chivalrous gentleman," he said.
"I thank God that I did not kill you."

De Coude was a Frenchman. Frenchmen are impulsive. He threw
his arms about Tarzan and embraced him. Monsieur Flaubert
embraced D'Arnot. There was no one to embrace the doctor.
So possibly it was pique which prompted him to interfere,
and demand that he be permitted to dress Tarzan's wounds.

"This gentleman was hit once at least," he said. "Possibly thrice."

"Twice," said Tarzan. "Once in the left shoulder, and again
in the left side--both flesh wounds, I think." But the doctor
insisted upon stretching him upon the sward, and tinkering
with him until the wounds were cleansed and the flow of
blood checked.

One result of the duel was that they all rode back to Paris
together in D'Arnot's car, the best of friends. De Coude
was so relieved to have had this double assurance of his
wife's loyalty that he felt no rancor at all toward Tarzan.
It is true that the latter had assumed much more of the fault
than was rightly his, but if he lied a little he may be
excused, for he lied in the service of a woman, and he lied
like a gentleman.

The ape-man was confined to his bed for several days. He
felt that it was foolish and unnecessary, but the doctor and
D'Arnot took the matter so to heart that he gave in to please
them, though it made him laugh to think of it.

"It is droll," he said to D'Arnot. "To lie abed because of a
pin prick! Why, when Bolgani, the king gorilla, tore me almost
to pieces, while I was still but a little boy, did I have a
nice soft bed to lie on? No, only the damp, rotting vegetation
of the jungle. Hidden beneath some friendly bush I lay for
days and weeks with only Kala to nurse me--poor, faithful
Kala, who kept the insects from my wounds and warned off
the beasts of prey.

"When I called for water she brought it to me in her own
mouth--the only way she knew to carry it. There was no
sterilized gauze, there was no antiseptic bandage--there
was nothing that would not have driven our dear doctor mad
to have seen. Yet I recovered--recovered to lie in bed
because of a tiny scratch that one of the jungle folk would
scarce realize unless it were upon the end of his nose."

But the time was soon over, and before he realized it
Tarzan found himself abroad again. Several times De Coude
had called, and when he found that Tarzan was anxious for
employment of some nature he promised to see what could
be done to find a berth for him.

It was the first day that Tarzan was permitted to go out
that he received a message from De Coude requesting him
to call at the count's office that afternoon.

He found De Coude awaiting him with a very pleasant welcome,
and a sincere congratulation that he was once more
upon his feet. Neither had ever mentioned the duel or the
cause of it since that morning upon the field of honor.

"I think that I have found just the thing for you, Monsieur
Tarzan," said the count. "It is a position of much trust and
responsibility, which also requires considerably physical courage
and prowess. I cannot imagine a man better fitted than
you, my dear Monsieur Tarzan, for this very position. It will
necessitate travel, and later it may lead to a very much better
post--possibly in the diplomatic service.

"At first, for a short time only, you will be a special agent
in the service of the ministry of war. Come, I will take you
to the gentleman who will be your chief. He can explain
the duties better than I, and then you will be in a position
to judge if you wish to accept or no."

De Coude himself escorted Tarzan to the office of General
Rochere, the chief of the bureau to which Tarzan would be
attached if he accepted the position. There the count left
him, after a glowing description to the general of the many
attributes possessed by the ape-man which should fit him
for the work of the service.

A half hour later Tarzan walked out of the office the
possessor of the first position he had ever held. On the morrow
he was to return for further instructions, though General
Rochere had made it quite plain that Tarzan might prepare
to leave Paris for an almost indefinite period, possibly on
the morrow.

It was with feelings of the keenest elation that he hastened
home to bear the good news to D'Arnot. At last he was to be
of some value in the world. He was to earn money, and, best
of all, to travel and see the world.

He could scarcely wait to get well inside D'Arnot's sitting
room before he burst out with the glad tidings. D'Arnot was
not so pleased.

"It seems to delight you to think that you are to leave
Paris, and that we shall not see each other for months, perhaps.
Tarzan, you are a most ungrateful beast!" and D'Arnot laughed.

"No, Paul; I am a little child. I have a new toy, and I am
tickled to death."

And so it came that on the following day Tarzan left
Paris en route for Marseilles and Oran.

Chapter 7

The Dancing Girl of Sidi Aissa

Tarzan's first mission did not bid fair to be either
exciting or vastly important. There was a certain lieutenant
of SPAHIS whom the government had reason to suspect
of improper relations with a great European power.
This Lieutenant Gernois, who was at present stationed at
Sidibel-Abbes, had recently been attached to the general staff,
where certain information of great military value had come
into his possession in the ordinary routine of his duties.
It was this information which the government suspected the
great power was bartering for with the officer.

It was at most but a vague hint dropped by a certain
notorious Parisienne in a jealous mood that had caused
suspicion to rest upon the lieutenant. But general staffs are
jealous of their secrets, and treason so serious a thing that
even a hint of it may not be safely neglected. And so it was
that Tarzan had come to Algeria in the guise of an American
hunter and traveler to keep a close eye upon Lieutenant Gernois.

He had looked forward with keen delight to again seeing
his beloved Africa, but this northern aspect of it was so
different from his tropical jungle home that he might as well
have been back in Paris for all the heart thrills of homecoming
that he experienced. At Oran he spent a day wandering through
the narrow, crooked alleys of the Arab quarter enjoying the
strange, new sights. The next day found him at Sidi-bel-Abbes,
where he presented his letters of introduction to both civil
and military authorities--letters which gave no clew to the
real significance of his mission.

Tarzan possessed a sufficient command of English to enable
him to pass among Arabs and Frenchmen as an American,
and that was all that was required of it. When he met an
Englishman he spoke French in order that he might not betray
himself, but occasionally talked in English to foreigners
who understood that tongue, but could not note the slight
imperfections of accent and pronunciation that were his.

Here he became acquainted with many of the French officers,
and soon became a favorite among them. He met Gernois,
whom he found to be a taciturn, dyspeptic-looking man of
about forty, having little or no social intercourse with
his fellows.

For a month nothing of moment occurred. Gernois apparently
had no visitors, nor did he on his occasional visits
to the town hold communication with any who might even
by the wildest flight of imagination be construed into secret
agents of a foreign power. Tarzan was beginning to hope that,
after all, the rumor might have been false, when suddenly
Gernois was ordered to Bou Saada in the Petit Sahara far to
the south.

A company of SPAHIS and three officers were to relieve
another company already stationed there. Fortunately one of
the officers, Captain Gerard, had become an excellent friend of
Tarzan's, and so when the ape-man suggested that he should
embrace the opportunity of accompanying him to Bou Saada, where
he expected to find hunting, it caused not the slightest suspicion.

At Bouira the detachment detrained, and the balance of the
journey was made in the saddle. As Tarzan was dickering at
Bouira for a mount he caught a brief glimpse of a man in
European clothes eying him from the doorway of a native
coffeehouse, but as Tarzan looked the man turned and entered the
little, low-ceilinged mud hut, and but for a haunting impression
that there had been something familiar about the face or figure
of the fellow, Tarzan gave the matter no further thought.

The march to Aumale was fatiguing to Tarzan, whose
equestrian experiences hitherto had been confined to a course
of riding lessons in a Parisian academy, and so it was that he
quickly sought the comforts of a bed in the Hotel Grossat,
while the officers and troops took up their quarters at the
military post.

Although Tarzan was called early the following morning,
the company of SPAHIS was on the march before he had
finished his breakfast. He was hurrying through his meal that
the soldiers might not get too far in advance of him when he
glanced through the door connecting the dining room with the bar.

To his surprise, he saw Gernois standing there in
conversation with the very stranger he had seen in the coffee-
house at Bouira the day previous. He could not be mistaken,
for there was the same strangely familiar attitude and figure,
though the man's back was toward him.

As his eyes lingered on the two, Gernois looked up and
caught the intent expression on Tarzan's face. The stranger
was talking in a low whisper at the time, but the French
officer immediately interrupted him, and the two at once
turned away and passed out of the range of Tarzan's vision.

This was the first suspicious occurrence that Tarzan had
ever witnessed in connection with Gernois' actions, but he
was positive that the men had left the barroom solely because
Gernois had caught Tarzan's eyes upon them; then there was
the persistent impression of familiarity about the stranger
to further augment the ape-man's belief that here at length
was something which would bear watching.

A moment later Tarzan entered the barroom, but the men
had left, nor did he see aught of them in the street beyond,
though he found a pretext to ride to various shops before he
set out after the column which had now considerable start of him.
He did not overtake them until he reached Sidi Aissa shortly
after noon, where the soldiers had halted for an hour's rest.
Here he found Gernois with the column, but there was no
sign of the stranger.

It was market day at Sidi Aissa, and the numberless caravans
of camels coming in from the desert, and the crowds of
bickering Arabs in the market place, filled Tarzan with a
consuming desire to remain for a day that he might see more of
these sons of the desert. Thus it was that the company of
SPAHIS marched on that afternoon toward Bou Saada without
him. He spent the hours until dark wandering about the
market in company with a youthful Arab, one Abdul, who
had been recommended to him by the innkeeper as a trustworthy
servant and interpreter.

Here Tarzan purchased a better mount than the one he
had selected at Bouira, and, entering into conversation with
the stately Arab to whom the animal had belonged, learned
that the seller was Kadour ben Saden, sheik of a desert tribe
far south of Djelfa. Through Abdul, Tarzan invited his new
acquaintance to dine with him. As the three were making
their way through the crowds of marketers, camels, donkeys,
and horses that filled the market place with a confusing
babel of sounds, Abdul plucked at Tarzan's sleeve.

"Look, master, behind us," and he turned, pointing at a
figure which disappeared behind a camel as Tarzan turned.
"He has been following us about all afternoon," continued Abdul.

"I caught only a glimpse of an Arab in a dark-blue burnoose
and white turban," replied Tarzan. "Is it he you mean?"

"Yes. I suspected him because he seems a stranger here,
without other business than following us, which is not the
way of the Arab who is honest, and also because he keeps
the lower part of his face hidden, only his eyes showing.
He must be a bad man, or he would have honest business of
his own to occupy his time."

"He is on the wrong scent then, Abdul," replied Tarzan,
"for no one here can have any grievance against me.
This is my first visit to your country, and none knows me.
He will soon discover his error, and cease to follow us."

"Unless he be bent on robbery," returned Abdul.

"Then all we can do is wait until he is ready to try his
hand upon us," laughed Tarzan, "and I warrant that he will
get his bellyful of robbing now that we are prepared for
him," and so he dismissed the subject from his mind, though
he was destined to recall it before many hours through a most
unlooked-for occurrence.

Kadour ben Saden, having dined well, prepared to take leave
of his host. With dignified protestations of friendship, he
invited Tarzan to visit him in his wild domain, where the
antelope, the stag, the boar, the panther, and the lion might
still be found in sufficient numbers to tempt an ardent huntsman.

On his departure the ape-man, with Abdul, wandered again
into the streets of Sidi Aissa, where he was soon attracted
by the wild din of sound coming from the open doorway of
one of the numerous CAFES MAURES. It was after eight, and
the dancing was in full swing as Tarzan entered. The room
was filled to repletion with Arabs. All were smoking, and
drinking their thick, hot coffee.

Tarzan and Abdul found seats near the center of the room,
though the terrific noise produced by the musicians upon
their Arab drums and pipes would have rendered a seat
farther from them more acceptable to the quiet-loving ape-man.
A rather good-looking Ouled-Nail was dancing, and, perceiving
Tarzan's European clothes, and scenting a generous gratuity,
she threw her silken handkerchief upon his shoulder,
to be rewarded with a franc.

When her place upon the floor had been taken by another
the bright-eyed Abdul saw her in conversation with two
Arabs at the far side of the room, near a side door that
let upon an inner court, around the gallery of which were
the rooms occupied by the girls who danced in this cafe.

At first he thought nothing of the matter, but presently he
noticed from the corner of his eye one of the men nod in
their direction, and the girl turn and shoot a furtive glance
at Tarzan. Then the Arabs melted through the doorway into
the darkness of the court.

When it came again the girl's turn to dance she hovered
close to Tarzan, and for the ape-man alone were her sweetest
smiles. Many an ugly scowl was cast upon the tall European
by swarthy, dark-eyed sons of the desert, but neither smiles
nor scowls produced any outwardly visible effect upon him.
Again the girl cast her handkerchief upon his shoulder, and
again was she rewarded with a franc piece. As she was sticking
it upon her forehead, after the custom of her kind, she
bent low toward Tarzan, whispering a quick word in his ear.

"There are two without in the court," she said quickly, in
broken French, "who would harm m'sieur. At first I promised
to lure you to them, but you have been kind, and I cannot
do it. Go quickly, before they find that I have failed them.
I think that they are very bad men."

Tarzan thanked the girl, assuring her that he would be careful,
and, having finished her dance, she crossed to the little
doorway and went out into the court. But Tarzan did not leave
the cafe as she had urged.

For another half hour nothing unusual occurred, then a
surly-looking Arab entered the cafe from the street. He stood
near Tarzan, where he deliberately made insulting remarks
about the European, but as they were in his native tongue
Tarzan was entirely innocent of their purport until Abdul
took it upon himself to enlighten him.

"This fellow is looking for trouble," warned Abdul. "He is
not alone. In fact, in case of a disturbance, nearly every
man here would be against you. It would be better to leave
quietly, master."

"Ask the fellow what he wants," commanded Tarzan.

"He says that `the dog of a Christian' insulted the Ouled-
Nail, who belongs to him. He means trouble, m'sieur."

"Tell him that I did not insult his or any other Ouled-
Nail, that I wish him to go away and leave me alone.
That I have no quarrel with him, nor has he any with me."

"He says," replied Abdul, after delivering this message to
the Arab, "that besides being a dog yourself that you are the
son of one, and that your grandmother was a hyena.
Incidentally you are a liar."

The attention of those near by had now been attracted
by the altercation, and the sneering laughs that followed
this torrent of invective easily indicated the trend of the
sympathies of the majority of the audience.

Tarzan did not like being laughed at, neither did he relish
the terms applied to him by the Arab, but he showed no
sign of anger as he arose from his seat upon the bench.
A half smile played about his lips, but of a sudden a mighty
fist shot into the face of the scowling Arab, and back of it
were the terrible muscles of the ape-man.

At the instant that the man fell a half dozen fierce plainsmen
sprang into the room from where they had apparently been
waiting for their cue in the street before the cafe.
With cries of "Kill the unbeliever!" and "Down with the
dog of a Christian!" they made straight for Tarzan.
A number of the younger Arabs in the audience sprang to
their feet to join in the assault upon the unarmed white man.
Tarzan and Abdul were rushed back toward the end of
the room by the very force of numbers opposing them.
The young Arab remained loyal to his master, and with
drawn knife fought at his side.

With tremendous blows the ape-man felled all who came
within reach of his powerful hands. He fought quietly and
without a word, upon his lips the same half smile they had
worn as he rose to strike down the man who had insulted him.
It seemed impossible that either he or Abdul could survive the
sea of wicked-looking swords and knives that surrounded
them, but the very numbers of their assailants proved the
best bulwark of their safety. So closely packed was the
howling, cursing mob that no weapon could be wielded to
advantage, and none of the Arabs dared use a firearm for
fear of wounding one of his compatriots.

Finally Tarzan succeeded in seizing one of the most
persistent of his attackers. With a quick wrench he disarmed
the fellow, and then, holding him before them as a shield,
he backed slowly beside Abdul toward the little door which
led into the inner courtyard. At the threshold he paused for
an instant, and, lifting the struggling Arab above his head,
hurled him, as though from a catapult, full in the faces of
his on-pressing fellows.

Then Tarzan and Abdul stepped into the semidarkness of
the court. The frightened Ouled-Nails were crouching at the
tops of the stairs which led to their respective rooms, the
only light in the courtyard coming from the sickly candles
which each girl had stuck with its own grease to the woodwork
of her door-frame, the better to display her charms
to those who might happen to traverse the dark inclosure.

Scarcely had Tarzan and Abdul emerged from the room ere
a revolver spoke close at their backs from the shadows
beneath one of the stairways, and as they turned to meet this
new antagonist, two muffled figures sprang toward them,
firing as they came. Tarzan leaped to meet these two new
assailants. The foremost lay, a second later, in the trampled
dirt of the court, disarmed and groaning from a broken wrist.
Abdul's knife found the vitals of the second in the instant
that the fellow's revolver missed fire as he held it to the
faithful Arab's forehead.

The maddened horde within the cafe were now rushing out in
pursuit of their quarry. The Ouled-Nails had extinguished
their candles at a cry from one of their number, and the
only light within the yard came feebly from the open and
half-blocked door of the cafe. Tarzan had seized a sword
from the man who had fallen before Abdul's knife, and now
he stood waiting for the rush of men that was coming in
search of them through the darkness.

Suddenly he felt a light hand upon his shoulder from behind,
and a woman's voice whispering, "Quick, m'sieur; this way. Follow me."

"Come, Abdul," said Tarzan, in a low tone, to the youth;
"we can be no worse off elsewhere than we are here."

The woman turned and led them up the narrow stairway
that ended at the door of her quarters. Tarzan was close
beside her. He saw the gold and silver bracelets upon her
bare arms, the strings of gold coin that depended from her hair
ornaments, and the gorgeous colors of her dress. He saw that
she was a Ouled-Nail, and instinctively he knew that she
was the same who had whispered the warning in his ear
earlier in the evening.

As they reached the top of the stairs they could hear the
angry crowd searching the yard beneath.

"Soon they will search here," whispered the girl.
"They must not find you, for, though you fight with the
strength of many men, they will kill you in the end.
Hasten; you can drop from the farther window of my room to the
street beyond. Before they discover that you are no longer in
the court of the buildings you will be safe within the hotel."

But even as she spoke, several men had started up the
stairway at the head of which they stood. There was a sudden
cry from one of the searchers. They had been discovered.
Quickly the crowd rushed for the stairway. The foremost
assailant leaped quickly upward, but at the top he met the
sudden sword that he had not expected--the quarry had been
unarmed before.

With a cry, the man toppled back upon those behind him.
Like tenpins they rolled down the stairs. The ancient and
rickety structure could not withstand the strain of this
unwonted weight and jarring. With a creaking and rending
of breaking wood it collapsed beneath the Arabs, leaving
Tarzan, Abdul, and the girl alone upon the frail platform
at the top.

"Come!" cried the Ouled-Nail. "They will reach us from
another stairway through the room next to mine. We have
not a moment to spare."

Just as they were entering the room Abdul heard and
translated a cry from the yard below for several to hasten
to the street and cut off escape from that side.

"We are lost now," said the girl simply.

"We?" questioned Tarzan.

"Yes, m'sieur," she responded; "they will kill me as well.
Have I not aided you?"

This put a different aspect on the matter. Tarzan had rather
been enjoying the excitement and danger of the encounter.
He had not for an instant supposed that either Abdul or the
girl could suffer except through accident, and he had only
retreated just enough to keep from being killed himself.
He had had no intention of running away until he saw that
he was hopelessly lost were he to remain.

Alone he could have sprung into the midst of that close-
packed mob, and, laying about him after the fashion of
Numa, the lion, have struck the Arabs with such consternation
that escape would have been easy. Now he must think
entirely of these two faithful friends.

He crossed to the window which overlooked the street. In
a minute there would be enemies below. Already he could
hear the mob clambering the stairway to the next quarters--
they would be at the door beside him in another instant.
He put a foot upon the sill and leaned out, but he did not
look down. Above him, within arm's reach, was the low roof
of the building. He called to the girl. She came and stood
beside him. He put a great arm about her and lifted her across
his shoulder.

"Wait here until I reach down for you from above," he
said to Abdul. "In the meantime shove everything in the
room against that door--it may delay them long enough."
Then he stepped to the sill of the narrow window with the
girl upon his shoulders. "Hold tight," he cautioned her.
A moment later he had clambered to the roof above with the
ease and dexterity of an ape. Setting the girl down, he leaned
far over the roof's edge, calling softly to Abdul. The youth
ran to the window.

"Your hand," whispered Tarzan. The men in the room beyond
were battering at the door. With a sudden crash it fell
splintering in, and at the same instant Abdul felt himself
lifted like a feather onto the roof above. They were not a
moment too soon, for as the men broke into the room which
they had just quitted a dozen more rounded the corner in the
street below and came running to a spot beneath the girl's window.

Chapter 8

The Fight in the Desert

As the three squatted upon the roof above the quarters of
the Ouled-Nails they heard the angry cursing of the
Arabs in the room beneath. Abdul translated from time
to time to Tarzan.

"They are berating those in the street below now," said
Abdul, "for permitting us to escape so easily. Those in the
street say that we did not come that way--that we are still
within the building, and that those above, being too cowardly
to attack us, are attempting to deceive them into believing
that we have escaped. In a moment they will have fighting
of their own to attend to if they continue their brawling."

Presently those in the building gave up the search, and
returned to the cafe. A few remained in the street below,
smoking and talking.

Tarzan spoke to the girl, thanking her for the sacrifice she
had made for him, a total stranger.

"I liked you," she said simply. "You were unlike the others
who come to the cafe. You did not speak coarsely to me--
the manner in which you gave me money was not an insult."

"What shall you do after tonight?" he asked. "You cannot return
to the cafe. Can you even remain with safety in Sidi Aissa?"

"Tomorrow it will be forgotten," she replied. "But I should
be glad if it might be that I need never return to this or
another cafe. I have not remained because I wished to;
I have been a prisoner."

"A prisoner!" ejaculated Tarzan incredulously.

"A slave would be the better word," she answered. "I was stolen
in the night from my father's DOUAR by a band of marauders.
They brought me here and sold me to the Arab who keeps this cafe.
It has been nearly two years now since I saw the last of mine
own people. They are very far to the south. They never come
to Sidi Aissa."

"You would like to return to your people?" asked Tarzan.
"Then I shall promise to see you safely so far as Bou Saada
at least. There we can doubtless arrange with the commandant
to send you the rest of the way."

"Oh, m'sieur," she cried, "how can I ever repay you! You
cannot really mean that you will do so much for a poor
Ouled-Nail. But my father can reward you, and he will, for
is he not a great sheik? He is Kadour ben Saden."

"Kadour ben Saden!" ejaculated Tarzan. "Why, Kadour
ben Saden is in Sidi Aissa this very night. He dined
with me but a few hours since."

"My father in Sidi Aissa?" cried the amazed girl.
"Allah be praised then, for I am indeed saved."

"Hssh!" cautioned Abdul. "Listen."

From below came the sound of voices, quite distinguishable
upon the still night air. Tarzan could not understand the
words, but Abdul and the girl translated.

"They have gone now," said the latter. "It is you they want, m'sieur.
One of them said that the stranger who had offered
money for your slaying lay in the house of Akmed din
Soulef with a broken wrist, but that he had offered a still
greater reward if some would lay in wait for you upon the
road to Bou Saada and kill you."

"It is he who followed m'sieur about the market today,"
exclaimed Abdul. "I saw him again within the cafe--him
and another; and the two went out into the inner court after
talking with this girl here. It was they who attacked and
fired upon us, as we came out of the cafe. Why do they wish
to kill you, m'sieur?"

"I do not know," replied Tarzan, and then, after a pause:
"Unless--" But he did not finish, for the thought that had
come to his mind, while it seemed the only reasonable solution
of the mystery, appeared at the same time quite improbable.
Presently the men in the street went away. The courtyard
and the cafe were deserted. Cautiously Tarzan lowered
himself to the sill of the girl's window. The room was empty.
He returned to the roof and let Abdul down, then he
lowered the girl to the arms of the waiting Arab.

From the window Abdul dropped the short distance to the
street below, while Tarzan took the girl in his arms and leaped
down as he had done on so many other occasions in his
own forest with a burden in his arms. A little cry of alarm
was startled from the girl's lips, but Tarzan landed in the
street with but an imperceptible jar, and lowered her in safety
to her feet.

She clung to him for a moment.

"How strong m'sieur is, and how active," she cried.
"EL ADREA, the black lion, himself is not more so."

"I should like to meet this EL ADREA of yours," he said.
"I have heard much about him."

"And you come to the DOUAR of my father you shall see
him," said the girl. "He lives in a spur of the mountains
north of us, and comes down from his lair at night to rob my
father's DOUAR. With a single blow of his mighty paw he
crushes the skull of a bull, and woe betide the belated
wayfarer who meets EL ADREA abroad at night."

Without further mishap they reached the hotel. The sleepy
landlord objected strenuously to instituting a search for
Kadour ben Saden until the following morning, but a piece
of gold put a different aspect on the matter, so that a few
moments later a servant had started to make the rounds of
the lesser native hostelries where it might be expected that a
desert sheik would find congenial associations. Tarzan had
felt it necessary to find the girl's father that night, for
fear he might start on his homeward journey too early in the
morning to be intercepted.

They had waited perhaps half an hour when the messenger
returned with Kadour ben Saden. The old sheik entered
the room with a questioning expression upon his proud face.

"Monsieur has done me the honor to--" he commenced, and
then his eyes fell upon the girl. With outstretched arms
he crossed the room to meet her. "My daughter!" he cried.
"Allah is merciful!" and tears dimmed the martial eyes of
the old warrior.

When the story of her abduction and her final rescue had
been told to Kadour ben Saden he extended his hand to Tarzan.

"All that is Kadour ben Saden's is thine, my friend, even
to his life," he said very simply, but Tarzan knew that
those were no idle words.

It was decided that although three of them would have to
ride after practically no sleep, it would be best to make an
early start in the morning, and attempt to ride all the
way to Bou Saada in one day. It would have been
comparatively easy for the men, but for the girl it
was sure to be a fatiguing journey.

She, however, was the most anxious to undertake it, for
it seemed to her that she could not quickly enough reach the
family and friends from whom she had been separated for
two years.

It seemed to Tarzan that he had not closed his eyes before
he was awakened, and in another hour the party was on its
way south toward Bou Saada. For a few miles the road was
good, and they made rapid progress, but suddenly it became
only a waste of sand, into which the horses sank fetlock
deep at nearly every step. In addition to Tarzan, Abdul,
the sheik, and his daughter were four of the wild plainsmen
of the sheik's tribe who had accompanied him upon the trip
to Sidi Aissa. Thus, seven guns strong, they entertained little
fear of attack by day, and if all went well they should reach
Bou Saada before nightfall.

A brisk wind enveloped them in the blowing sand of the
desert, until Tarzan's lips were parched and cracked. What
little he could see of the surrounding country was far from
alluring--a vast expanse of rough country, rolling in little,
barren hillocks, and tufted here and there with clumps of
dreary shrub. Far to the south rose the dim lines of the
Saharan Atlas range. How different, thought Tarzan, from
the gorgeous Africa of his boyhood!

Abdul, always on the alert, looked backward quite as often
as he did ahead. At the top of each hillock that they mounted
he would draw in his horse and, turning, scan the country to
the rear with utmost care. At last his scrutiny was rewarded.

"Look!" he cried. "There are six horsemen behind us."

"Your friends of last evening, no doubt, monsieur," remarked
Kadour ben Saden dryly to Tarzan.

"No doubt," replied the ape-man. "I am sorry that my
society should endanger the safety of your journey. At the
next village I shall remain and question these gentlemen,
while you ride on. There is no necessity for my being at Bou
Saada tonight, and less still why you should not ride in peace."

"If you stop we shall stop," said Kadour ben Saden. "Until
you are safe with your friends, or the enemy has left your
trail, we shall remain with you. There is nothing more to say."

Tarzan nodded his head. He was a man of few words,
and possibly it was for this reason as much as any that
Kadour ben Saden had taken to him, for if there be one
thing that an Arab despises it is a talkative man.

All the balance of the day Abdul caught glimpses of the
horsemen in their rear. They remained always at about the
same distance. During the occasional halts for rest, and
at the longer halt at noon, they approached no closer.

"They are waiting for darkness," said Kadour ben Saden.

And darkness came before they reached Bou Saada. The
last glimpse that Abdul had of the grim, white-robed figures
that trailed them, just before dusk made it impossible to
distinguish them, had made it apparent that they were rapidly
closing up the distance that intervened between them and
their intended quarry. He whispered this fact to Tarzan, for
he did not wish to alarm the girl. The ape-man drew back
beside him.

"You will ride ahead with the others, Abdul," said Tarzan.
"This is my quarrel. I shall wait at the next convenient
spot, and interview these fellows."

"Then Abdul shall wait at thy side," replied the young
Arab, nor would any threats or commands move him from
his decision.

"Very well, then," replied Tarzan. "Here is as good a place
as we could wish. Here are rocks at the top of this hillock.
We shall remain hidden here and give an account of ourselves
to these gentlemen when they appear."

They drew in their horses and dismounted. The others
riding ahead were already out of sight in the darkness.
Beyond them shone the lights of Bou Saada. Tarzan removed
his rifle from its boot and loosened his revolver in its holster.
He ordered Abdul to withdraw behind the rocks with the
horses, so that they should be shielded from the enemies'
bullets should they fire. The young Arab pretended to do as
he was bid, but when he had fastened the two animals securely
to a low shrub he crept back to lie on his belly a few
paces behind Tarzan.

The ape-man stood erect in the middle of the road, waiting.
Nor did he have long to wait. The sound of galloping
horses came suddenly out of the darkness below him, and a
moment later he discerned the moving blotches of lighter
color against the solid background of the night.

"Halt," he cried, "or we fire!"

The white figures came to a sudden stop, and for a moment
there was silence. Then came the sound of a whispered council,
and like ghosts the phantom riders dispersed in all directions.
Again the desert lay still about him, yet it was an ominous
stillness that foreboded evil.

Abdul raised himself to one knee. Tarzan cocked his
jungle-trained ears, and presently there came to him the
sound of horses walking quietly through the sand to the
east of him, to the west, to the north, and to the south.
They had been surrounded. Then a shot came from the direction
in which he was looking, a bullet whirred through the air
above his head, and he fired at the flash of the enemy's gun.

Instantly the soundless waste was torn with the quick
staccato of guns upon every hand. Abdul and Tarzan fired
only at the flashes--they could not yet see their foemen.
Presently it became evident that the attackers were circling
their position, drawing closer and closer in as they began to
realize the paltry numbers of the party which opposed them.

But one came too close, for Tarzan was accustomed to using
his eyes in the darkness of the jungle night, than which
there is no more utter darkness this side the grave, and
with a cry of pain a saddle was emptied.

"The odds are evening, Abdul," said Tarzan, with a low laugh.

But they were still far too one-sided, and when the five
remaining horsemen whirled at a signal and charged full
upon them it looked as if there would be a sudden ending
of the battle. Both Tarzan and Abdul sprang to the shelter of
the rocks, that they might keep the enemy in front of them.
There was a mad clatter of galloping hoofs, a volley of shots
from both sides, and the Arabs withdrew to repeat the
maneuver; but there were now only four against the two.

For a few moments there came no sound from out of
the surrounding blackness. Tarzan could not tell whether the
Arabs, satisfied with their losses, had given up the fight, or
were waiting farther along the road to waylay them as they
proceeded on toward Bou Saada. But he was not left long in
doubt, for now all from one direction came the sound of a
new charge. But scarcely had the first gun spoken ere a
dozen shots rang out behind the Arabs. There came the wild
shouts of a new party to the controversy, and the pounding
of the feet of many horses from down the road to Bou Saada.

The Arabs did not wait to learn the identity of the oncomers.
With a parting volley as they dashed by the position which
Tarzan and Abdul were holding, they plunged off along the
road toward Sidi Aissa. A moment later Kadour ben Saden
and his men dashed up.

The old sheik was much relieved to find that neither
Tarzan nor Abdul had received a scratch. Not even had their
horses been wounded. They sought out the two men who had
fallen before Tarzan's shots, and, finding that both were
dead, left them where they lay.

"Why did you not tell me that you contemplated ambushing
those fellows?" asked the sheik in a hurt tone. "We might
have had them all if the seven of us had stopped to meet them."

"Then it would have been useless to stop at all," replied
Tarzan, "for had we simply ridden on toward Bou Saada they
would have been upon us presently, and all could have been
engaged. It was to prevent the transfer of my own quarrel
to another's shoulders that Abdul and I stopped off to
question them. Then there is your daughter--I could not be the
cause of exposing her needlessly to the marksmanship of six men."

Kadour ben Saden shrugged his shoulders. He did not
relish having been cheated out of a fight.

The little battle so close to Bou Saada had drawn out a
company of soldiers. Tarzan and his party met them just
outside the town. The officer in charge halted them to learn
the significance of the shots.

"A handful of marauders," replied Kadour ben Saden.
"They attacked two of our number who had dropped behind,
but when we returned to them the fellows soon dispersed.
They left two dead. None of my party was injured."

This seemed to satisfy the officer, and after taking the
names of the party he marched his men on toward the scene
of the skirmish to bring back the dead men for purposes of
identification, if possible.

Two days later, Kadour ben Saden, with his daughter and
followers, rode south through the pass below Bou Saada,
bound for their home in the far wilderness. The sheik had
urged Tarzan to accompany him, and the girl had added her
entreaties to those of her father; but, though he could not
explain it to them, Tarzan's duties loomed particularly large
after the happenings of the past few days, so that he could not
think of leaving his post for an instant. But he promised to
come later if it lay within his power to do so, and they had
to content themselves with that assurance.

During these two days Tarzan had spent practically all his
time with Kadour ben Saden and his daughter. He was keenly
interested in this race of stern and dignified warriors, and
embraced the opportunity which their friendship offered to
learn what he could of their lives and customs. He even
commenced to acquire the rudiments of their language under the
pleasant tutorage of the brown-eyed girl. It was with real
regret that he saw them depart, and he sat his horse at the
opening to the pass, as far as which he had accompanied
them, gazing after the little party as long as he could catch a
glimpse of them.

Here were people after his own heart! Their wild, rough
lives, filled with danger and hardship, appealed to this half-
savage man as nothing had appealed to him in the midst of the
effeminate civilization of the great cities he had visited. Here
was a life that excelled even that of the jungle, for here he
might have the society of men--real men whom he could honor and
respect, and yet be near to the wild nature that he loved.
In his head revolved an idea that when he had completed his
mission he would resign and return to live for the remainder
of his life with the tribe of Kadour ben Saden.

Then he turned his horse's head and rode slowly back to Bou Saada.

The front of the Hotel du Petit Sahara, where Tarzan
stopped in Bou Saada, is taken up with the bar, two dining-
rooms, and the kitchens. Both of the dining-rooms open
directly off the bar, and one of them is reserved for the use
of the officers of the garrison. As you stand in the barroom
you may look into either of the dining-rooms if you wish.

It was to the bar that Tarzan repaired after speeding
Kadour ben Saden and his party on their way. It was yet
early in the morning, for Kadour ben Saden had elected to
ride far that day, so that it happened that when Tarzan
returned there were guests still at breakfast.

As his casual glance wandered into the officers' dining-
room, Tarzan saw something which brought a look of interest
to his eyes. Lieutenant Gernois was sitting there, and as
Tarzan looked a white-robed Arab approached and, bending,
whispered a few words into the lieutenant's ear. Then he
passed on out of the building through another door.

In itself the thing was nothing, but as the man had stooped
to speak to the officer, Tarzan had caught sight of something
which the accidental parting of the man's burnoose had
revealed--he carried his left arm in a sling.

Chapter 9

Numa "El Adrea"

On the same day that Kadour ben Saden rode south the
diligence from the north brought Tarzan a letter from
D'Arnot which had been forwarded from Sidi-bel-Abbes.
It opened the old wound that Tarzan would have
been glad to have forgotten; yet he was not sorry that
D'Arnot had written, for one at least of his subjects could
never cease to interest the ape-man. Here is the letter:

MY DEAR JEAN:

Since last I wrote you I have been across to London on a
matter of business. I was there but three days. The very first
day I came upon an old friend of yours--quite unexpectedly--in
Henrietta Street. Now you never in the world would guess whom.
None other than Mr. Samuel T. Philander. But it is true.
I can see your look of incredulity. Nor is this all.
He insisted that I return to the hotel with him, and there
I found the others--Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, Miss
Porter, and that enormous black woman, Miss Porter's maid
--Esmeralda, you will recall. While I was there Clayton
came in. They are to be married soon, or rather sooner, for
I rather suspect that we shall receive announcements almost
any day. On account of his father's death it is to be a
very quiet affair--only blood relatives.

While I was alone with Mr. Philander the old fellow became
rather confidential. Said Miss Porter had already postponed
the wedding on three different occasions. He confided
that it appeared to him that she was not particularly anxious
to marry Clayton at all; but this time it seems that it is
quite likely to go through.

Of course they all asked after you, but I respected your
wishes in the matter of your true origin, and only spoke to
them of your present affairs.

Miss Porter was especially interested in everything I had
to say about you, and asked many questions. I am afraid I
took a rather unchivalrous delight in picturing your desire
and resolve to go back eventually to your native jungle.
I was sorry afterward, for it did seem to cause her real
anguish to contemplate the awful dangers to which you wished
to return. "And yet," she said, "I do not know. There are
more unhappy fates than the grim and terrible jungle presents
to Monsieur Tarzan. At least his conscience will be free
from remorse. And there are moments of quiet and restfulness
by day, and vistas of exquisite beauty. You may find it
strange that I should say it, who experienced such terrifying
experiences in that frightful forest, yet at times I long to
return, for I cannot but feel that the happiest moments of
my life were spent there."

There was an expression of ineffable sadness on her face
as she spoke, and I could not but feel that she knew that I
knew her secret, and that this was her way of transmitting
to you a last tender message from a heart that might still
enshrine your memory, though its possessor belonged to another.

Clayton appeared nervous and ill at ease while you were
the subject of conversation. He wore a worried and harassed
expression. Yet he was very kindly in his expressions of
interest in you. I wonder if he suspects the truth about you?

Tennington came in with Clayton. They are great friends,
you know. He is about to set out upon one of his interminable
cruises in that yacht of his, and was urging the entire party
to accompany him. Tried to inveigle me into it, too.
Is thinking of circumnavigating Africa this time. I told him
that his precious toy would take him and some of his friends
to the bottom of the ocean one of these days if he didn't get
it out of his head that she was a liner or a battleship.

I returned to Paris day before yesterday, and yesterday I
met the Count and Countess de Coude at the races. They
inquired after you. De Coude really seems quite fond of you.
Doesn't appear to harbor the least ill will. Olga is as
beautiful as ever, but a trifle subdued. I imagine that she
learned a lesson through her acquaintance with you that will
serve her in good stead during the balance of her life. It is
fortunate for her, and for De Coude as well, that it was you
and not another man more sophisticated.

Had you really paid court to Olga's heart I am afraid that
there would have been no hope for either of you.

She asked me to tell you that Nikolas had left France.
She paid him twenty thousand francs to go away, and stay.
She is congratulating herself that she got rid of him before
he tried to carry out a threat he recently made her that he
should kill you at the first opportunity. She said that she
should hate to think that her brother's blood was on your
hands, for she is very fond of you, and made no bones in
saying so before the count. It never for a moment seemed to
occur to her that there might be any possibility of any other
outcome of a meeting between you and Nikolas. The count
quite agreed with her in that. He added that it would take a
regiment of Rokoffs to kill you. He has a most healthy
respect for your prowess.

Have been ordered back to my ship. She sails from Havre in
two days under sealed orders. If you will address me in her
care, the letters will find me eventually. I shall write you
as soon as another opportunity presents.
Your sincere friend,
PAUL D'ARNOT.

"I fear," mused Tarzan, half aloud, "that Olga has thrown
away her twenty thousand francs."

He read over that part of D'Arnot's letter several times
in which he had quoted from his conversation with Jane
Porter. Tarzan derived a rather pathetic happiness from
it, but it was better than no happiness at all.

The following three weeks were quite uneventful. On
several occasions Tarzan saw the mysterious Arab, and once
again he had been exchanging words with Lieutenant Gernois;
but no amount of espionage or shadowing by Tarzan revealed
the Arab's lodgings, the location of which Tarzan was
anxious to ascertain.

Gernois, never cordial, had kept more than ever aloof
from Tarzan since the episode in the dining-room of the
hotel at Aumale. His attitude on the few occasions that
they had been thrown together had been distinctly hostile.

That he might keep up the appearance of the character
he was playing, Tarzan spent considerable time hunting in
the vicinity of Bou Saada. He would spend entire days in
the foothills, ostensibly searching for gazelle, but on the
few occasions that he came close enough to any of the
beautiful little animals to harm them he invariably allowed
them to escape without so much as taking his rifle from its
boot. The ape-man could see no sport in slaughtering the
most harmless and defenseless of God's creatures for the
mere pleasure of killing.

In fact, Tarzan had never killed for "pleasure," nor to
him was there pleasure in killing. It was the joy of righteous
battle that he loved--the ecstasy of victory. And the keen
and successful hunt for food in which he pitted his skill
and craftiness against the skill and craftiness of another;
but to come out of a town filled with food to shoot down a
soft-eyed, pretty gazelle--ah, that was crueller than the
deliberate and cold-blooded murder of a fellow man.
Tarzan would have none of it, and so he hunted alone
that none might discover the sham that he was practicing.

And once, probably because of the fact that he rode alone,
he was like to have lost his life. He was riding slowly
through a little ravine when a shot sounded close behind
him, and a bullet passed through the cork helmet he wore.
Although he turned at once and galloped rapidly to the top
of the ravine, there was no sign of any enemy, nor did he
see aught of another human being until he reached Bou Saada.

"Yes," he soliloquized, in recalling the occurrence,
"Olga has indeed thrown away her twenty thousand francs."

That night he was Captain Gerard's guest at a little dinner.

"Your hunting has not been very fortunate?" questioned
the officer.

"No," replied Tarzan; "the game hereabout is timid, nor do
I care particularly about hunting game birds or antelope.
I think I shall move on farther south, and have a try at
some of your Algerian lions."

"Good!" exclaimed the captain. "We are marching toward Djelfa
on the morrow. You shall have company that far at least.
Lieutenant Gernois and I, with a hundred men, are ordered
south to patrol a district in which the marauders are giving
considerable trouble. Possibly we may have the pleasure
of hunting the lion together--what say you?"

Tarzan was more than pleased, nor did he hesitate to say so;
but the captain would have been astonished had he known
the real reason of Tarzan's pleasure. Gernois was sitting
opposite the ape-man. He did not seem so pleased with his
captain's invitation.

"You will find lion hunting more exciting than gazelle
shooting," remarked Captain Gerard, "and more dangerous."

"Even gazelle shooting has its dangers," replied Tarzan.
"Especially when one goes alone. I found it so today.
I also found that while the gazelle is the most timid
of animals, it is not the most cowardly."

He let his glance rest only casually upon Gernois after
he had spoken, for he did not wish the man to know that he
was under suspicion, or surveillance, no matter what he
might think. The effect of his remark upon him, however,
might tend to prove his connection with, or knowledge of,
certain recent happenings. Tarzan saw a dull red creep up
from beneath Gernois' collar. He was satisfied, and quickly
changed the subject.

When the column rode south from Bou Saada the next
morning there were half a dozen Arabs bringing up the rear.

"They are not attached to the command," replied Gerard
in response to Tarzan's query. "They merely accompany us
on the road for companionship."

Tarzan had learned enough about Arab character since
he had been in Algeria to know that this was no real motive,
for the Arab is never overfond of the companionship of
strangers, and especially of French soldiers. So his
suspicions were aroused, and he decided to keep a sharp eye
on the little party that trailed behind the column at a distance
of about a quarter of a mile. But they did not come close
enough even during the halts to enable him to obtain a
close scrutiny of them.

He had long been convinced that there were hired assassins
on his trail, nor was he in great doubt but that Rokoff was
at the bottom of the plot. Whether it was to be revenge for
the several occasions in the past that Tarzan had defeated the
Russian's purposes and humiliated him, or was in some way
connected with his mission in the Gernois affair, he could not
determine. If the latter, and it seemed probable since the
evidence he had had that Gernois suspected him, then he
had two rather powerful enemies to contend with, for there
would be many opportunities in the wilds of Algeria, for
which they were bound, to dispatch a suspected enemy
quietly and without attracting suspicion.

After camping at Djelfa for two days the column moved to the
southwest, from whence word had come that the marauders were
operating against the tribes whose DOUARS were situated
at the foot of the mountains.

The little band of Arabs who had accompanied them from
Bou Saada had disappeared suddenly the very night that
orders had been given to prepare for the morrow's march
from Djelfa. Tarzan made casual inquiries among the men,
but none could tell him why they had left, or in what
direction they had gone. He did not like the looks of it,
especially in view of the fact that he had seen Gernois in
conversation with one of them some half hour after Captain
Gerard had issued his instructions relative to the new move.
Only Gernois and Tarzan knew the direction of the proposed march.
All the soldiers knew was that they were to be prepared to
break camp early the next morning. Tarzan wondered if
Gernois could have revealed their destination to the Arabs.

Late that afternoon they went into camp at a little oasis in
which was the DOUAR of a sheik whose flocks were being
stolen, and whose herdsmen were being killed. The Arabs
came out of their goatskin tents, and surrounded the soldiers,
asking many questions in the native tongue, for the soldiers
were themselves natives. Tarzan, who, by this time, with the
assistance of Abdul, had picked up quite a smattering of
Arab, questioned one of the younger men who had accompanied
the sheik while the latter paid his respects to Captain Gerard.

No, he had seen no party of six horsemen riding from
the direction of Djelfa. There were other oases scattered
about--possibly they had been journeying to one of these.
Then there were the marauders in the mountains above
--they often rode north to Bou Saada in small parties, and
even as far as Aumale and Bouira. It might indeed have been
a few marauders returning to the band from a pleasure trip
to one of these cities.

Early the next morning Captain Gerard split his command
in two, giving Lieutenant Gernois command of one party,
while he headed the other. They were to scour the mountains
upon opposite sides of the plain.

"And with which detachment will Monsieur Tarzan ride?"
asked the captain. "Or maybe it is that monsieur does not
care to hunt marauders?"

"Oh, I shall be delighted to go," Tarzan hastened to explain.
He was wondering what excuse he could make to accompany Gernois.
His embarrassment was short-lived, and was relieved from a most
unexpected source. It was Gernois himself who spoke.

"If my captain will forego the pleasure of Monsieur Tarzan's
company for this once, I shall esteem it an honor indeed
to have monsieur ride with me today," he said, nor was his
tone lacking in cordiality. In fact, Tarzan imagined
that he had overdone it a trifle, but, even so, he was both
astounded and pleased, hastening to express his delight at
the arrangement.

And so it was that Lieutenant Gernois and Tarzan rode
off side by side at the head of the little detachment of
SPAHIS. Gernois' cordiality was short-lived. No soone
had they ridden out of sight of Captain Gerard and his men
than he lapsed once more into his accustomed taciturnity.
As they advanced the ground became rougher. Steadily it ascended
toward the mountains, into which they filed through a narrow
canon close to noon. By the side of a little rivulet
Gernois called the midday halt. Here the men prepared and
ate their frugal meal, and refilled their canteens.

After an hour's rest they advanced again along the canon,
until they presently came to a little valley, from which
several rocky gorges diverged. Here they halted, while
Gernois minutely examined the surrounding heights from
the center of the depression.

"We shall separate here," he said, "several riding into each
of these gorges," and then he commenced to detail his various
squads and issue instructions to the non-commissioned officers
who were to command them. When he had done he turned to Tarzan.
"Monsieur will be so good as to remain here until we return."

Tarzan demurred, but the officer cut him short. "There may
be fighting for one of these sections," he said, "and
troops cannot be embarrassed by civilian noncombatants
during action."

"But, my dear lieutenant," expostulated Tarzan, "I am
most ready and willing to place myself under command
of yourself or any of your sergeants or corporals, and to
fight in the ranks as they direct. It is what I came for."

"I should be glad to think so," retorted Gernois, with a
sneer he made no attempt to disguise. Then shortly:
"You are under my orders, and they are that you remain here
until we return. Let that end the matter," and he turned and
spurred away at the head of his men. A moment later Tarzan
found himself alone in the midst of a desolate mountain fastness.

The sun was hot, so he sought the shelter of a nearby
tree, where he tethered his horse, and sat down upon the
ground to smoke. Inwardly he swore at Gernois for the trick
he had played upon him. A mean little revenge, thought
Tarzan, and then suddenly it occurred to him that the man
would not be such a fool as to antagonize him through a
trivial annoyance of so petty a description. There must be
something deeper than this behind it. With the thought he
arose and removed his rifle from its boot. He looked to its
loads and saw that the magazine was full. Then he inspected
his revolver. After this preliminary precaution he scanned the
surrounding heights and the mouths of the several gorges
--he was determined that he should not be caught napping.

The sun sank lower and lower, yet there was no sign of
returning SPAHIS. At last the valley was submerged in
shadow Tarzan was too proud to go back to camp until he had
given the detachment ample time to return to the valley,
which he thought was to have been their rendezvous.
With the closing in of night he felt safer from attack, for
he was at home in the dark. He knew that none might approach
him so cautiously as to elude those alert and sensitive
ears of his; then there were his eyes, too, for he could
see well at night; and his nose, if they came toward him
from up-wind, would apprise him of the approach of an enemy
while they were still a great way off.

So he felt that he was in little danger, and thus lulled
to a sense of security he fell asleep, with his back against
the tree.

He must have slept for several hours, for when he was
suddenly awakened by the frightened snorting and plunging
of his horse the moon was shining full upon the little valley,
and there, not ten paces before him, stood the grim cause of
the terror of his mount.

Superb, majestic, his graceful tail extended and quivering,
and his two eyes of fire riveted full upon his prey, stood
Numa EL ADREA, the black lion. A little thrill of joy
tingled through Tarzan's nerves. It was like meeting an old
friend after years of separation. For a moment he sat rigid to
enjoy the magnificent spectacle of this lord of the wilderness.

But now Numa was crouching for the spring. Very slowly
Tarzan raised his gun to his shoulder. He had never killed a
large animal with a gun in all his life--heretofore he had
depended upon his spear, his poisoned arrows, his rope, his
knife, or his bare hands. Instinctively he wished that he had
his arrows and his knife--he would have felt surer with them.

Numa was lying quite flat upon the ground now, presenting
only his head. Tarzan would have preferred to fire a little
from one side, for he knew what terrific damage the lion
could do if he lived two minutes, or even a minute after he
was hit. The horse stood trembling in terror at Tarzan's back.
The ape-man took a cautious step to one side--Numa but followed
him with his eyes. Another step he took, and then another.
Numa had not moved. Now he could aim at a point between
the eye and the ear.

His finger tightened upon the trigger, and as he fired
Numa sprang. At the same instant the terrified horse
made a last frantic effort to escape--the tether parted,
and he went careening down the canon toward the desert.

No ordinary man could have escaped those frightful claws
when Numa sprang from so short a distance, but Tarzan was
no ordinary man. From earliest childhood his muscles had
been trained by the fierce exigencies of his existence to act
with the rapidity of thought. As quick as was EL ADREA,
Tarzan of the Apes was quicker, and so the great beast
crashed against a tree where he had expected to feel the soft
flesh of man, while Tarzan, a couple of paces to the right,
pumped another bullet into him that brought him clawing
and roaring to his side.

Twice more Tarzan fired in quick succession, and then
EL ADREA lay still and roared no more. It was no longer
Monsieur Jean Tarzan; it was Tarzan of the Apes that put a
savage foot upon the body of his savage kill, and, raising
his face to the full moon, lifted his mighty voice in the weird
and terrible challenge of his kind--a bull ape had made his kill.
And the wild things in the wild mountains stopped in their
hunting, and trembled at this new and awful voice,
while down in the desert the children of the wilderness came
out of their goatskin tents and looked toward the mountains,
wondering what new and savage scourge had come to devastate
their flocks.

A half mile from the valley in which Tarzan stood, a score
of white-robed figures, bearing long, wicked-looking guns,
halted at the sound, and looked at one another with
questioning eyes. But presently, as it was not repeated,
they took up their silent, stealthy way toward the valley.

Tarzan was now confident that Gernois had no intention
of returning for him, but he could not fathom the object
that had prompted the officer to desert him, yet leave him
free to return to camp. His horse gone, he decided that it
would be foolish to remain longer in the mountains, so he
set out toward the desert.

He had scarcely entered the confines of the canon when
the first of the white-robed figures emerged into the valley
upon the opposite side. For a moment they scanned the little
depression from behind sheltering bowlders, but when they
had satisfied themselves that it was empty they advanced
across it. Beneath the tree at one side they came upon the
body of EL ADREA. With muttered exclamations they crowded
about it. Then, a moment later, they hurried down the canon
which Tarzan was threading a brief distance in advance of them.
They moved cautiously and in silence, taking advantage of shelter,
as men do who are stalking man.

Chapter 10

Through the Valley of the Shadow

As Tarzan walked down the wild canon beneath the brilliant
African moon the call of the jungle was strong upon him.
The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with
life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes--every
sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle
enemy--yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud
consciousness of his might.

The nocturnal sounds of the mountains were new to him,
yet they fell upon his ears like the soft voice of a half-
forgotten love. Many he intuitively sensed--ah, there was one
that was familiar indeed; the distant coughing of Sheeta, the
leopard; but there was a strange note in the final wail which
made him doubt. It was a panther he heard.

Presently a new sound--a soft, stealthy sound--obtruded
itself among the others. No human ears other than the ape-
man's would have detected it. At first he did not translate it,
but finally he realized that it came from the bare feet of a
number of human beings. They were behind him, and they
were coming toward him quietly. He was being stalked.

In a flash he knew why he had been left in that little
valley by Gernois; but there had been a hitch in the
arrangements--the men had come too late. Closer and closer came
the footsteps. Tarzan halted and faced them, his rifle ready in
his hand. Now he caught a fleeting glimpse of a white burnoose.
He called aloud in French, asking what they would of him.
His reply was the flash of a long gun, and with the sound of
the shot Tarzan of the Apes plunged forward upon his face.

The Arabs did not rush out immediately; instead, they
waited to be sure that their victim did not rise. Then they
came rapidly from their concealment, and bent over him.
It was soon apparent that he was not dead. One of the men put
the muzzle of his gun to the back of Tarzan's head to finish
him, but another waved him aside. "If we bring him alive
the reward is to be greater," explained the latter.
So they bound his hands and feet, and, picking him up,
placed him on the shoulders of four of their number.
Then the march was resumed toward the desert. When they had
come out of the mountains they turned toward the south, and
about daylight came to the spot where their horses stood
in care of two of their number.

From here on their progress was more rapid. Tarzan, who
had regained consciousness, was tied to a spare horse, which
they evidently had brought for the purpose. His wound was but
a slight scratch, which had furrowed the flesh across his temple.
It had stopped bleeding, but the dried and clotted
blood smeared his face and clothing. He had said no word
since he had fallen into the hands of these Arabs, nor had
they addressed him other than to issue a few brief commands
to him when the horses had been reached.

For six hours they rode rapidly across the burning desert,
avoiding the oases near which their way led. About noon
they came to a DOUAR of about twenty tents. Here they
halted, and as one of the Arabs was releasing the alfa-grass
ropes which bound him to his mount they were surrounded
by a mob of men, women, and children. Many of the tribe,
and more especially the women, appeared to take delight in
heaping insults upon the prisoner, and some had even gone
so far as to throw stones at him and strike him with
sticks, when an old sheik appeared and drove them away.

"Ali-ben-Ahmed tells me," he said, "that this man sat alone
in the mountains and slew EL ADREA. What the business of
the stranger who sent us after him may be, I know not, and what
he may do with this man when we turn him over to him, I
care not; but the prisoner is a brave man, and while he is in
our hands he shall be treated with the respect that be due
one who hunts THE LORD WITH THE LARGE HEAD alone and by
night--and slays him."

Tarzan had heard of the respect in which Arabs held a
lion-killer, and he was not sorry that chance had played into
his hands thus favorably to relieve him of the petty tortures
of the tribe. Shortly after this he was taken to a goat-
skin tent upon the upper side of the DOUAR. There he was
fed, and then, securely bound, was left lying on a piece of
native carpet, alone in the tent.

He could see a guard sitting before the door of his frail
prison, but when he attempted to force the stout bonds that
held him he realized that any extra precaution on the part
of his captors was quite unnecessary; not even his giant
muscles could part those numerous strands.

Just before dusk several men approached the tent where
he lay, and entered it. All were in Arab dress, but presently
one of the number advanced to Tarzan's side, and as he let
the folds of cloth that had hidden the lower half of his face
fall away the ape-man saw the malevolent features of
Nikolas Rokoff. There was a nasty smile on the bearded lips.
"Ah, Monsieur Tarzan," he said, "this is indeed a pleasure.
But why do you not rise and greet your guest?" Then, with
an ugly oath, "Get up, you dog!" and, drawing back his
booted foot, he kicked Tarzan heavily in the side. "And here
is another, and another, and another," he continued, as he
kicked Tarzan about the face and side. "One for each of the
injuries you have done me."

The ape-man made no reply--he did not even deign to look
upon the Russian again after the first glance of recognition.
Finally the sheik, who had been standing a mute and frowning
witness of the cowardly attack, intervened.

"Stop!" he commanded. "Kill him if you will, but I will
see no brave man subjected to such indignities in my presence.
I have half a mind to turn him loose, that I may see how
long you would kick him then."

This threat put a sudden end to Rokoff's brutality, for he
had no craving to see Tarzan loosed from his bonds while
he was within reach of those powerful hands.

"Very well," he replied to the Arab; "I shall kill him presently."

"Not within the precincts of my DOUAR," returned the
sheik. "When he leaves here he leaves alive. What you do
with him in the desert is none of my concern, but I shall
not have the blood of a Frenchman on the hands of my tribe
on account of another man's quarrel--they would send
soldiers here and kill many of my people, and burn our tents
and drive away our flocks."

"As you say," growled Rokoff. "I'll take him out into the
desert below the DOUAR, and dispatch him."

"You will take him a day's ride from my country," said
the sheik, firmly, "and some of my children shall follow you
to see that you do not disobey me--otherwise there may be
two dead Frenchmen in the desert."

Rokoff shrugged. "Then I shall have to wait until the
morrow--it is already dark."

"As you will," said the sheik. "But by an hour after dawn
you must be gone from my DOUAR. I have little liking for
unbelievers, and none at all for a coward."

Rokoff would have made some kind of retort, but he
checked himself, for he realized that it would require
but little excuse for the old man to turn upon him.
Together they left the tent. At the door Rokoff could not
resist the temptation to turn and fling a parting taunt at Tarzan.
"Sleep well, monsieur," he said, "and do not forget to pray well,
for when you die tomorrow it will be in such agony that you will
be unable to pray for blaspheming."

No one had bothered to bring Tarzan either food or water since
noon, and consequently he suffered considerably from thirst.
He wondered if it would be worth while to ask his
guard for water, but after making two or three requests
without receiving any response, he decided that it would not.

Far up in the mountains he heard a lion roar. How much
safer one was, he soliloquized, in the haunts of wild beasts
than in the haunts of men. Never in all his jungle life had he
been more relentlessly tracked down than in the past few
months of his experience among civilized men. Never had he
been any nearer death.

Again the lion roared. It sounded a little nearer. Tarzan felt
the old, wild impulse to reply with the challenge of his kind.
His kind? He had almost forgotten that he was a man and not an ape.
He tugged at his bonds. God, if he could but get them near
those strong teeth of his. He felt a wild wave of madness sweep
over him as his efforts to regain his liberty met with failure.

Numa was roaring almost continually now. It was quite
evident that he was coming down into the desert to hunt.
It was the roar of a hungry lion. Tarzan envied him, for he
was free. No one would tie him with ropes and slaughter
him like a sheep. It was that which galled the ape-man.
He did not fear to die, no--it was the humiliation of defeat
before death, without even a chance to battle for his life.

It must be near midnight, thought Tarzan. He had several
hours to live. Possibly he would yet find a way to take
Rokoff with him on the long journey. He could hear the savage
lord of the desert quite close by now. Possibly he sought
his meat from among the penned animals within the DOUAR.

For a long time silence reigned, then Tarzan's trained ears
caught the sound of a stealthily moving body. It came
from the side of the tent nearest the mountains--the back.
Nearer and nearer it came. He waited, listening intently, for
it to pass. For a time there was silence without, such a terrible
silence that Tarzan was surprised that he did not hear the
breathing of the animal he felt sure must be crouching close
to the back wall of his tent.

There! It is moving again. Closer it creeps. Tarzan turns his
head in the direction of the sound. It is very dark within the tent.
Slowly the back rises from the ground, forced up by the head and
shoulders of a body that looks all black in the semi-darkness.
Beyond is a faint glimpse of the dimly starlit desert.
A grim smile plays about Tarzan's lips. At least Rokoff will
be cheated. How mad he will be! And death will be more
merciful than he could have hoped for at the hands of the Russian.

Now the back of the tent drops into place, and all is darkness
again--whatever it is is inside the tent with him. He hears
it creeping close to him--now it is beside him. He closes
his eyes and waits for the mighty paw. Upon his upturned
face falls the gentle touch of a soft hand groping in the dark,
and then a girl's voice in a scarcely audible whisper
pronounces his name.

"Yes, it is I," he whispers in reply. "But in the name of
Heaven who are you?"

"The Ouled-Nail of Sisi Aissa," came the answer. While she
spoke Tarzan could feel her working about his bonds.
Occasionally the cold steel of a knife touched his flesh.
A moment later he was free.

"Come!" she whispered.

On hands and knees he followed her out of the tent by the way
she had come. She continued crawling thus flat to the ground
until she reached a little patch of shrub. There she halted
until he gained her side. For a moment he looked at her
before he spoke.

"I cannot understand," he said at last. "Why are you here?
How did you know that I was a prisoner in that tent?
How does it happen that it is you who have saved me?"

She smiled. "I have come a long way tonight," she said,
"and we have a long way to go before we shall be out of danger.
Come; I shall tell you all about as we go."

Together they rose and set off across the desert in the
direction of the mountains.

"I was not quite sure that I should ever reach you," she
said at last. "EL ADREA is abroad tonight, and after
I left the horses I think he winded me and was following--I
was terribly frightened."

"What a brave girl," he said. "And you ran all that risk
for a stranger--an alien--an unbeliever?"

She drew herself up very proudly.

"I am the daughter of the Sheik Kabour ben Saden," she answered.
"I should be no fit daughter of his if I would not risk my
life to save that of the man who saved mine while he yet
thought that I was but a common Ouled-Nail."

"Nevertheless," he insisted, "you are a very brave girl.
But how did you know that I was a prisoner back there?"

"Achmet-din-Taieb, who is my cousin on my father's side, was
visiting some friends who belong to the tribe that captured you.
He was at the DOUAR when you were brought in. When he reached
home he was telling us about the big Frenchman who had been
captured by Ali-ben-Ahmed for another Frenchman who wished
to kill him. From the description I knew that it must be you.
My father was away. I tried to persuade some of the men to
come and save you, but they would not do it, saying: `Let the
unbelievers kill one another if they wish. It is none of our
affair, and if we go and interfere with Ali-ben-Ahmed's plans
we shall only stir up a fight with our own people.'

"So when it was dark I came alone, riding one horse and
leading another for you. They are tethered not far from here.
By morning we shall be within my father's DOUAR.
He should be there himself by now--then let them come and
try to take Kadour ben Saden's friend."

For a few moments they walked on in silence.

"We should be near the horses," she said. "It is strange
that I do not see them here."

Then a moment later she stopped, with a little cry of consternation.

"They are gone!" she exclaimed. "It is here that I tethered them."

Tarzan stooped to examine the ground. He found that a
large shrub had been torn up by the roots. Then he found
something else. There was a wry smile on his face as he rose
and turned toward the girl.

"EL ADREA has been here. From the signs, though, I rather
think that his prey escaped him. With a little start they
would be safe enough from him in the open."

There was nothing to do but continue on foot. The way
led them across a low spur of the mountains, but the girl
knew the trail as well as she did her mother's face.
They walked in easy, swinging strides, Tarzan keeping a hand's
breadth behind the girl's shoulder, that she might set the
pace, and thus be less fatigued. As they walked they talked,
occasionally stopping to listen for sounds of pursuit.

It was now a beautiful, moonlit night. The air was crisp
and invigorating. Behind them lay the interminable vista of
the desert, dotted here and there with an occasional oasis.
The date palms of the little fertile spot they had just left,
and the circle of goatskin tents, stood out in sharp relief
against the yellow sand--a phantom paradise upon a phantom sea.
Before them rose the grim and silent mountains. Tarzan's blood
leaped in his veins. This was life! He looked down upon the
girl beside him--a daughter of the desert walking across the
face of a dead world with a son of the jungle. He smiled at
the thought. He wished that he had had a sister, and that she
had been like this girl. What a bully chum she would have been!

They had entered the mountains now, and were progressing
more slowly, for the trail was steeper and very rocky.

For a few minutes they had been silent. The girl was
wondering if they would reach her father's DOUAR before the
pursuit had overtaken them. Tarzan was wishing that they
might walk on thus forever. If the girl were only a man
they might. He longed for a friend who loved the same wild
life that he loved. He had learned to crave companionship,
but it was his misfortune that most of the men he knew
preferred immaculate linen and their clubs to nakedness and
the jungle. It was, of course, difficult to understand,
yet it was very evident that they did.

The two had just turned a projecting rock around which
the trail ran when they were brought to a sudden stop.
There, before them, directly in the middle of the path, stood
Numa, EL ADREA, the black lion. His green eyes looked very
wicked, and he bared his teeth, and lashed his bay-black sides
with his angry tail. Then he roared--the fearsome, terror-
inspiring roar of the hungry lion which is also angry.

"Your knife," said Tarzan to the girl, extending his hand.
She slipped the hilt of the weapon into his waiting palm.
As his fingers closed upon it he drew her back and pushed her
behind him. "Walk back to the desert as rapidly as you can.
If you hear me call you will know that all is well, and
you may return."

"It is useless," she replied, resignedly. "This is the end."

"Do as I tell you," he commanded. "Quickly! He is about
to charge." The girl dropped back a few paces, where she
stood watching for the terrible sight that she knew she
should soon witness.

The lion was advancing slowly toward Tarzan, his nose to
the ground, like a challenging bull, his tail extended now
and quivering as though with intense excitement.

The ape-man stood, half crouching, the long Arab knife
glistening in the moonlight. Behind him the tense figure of
the girl, motionless as a carven statue. She leaned slightly
forward, her lips parted, her eyes wide. Her only conscious
thought was wonder at the bravery of the man who dared
face with a puny knife the lord with the large head. A man
of her own blood would have knelt in prayer and gone down
beneath those awful fangs without resistance. In either case
the result would be the same--it was inevitable; but she could
not repress a thrill of admiration as her eyes rested upon
the heroic figure before her. Not a tremor in the whole
giant frame--his attitude as menacing and defiant as that of
EL ADREA himself.

The lion was quite close to him now--but a few paces
intervened--he crouched, and then, with a deafening
roar, he sprang.

Chapter 11

John Caldwell, London

As Numa EL ADREA launched himself with widespread paws
and bared fangs he looked to find this puny man as
easy prey as the score who had gone down beneath
him in the past. To him man was a clumsy, slow-moving,
defenseless creature--he had little respect for him.

But this time he found that he was pitted against a creature
as agile and as quick as himself. When his mighty frame
struck the spot where the man had been he was no longer there.

The watching girl was transfixed by astonishment at the
ease with which the crouching man eluded the great paws.
And now, O Allah! He had rushed in behind EL ADREA'S
shoulder even before the beast could turn, and had grasped
him by the mane. The lion reared upon his hind legs like a
horse--Tarzan had known that he would do this, and he was ready.
A giant arm encircled the black-maned throat, and once, twice,
a dozen times a sharp blade darted in and out of the bay-black
side behind the left shoulder.

Frantic were the leaps of Numa--awful his roars of rage
and pain; but the giant upon his back could not be dislodged
or brought within reach of fangs or talons in the brief
interval of life that remained to the lord with the large head.
He was quite dead when Tarzan of the Apes released his hold
and arose. Then the daughter of the desert witnessed a thing
that terrified her even more than had the presence of EL ADREA.
The man placed a foot upon the carcass of his kill, and,
with his handsome face raised toward the full moon, gave voice
to the most frightful cry that ever had smote upon her ears.

With a little cry of fear she shrank away from him--she
thought that the fearful strain of the encounter had driven
him mad. As the last note of that fiendish challenge died out
in the diminishing echoes of the distance the man dropped
his eyes until they rested upon the girl.

Instantly his face was lighted by the kindly smile that was
ample assurance of his sanity, and the girl breathed freely
once again, smiling in response.

"What manner of man are you?" she asked. "The thing
you have done is unheard of. Even now I cannot believe
that it is possible for a lone man armed only with a knife to
have fought hand to hand with EL ADREA and conquered him,
unscathed--to have conquered him at all. And that cry--it
was not human. Why did you do that?"

Tarzan flushed. "It is because I forget," he said, "sometimes,
that I am a civilized man. When I kill it must be that I am
another creature." He did not try to explain further, for it
always seemed to him that a woman must look with loathing
upon one who was yet so nearly a beast.

Together they continued their journey. The sun was an
hour high when they came out into the desert again beyond
the mountains. Beside a little rivulet they found the girl's
horses grazing. They had come this far on their way home,
and with the cause of their fear no longer present had
stopped to feed.

With little trouble Tarzan and the girl caught them, and,
mounting, rode out into the desert toward the DOUAR of
Sheik Kadour ben Saden.

No sign of pursuit developed, and they came in safety
about nine o'clock to their destination. The sheik had but
just returned. He was frantic with grief at the absence of
his daughter, whom he thought had been again abducted by
the marauders. With fifty men he was already mounted to go
in search of her when the two rode into the DOUAR.

His joy at the safe return of his daughter was only equaled
by his gratitude to Tarzan for bringing her safely to him
through the dangers of the night, and his thankfulness that
she had been in time to save the man who had once saved her.

No honor that Kadour ben Saden could heap upon the ape-
man in acknowledgment of his esteem and friendship was
neglected. When the girl had recited the story of the slaying
of EL ADREA Tarzan was surrounded by a mob of worshiping
Arabs--it was a sure road to their admiration and respect.

The old sheik insisted that Tarzan remain indefinitely as his
guest. He even wished to adopt him as a member of the tribe,
and there was for some time a half-formed resolution in the
ape-man's mind to accept and remain forever with these wild
people, whom he understood and who seemed to understand him.
His friendship and liking for the girl were potent
factors in urging him toward an affirmative decision.

Had she been a man, he argued, he should not have hesitated,
for it would have meant a friend after his own heart,
with whom he could ride and hunt at will; but as it was they
would be hedged by the conventionalities that are even more
strictly observed by the wild nomads of the desert than by
their more civilized brothers and sisters. And in a little while
she would be married to one of these swarthy warriors, and
there would be an end to their friendship. So he decided
against the sheik's proposal, though he remained a week as
his guest.

When he left, Kadour ben Saden and fifty white-robed
warriors rode with him to Bou Saada. While they were
mounting in the DOUAR of Kadour ben Saden the morning
of their departure, the girl came to bid farewell to Tarzan.

"I have prayed that you would remain with us," she said
simply, as he leaned from his saddle to clasp her hand in
farewell, "and now I shall pray that you will return."
There was an expression of wistfulness in her beautiful
eyes, and a pathetic droop at the corners of her mouth.
Tarzan was touched.

"Who knows?" and then he turned and rode after the
departing Arabs.

Outside Bou Saada he bade Kadour ben Saden and his men
good-by, for there were reasons which made him wish to
make his entry into the town as secret as possible, and when
he had explained them to the sheik the latter concurred in
his decision. The Arabs were to enter Bou Saada ahead of
him, saying nothing as to his presence with them.
Later Tarzan would come in alone, and go directly to
an obscure native inn.

Thus, making his entrance after dark, as he did, he was not
seen by any one who knew him, and reached the inn unobserved.
After dining with Kadour ben Saden as his guest, he went to
his former hotel by a roundabout way, and, coming in by a
rear entrance, sought the proprietor, who seemed much
surprised to see him alive.

Yes, there was mail for monsieur; he would fetch it.
No, he would mention monsieur's return to no one.
Presently he returned with a packet of letters. One was an
order from his superior to lay off on his present work,
and hasten to Cape Town by the first steamer he could get.
His further instructions would be awaiting him there in the
hands of another agent whose name and address were given.
That was all--brief but explicit. Tarzan arranged to leave
Bou Saada early the next morning. Then he started for the
garrison to see Captain Gerard, whom the hotel man had told
him had returned with his detachment the previous day.

He found the officer in his quarters. He was filled with
surprise and pleasure at seeing Tarzan alive and well.

"When Lieutenant Gernois returned and reported that he
had not found you at the spot that you had chosen to remain
while the detachment was scouting, I was filled with alarm.
We searched the mountain for days. Then came word that
you had been killed and eaten by a lion. As proof your
gun was brought to us. Your horse had returned to camp
the second day after your disappearance. We could not doubt.
Lieutenant Gernois was grief-stricken--he took all the
blame upon himself. It was he who insisted on carrying on
the search himself. It was he who found the Arab with your gun.
He will be delighted to know that you are safe."

"Doubtless," said Tarzan, with a grim smile.

"He is down in the town now, or I should send for him,"
continued Captain Gerard. "I shall tell him as soon
as he returns."

Tarzan let the officer think that he had been lost, wandering
finally into the DOUAR of Kadour ben Saden, who had
escorted him back to Bou Saada. As soon as possible he bade
the good officer adieu, and hastened back into the town.
At the native inn he had learned through Kadour ben Saden a
piece of interesting information. It told of a black-bearded
white man who went always disguised as an Arab. For a time
he had nursed a broken wrist. More recently he had been
away from Bou Saada, but now he was back, and Tarzan
knew his place of concealment. It was for there he headed.

Through narrow, stinking alleys, black as Erebus, he groped,
and then up a rickety stairway, at the end of which was a
closed door and a tiny, unglazed window. The window was
high under the low eaves of the mud building. Tarzan could
just reach the sill. He raised himself slowly until his
eyes topped it. The room within was lighted, and at a table
sat Rokoff and Gernois. Gernois was speaking.

"Rokoff, you are a devil!" he was saying. "You have hounded
me until I have lost the last shred of my honor. You have
driven me to murder, for the blood of that man Tarzan is on
my hands. If it were not that that other devil's spawn,
Paulvitch, still knew my secret, I should kill you here tonight
with my bare hands."

Rokoff laughed. "You would not do that, my dear lieutenant,"
he said. "The moment I am reported dead by assassination
that dear Alexis will forward to the minister of war full
proof of the affair you so ardently long to conceal; and,
further, will charge you with my murder. Come, be sensible.
I am your best friend. Have I not protected your honor as
though it were my own?"

Gernois sneered, and spat out an oath.

"Just one more little payment," continued Rokoff, "and the
papers I wish, and you have my word of honor that I shall
never ask another cent from you, or further information."

"And a good reason why," growled Gernois. "What you
ask will take my last cent, and the only valuable military
secret I hold. You ought to be paying me for the information,
instead of taking both it and money, too."

"I am paying you by keeping a still tongue in my head,"
retorted Rokoff. "But let's have done. Will you, or will you not?
I give you three minutes to decide. If you are not agreeable
I shall send a note to your commandant tonight that will end
in the degradation that Dreyfus suffered--the only difference
being that he did not deserve it."

For a moment Gernois sat with bowed head. At length he arose.
He drew two pieces of paper from his blouse.

"Here," he said hopelessly. "I had them ready, for I knew
that there could be but one outcome." He held them toward
the Russian.

Rokoff's cruel face lighted in malignant gloating. He seized
the bits of paper.

"You have done well, Gernois," he said. "I shall not trouble
you again--unless you happen to accumulate some more money or
information," and he grinned.

"You never shall again, you dog!" hissed Gernois. "The
next time I shall kill you. I came near doing it tonight.
For an hour I sat with these two pieces of paper on my table
before me ere I came here--beside them lay my loaded revolver.
I was trying to decide which I should bring. Next time the
choice shall be easier, for I already have decided. You had
a close call tonight, Rokoff; do not tempt fate a second time."

Then Gernois rose to leave. Tarzan barely had time to drop
to the landing and shrink back into the shadows on the far
side of the door. Even then he scarcely hoped to elude
detection. The landing was very small, and though he flattened
himself against the wall at its far edge he was scarcely more
than a foot from the doorway. Almost immediately it
opened, and Gernois stepped out. Rokoff was behind him.
Neither spoke. Gernois had taken perhaps three steps down
the stairway when he halted and half turned, as though to
retrace his steps.

Tarzan knew that discovery would be inevitable. Rokoff still
stood on the threshold a foot from him, but he was looking in the
opposite direction, toward Gernois. Then the officer evidently
reconsidered his decision, and resumed his downward course.
Tarzan could hear Rokoff's sigh of relief. A moment later
the Russian went back into the room and closed the door.

Tarzan waited until Gernois had had time to get well out
of hearing, then he pushed open the door and stepped into
the room. He was on top of Rokoff before the man could rise
from the chair where he sat scanning the paper Gernois had
given him. As his eyes turned and fell upon the ape-man's
face his own went livid.

"You!" he gasped.

"I," replied Tarzan.

"What do you want?" whispered Rokoff, for the look in the
ape-man's eyes frightened him. "Have you come to kill me?
You do not dare. They would guillotine you. You do not
dare kill me."

"I dare kill you, Rokoff," replied Tarzan, "for no one knows
that you are here or that I am here, and Paulvitch would tell
them that it was Gernois. I heard you tell Gernois so. But that
would not influence me, Rokoff. I would not care who knew
that I had killed you; the pleasure of killing you would more
than compensate for any punishment they might inflict upon me.
You are the most despicable cur of a coward, Rokoff, I have ever
heard of. You should be killed. I should love to kill you,"
and Tarzan approached closer to the man.

Rokoff's nerves were keyed to the breaking point. With a shriek
he sprang toward an adjoining room, but the ape-man was upon
his back while his leap was yet but half completed. Iron fingers
sought his throat--the great coward squealed like a stuck pig,
until Tarzan had shut off his wind. Then the ape-man dragged
him to his feet, still choking him. The Russian struggled
futilely--he was like a babe in the mighty grasp of Tarzan of the Apes.

Tarzan sat him in a chair, and long before there was danger
of the man's dying he released his hold upon his throat.
When the Russian's coughing spell had abated Tarzan spoke
to him again.

"I have given you a taste of the suffering of death," he said.
"But I shall not kill--this time. I am sparing you solely for
the sake of a very good woman whose great misfortune it was
to have been born of the same woman who gave birth to you.
But I shall spare you only this once on her account.
Should I ever learn that you have again annoyed her or
her husband--should you ever annoy me again--should I
hear that you have returned to France or to any French
posession, I shall make it my sole business to hunt you down
and complete the choking I commenced tonight." Then he
turned to the table, on which the two pieces of paper still lay.
As he picked them up Rokoff gasped in horror.

Tarzan examined both the check and the other. He was
amazed at the information the latter contained. Rokoff had
partially read it, but Tarzan knew that no one could remember
the salient facts and figures it held which made it of real
value to an enemy of France.

"These will interest the chief of staff," he said, as he
slipped them into his pocket.
Rokoff groaned. He did not dare curse aloud.

The next morning Tarzan rode north on his way to Bouira
and Algiers. As he had ridden past the hotel Lieutenant
Gernois was standing on the veranda. As his eyes discovered
Tarzan he went white as chalk. The ape-man would have been
glad had the meeting not occurred, but he could not avoid it.
He saluted the officer as he rode past. Mechanically Gernois
returned the salute, but those terrible, wide eyes followed
the horseman, expressionless except for horror. It was as
though a dead man looked upon a ghost.

At Sidi Aissa Tarzan met a French officer with whom he
had become acquainted on the occasion of his recent
sojourn in the town.

"You left Bou Saada early?" questioned the officer.
"Then you have not heard about poor Gernois."

"He was the last man I saw as I rode away," replied Tarzan.
"What about him?"

"He is dead. He shot himself about eight o'clock this morning."

Two days later Tarzan reached Algiers. There he found that
he would have a two days' wait before he could catch a ship
bound for Cape Town. He occupied his time in writing out
a full report of his mission. The secret papers he had taken
from Rokoff he did not inclose, for he did not dare trust
them out of his own possession until he had been authorized
to turn them over to another agent, or himself return to
Paris with them.

As Tarzan boarded his ship after what seemed a most tedious
wait to him, two men watched him from an upper deck.
Both were fashionably dressed and smooth shaven. The taller
of the two had sandy hair, but his eyebrows were very black.
Later in the day they chanced to meet Tarzan on deck,
but as one hurriedly called his companion's attention to
something at sea their faces were turned from Tarzan as he
passed, so that he did not notice their features. In fact,
he had paid no attention to them at all.

Following the instructions of his chief, Tarzan had booked
his passage under an assumed name--John Caldwell, London.
He did not understand the necessity of this, and it caused him
considerable speculation. He wondered what role he was to
play in Cape Town.

"Well," he thought, "thank Heaven that I am rid of Rokoff.
He was commencing to annoy me. I wonder if I am really
becoming so civilized that presently I shall develop a set of
nerves. He would give them to me if any one could, for he
does not fight fair. One never knows through what new
agency he is going to strike. It is as though Numa, the lion,
had induced Tantor, the elephant, and Histah, the snake, to
join him in attempting to kill me. I would then never have
known what minute, or by whom, I was to be attacked next.
But the brutes are more chivalrous than man--they do not
stoop to cowardly intrigue."

At dinner that night Tarzan sat next to a young woman whose
place was at the captain's left. The officer introduced them.

Miss Strong! Where had he heard the name before? It was
very familiar. And then the girl's mother gave him the
clew, for when she addressed her daughter she called her Hazel.

Hazel Strong! What memories the name inspired. It had
been a letter to this girl, penned by the fair hand of Jane
Porter, that had carried to him the first message from the
woman he loved. How vividly he recalled the night he had
stolen it from the desk in the cabin of his long-dead father,
where Jane Porter had sat writing it late into the night,
while he crouched in the darkness without. How terror-
stricken she would have been that night had she known that
the wild jungle beast squatted outside her window, watching
her every move.

And this was Hazel Strong--Jane Porter's best friend!

Chapter 12

Ships That Pass

Let us go back a few months to the little, windswept
platform of a railway station in northern Wisconsin.
The smoke of forest fires hangs low over the surrounding
landscape, its acrid fumes smarting the eyes of a little
party of six who stand waiting the coming of the train
that is to bear them away toward the south.

Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his hands clasped beneath the tails
of his long coat, paces back and forth under the ever-watchful
eye of his faithful secretary, Mr. Samuel T. Philander.
Twice within the past few minutes he has started absent-mindedly
across the tracks in the direction of a near-by swamp, only to
be rescued and dragged back by the tireless Mr. Philander.

Jane Porter, the professor's daughter, is in strained and
lifeless conversation with William Cecil Clayton and Tarzan
of the Apes. Within the little waiting room, but a bare
moment before, a confession of love and a renunciation had
taken place that had blighted the lives and happiness of two
of the party, but William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was
not one of them.

Behind Miss Porter hovered the motherly Esmeralda. She, too,
was happy, for was she not returning to her beloved Maryland?
Already she could see dimly through the fog of smoke the murky
headlight of the oncoming engine. The men began to gather up
the hand baggage. Suddenly Clayton exclaimed.

"By Jove! I've left my ulster in the waiting-room," and
hastened off to fetch it.

"Good-bye, Jane," said Tarzan, extending his hand.
"God bless you!"

"Good-bye," replied the girl faintly. "Try to forget me--no,
not that--I could not bear to think that you had forgotten me."

"There is no danger of that, dear," he answered. "I wish
to Heaven that I might forget. It would be so much easier
than to go through life always remembering what might have been.
You will be happy, though; I am sure you shall--you must be.
You may tell the others of my decision to drive my car on
to New York--I don't feel equal to bidding Clayton good-bye.
I want always to remember him kindly, but I fear that I am
too much of a wild beast yet to be trusted too long with
the man who stands between me and the one person in all
the world I want."

As Clayton stooped to pick up his coat in the waiting
room his eyes fell on a telegraph blank lying face down
upon the floor. He stooped to pick it up, thinking it
might be a message of importance which some one had dropped.
He glanced at it hastily, and then suddenly he forgot his
coat, the approaching train--everything but that terrible
little piece of yellow paper in his hand. He read it twice
before he could fully grasp the terrific weight of meaning
that it bore to him.

When he had picked it up he had been an English nobleman,
the proud and wealthy possessor of vast estates--a moment
later he had read it, and he knew that he was an untitled
and penniless beggar. It was D'Arnot's cablegram to
Tarzan, and it read:

Finger prints prove you Greystoke. Congratulations.
D'ARNOT.

He staggered as though he had received a mortal blow.
Just then he heard the others calling to him to hurry--the
train was coming to a stop at the little platform.
Like a man dazed he gathered up his ulster. He would tell
them about the cablegram when they were all on board the train.
Then he ran out upon the platform just as the engine whistled
twice in the final warning that precedes the first rumbling
jerk of coupling pins. The others were on board, leaning out
from the platform of a Pullman, crying to him to hurry.
Quite five minutes elapsed before they were settled in their
seats, nor was it until then that Clayton discovered that
Tarzan was not with them.

"Where is Tarzan?" he asked Jane Porter. "In another car?"

"No," she replied; "at the last minute he determined to
drive his machine back to New York. He is anxious to see
more of America than is possible from a car window. He is
returning to France, you know."

Clayton did not reply. He was trying to find the right words
to explain to Jane Porter the calamity that had befallen him
--and her. He wondered just what the effect of his knowledge
would be on her. Would she still wish to marry him--to be
plain Mrs. Clayton? Suddenly the awful sacrifice which one
of them must make loomed large before his imagination.
Then came the question: Will Tarzan claim his own? The ape-man
had known the contents of the message before he calmly denied
knowledge of his parentage! He had admitted that Kala, the ape,
was his mother! Could it have been for love of Jane Porter?

There was no other explanation which seemed reasonable.
Then, having ignored the evidence of the message, was it not
reasonable to assume that he meant never to claim his birthright?
If this were so, what right had he, William Cecil Clayton, to
thwart the wishes, to balk the self-sacrifice of this
strange man? If Tarzan of the Apes could do this thing to
save Jane Porter from unhappiness, why should he, to whose
care she was intrusting her whole future, do aught to
jeopardize her interests?

And so he reasoned until the first generous impulse to
proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates
to their rightful owner was forgotten beneath the mass of
sophistries which self-interest had advanced. But during the
balance of the trip, and for many days thereafter, he was
moody and distraught. Occasionally the thought obtruded
itself that possibly at some later day Tarzan would regret
his magnanimity, and claim his rights.

Several days after they reached Baltimore Clayton
broached the subject of an early marriage to Jane.

"What do you mean by early?" she asked.

"Within the next few days. I must return to England at
once--I want you to return with me, dear."

"I can't get ready so soon as that," replied Jane. "It will
take a whole month, at least."

She was glad, for she hoped that whatever called him to
England might still further delay the wedding. She had made
a bad bargain, but she intended carrying her part loyally
to the bitter end--if she could manage to secure a temporary
reprieve, though, she felt that she was warranted in doing so.
His reply disconcerted her.

"Very well, Jane," he said. "I am disappointed, but I shall let
my trip to England wait a month; then we can go back together."

But when the month was drawing to a close she found still
another excuse upon which to hang a postponement, until at
last, discouraged and doubting, Clayton was forced to go
back to England alone.

The several letters that passed between them brought Clayton
no nearer to a consummation of his hopes than he had been
before, and so it was that he wrote directly to Professor
Porter, and enlisted his services. The old man had always
favored the match. He liked Clayton, and, being of an old
southern family, he put rather an exaggerated value on the
advantages of a title, which meant little or nothing to
his daughter.

Clayton urged that the professor accept his invitation to
be his guest in London, an invitation which included the
professor's entire little family--Mr. Philander, Esmeralda,
and all. The Englishman argued that once Jane was there, and
home ties had been broken, she would not so dread the step
which she had so long hesitated to take.

So the evening that he received Clayton's letter Professor Porter
announced that they would leave for London the following week.

But once in London Jane Porter was no more tractable than she
had been in Baltimore. She found one excuse after another,
and when, finally, Lord Tennington invited the party to cruise
around Africa in his yacht, she expressed the greatest delight
in the idea, but absolutely refused to be married until they
had returned to London. As the cruise was to consume a year
at least, for they were to stop for indefinite periods at
various points of interest, Clayton mentally anathematized
Tennington for ever suggesting such a ridiculous trip.

It was Lord Tennington's plan to cruise through the
Mediterranean, and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and
thus down the East Coast, putting in at every port that
was worth the seeing.

And so it happened that on a certain day two vessels passed
in the Strait of Gibraltar. The smaller, a trim white
yacht, was speeding toward the east, and on her deck sat a
young woman who gazed with sad eyes upon a diamondstudded
locket which she idly fingered. Her thoughts were far
away, in the dim, leafy fastness of a tropical jungle--and
her heart was with her thoughts.

She wondered if the man who had given her the beautiful
bauble, that had meant so much more to him than the
intrinsic value which he had not even known could ever
have meant to him, was back in his savage forest.

And upon the deck of the larger vessel, a passenger steamer
passing toward the east, the man sat with another young
woman, and the two idly speculated upon the identity of the
dainty craft gliding so gracefully through the gentle swell of
the lazy sea.

When the yacht had passed the man resumed the conversation
that her appearance had broken off.

"Yes," he said, "I like America very much, and that means,
of course, that I like Americans, for a country is only what
its people make it. I met some very delightful people while I
was there. I recall one family from your own city, Miss
Strong, whom I liked particularly--Professor Porter and
his daughter."

"Jane Porter!" exclaimed the girl. "Do you mean to tell me
that you know Jane Porter? Why, she is the very best friend
I have in the world. We were little children together--we have
known each other for ages."

"Indeed!" he answered, smiling. "You would have difficulty
in persuading any one of the fact who had seen either of you."

"I'll qualify the statement, then," she answered, with a laugh.
"We have known each other for two ages--hers and mine.
But seriously we are as dear to each other as sisters,
and now that I am going to lose her I am almost heartbroken."

"Going to lose her?" exclaimed Tarzan. "Why, what do you mean?
Oh, yes, I understand. You mean that now that she is married
and living in England, you will seldom if ever see her."

"Yes," replied she; "and the saddest part of it all is that
she is not marrying the man she loves. Oh, it is terrible.
Marrying from a sense of duty! I think it is perfectly wicked,
and I told her so. I have felt so strongly on the subject that
although I was the only person outside of blood relations
who was to have been asked to the wedding I would not let
her invite me, for I should not have gone to witness the
terrible mockery. But Jane Porter is peculiarly positive.
She has convinced herself that she is doing the only honorable
thing that she can do, and nothing in the world will ever
prevent her from marrying Lord Greystoke except Greystoke
himself, or death."

"I am sorry for her," said Tarzan.

"And I am sorry for the man she loves," said the girl, "for
he loves her. I never met him, but from what Jane tells me
he must be a very wonderful person. It seems that he was
born in an African jungle, and brought up by fierce,
anthropoid apes. He had never seen a white man or woman
until Professor Porter and his party were marooned on the
coast right at the threshold of his tiny cabin. He saved them
from all manner of terrible beasts, and accomplished the
most wonderful feats imaginable, and then to cap the climax
he fell in love with Jane and she with him, though she never
really knew it for sure until she had promised herself to
Lord Greystoke."

"Most remarkable," murmured Tarzan, cudgeling his brain for
some pretext upon which to turn the subject. He delighted
in hearing Hazel Strong talk of Jane, but when he was the
subject of the conversation he was bored and embarrassed.
But he was soon given a respite, for the girl's mother
joined them, and the talk became general.

The next few days passed uneventfully. The sea was quiet.
The sky was clear. The steamer plowed steadily on toward the
south without pause. Tarzan spent quite a little time with
Miss Strong and her mother. They whiled away their hours
on deck reading, talking, or taking pictures with Miss
Strong's camera. When the sun had set they walked.

One day Tarzan found Miss Strong in conversation with a
stranger, a man he had not seen on board before. As he
approached the couple the man bowed to the girl and turned
to walk away.

"Wait, Monsieur Thuran," said Miss Strong; "you must meet
Mr. Caldwell. We are all fellow passengers, and should
be acquainted."

The two men shook hands. As Tarzan looked into the eyes
of Monsieur Thuran he was struck by the strange familiarity
of their expression.

"I have had the honor of monsieur's acquaintance in the
past, I am sure," said Tarzan, "though I cannot recall the
circumstances."

Monsieur Thuran appeared ill at ease.

"I cannot say, monsieur," he replied. "It may be so. I have
had that identical sensation myself when meeting a stranger."

"Monsieur Thuran has been explaining some of the mysteries
of navigation to me," explained the girl.

Tarzan paid little heed to the conversation that ensued--he
was attempting to recall where he had met Monsieur Thuran before.
That it had been under peculiar circumstances he was positive.
Presently the sun reached them, and the girl asked Monsieur
Thuran to move her chair farther back into the shade.
Tarzan happened to be watching the man at the time,
and noticed the awkward manner in which he handled
the chair--his left wrist was stiff. That clew was
sufficient--a sudden train of associated ideas did the rest.

Monsieur Thuran had been trying to find an excuse to
make a graceful departure. The lull in the conversation
following the moving of their position gave him an opportunity
to make his excuses. Bowing low to Miss Strong, and inclining
his head to Tarzan, he turned to leave them.

"Just a moment," said Tarzan. "If Miss Strong will pardon me
I will accompany you. I shall return in a moment, Miss Strong."

Monsieur Thuran looked uncomfortable. When the two men had
passed out of the girl's sight, Tarzan stopped, laying a
heavy hand on the other's shoulder.

"What is your game now, Rokoff?" he asked.

"I am leaving France as I promised you," replied the other,
in a surly voice.

"I see you are," said Tarzan; "but I know you so well
that I can scarcely believe that your being on the same boat
with me is purely a coincidence. If I could believe it the
fact that you are in disguise would immediately disabuse
my mind of any such idea."

"Well," growled Rokoff, with a shrug, "I cannot see what you
are going to do about it. This vessel flies the English flag.
I have as much right on board her as you, and from the
fact that you are booked under an assumed name I imagine
that I have more right."

"We will not discuss it, Rokoff. All I wanted to say to
you is that you must keep away from Miss Strong--she is a
decent woman."

Rokoff turned scarlet.

"If you don't I shall pitch you overboard," continued Tarzan.
"Do not forget that I am just waiting for some excuse."
Then he turned on his heel, and left Rokoff standing
there trembling with suppressed rage.

He did not see the man again for days, but Rokoff was
not idle. In his stateroom with Paulvitch he fumed and
swore, threatening the most terrible of revenges.

"I would throw him overboard tonight," he cried, "were I
sure that those papers were not on his person. I cannot
chance pitching them into the ocean with him. If you were
not such a stupid coward, Alexis, you would find a way to
enter his stateroom and search for the documents."

Paulvitch smiled. "You are supposed to be the brains of this
partnership, my dear Nikolas," he replied. "Why do you not
find the means to search Monsieur Caldwell's stateroom--eh?"

Two hours later fate was kind to them, for Paulvitch, who
was ever on the watch, saw Tarzan leave his room without
locking the door. Five minutes later Rokoff was stationed
where he could give the alarm in case Tarzan returned, and
Paulvitch was deftly searching the contents of the ape-
man's luggage.

He was about to give up in despair when he saw a coat
which Tarzan had just removed. A moment later he grasped an
official envelope in his hand. A quick glance at its contents
brought a broad smile to the Russian's face.

When he left the stateroom Tarzan himself could not have
told that an article in it had been touched since he left
it--Paulvitch was a past master in his chosen field.
When he handed the packet to Rokoff in the seclusion of
their stateroom the larger man rang for a steward, and
ordered a pint of champagne.

"We must celebrate, my dear Alexis," he said.

"It was luck, Nikolas," explained Paulvitch. "It is evident
that he carries these papers always upon his person--just
by chance he neglected to transfer them when he changed
coats a few minutes since. But there will be the deuce to
pay when he discovers his loss. I am afraid that he will
immediately connect you with it. Now that he knows that
you are on board he will suspect you at once."

"It will make no difference whom he suspects--after to-night,"
said Rokoff, with a nasty grin.

After Miss Strong had gone below that night Tarzan stood
leaning over the rail looking far out to sea. Every night he
had done this since he had come on board--sometimes he
stood thus for an hour. And the eyes that had been watching
his every movement since he had boarded the ship at
Algiers knew that this was his habit.

Even as he stood there this night those eyes were on him.
Presently the last straggler had left the deck. It was
a clear night, but there was no moon--objects on deck
were barely discernible.

From the shadows of the cabin two figures crept stealthily
upon the ape-man from behind. The lapping of the waves
against the ship's sides, the whirring of the propeller,
the throbbing of the engines, drowned the almost soundless
approach of the two.

They were quite close to him now, and crouching low, like
tacklers on a gridiron. One of them raised his hand and
lowered it, as though counting off seconds--one--two--three!
As one man the two leaped for their victim. Each grasped a
leg, and before Tarzan of the Apes, lightning though he was,
could turn to save himself he had been pitched over the low
rail and was falling into the Atlantic.

Hazel Strong was looking from her darkened port across
the dark sea. Suddenly a body shot past her eyes from
the deck above. It dropped so quickly into the dark waters
below that she could not be sure of what it was--it might
have been a man, she could not say. She listened for some
outcry from above--for the always-fearsome call, "Man overboard!"
but it did not come. All was silence on the ship above--all
was silence in the sea below.

The girl decided that she had but seen a bundle of refuse
thrown overboard by one of the ship's crew, and a moment
later sought her berth.

Chapter 13

The Wreck of the "Lady Alice"

The next morning at breakfast Tarzan's place was vacant.
Miss Strong was mildly curious, for Mr. Caldwell had
always made it a point to wait that he might breakfast
with her and her mother. As she was sitting on deck later
Monsieur Thuran paused to exchange a half dozen pleasant
words with her. He seemed in most excellent spirits--his
manner was the extreme of affability. As he passed on Miss
Strong thought what a very delightful man was Monsieur Thuran.

The day dragged heavily. She missed the quiet companionship
of Mr. Caldwell--there had been something about him
that had made the girl like him from the first; he had talked
so entertainingly of the places he had seen--the peoples
and their customs--the wild beasts; and he had always had a
droll way of drawing striking comparisons between savage
animals and civilized men that showed a considerable
knowledge of the former, and a keen, though somewhat cynical,
estimate of the latter.

When Monsieur Thuran stopped again to chat with her in
the afternoon she welcomed the break in the day's monotony.
But she had begun to become seriously concerned in Mr.
Caldwell's continued absence; somehow she constantly
associated it with the start she had had the night before,
when the dark object fell past her port into the sea.
Presently she broached the subject to Monsieur Thuran.
Had he seen Mr. Caldwell today? He had not. Why?

"He was not at breakfast as usual, nor have I seen him
once since yesterday," explained the girl.

Monsieur Thuran was extremely solicitous.

"I did not have the pleasure of intimate acquaintance
with Mr. Caldwell," he said. "He seemed a most estimable
gentleman, however. Can it be that he is indisposed,
and has remained in his stateroom? It would not be strange."

"No," replied the girl, "it would not be strange, of course;
but for some inexplicable reason I have one of those foolish
feminine presentiments that all is not right with Mr. Caldwell.
It is the strangest feeling--it is as though I knew that
he was not on board the ship."

Monsieur Thuran laughed pleasantly. "Mercy, my dear
Miss Strong," he said; "where in the world could he be then?
We have not been within sight of land for days."

"Of course, it is ridiculous of me," she admitted. And then:
"But I am not going to worry about it any longer; I
am going to find out where Mr. Caldwell is," and she
motioned to a passing steward.

"That may be more difficult than you imagine, my dear girl,"
thought Monsieur Thuran, but aloud he said: "By all means."

"Find Mr. Caldwell, please," she said to the steward, "and tell
him that his friends are much worried by his continued absence."

"You are very fond of Mr. Caldwell?" suggested Monsieur Thuran.

"I think he is splendid," replied the girl. "And mamma is
perfectly infatuated with him. He is the sort of man with
whom one has a feeling of perfect security--no one could
help but have confidence in Mr. Caldwell."

A moment later the steward returned to say that Mr. Caldwell
was not in his stateroom. "I cannot find him, Miss Strong,
and"--he hesitated--"I have learned that his berth was not
occupied last night. I think that I had better report the
matter to the captain."

"Most assuredly," exclaimed Miss Strong. "I shall go
with you to the captain myself. It is terrible! I know that
something awful has happened. My presentiments were not
false, after all."

It was a very frightened young woman and an excited steward
who presented themselves before the captain a few moments later.
He listened to their stories in silence--a look of concern
marking his expression as the steward assured him that he
had sought for the missing passenger in every part of the
ship that a passenger might be expected to frequent.

"And are you sure, Miss Strong, that you saw a body fall
overboard last night?" he asked.

"There is not the slightest doubt about that," she answered.
"I cannot say that it was a human body--there was no outcry.
It might have been only what I thought it was--a bundle of refuse.
But if Mr. Caldwell is not found on board I shall always be
positive that it was he whom I saw fall past my port."

The captain ordered an immediate and thorough search
of the entire ship from stem to stern--no nook or cranny was
to be overlooked. Miss Strong remained in his cabin, waiting
the outcome of the quest. The captain asked her many
questions, but she could tell him nothing about the missing
man other than what she had herself seen during their brief
acquaintance on shipboard. For the first time she suddenly
realized how very little indeed Mr. Caldwell had told her about
himself or his past life. That he had been born in Africa
and educated in Paris was about all she knew, and this
meager information had been the result of her surprise that
an Englishman should speak English with such a marked
French accent.

"Did he ever speak of any enemies?" asked the captain.

"Never."

"Was he acquainted with any of the other passengers?"

"Only as he had been with me--through the circumstance
of casual meeting as fellow shipmates."

"Er--was he, in your opinion, Miss Strong, a man who
drank to excess?"

"I do not know that he drank at all--he certainly had not
been drinking up to half an hour before I saw that body
fall overboard," she answered, "for I was with him on deck
up to that time."

"It is very strange," said the captain. "He did not look
to me like a man who was subject to fainting spells, or
anything of that sort. And even had he been it is scarcely
credible that he should have fallen completely over the
rail had he been taken with an attack while leaning upon it
--he would rather have fallen inside, upon the deck. If he is
not on board, Miss Strong, he was thrown overboard--and
the fact that you heard no outcry would lead to the assumption
that he was dead before he left the ship's deck--murdered."

The girl shuddered.

It was a full hour later that the first officer returned to
report the outcome of the search.

"Mr. Caldwell is not on board, sir," he said.

"I fear that there is something more serious than accident
here, Mr. Brently," said the captain. "I wish that you would
make a personal and very careful examination of Mr. Caldwell's
effects, to ascertain if there is any clew to a motive either
for suicide or murder--sift the thing to the bottom."

"Aye, aye, sir!" responded Mr. Brently, and left to commence
his investigation.

Hazel Strong was prostrated. For two days she did not
leave her cabin, and when she finally ventured on deck she was
very wan and white, with great, dark circles beneath her eyes.
Waking or sleeping, it seemed that she constantly saw that
dark body dropping, swift and silent, into the cold, grim sea.

Shortly after her first appearance on deck following the
tragedy, Monsieur Thuran joined her with many expressions
of kindly solicitude.

"Oh, but it is terrible, Miss Strong," he said. "I cannot rid
my mind of it."

"Nor I," said the girl wearily. "I feel that he might have
been saved had I but given the alarm."

"You must not reproach yourself, my dear Miss Strong,"
urged Monsieur Thuran. "It was in no way your fault.
Another would have done as you did. Who would think that
because something fell into the sea from a ship that it must
necessarily be a man? Nor would the outcome have been
different had you given an alarm. For a while they would
have doubted your story, thinking it but the nervous
hallucination of a woman--had you insisted it would have been
too late to have rescued him by the time the ship could have
been brought to a stop, and the boats lowered and rowed
back miles in search of the unknown spot where the tragedy
had occurred. No, you must not censure yourself. You have
done more than any other of us for poor Mr. Caldwell--you
were the only one to miss him. It was you who instituted
the search."

The girl could not help but feel grateful to him for his
kind and encouraging words. He was with her often--almost
constantly for the remainder of the voyage--and she
grew to like him very much indeed. Monsieur Thuran had
learned that the beautiful Miss Strong, of Baltimore, was an
American heiress--a very wealthy girl in her own right, and
with future prospects that quite took his breath away when he
contemplated them, and since he spent most of his time in that
delectable pastime it is a wonder that he breathed at all.

It had been Monsieur Thuran's intention to leave the ship at
the first port they touched after the disappearance of Tarzan.
Did he not have in his coat pocket the thing he had
taken passage upon this very boat to obtain? There was
nothing more to detain him here. He could not return to
the Continent fast enough, that he might board the first
express for St. Petersburg.

But now another idea had obtruded itself, and was rapidly
crowding his original intentions into the background.
That American fortune was not to be sneezed at, nor was
its possessor a whit less attractive.

"SAPRISTI! but she would cause a sensation in St. Petersburg."
And he would, too, with the assistance of her inheritance.

After Monsieur Thuran had squandered a few million dollars,
he discovered that the vocation was so entirely to his
liking that he would continue on down to Cape Town, where
he suddenly decided that he had pressing engagements
that might detain him there for some time.

Miss Strong had told him that she and her mother were to
visit the latter's brother there--they had not decided upon the
duration of their stay, and it would probably run into months.

She was delighted when she found that Monsieur Thuran
was to be there also.

"I hope that we shall be able to continue our acquaintance,"
she said. "You must call upon mamma and me as
soon as we are settled."

Monsieur Thuran was delighted at the prospect, and lost
no time in saying so. Mrs. Strong was not quite so favorably
impressed by him as her daughter.

"I do not know why I should distrust him," she said to
Hazel one day as they were discussing him. "He seems a
perfect gentleman in every respect, but sometimes there
is something about his eyes--a fleeting expression which
I cannot describe, but which when I see it gives me a
very uncanny feeling."

The girl laughed. "You are a silly dear, mamma," she said.

"I suppose so, but I am sorry that we have not poor Mr.
Caldwell for company instead."

"And I, too," replied her daughter.

Monsieur Thuran became a frequent visitor at the home of
Hazel Strong's uncle in Cape Town. His attentions were very
marked, but they were so punctiliously arranged to meet
the girl's every wish that she came to depend upon him more
and more. Did she or her mother or a cousin require an
escort--was there a little friendly service to be rendered,
the genial and ubiquitous Monsieur Thuran was always available.
Her uncle and his family grew to like him for his unfailing
courtesy and willingness to be of service. Monsieur Thuran
was becoming indispensable. At length, feeling the moment
propitious, he proposed. Miss Strong was startled.
She did not know what to say.

"I had never thought that you cared for me in any such
way," she told him. "I have looked upon you always as a
very dear friend. I shall not give you my answer now.
Forget that you have asked me to be your wife. Let us go
on as we have been--then I can consider you from an entirely
different angle for a time. It may be that I shall discover
that my feeling for you is more than friendship. I certainly
have not thought for a moment that I loved you."

This arrangement was perfectly satisfactory to Monsieur Thuran.
He deeply regretted that he had been hasty, but he had
loved her for so long a time, and so devotedly, that he
thought that every one must know it.

"From the first time I saw you, Hazel," he said, "I have
loved you. I am willing to wait, for I am certain that so great
and pure a love as mine will be rewarded. All that I care to
know is that you do not love another. Will you tell me?"

"I have never been in love in my life," she replied, and he
was quite satisfied. On the way home that night he purchased
a steam yacht, and built a million-dollar villa on the Black Sea.

The next day Hazel Strong enjoyed one of the happiest surprises
of her life--she ran face to face upon Jane Porter as she was
coming out of a jeweler's shop.

"Why, Jane Porter!" she exclaimed. "Where in the world
did you drop from? Why, I can't believe my own eyes."

"Well, of all things!" cried the equally astonished Jane.
"And here I have been wasting whole reams of perfectly good
imagination picturing you in Baltimore--the very idea!" And
she threw her arms about her friend once more, and kissed
her a dozen times.

By the time mutual explanations had been made Hazel
knew that Lord Tennington's yacht had put in at Cape Town
for at least a week's stay, and at the end of that time was to
continue on her voyage--this time up the West Coast--and so
back to England. "Where," concluded Jane, "I am to be married."

"Then you are not married yet?" asked Hazel.

"Not yet," replied Jane, and then, quite irrelevantly, "I wish
England were a million miles from here.

Visits were exchanged between the yacht and Hazel's relatives.
Dinners were arranged, and trips into the surrounding
country to entertain the visitors. Monsieur Thuran was a
welcome guest at every function. He gave a dinner himself to the
men of the party, and managed to ingratiate himself in the
good will of Lord Tennington by many little acts of hospitality.

Monsieur Thuran had heard dropped a hint of something
which might result from this unexpected visit of Lord
Tennington's yacht, and he wanted to be counted in on it.
Once when he was alone with the Englishman he took occasion to
make it quite plain that his engagement to Miss Strong was
to be announced immediately upon their return to America.
"But not a word of it, my dear Tennington--not a word of it."

"Certainly, I quite understand, my dear fellow," Tennington
had replied. "But you are to be congratulated--ripping
girl, don't you know--really."

The next day it came. Mrs. Strong, Hazel, and Monsieur
Thuran were Lord Tennington's guests aboard his yacht.
Mrs. Strong had been telling them how much she had enjoyed
her visit at Cape Town, and that she regretted that a letter
just received from her attorneys in Baltimore had necessitated
her cutting her visit shorter than they had intended.

"When do you sail?" asked Tennington.

"The first of the week, I think," she replied.
"Indeed?" exclaimed Monsieur Thuran. "I am very fortunate.
I, too, have found that I must return at once, and now
I shall have the honor of accompanying and serving you."

"That is nice of you, Monsieur Thuran," replied Mrs. Strong.
"I am sure that we shall be glad to place ourselves under
your protection." But in the bottom of her heart was
the wish that they might escape him. Why, she could not
have told.

"By Jove!" ejaculated Lord Tennington, a moment later.
"Bully idea, by Jove!"

"Yes, Tennington, of course," ventured Clayton; "it must
be a bully idea if you had it, but what the deuce is it?
Goin' to steam to China via the south pole?"

"Oh, I say now, Clayton," returned Tennington, "you
needn't be so rough on a fellow just because you didn't
happen to suggest this trip yourself--you've acted a regular
bounder ever since we sailed.

"No, sir," he continued, "it's a bully idea, and you'll all
say so. It's to take Mrs. Strong and Miss Strong, and Thuran,
too, if he'll come, as far as England with us on the yacht.
Now, isn't that a corker?"

"Forgive me, Tenny, old boy," cried Clayton. "It certainly
IS a corking idea--I never should have suspected you of it.
You're quite sure it's original, are you?"

"And we'll sail the first of the week, or any other time that
suits your convenience, Mrs. Strong," concluded the big-hearted
Englishman, as though the thing were all arranged
except the sailing date.

"Mercy, Lord Tennington, you haven't even given us an
opportunity to thank you, much less decide whether we shall
be able to accept your generous invitation," said Mrs. Strong.

"Why, of course you'll come," responded Tennington.
"We'll make as good time as any passenger boat, and you'll
be fully as comfortable; and, anyway, we all want you, and
won't take no for an answer."

And so it was settled that they should sail the following Monday.

Two days out the girls were sitting in Hazel's cabin,
looking at some prints she had had finished in Cape Town.
They represented all the pictures she had taken since she
had left America, and the girls were both engrossed in them,
Jane asking many questions, and Hazel keeping up a perfect torrent
of comment and explanation of the various scenes and people.

"And here," she said suddenly, "here's a man you know.
Poor fellow, I have so often intended asking you about him,
but I never have been able to think of it when we were together."
She was holding the little print so that Jane did not see
the face of the man it portrayed.

"His name was John Caldwell," continued Hazel. "Do you recall him?
He said that he met you in America. He is an Englishman."

"I do not recollect the name," replied Jane. "Let me
see the picture."
"The poor fellow was lost overboard on our trip down the
coast," she said, as she handed the print to Jane.

"Lost over--Why, Hazel, Hazel--don't tell me that he is
dead--drowned at sea! Hazel! Why don't you say that you are joking!"
And before the astonished Miss Strong could catch her
Jane Porter had slipped to the floor in a swoon.

After Hazel had restored her chum to consciousness she
sat looking at her for a long time before either spoke.

"I did not know, Jane," said Hazel, in a constrained voice,
"that you knew Mr. Caldwell so intimately that his death
could prove such a shock to you."

"John Caldwell?" questioned Miss Porter. "You do not mean
to tell me that you do not know who this man was, Hazel?"

"Why, yes, Jane; I know perfectly well who he was--his
name was John Caldwell; he was from London."

"Oh, Hazel, I wish I could believe it," moaned the girl.
"I wish I could believe it, but those features are burned so
deep into my memory and my heart that I should recognize
them anywhere in the world from among a thousand others,
who might appear identical to any one but me."

"What do you mean, Jane?" cried Hazel, now thoroughly alarmed.
"Who do you think it is?"

"I don't think, Hazel. I know that that is a picture of
Tarzan of the Apes."

"Jane!"

"I cannot be mistaken. Oh, Hazel, are you sure that he is dead?
Can there be no mistake?"

"I am afraid not, dear," answered Hazel sadly. "I wish I
could think that you are mistaken, but now a hundred and
one little pieces of corroborative evidence occur to me that
meant nothing to me while I thought that he was John Caldwell,
of London. He said that he had been born in Africa,
and educated in France."

"Yes, that would be true," murmured Jane Porter dully.

"The first officer, who searched his luggage, found nothing
to identify John Caldwell, of London. Practically all his
belongings had been made, or purchased, in Paris. Everything
that bore an initial was marked either with a `T' alone, or
with `J. C. T.' We thought that he was traveling incognito
under his first two names--the J. C. standing for John Caldwell."

"Tarzan of the Apes took the name Jean C. Tarzan," said
Jane, in the same lifeless monotone. "And he is dead! Oh!
Hazel, it is horrible! He died all alone in this terrible ocean!
It is unbelievable that that brave heart should have ceased
to beat--that those mighty muscles are quiet and cold forever!
That he who was the personification of life and health
and manly strength should be the prey of slimy, crawling
things, that--" But she could go no further, and with a little
moan she buried her head in her arms, and sank sobbing to the floor.

For days Miss Porter was ill, and would see no one except
Hazel and the faithful Esmeralda. When at last she came on
deck all were struck by the sad change that had taken place
in her. She was no longer the alert, vivacious American
beauty who had charmed and delighted all who came in contact
with her. Instead she was a very quiet and sad little
girl--with an expression of hopeless wistfulness that none
but Hazel Strong could interpret.

The entire party strove their utmost to cheer and amuse
her, but all to no avail. Occasionally the jolly Lord
Tennington would wring a wan smile from her, but for the
most part she sat with wide eyes looking out across the sea.

With Jane Porter's illness one misfortune after another
seemed to attack the yacht. First an engine broke down, and
they drifted for two days while temporary repairs were being made.
Then a squall struck them unaware, that carried overboard
nearly everything above deck that was portable. Later two of
the seamen fell to fighting in the forecastle, with the
result that one of them was badly wounded with a knife, and
the other had to be put in irons. Then, to cap the climax,
the mate fell overboard at night, and was drowned before
help could reach him. The yacht cruised about the spot for
ten hours, but no sign of the man was seen after he
disappeared from the deck into the sea.

Every member of the crew and guests was gloomy and depressed
after these series of misfortunes. All were apprehensive of
worse to come, and this was especially true of the
seamen who recalled all sorts of terrible omens and warnings
that had occurred during the early part of the voyage, and
which they could now clearly translate into the precursors of
some grim and terrible tragedy to come.

Nor did the croakers have long to wait. The second night
after the drowning of the mate the little yacht was suddenly
wracked from stem to stern. About one o'clock in the
morning there was a terrific impact that threw the slumbering
guests and crew from berth and bunk. A mighty shudder ran
through the frail craft; she lay far over to starboard; the
engines stopped. For a moment she hung there with her decks
at an angle of forty-five degrees--then, with a sullen, rending
sound, she slipped back into the sea and righted.

Instantly the men rushed upon deck, followed closely by
the women. Though the night was cloudy, there was little
wind or sea, nor was it so dark but that just off the port
bow a black mass could be discerned floating low in the water.

"A derelict," was the terse explanation of the officer of the watch.

Presently the engineer hurried on deck in search of the captain.

"That patch we put on the cylinder head's blown out, sir," he
reported, "and she's makin' water fast for'ard on the port bow."

An instant later a seaman rushed up from below.

"My Gawd!" he cried. "Her whole bleedin' bottom's ripped
out. She can't float twenty minutes."

"Shut up!" roared Tennington. "Ladies, go below and get
some of your things together. It may not be so bad as that,
but we may have to take to the boats. It will be safer
to be prepared. Go at once, please. And, Captain Jerrold,
send some competent man below, please, to ascertain the exact
extent of the damage. In the meantime I might suggest that
you have the boats provisioned."

The calm, low voice of the owner did much to reassure
the entire party, and a moment later all were occupied with
the duties he had suggested. By the time the ladies had
returned to the deck the rapid provisioning of the boats had
been about completed, and a moment later the officer who
had gone below had returned to report. But his opinion was
scarcely needed to assure the huddled group of men and
women that the end of the LADY ALICE was at hand.

"Well, sir?" said the captain, as his officer hesitated.

"I dislike to frighten the ladies, sir," he said, "but she
can't float a dozen minutes, in my opinion. There's a hole in
her you could drive a bally cow through, sir."

For five minutes the LADY ALICE had been settling rapidly
by the bow. Already her stern loomed high in the air, and
foothold on the deck was of the most precarious nature.
She carried four boats, and these were all filled and lowered
away in safety. As they pulled rapidly from the stricken
little vessel Jane Porter turned to have one last look at her.
Just then there came a loud crash and an ominous rumbling
and pounding from the heart of the ship--her machinery had
broken loose, and was dashing its way toward the bow,
tearing out partitions and bulkheads as it went--the stern rose
rapidly high above them; for a moment she seemed to pause
there--a vertical shaft protruding from the bosom of the
ocean, and then swiftly she dove headforemost beneath the waves.

In one of the boats the brave Lord Tennington wiped a tear
from his eye--he had not seen a fortune in money go down
forever into the sea, but a dear, beautiful friend whom he
had loved.

At last the long night broke, and a tropical sun smote
down upon the rolling water. Jane Porter had dropped into a
fitful slumber--the fierce light of the sun upon her upturned
face awoke her. She looked about her. In the boat with her
were three sailors, Clayton, and Monsieur Thuran. Then she
looked for the other boats, but as far as the eye could reach
there was nothing to break the fearful monotony of that
waste of waters--they were alone in a small boat upon the
broad Atlantic.

Chapter 14

Back to the Primitive

As Tarzan struck the water, his first impulse was to swim clear
of the ship and possible danger from her propellers. He knew
whom to thank for his present predicament, and as he lay in
the sea, just supporting himself by a gentle movement of his
hands, his chief emotion was one of chagrin that he had been
so easily bested by Rokoff.

He lay thus for some time, watching the receding and
rapidly diminishing lights of the steamer without it ever once
occurring to him to call for help. He never had called for
help in his life, and so it is not strange that he did not think
of it now. Always had he depended upon his own prowess
and resourcefulness, nor had there ever been since the days
of Kala any to answer an appeal for succor. When it did
occur to him it was too late.

There was, thought Tarzan, a possible one chance in a
hundred thousand that he might be picked up, and an even
smaller chance that he would reach land, so he determined
that to combine what slight chances there were, he would
swim slowly in the direction of the coast--the ship might
have been closer in than he had known.

His strokes were long and easy--it would be many hours
before those giant muscles would commence to feel fatigue.
As he swam, guided toward the east by the stars, he noticed
that he felt the weight of his shoes, and so he removed them.
His trousers went next, and he would have removed his coat
at the same time but for the precious papers in its pocket.
To assure himself that he still had them he slipped his
hand in to feel, but to his consternation they were gone.

Now he knew that something more than revenge had
prompted Rokoff to pitch him overboard--the Russian had
managed to obtain possession of the papers Tarzan had
wrested from him at Bou Saada. The ape-man swore softly,
and let his coat and shirt sink into the Atlantic. Before many
hours he had divested himself of his remaining garments,
and was swimming easily and unencumbered toward the east.

The first faint evidence of dawn was paling the stars ahead
of him when the dim outlines of a low-lying black mass
loomed up directly in his track. A few strong strokes brought
him to its side--it was the bottom of a wave-washed derelict.
Tarzan clambered upon it--he would rest there until daylight
at least. He had no intention to remain there inactive--a prey
to hunger and thirst. If he must die he preferred dying in
action while making some semblance of an attempt to save himself.

The sea was quiet, so that the wreck had only a gently
undulating motion, that was nothing to the swimmer who
had had no sleep for twenty hours. Tarzan of the Apes
curled up upon the slimy timbers, and was soon asleep.

The heat of the sun awoke him early in the forenoon.
His first conscious sensation was of thirst, which grew
almost to the proportions of suffering with full returning
consciousness; but a moment later it was forgotten in the
joy of two almost simultaneous discoveries. The first was
a mass of wreckage floating beside the derelict in the midst
of which, bottom up, rose and fell an overturned lifeboat;
the other was the faint, dim line of a far-distant shore
showing on the horizon in the east.

Tarzan dove into the water, and swam around the wreck
to the lifeboat. The cool ocean refreshed him almost as
much as would a draft of water, so that it was with renewed
vigor that he brought the smaller boat alongside the derelict,
and, after many herculean efforts, succeeded in dragging it
onto the slimy ship's bottom. There he righted and examined
it--the boat was quite sound, and a moment later floated upright
alongside the wreck. Then Tarzan selected several pieces
of wreckage that might answer him as paddles, and presently
was making good headway toward the far-off shore.

It was late in the afternoon by the time he came close
enough to distinguish objects on land, or to make out the
contour of the shore line. Before him lay what appeared to
be the entrance to a little, landlocked harbor. The wooded
point to the north was strangely familiar. Could it be
possible that fate had thrown him up at the very threshold
of his own beloved jungle! But as the bow of his boat
entered the mouth of the harbor the last shred of doubt was
cleared away, for there before him upon the farther shore,
under the shadows of his primeval forest, stood his own
cabin--built before his birth by the hand of his long-dead
father, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.

With long sweeps of his giant muscles Tarzan sent the little
craft speeding toward the beach. Its prow had scarcely
touched when the ape-man leaped to shore--his heart beat
fast in joy and exultation as each long-familiar object came
beneath his roving eyes--the cabin, the beach, the little
brook, the dense jungle, the black, impenetrable forest.
The myriad birds in their brilliant plumage--the gorgeous
tropical blooms upon the festooned creepers falling in great
loops from the giant trees.

Tarzan of the Apes had come into his own again, and that
all the world might know it he threw back his young head,
and gave voice to the fierce, wild challenge of his tribe.
For a moment silence reigned upon the jungle, and then,
low and weird, came an answering challenge--it was the
deep roar of Numa, the lion; and from a great distance,
faintly, the fearsome answering bellow of a bull ape.

Tarzan went to the brook first, and slaked his thirst.
Then he approached his cabin. The door was still closed
and latched as he and D'Arnot had left it. He raised the
latch and entered. Nothing had been disturbed; there were
the table, the bed, and the little crib built by his
father--the shelves and cupboards just as they had stood
for ever twenty-three years--just as he had left them
nearly two years before.

His eyes satisfied, Tarzan's stomach began to call aloud for
attention--the pangs of hunger suggested a search for food.
There was nothing in the cabin, nor had he any weapons;
but upon a wall hung one of his old grass ropes. It had
been many times broken and spliced, so that he had discarded
it for a better one long before. Tarzan wished that he had a knife.
Well, unless he was mistaken he should have that and a spear and
bows and arrows before another sun had set--the rope would take
care of that, and in the meantime it must be made to procure
food for him. He coiled it carefully, and, throwing it about
his shoulder, went out, closing the door behind him.

Close to the cabin the jungle commenced, and into it
Tarzan of the Apes plunged, wary and noiseless--once more
a savage beast hunting its food. For a time he kept to the
ground, but finally, discovering no spoor indicative of
nearby meat, he took to the trees. With the first dizzy swing
from tree to tree all the old joy of living swept over him.
Vain regrets and dull heartache were forgotten. Now was he living.
Now, indeed, was the true happiness of perfect freedom his.
Who would go back to the stifling, wicked cities of civilized
man when the mighty reaches of the great jungle offered peace
and liberty? Not he.

While it was yet light Tarzan came to a drinking place by
the side of a jungle river. There was a ford there, and for
countless ages the beasts of the forest had come down to
drink at this spot. Here of a night might always be found
either Sabor or Numa crouching in the dense foliage of the
surrounding jungle awaiting an antelope or a water buck for
their meal. Here came Horta, the boar, to water, and here
came Tarzan of the Apes to make a kill, for he was very empty.

On a low branch he squatted above the trail. For an hour
he waited. It was growing dark. A little to one side of the
ford in the densest thicket he heard the faint sound of padded
feet, and the brushing of a huge body against tall grasses
and tangled creepers. None other than Tarzan might have
heard it, but the ape-man heard and translated--it was Numa,
the lion, on the same errand as himself. Tarzan smiled.

Presently he heard an animal approaching warily along
the trail toward the drinking place. A moment more and it
came in view--it was Horta, the boar. Here was delicious
meat--and Tarzan's mouth watered. The grasses where Numa
lay were very still now--ominously still. Horta passed
beneath Tarzan--a few more steps and he would be within the
radius of Numa's spring. Tarzan could imagine how old
Numa's eyes were shining--how he was already sucking
in his breath for the awful roar which would freeze his prey
for the brief instant between the moment of the spring and
the sinking of terrible fangs into splintering bones.

But as Numa gathered himself, a slender rope flew through
the air from the low branches of a near-by tree. A noose
settled about Horta's neck. There was a frightened grunt,
a squeal, and then Numa saw his quarry dragged backward
up the trail, and, as he sprang, Horta, the boar, soared
upward beyond his clutches into the tree above, and a mocking
face looked down and laughed into his own.

Then indeed did Numa roar. Angry, threatening, hungry,
he paced back and forth beneath the taunting ape-man.
Now he stopped, and, rising on his hind legs against the stem
of the tree that held his enemy, sharpened his huge claws upon
the bark, tearing out great pieces that laid bare the white
wood beneath.

And in the meantime Tarzan had dragged the struggling
Horta to the limb beside him. Sinewy fingers completed the
work the choking noose had commenced. The ape-man had
no knife, but nature had equipped him with the means of
tearing his food from the quivering flank of his prey, and
gleaming teeth sank into the succulent flesh while the raging
lion looked on from below as another enjoyed the dinner
that he had thought already his.

It was quite dark by the time Tarzan had gorged himself.
Ah, but it had been delicious! Never had he quite accustomed
himself to the ruined flesh that civilized men had served
him, and in the bottom of his savage heart there had
constantly been the craving for the warm meat of the
fresh kill, and the rich, red blood.

He wiped his bloody hands upon a bunch of leaves,
slung the remains of his kill across his shoulder, and swung
off through the middle terrace of the forest toward his cabin,
and at the same instant Jane Porter and William Cecil
Clayton arose from a sumptuous dinner upon the LADY
ALICE, thousands of miles to the east, in the Indian Ocean.

Beneath Tarzan walked Numa, the lion, and when the ape-man
deigned to glance downward he caught occasional glimpses
of the baleful green eyes following through the darkness.
Numa did not roar now--instead, he moved stealthily,
like the shadow of a great cat; but yet he took no step
that did not reach the sensitive ears of the ape-man.

Tarzan wondered if he would stalk him to his cabin door.
He hoped not, for that would mean a night's sleep curled in
the crotch of a tree, and he much preferred the bed of
grasses within his own abode. But he knew just the tree
and the most comfortable crotch, if necessity demanded that
he sleep out. A hundred times in the past some great jungle
cat had followed him home, and compelled him to seek shelter
in this same tree, until another mood or the rising sun had
sent his enemy away.

But presently Numa gave up the chase and, with a series
of blood-curdling moans and roars, turned angrily back in
search of another and an easier dinner. So Tarzan came to his
cabin unattended, and a few moments later was curled up in
the mildewed remnants of what had once been a bed of grasses.
Thus easily did Monsieur Jean C. Tarzan slough the thin skin
of his artificial civilization, and sink happy and contented
into the deep sleep of the wild beast that has fed to repletion.
Yet a woman's "yes" would have bound him to that other life
forever, and made the thought of this savage existence repulsive.

Tarzan slept late into the following forenoon, for he had
been very tired from the labors and exertion of the long
night and day upon the ocean, and the jungle jaunt that had
brought into play muscles that he had scarce used for nearly
two years. When he awoke he ran to the brook first to drink.
Then he took a plunge into the sea, swimming about for
a quarter of an hour. Afterward he returned to his cabin,
and breakfasted off the flesh of Horta. This done, he buried
the balance of the carcass in the soft earth outside the cabin,
for his evening meal.

Once more he took his rope and vanished into the jungle.
This time he hunted nobler quarry--man; although had you
asked him his own opinion he could have named a dozen
other denizens of the jungle which he considered far the
superiors in nobility of the men he hunted. Today Tarzan
was in quest of weapons. He wondered if the women and
children had remained in Mbonga's village after the punitive
expedition from the French cruiser had massacred all the
warriors in revenge for D'Arnot's supposed death. He hoped
that he should find warriors there, for he knew not how
long a quest he should have to make were the village deserted.

The ape-man traveled swiftly through the forest, and about
noon came to the site of the village, but to his disappointment
found that the jungle had overgrown the plantain fields
and that the thatched huts had fallen in decay. There was no
sign of man. He clambered about among the ruins for half
an hour, hoping that he might discover some forgotten
weapon, but his search was without fruit, and so he took up
his quest once more, following up the stream, which flowed
from a southeasterly direction. He knew that near fresh
water he would be most likely to find another settlement.

As he traveled he hunted as he had hunted with his ape
people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning
over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high
into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny
rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things
that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's
diet, the better--and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce,
brutal anthropoid that Kala had taught him to be, and that
he had been for the first twenty years of his life.

Occasionally he smiled as he recalled some friend who
might even at the moment be sitting placid and immaculate
within the precincts of his select Parisian club--just as Tarzan
had sat but a few months before; and then he would stop,
as though turned suddenly to stone as the gentle breeze
carried to his trained nostrils the scent of some new prey or
a formidable enemy.

That night he slept far inland from his cabin, securely
wedged into the crotch of a giant tree, swaying a hundred
feet above the ground. He had eaten heartily again--this
time from the flesh of Bara, the deer, who had fallen prey to
his quick noose.

Early the next morning he resumed his journey, always
following the course of the stream. For three days he
continued his quest, until he had come to a part of the
jungle in which he never before had been. Occasionally upon
the higher ground the forest was much thinner, and in the far
distance through the trees he could see ranges of mighty
mountains, with wide plains in the foreground. Here, in the
open spaces, were new game--countless antelope and vast
herds of zebra. Tarzan was entranced--he would make a long
visit to this new world.

On the morning of the fourth day his nostrils were suddenly
surprised by a faint new scent. It was the scent of man,
but yet a long way off. The ape-man thrilled with pleasure.
Every sense was on the alert as with crafty stealth he
moved quickly through the trees, up-wind, in the direction
of his prey. Presently he came upon it--a lone warrior
treading softly through the jungle.

Tarzan followed close above his quarry, waiting for a
clearer space in which to hurl his rope. As he stalked
the unconscious man, new thoughts presented themselves to
the ape-man--thoughts born of the refining influences of
civilization, and of its cruelties. It came to him that
seldom if ever did civilized man kill a fellow being without
some pretext, however slight. It was true that Tarzan wished
this man's weapons and ornaments, but was it necessary to take
his life to obtain them?

The longer he thought about it, the more repugnant became
the thought of taking human life needlessly; and thus
it happened that while he was trying to decide just what
to do, they had come to a little clearing, at the far side of
which lay a palisaded village of beehive huts.

As the warrior emerged from the forest, Tarzan caught a
fleeting glimpse of a tawny hide worming its way through the
matted jungle grasses in his wake--it was Numa, the lion.
He, too, was stalking the black man. With the instant that
Tarzan realized the native's danger his attitude toward his
erstwhile prey altered completely--now he was a fellow man
threatened by a common enemy.

Numa was about to charge--there was little time in which
to compare various methods or weigh the probable results
of any. And then a number of things happened, almost
simultaneously--the lion sprang from his ambush toward the
retreating black--Tarzan cried out in warning--and the black
turned just in time to see Numa halted in mid-flight by a
slender strand of grass rope, the noosed end of which
had fallen cleanly about his neck.

The ape-man had acted so quickly that he had been
unable to prepare himself to withstand the strain and shock
of Numa's great weight upon the rope, and so it was that
though the rope stopped the beast before his mighty talons
could fasten themselves in the flesh of the black, the strain
overbalanced Tarzan, who came tumbling to the ground not
six paces from the infuriated animal. Like lightning Numa
turned upon this new enemy, and, defenseless as he was,
Tarzan of the Apes was nearer to death that instant than he
ever before had been. It was the black who saved him.
The warrior realized in an instant that he owed his life
to this strange white man, and he also saw that only a miracle
could save his preserver from those fierce yellow fangs that
had been so near to his own flesh.

With the quickness of thought his spear arm flew back,
and then shot forward with all the force of the sinewy
muscles that rolled beneath the shimmering ebon hide.
True to its mark the iron-shod weapon flew, transfixing
Numa's sleek carcass from the right groin to beneath the
left shoulder. With a hideous scream of rage and pain the
brute turned again upon the black. A dozen paces he had
gone when Tarzan's rope brought him to a stand once more--
then he wheeled again upon the ape-man, only to feel the
painful prick of a barbed arrow as it sank half its length
in his quivering flesh. Again he stopped, and by this time
Tarzan had run twice around the stem of a great tree with
his rope, and made the end fast.

The black saw the trick, and grinned, but Tarzan knew
that Numa must be quickly finished before those mighty
teeth had found and parted the slender cord that held him.
It was a matter of but an instant to reach the black's side
and drag his long knife from its scabbard. Then he signed
the warrior to continue to shoot arrows into the great beast
while he attempted to close in upon him with the knife; so
as one tantalized upon one side, the other sneaked cautiously
in upon the other. Numa was furious. He raised his voice
in a perfect frenzy of shrieks, growls, and hideous moans,
the while he reared upon his hind legs in futile attempt
to reach first one and then the other of his tormentors.

But at length the agile ape-man saw his chance, and rushed
in upon the beast's left side behind the mighty shoulder.
A giant arm encircled the tawny throat, and a long blade sank
once, true as a die, into the fierce heart. Then Tarzan arose,
and the black man and the white looked into each other's eyes
across the body of their kill--and the black made the sign of
peace and friendship, and Tarzan of the Apes answered in kind.

Chapter 15

From Ape to Savage

The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited
horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment
after the lion's death the two men were surrounded by
lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering--a
thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply.

And then the women came, and the children--eager, curious,
and, at sight of Tarzan, more questioning than ever.
The ape-man's new friend finally succeeded in making
himself heard, and when he had done talking the men and
women of the village vied with one another in doing honor
to the strange creature who had saved their fellow and
battled single-handed with fierce Numa.

At last they led him back to their village, where they
brought him gifts of fowl, and goats, and cooked food.
When he pointed to their weapons the warriors hastened
to fetch spear, shield, arrows, and a bow. His friend of the
encounter presented him with the knife with which he had
killed Numa. There was nothing in all the village he could
not have had for the asking.

How much easier this was, thought Tarzan, than murder
and robbery to supply his wants. How close he had been to
killing this man whom he never had seen before, and who
now was manifesting by every primitive means at his
command friendship and affection for his would-be slayer.
Tarzan of the Apes was ashamed. Hereafter he would at least wait
until he knew men deserved it before he thought of killing them.

The idea recalled Rokoff to his mind. He wished that he
might have the Russian to himself in the dark jungle for a
few minutes. There was a man who deserved killing if ever
any one did. And if he could have seen Rokoff at that moment
as he assiduously bent every endeavor to the pleasant task
of ingratiating himself into the affections of the beautiful
Miss Strong, he would have longed more than ever to mete
out to the man the fate he deserved.

Tarzan's first night with the savages was devoted to a wild
orgy in his honor. There was feasting, for the hunters had
brought in an antelope and a zebra as trophies of their skill,
and gallons of the weak native beer were consumed. As the
warriors danced in the firelight, Tarzan was again impressed
by the symmetry of their figures and the regularity of their
features--the flat noses and thick lips of the typical West
Coast savage were entirely missing. In repose the faces of the
men were intelligent and dignified, those of the women
ofttimes prepossessing.

It was during this dance that the ape-man first noticed
that some of the men and many of the women wore ornaments
of gold--principally anklets and armlets of great weight,
apparently beaten out of the solid metal. When he
expressed a wish to examine one of these, the owner removed
it from her person and insisted, through the medium of signs,
that Tarzan accept it as a gift. A close scrutiny of the
bauble convinced the ape-man that the article was of
virgin gold, and he was surprised, for it was the first time
that he had ever seen golden ornaments among the savages
of Africa, other than the trifling baubles those near the
coast had purchased or stolen from Europeans. He tried
to ask them from whence the metal came, but he could not
make them understand.

When the dance was done Tarzan signified his intention
to leave them, but they almost implored him to accept the
hospitality of a great hut which the chief set apart for his
sole use. He tried to explain that he would return in the
morning, but they could not understand. When he finally
walked away from them toward the side of the village opposite
the gate, they were still further mystified as to his intentions.

Tarzan, however, knew just what he was about. In the
past he had had experience with the rodents and vermin
that infest every native village, and, while he was not
overscrupulous about such matters, he much preferred the
fresh air of the swaying trees to the fetid atmosphere of a hut.

The natives followed him to where a great tree overhung
the palisade, and as Tarzan leaped for a lower branch
and disappeared into the foliage above, precisely after the
manner of Manu, the monkey, there were loud exclamations
of surprise and astonishment. For half an hour they called
to him to return, but as he did not answer them they at
last desisted, and sought the sleeping-mats within their huts.

Tarzan went back into the forest a short distance until
he had found a tree suited to his primitive requirements,
and then, curling himself in a great crotch, he fell
immediately into a deep sleep.

The following morning he dropped into the village street
as suddenly as he had disappeared the preceding night.
For a moment the natives were startled and afraid, but when
they recognized their guest of the night before they
welcomed him with shouts and laughter. That day he
accompanied a party of warriors to the nearby plains on a
great hunt, and so dexterous did they find this white man
with their own crude weapons that another bond of respect
and admiration was thereby wrought.

For weeks Tarzan lived with his savage friends, hunting
buffalo, antelope, and zebra for meat, and elephant for ivory.
Quickly he learned their simple speech, their native customs,
and the ethics of their wild, primitive tribal life.
He found that they were not cannibals--that they looked
with loathing and contempt upon men who ate men.

Busuli, the warrior whom he had stalked to the village,
told him many of the tribal legends--how, many years
before, his people had come many long marches from the
north; how once they had been a great and powerful tribe;
and how the slave raiders had wrought such havoc among
them with their death-dealing guns that they had been
reduced to a mere remnant of their former numbers and power.

"They hunted us down as one hunts a fierce beast," said Busuli.
"There was no mercy in them. When it was not slaves they
sought it was ivory, but usually it was both. Our men were
killed and our women driven away like sheep. We fought
against them for many years, but our arrows and spears
could not prevail against the sticks which spit fire
and lead and death to many times the distance that our
mightiest warrior could place an arrow. At last, when my
father was a young man, the Arabs came again, but our
warriors saw them a long way off, and Chowambi, who was
chief then, told his people to gather up their belongings
and come away with him--that he would lead them far to
the south until they found a spot to which the Arab raiders
did not come.

"And they did as he bid, carrying all their belongings,
including many tusks of ivory. For months they wandered,
suffering untold hardships and privations, for much of the
way was through dense jungle, and across mighty mountains,
but finally they came to this spot, and although they sent
parties farther on to search for an even better location,
none has ever been found."

"And the raiders have never found you here?" asked Tarzan.

"About a year ago a small party of Arabs and Manyuema
stumbled upon us, but we drove them off, killing many.
For days we followed them, stalking them for the wild beasts
they are, picking them off one by one, until but a handful
remained, but these escaped us."

As Busuli talked he fingered a heavy gold armlet that
encircled the glossy hide of his left arm. Tarzan's eyes
had been upon the ornament, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
Presently he recalled the question he had tried to ask when
he first came to the tribe--the question he could not at that
time make them understand. For weeks he had forgotten so trivial
a thing as gold, for he had been for the time a truly
primeval man with no thought beyond today. But of a sudden
the sight of gold awakened the sleeping civilization that was
in him, and with it came the lust for wealth. That lesson
Tarzan had learned well in his brief experience of the ways
of civilized man. He knew that gold meant power and pleasure.
He pointed to the bauble.

"From whence came the yellow metal, Busuli?" he asked.

The black pointed toward the southeast.

"A moon's march away--maybe more," he replied.

"Have you been there?" asked Tarzan.

"No, but some of our people were there years ago, when
my father was yet a young man. One of the parties that
searched farther for a location for the tribe when first they
settled here came upon a strange people who wore many
ornaments of yellow metal. Their spears were tipped with it,
as were their arrows, and they cooked in vessels made all
of solid metal like my armlet.

"They lived in a great village in huts that were built of
stone and surrounded by a great wall. They were very fierce,
rushing out and falling upon our warriors before ever they
learned that their errand was a peaceful one. Our men were
few in number, but they held their own at the top of a little
rocky hill, until the fierce people went back at sunset into their
wicked city. Then our warriors came down from their hill,
and, after taking many ornaments of yellow metal from the
bodies of those they had slain, they marched back out of
the valley, nor have any of us ever returned.

"They are wicked people--neither white like you nor black
like me, but covered with hair as is Bolgani, the gorilla.
Yes, they are very bad people indeed, and Chowambi was
glad to get out of their country."

"And are none of those alive who were with Chowambi, and saw
these strange people and their wonderful city?" asked Tarzan.

"Waziri, our chief, was there," replied Busuli. "He was
a very young man then, but he accompanied Chowambi,
who was his father."

So that night Tarzan asked Waziri about it, and Waziri, who
was now an old man, said that it was a long march, but that
the way was not difficult to follow. He remembered it well.

"For ten days we followed this river which runs beside
our village. Up toward its source we traveled until on the
tenth day we came to a little spring far up upon the side of a
lofty mountain range. In this little spring our river is born.
The next day we crossed over the top of the mountain, and
upon the other side we came to a tiny rivulet which we
followed down into a great forest. For many days we
traveled along the winding banks of the rivulet that had now
become a river, until we came to a greater river, into which
it emptied, and which ran down the center of a mighty valley.

"Then we followed this large river toward its source, hoping
to come to more open land. After twenty days of marching
from the time we had crossed the mountains and passed out of
our own country we came again to another range of mountains.
Up their side we followed the great river, that had now
dwindled to a tiny rivulet, until we came to a little cave
near the mountain-top. In this cave was the mother of the river.

"I remember that we camped there that night, and that it
was very cold, for the mountains were high. The next day
we decided to ascend to the top of the mountains, and see
what the country upon the other side looked like, and if
it seemed no better than that which we had so far traversed
we would return to our village and tell them that they had
already found the best place in all the world to live.

"And so we clambered up the face of the rocky cliffs
until we reached the summit, and there from a flat
mountain-top we saw, not far beneath us, a shallow valley,
very narrow; and upon the far side of it was a great village
of stone, much of which had fallen and crumbled into decay."

The balance of Waziri's story was practically the same as
that which Busuli had told.

"I should like to go there and see this strange city," said
Tarzan, "and get some of their yellow metal from its fierce
inhabitants."

"It is a long march," replied Waziri, "and I am an old
man, but if you will wait until the rainy season is over and
the rivers have gone down I will take some of my warriors
and go with you."

And Tarzan had to be contented with that arrangement,
though he would have liked it well enough to have set off the
next morning--he was as impatient as a child. Really Tarzan
of the Apes was but a child, or a primeval man, which is
the same thing in a way.

The next day but one a small party of hunters returned to
the village from the south to report a large herd of elephant
some miles away. By climbing trees they had had a fairly
good view of the herd, which they described as numbering
several large tuskers, a great many cows and calves,
and full-grown bulls whose ivory would be worth having.

The balance of the day and evening was filled with preparation
for a great hunt--spears were overhauled, quivers were
replenished, bows were restrung; and all the while the
village witch doctor passed through the busy throngs disposing
of various charms and amulets designed to protect the possessor
from hurt, or bring him good fortune in the morrow's hunt.

At dawn the hunters were off. There were fifty sleek, black
warriors, and in their midst, lithe and active as a young
forest god, strode Tarzan of the Apes, his brown skin
contrasting oddly with the ebony of his companions. Except for
color he was one of them. His ornaments and weapons were
the same as theirs--he spoke their language--he laughed
and joked with them, and leaped and shouted in the brief
wild dance that preceded their departure from the village, to
all intent and purpose a savage among savages. Nor, had he
questioned himself, is it to be doubted that he would have
admitted that he was far more closely allied to these people
and their life than to the Parisian friends whose ways,
apelike, he had successfully mimicked for a few short months.

But he did think of D'Arnot, and a grin of amusement
showed his strong white teeth as he pictured the immaculate
Frenchman's expression could he by some means see Tarzan
as he was that minute. Poor Paul, who had prided himself on
having eradicated from his friend the last traces of wild savagery.
"How quickly have I fallen!" thought Tarzan; but in his heart
he did not consider it a fall--rather, he pitied the poor
creatures of Paris, penned up like prisoners in their silly
clothes, and watched by policemen all their poor lives,
that they might do nothing that was not entirely artificial
and tiresome.

A two hours' march brought them close to the vicinity in
which the elephants had been seen the previous day.
From there on they moved very quietly indeed searching for
the spoor of the great beasts. At length they found the
well-marked trail along which the herd had passed not many
hours before. In single file they followed it for about half
an hour. It was Tarzan who first raised his hand in signal
that the quarry was at hand--his sensitive nose had warned
him that the elephants were not far ahead of them.

The blacks were skeptical when he told them how he knew.

"Come with me," said Tarzan, "and we shall see."

With the agility of a squirrel he sprang into a tree and ran
nimbly to the top. One of the blacks followed more slowly
and carefully. When he had reached a lofty limb beside the
ape-man the latter pointed to the south, and there, some few
hundred yards away, the black saw a number of huge black
backs swaying back and forth above the top of the lofty
jungle grasses. He pointed the direction to the watchers below,
indicating with his fingers the number of beasts he could count.

Immediately the hunters started toward the elephants.
The black in the tree hastened down, but Tarzan stalked, after
his own fashion, along the leafy way of the middle terrace.

It is no child's play to hunt wild elephants with the crude
weapons of primitive man. Tarzan knew that few native
tribes ever attempted it, and the fact that his tribe did so
gave him no little pride--already he was commencing to
think of himself as a member of the little community.
As Tarzan moved silently through the trees he saw the
warriors below creeping in a half circle upon the still
unsuspecting elephants. Finally they were within sight of the
great beasts. Now they singled out two large tuskers, and at
a signal the fifty men rose from the ground where they had
lain concealed, and hurled their heavy war spears at the two
marked beasts. There was not a single miss; twenty-five
spears were embedded in the sides of each of the giant animals.
One never moved from the spot where it stood when the
avalanche of spears struck it, for two, perfectly aimed,
had penetrated its heart, and it lunged forward upon
its knees, rolling to the ground without a struggle.

The other, standing nearly head-on toward the hunters,
had not proved so good a mark, and though every spear
struck not one entered the great heart. For a moment the
huge bull stood trumpeting in rage and pain, casting about
with its little eyes for the author of its hurt. The blacks
had faded into the jungle before the weak eyes of the monster
had fallen upon any of them, but now he caught the sound of
their retreat, and, amid a terrific crashing of underbrush
and branches, he charged in the direction of the noise.

It so happened that chance sent him in the direction of
Busuli, whom he was overtaking so rapidly that it was as
though the black were standing still instead of racing at full
speed to escape the certain death which pursued him.
Tarzan had witnessed the entire performance from the branches
of a nearby tree, and now that he saw his friend's peril he
raced toward the infuriated beast with loud cries, hoping to
distract him.

But it had been as well had he saved his breath, for the
brute was deaf and blind to all else save the particular
object of his rage that raced futilely before him.
And now Tarzan saw that only a miracle could save Busuli,
and with the same unconcern with which he had once hunted
this very man he hurled himself into the path of the elephant
to save the black warrior's life.

He still grasped his spear, and while Tantor was yet six
or eight paces behind his prey, a sinewy white warrior
dropped as from the heavens, almost directly in his path.
With a vicious lunge the elephant swerved to the right to
dispose of this temerarious foeman who dared intervene
between himself and his intended victim; but he had not
reckoned on the lightning quickness that could galvanize
those steel muscles into action so marvelously swift as to
baffle even a keener eyesight than Tantor's.

And so it happened that before the elephant realized that
his new enemy had leaped from his path Tarzan had driven
his iron-shod spear from behind the massive shoulder straight
into the fierce heart, and the colossal pachyderm had toppled
to his death at the feet of the ape-man.

Busuli had not beheld the manner of his deliverance, but
Waziri, the old chief, had seen, and several of the other
warriors, and they hailed Tarzan with delight as they swarmed
about him and his great kill. When he leaped upon the mighty
carcass, and gave voice to the weird challenge with which he
announced a great victory, the blacks shrank back in fear,
for to them it marked the brutal Bolgani, whom they feared
fully as much as they feared Numa, the lion; but with a fear
with which was mixed a certain uncanny awe of the manlike
thing to which they attributed supernatural powers.

But when Tarzan lowered his raised head and smiled upon
them they were reassured, though they did not understand.
Nor did they ever fully understand this strange creature
who ran through the trees as quickly as Manu, yet was even
more at home upon the ground than themselves; who was
except as to color like unto themselves, yet as powerful
as ten of them, and singlehanded a match for the fiercest
denizens of the fierce jungle.

When the remainder of the warriors had gathered, the
hunt was again taken up and the stalking of the retreating
herd once more begun; but they had covered a bare hundred
yards when from behind them, at a great distance,
sounded faintly a strange popping.

For an instant they stood like a group of statuary,
intently listening. Then Tarzan spoke.

"Guns!" he said. "The village is being attacked."

"Come!" cried Waziri. "The Arab raiders have returned
with their cannibal slaves for our ivory and our women!"

Chapter 16

The Ivory Raiders

Waziri's warriors marched at a rapid trot through the
jungle in the direction of the village. For a few minutes,
the sharp cracking of guns ahead warned them to haste,
but finally the reports dwindled to an occasional shot,
presently ceasing altogether. Nor was this less ominous
than the rattle of musketry, for it suggested but a single
solution to the little band of rescuers--that the illy
garrisoned village had already succumbed to the onslaught
of a superior force.

The returning hunters had covered a little more than
three miles of the five that had separated them from the
village when they met the first of the fugitives who had
escaped the bullets and clutches of the foe. There were a
dozen women, youths, and girls in the party, and so excited
were they that they could scarce make themselves understood
as they tried to relate to Waziri the calamity that had
befallen his people.

"They are as many as the leaves of the forest," cried one
of the women, in attempting to explain the enemy's force.
"There are many Arabs and countless Manyuema, and they
all have guns. They crept close to the village before we
knew that they were about, and then, with many shouts,
they rushed in upon us, shooting down men, and women,
and children. Those of us who could fled in all directions
into the jungle, but more were killed. I do not know whether
they took any prisoners or not--they seemed only bent
upon killing us all. The Manyuema called us many names,
saying that they would eat us all before they left our
country--that this was our punishment for killing their
friends last year. I did not hear much, for I ran away quickly."

The march toward the village was now resumed, more
slowly and with greater stealth, for Waziri knew that it was
too late to rescue--their only mission could be one of revenge.
Inside the next mile a hundred more fugitives were met.
There were many men among these, and so the fighting
strength of the party was augmented.

Now a dozen warriors were sent creeping ahead to reconnoiter.
Waziri remained with the main body, which advanced in a thin
line that spread in a great crescent through the forest.
By the chief's side walked Tarzan.

Presently one of the scouts returned. He had come within
sight of the village.

"They are all within the palisade," he whispered.

"Good!" said Waziri. "We shall rush in upon them and
slay them all," and he made ready to send word along the
line that they were to halt at the edge of the clearing until
they saw him rush toward the village--then all were to follow.

"Wait!" cautioned Tarzan. "If there are even fifty guns
within the palisade we shall be repulsed and slaughtered.
Let me go alone through the trees, so that I may look down
upon them from above, and see just how many there be, and
what chance we might have were we to charge. It were foolish
to lose a single man needlessly if there be no hope of success.
I have an idea that we can accomplish more by cunning than
by force. Will you wait, Waziri?"

"Yes," said the old chief. "Go!"

So Tarzan sprang into the trees and disappeared in the
direction of the village. He moved more cautiously than was
his wont, for he knew that men with guns could reach him
quite as easily in the treetops as on the ground. And when
Tarzan of the Apes elected to adopt stealth, no creature in
all the jungle could move so silently or so completely efface
himself from the sight of an enemy.

In five minutes he had wormed his way to the great tree
that overhung the palisade at one end of the village, and
from his point of vantage looked down upon the savage
horde beneath. He counted fifty Arabs and estimated that
there were five times as many Manyuema. The latter were
gorging themselves upon food and, under the very noses of
their white masters, preparing the gruesome feast which is the
PIECE DE RESISTANCE that follows a victory in which the
bodies of their slain enemies fall into their horrid hands.

The ape-man saw that to charge that wild horde, armed
as they were with guns, and barricaded behind the locked
gates of the village, would be a futile task, and so he
returned to Waziri and advised him to wait; that he, Tarzan,
had a better plan.

But a moment before one of the fugitives had related to
Waziri the story of the atrocious murder of the old chief's
wife, and so crazed with rage was the old man that he cast
discretion to the winds. Calling his warriors about him, he
commanded them to charge, and, with brandishing spears
and savage yells, the little force of scarcely more than a
hundred dashed madly toward the village gates. Before the
clearing had been half crossed the Arabs opened up a
withering fire from behind the palisade.

With the first volley Waziri fell. The speed of the
chargers slackened. Another volley brought down a half
dozen more. A few reached the barred gates, only to be shot
in their tracks, without the ghost of a chance to gain the
inside of the palisade, and then the whole attack crumpled,
and the remaining warriors scampered back into the forest.
As they ran the raiders opened the gates, rushing after them,
to complete the day's work with the utter extermination of
the tribe. Tarzan had been among the last to turn back toward
the forest, and now, as he ran slowly, he turned from time to
time to speed a well-aimed arrow into the body of a pursuer.

Once within the jungle, he found a little knot of determined
blacks waiting to give battle to the oncoming horde,
but Tarzan cried to them to scatter, keeping out of
harm's way until they could gather in force after dark.

"Do as I tell you," he urged, "and I will lead you to
victory over these enemies of yours. Scatter through the
forest, picking up as many stragglers as you can find, and at
night, if you think that you have been followed, come by
roundabout ways to the spot where we killed the elephants today.
Then I will explain my plan, and you will find that it is good.
You cannot hope to pit your puny strength and simple weapons
against the numbers and the guns of the Arabs and the Manyuema."

They finally assented. "When you scatter," explained Tarzan,
in conclusion, "your foes will have to scatter to follow you,
and so it may happen that if you are watchful you can drop
many a Manyuema with your arrows from behind some great trees."

They had barely time to hasten away farther into the forest
before the first of the raiders had crossed the clearing and
entered it in pursuit of them.

Tarzan ran a short distance along the ground before he
took to the trees. Then he raced quickly to the upper terrace,
there doubling on his tracks and making his way rapidly
back toward the village. Here he found that every Arab and
Manyuema had joined in the pursuit, leaving the village
deserted except for the chained prisoners and a single guard.

The sentry stood at the open gate, looking in the direction
of the forest, so that he did not see the agile giant that
dropped to the ground at the far end of the village street.
With drawn bow the ape-man crept stealthily toward his
unsuspecting victim. The prisoners had already discovered
him, and with wide eyes filled with wonder and with hope
they watched their would-be rescuer. Now he halted not ten
paces from the unconscious Manyuema. The shaft was
drawn back its full length at the height of the keen gray
eye that sighted along its polished surface. There was a
sudden twang as the brown fingers released their hold, and
without a sound the raider sank forward upon his face, a
wooden shaft transfixing his heart and protruding a foot
from his black chest.

Then Tarzan turned his attention to the fifty women and
youths chained neck to neck on the long slave chain.
There was no releasing of the ancient padlocks in the time that
was left him, so the ape-man called to them to follow him as
they were, and, snatching the gun and cartridge belt from the
dead sentry, he led the now happy band out through the village
gate and into the forest upon the far side of the clearing.

It was a slow and arduous march, for the slave chain was new
to these people, and there were many delays as one of their
number would stumble and fall, dragging others down with her.
Then, too, Tarzan had been forced to make a wide detour to
avoid any possibility of meeting with returning raiders.
He was partially guided by occasional shots which
indicated that the Arab horde was still in touch with the
villagers; but he knew that if they would but follow his
advice there would be but few casualties other than on the
side of the marauders.

Toward dusk the firing ceased entirely, and Tarzan knew
that the Arabs had all returned to the village. He could
scarce repress a smile of triumph as he thought of their rage
on discovering that their guard had been killed and their
prisoners taken away. Tarzan had wished that he might have
taken some of the great store of ivory the village contained,
solely for the purpose of still further augmenting the wrath
of his enemies; but he knew that that was not necessary for
its salvation, since he already had a plan mapped out which
would effectually prevent the Arabs leaving the country with
a single tusk. And it would have been cruel to have needlessly
burdened these poor, overwrought women with the extra
weight of the heavy ivory.

It was after midnight when Tarzan, with his slow-moving
caravan, approached the spot where the elephants lay.
Long before they reached it they had been guided by the
huge fire the natives had built in the center of a hastily
improvised BOMA, partially for warmth and partially to
keep off chance lions.

When they had come close to the encampment Tarzan
called aloud to let them know that friends were coming.
It was a joyous reception the little party received when the
blacks within the BOMA saw the long file of fettered friends
and relatives enter the firelight. These had all been given up
as lost forever, as had Tarzan as well, so that the happy blacks
would have remained awake all night to feast on elephant
meat and celebrate the return of their fellows, had not
Tarzan insisted that they take what sleep they could, against
the work of the coming day.

At that, sleep was no easy matter, for the women who
had lost their men or their children in the day's massacre
and battle made night hideous with their continued wailing
and howling. Finally, however, Tarzan succeeded in silencing
them, on the plea that their noise would attract the Arabs to
their hiding-place, when all would be slaughtered.

When dawn came Tarzan explained his plan of battle to
the warriors, and without demur one and all agreed that it
was the safest and surest way in which to rid themselves of
their unwelcome visitors and be revenged for the murder of
their fellows.

First the women and children, with a guard of some
twenty old warriors and youths, were started southward, to
be entirely out of the zone of danger. They had instructions
to erect temporary shelter and construct a protecting BOMA
of thorn bush; for the plan of campaign which Tarzan had
chosen was one which might stretch out over many days,
or even weeks, during which time the warriors would not
return to the new camp.

Two hours after daylight a thin circle of black warriors
surrounded the village. At intervals one was perched high
in the branches of a tree which could overlook the palisade.
Presently a Manyuema within the village fell, pierced by a
single arrow. There had been no sound of attack--none of
the hideous war-cries or vainglorious waving of menacing
spears that ordinarily marks the attack of savages--just a
silent messenger of death from out of the silent forest.

The Arabs and their followers were thrown into a fine
rage at this unprecedented occurrence. They ran for the
gates, to wreak dire vengeance upon the foolhardy perpetrator
of the outrage; but they suddenly realized that they did
not know which way to turn to find the foe. As they stood
debating with many angry shouts and much gesticulating,
one of the Arabs sank silently to the ground in their very
midst--a thin arrow protruding from his heart.

Tarzan had placed the finest marksmen of the tribe in the
surrounding trees, with directions never to reveal themselves
while the enemy was faced in their direction. As a black
released his messenger of death he would slink behind
the sheltering stem of the tree he had selected, nor would
he again aim until a watchful eye told him that none was
looking toward his tree.

Three times the Arabs started across the clearing in the
direction from which they thought the arrows came, but
each time another arrow would come from behind to take
its toll from among their number. Then they would turn and
charge in a new direction. Finally they set out upon a
determined search of the forest, but the blacks melted
before them, so that they saw no sign of an enemy.

But above them lurked a grim figure in the dense foliage
of the mighty trees--it was Tarzan of the Apes, hovering over
them as if he had been the shadow of death. Presently a
Manyuema forged ahead of his companions; there was none
to see from what direction death came, and so it came
quickly, and a moment later those behind stumbled over
the dead body of their comrade--the inevitable arrow piercing
the still heart.

It does not take a great deal of this manner of warfare to
get upon the nerves of white men, and so it is little to be
wondered at that the Manyuema were soon panic-stricken.
Did one forge ahead an arrow found his heart; did one lag
behind he never again was seen alive; did one stumble to
one side, even for a bare moment from the sight of his fellows,
he did not return--and always when they came upon
the bodies of their dead they found those terrible arrows
driven with the accuracy of superhuman power straight
through the victim's heart. But worse than all else was the
hideous fact that not once during the morning had they seen
or heard the slightest sign of an enemy other than the
pitiless arrows.

When finally they returned to the village it was no better.
Every now and then, at varying intervals that were maddening
in the terrible suspense they caused, a man would plunge
forward dead. The blacks besought their masters to leave
this terrible place, but the Arabs feared to take up the march
through the grim and hostile forest beset by this new and
terrible enemy while laden with the great store of ivory they
had found within the village; but, worse yet, they hated to
leave the ivory behind.

Finally the entire expedition took refuge within the thatched
huts--here, at least, they would be free from the arrows.
Tarzan, from the tree above the village, had marked the hut
into which the chief Arabs had gone, and, balancing himself
upon an overhanging limb, he drove his heavy spear with
all the force of his giant muscles through the thatched roof.
A howl of pain told him that it had found a mark.
With this parting salute to convince them that there was no
safety for them anywhere within the country, Tarzan returned
to the forest, collected his warriors, and withdrew a mile
to the south to rest and eat. He kept sentries in several
trees that commanded a view of the trail toward the
village, but there was no pursuit.

An inspection of his force showed not a single casualty--not
even a minor wound; while rough estimates of the enemies'
loss convinced the blacks that no fewer than twenty
had fallen before their arrows. They were wild with elation,
and were for finishing the day in one glorious rush upon the
village, during which they would slaughter the last of
their foemen. They were even picturing the various tortures
they would inflict, and gloating over the suffering of the
Manyuema, for whom they entertained a peculiar hatred,
when Tarzan put his foot down flatly upon the plan.

"You are crazy!" he cried. "I have shown you the only
way to fight these people. Already you have killed twenty
of them without the loss of a single warrior, whereas,
yesterday, following your own tactics, which you would now
renew, you lost at least a dozen, and killed not a single
Arab or Manyuema. You will fight just as I tell you to fight,
or I shall leave you and go back to my own country."

They were frightened when he threatened this, and
promised to obey him scrupulously if he would but promise
not to desert them.

"Very well," he said. "We shall return to the elephant
BOMA for the night. I have a plan to give the Arabs a little
taste of what they may expect if they remain in our country,
but I shall need no help. Come! If they suffer no more for
the balance of the day they will feel reassured, and the
relapse into fear will be even more nerve-racking than as
though we continued to frighten them all afternoon."

So they marched back to their camp of the previous night, and,
lighting great fires, ate and recounted the adventures of the
day until long after dark. Tarzan slept until midnight, then
he arose and crept into the Cimmerian blackness of the forest.
An hour later he came to the edge of the clearing before
the village. There was a camp-fire burning within the palisade.
The ape-man crept across the clearing until he stood before
the barred gates. Through the interstices he saw a lone sentry
sitting before the fire.

Quietly Tarzan went to the tree at the end of the village street.
He climbed softly to his place, and fitted an arrow to his bow.
For several minutes he tried to sight fairly upon the sentry,
but the waving branches and flickering firelight convinced
him that the danger of a miss was too great--he must touch
the heart full in the center to bring the quiet and sudden
death his plan required.

He had brought, besides, his bow, arrows, and rope, the
gun he had taken the previous day from the other sentry he
had killed. Caching all these in a convenient crotch of the
tree, he dropped lightly to the ground within the palisade,
armed only with his long knife. The sentry's back was toward him.
Like a cat Tarzan crept upon the dozing man. He was within
two paces of him now--another instant and the knife would
slide silently into the fellow's heart.

Tarzan crouched for a spring, for that is ever the quickest
and surest attack of the jungle beast--when the man,
warned, by some subtle sense, sprang to his feet and faced
the ape-man.

Chapter 17

The White Chief of the Waziri

When the eyes of the black Manyuema savage fell
upon the strange apparition that confronted him with
menacing knife they went wide in horror. He forgot
the gun within his hands; he even forgot to cry out--his
one thought was to escape this fearsome-looking white savage,
this giant of a man upon whose massive rolling muscles and
mighty chest the flickering firelight played.

But before he could turn Tarzan was upon him, and then
the sentry thought to scream for aid, but it was too late.
A great hand was upon his windpipe, and he was being borne
to the earth. He battled furiously but futilely--with the
grim tenacity of a bulldog those awful fingers were clinging
to his throat. Swiftly and surely life was being choked from him.
His eyes bulged, his tongue protruded, his face turned
to a ghastly purplish hue--there was a convulsive tremor of
the stiffening muscles, and the Manyuema sentry lay quite still.

The ape-man threw the body across one of his broad
shoulders and, gathering up the fellow's gun, trotted silently
up the sleeping village street toward the tree that gave him
such easy ingress to the palisaded village. He bore the dead
sentry into the midst of the leafy maze above.

First he stripped the body of cartridge belt and such
ornaments as he craved, wedging it into a convenient crotch
while his nimble fingers ran over it in search of the loot
he could not plainly see in the dark. When he had finished he
took the gun that had belonged to the man, and walked
far out upon a limb, from the end of which he could obtain
a better view of the huts. Drawing a careful bead on the
beehive structure in which he knew the chief Arabs to be,
he pulled the trigger. Almost instantly there was an
answering groan. Tarzan smiled. He had made another lucky hit.

Following the shot there was a moment's silence in the
camp, and then Manyuema and Arab came pouring from
the huts like a swarm of angry hornets; but if the truth were
known they were even more frightened than they were angry.
The strain of the preceding day had wrought upon the
fears of both black and white, and now this single shot in
the night conjured all manner of terrible conjectures in
their terrified minds.

When they discovered that their sentry had disappeared,
their fears were in no way allayed, and as though to bolster
their courage by warlike actions, they began to fire
rapidly at the barred gates of the village, although no enemy
was in sight. Tarzan took advantage of the deafening roar of
this fusillade to fire into the mob beneath him.

No one heard his shot above the din of rattling musketry
in the street, but some who were standing close saw one
of their number crumple suddenly to the earth. When they
leaned over him he was dead. They were panic-stricken, and
it took all the brutal authority of the Arabs to keep the
Manyuema from rushing helter-skelter into the jungle--anywhere
to escape from this terrible village.

After a time they commenced to quiet down, and as no
further mysterious deaths occurred among them they took
heart again. But it was a short-lived respite, for just as
they had concluded that they would not be disturbed again
Tarzan gave voice to a weird moan, and as the raiders looked
up in the direction from which the sound seemed to come,
the ape-man, who stood swinging the dead body of the sentry
gently to and fro, suddenly shot the corpse far out above
their heads.

With howls of alarm the throng broke in all directions
to escape this new and terrible creature who seemed to be
springing upon them. To their fear-distorted imaginations the
body of the sentry, falling with wide-sprawled arms and
legs, assumed the likeness of a great beast of prey. In their
anxiety to escape, many of the blacks scaled the palisade,
while others tore down the bars from the gates and rushed
madly across the clearing toward the jungle.

For a time no one turned back toward the thing that had
frightened them, but Tarzan knew that they would in a moment,
and when they discovered that it was but the dead
body of their sentry, while they would doubtless be still
further terrified, he had a rather definite idea as to what
they would do, and so he faded silently away toward the
south, taking the moonlit upper terrace back toward the
camp of the Waziri.

Presently one of the Arabs turned and saw that the thing
that had leaped from the tree upon them lay still and quiet
where it had fallen in the center of the village street.
Cautiously he crept back toward it until he saw that it was
but a man. A moment later he was beside the figure, and in
another had recognized it as the corpse of the Manyuema
who had stood on guard at the village gate.

His companions rapidly gathered around at his call, and
after a moment's excited conversation they did precisely
what Tarzan had reasoned they would. Raising their guns to
their shoulders, they poured volley after volley into the tree
from which the corpse had been thrown--had Tarzan remained
there he would have been riddled by a hundred bullets.

When the Arabs and Manyuema discovered that the only
marks of violence upon the body of their dead comrade
were giant finger prints upon his swollen throat they were
again thrown into deeper apprehension and despair.
That they were not even safe within a palisaded village
at night came as a distinct shock to them. That an enemy
could enter into the midst of their camp and kill their
sentry with bare hands seemed outside the bounds of reason,
and so the superstitious Manyuema commenced to attribute
their ill luck to supernatural causes; nor were the Arabs
able to offer any better explanation.

With at least fifty of their number flying through the black
jungle, and without the slightest knowledge of when their
uncanny foemen might resume the cold-blooded slaughter
they had commenced, it was a desperate band of cut-throats
that waited sleeplessly for the dawn. Only on the
promise of the Arabs that they would leave the village at
daybreak, and hasten onward toward their own land, would
the remaining Manyuema consent to stay at the village a
moment longer. Not even fear of their cruel masters was
sufficient to overcome this new terror.

And so it was that when Tarzan and his warriors returned
to the attack the next morning they found the raiders
prepared to march out of the village. The Manyuema were
laden with stolen ivory. As Tarzan saw it he grinned, for he
knew that they would not carry it far. Then he saw something
which caused him anxiety--a number of the Manyuema
were lighting torches in the remnant of the camp-fire.
They were about to fire the village.

Tarzan was perched in a tall tree some hundred yards from
the palisade. Making a trumpet of his hands, he called loudly
in the Arab tongue: "Do not fire the huts, or we shall kill
you all! Do not fire the huts, or we shall kill you all!"

A dozen times he repeated it. The Manyuema hesitated,
then one of them flung his torch into the campfire.
The others were about to do the same when an Arab sprung
upon them with a stick, beating them toward the huts.
Tarzan could see that he was commanding them to fire the
little thatched dwellings. Then he stood erect upon the
swaying branch a hundred feet above the ground, and,
raising one of the Arab guns to his shoulder, took careful aim
and fired. With the report the Arab who was urging on his
men to burn the village fell in his tracks, and the
Manyuema threw away their torches and fled from the village.
The last Tarzan saw of them they were racing toward the jungle,
while their former masters knelt upon the ground and fired at them.

But however angry the Arabs might have been at the
insubordination of their slaves, they were at least convinced
that it would be the better part of wisdom to forego the
pleasure of firing the village that had given them two such
nasty receptions. In their hearts, however, they swore to
return again with such force as would enable them to sweep
the entire country for miles around, until no vestige of
human life remained.

They had looked in vain for the owner of the voice
which had frightened off the men who had been detailed
to put the torch to the huts, but not even the keenest eye
among them had been able to locate him. They had seen
the puff of smoke from the tree following the shot that
brought down the Arab, but, though a volley had immediately
been loosed into its foliage, there had been no indication
that it had been effective.

Tarzan was too intelligent to be caught in any such trap,
and so the report of his shot had scarcely died away before
the ape-man was on the ground and racing for another tree
a hundred yards away. Here he again found a suitable perch
from which he could watch the preparations of the raiders.
It occurred to him that he might have considerable more
fun with them, so again he called to them through
his improvised trumpet.

"Leave the ivory!" he cried. "Leave the ivory! Dead men
have no use for ivory!"

Some of the Manyuema started to lay down their loads,
but this was altogether too much for the avaricious Arabs.
With loud shouts and curses they aimed their guns full
upon the bearers, threatening instant death to any who
might lay down his load. They could give up firing the
village, but the thought of abandoning this enormous
fortune in ivory was quite beyond their conception--better
death than that.

And so they marched out of the village of the Waziri, and
on the shoulders of their slaves was the ivory ransom of a
score of kings. Toward the north they marched, back toward
their savage settlement in the wild and unknown country
which lies back from the Kongo in the uttermost depths
of The Great Forest, and on either side of them traveled
an invisible and relentless foe.

Under Tarzan's guidance the black Waziri warriors stationed
themselves along the trail on either side in the densest underbrush.
They stood at far intervals, and, as the column passed,
a single arrow or a heavy spear, well aimed, would pierce
a Manyuema or an Arab. Then the Waziri would melt into the
distance and run ahead to take his stand farther on.
They did not strike unless success were sure and the
danger of detection almost nothing, and so the arrows
and the spears were few and far between, but so persistent
and inevitable that the slow-moving column of heavy-laden
raiders was in a constant state of panic--panic at
the uncertainty of who the next would be to fall, and when.

It was with the greatest difficulty that the Arabs prevented
their men a dozen times from throwing away their burdens and
fleeing like frightened rabbits up the trail toward the north.
And so the day wore on--a frightful nightmare of a day for the
raiders--a day of weary but well-repaid work for the Waziri.
At night the Arabs constructed a rude BOMA in a little
clearing by a river, and went into camp.

At intervals during the night a rifle would bark close
above their heads, and one of the dozen sentries which
they now had posted would tumble to the ground. Such a
condition was insupportable, for they saw that by means of
these hideous tactics they would be completely wiped out, one
by one, without inflicting a single death upon their enemy.
But yet, with the persistent avariciousness of the
white man, the Arabs clung to their loot, and when morning
came forced the demoralized Manyuema to take up their
burdens of death and stagger on into the jungle.

For three days the withering column kept up its frightful march.
Each hour was marked by its deadly arrow or cruel spear.
The nights were made hideous by the barking of the invisible
gun that made sentry duty equivalent to a death sentence.

On the morning of the fourth day the Arabs were compelled
to shoot two of their blacks before they could compel
the balance to take up the hated ivory, and as they did so a
voice rang out, clear and strong, from the jungle: "Today
you die, oh, Manyuema, unless you lay down the ivory.
Fall upon your cruel masters and kill them! You have guns,
why do you not use them? Kill the Arabs, and we will not
harm you. We will take you back to our village and feed
you, and lead you out of our country in safety and in peace.
Lay down the ivory, and fall upon your masters--we will
help you. Else you die!"

As the voice died down the raiders stood as though turned
to stone. The Arabs eyed their Manyuema slaves; the slaves
looked first at one of their fellows, and then at another--they
were but waiting for some one to take the initiative.
There were some thirty Arabs left, and about one hundred
and fifty blacks. All were armed--even those who were
acting as porters had their rifles slung across their backs.

The Arabs drew together. The sheik ordered the Manyuema
to take up the march, and as he spoke he cocked his rifle
and raised it. But at the same instant one of the blacks
threw down his load, and, snatching his rifle from his back,
fired point-black at the group of Arabs. In an instant the
camp was a cursing, howling mass of demons, fighting with
guns and knives and pistols. The Arabs stood together, and
defended their lives valiantly, but with the rain of lead
that poured upon them from their own slaves, and the shower
of arrows and spears which now leaped from the surrounding
jungle aimed solely at them, there was little question
from the first what the outcome would be. In ten minutes
from the time the first porter had thrown down his load the
last of the Arabs lay dead.

When the firing had ceased Tarzan spoke again to the Manyuema:

"Take up our ivory, and return it to our village, from
whence you stole it. We shall not harm you."

For a moment the Manyuema hesitated. They had no
stomach to retrace that difficult three days' trail.
They talked together in low whispers, and one turned
toward the jungle, calling aloud to the voice that had
spoken to them from out of the foliage.

"How do we know that when you have us in your village you
will not kill us all?" he asked.

"You do not know," replied Tarzan, "other than that we
have promised not to harm you if you will return our
ivory to us. But this you do know, that it lies within our
power to kill you all if you do not return as we direct,
and are we not more likely to do so if you anger us than
if you do as we bid?"

"Who are you that speaks the tongue of our Arab masters?"
cried the Manyuema spokesman. "Let us see you, and then
we shall give you our answer."

Tarzan stepped out of the jungle a dozen paces from them.

"Look!" he said. When they saw that he was white they
were filled with awe, for never had they seen a white savage
before, and at his great muscles and giant frame they were
struck with wonder and admiration.

"You may trust me," said Tarzan. "So long as you do as
I tell you, and harm none of my people, we shall do you
no hurt. Will you take up our ivory and return in peace to
our village, or shall we follow along your trail toward the
north as we have followed for the past three days?"

The recollection of the horrid days that had just passed
was the thing that finally decided the Manyuema, and so,
after a short conference, they took up their burdens and set
off to retrace their steps toward the village of the Waziri.
At the end of the third day they marched into the village gate,
and were greeted by the survivors of the recent massacre,
to whom Tarzan had sent a messenger in their temporary camp
to the south on the day that the raiders had quitted the
village, telling them that they might return in safety.

It took all the mastery and persuasion that Tarzan possessed
to prevent the Waziri falling on the Manyuema tooth
and nail, and tearing them to pieces, but when he had
explained that he had given his word that they would not be
molested if they carried the ivory back to the spot from
which they had stolen it, and had further impressed upon
his people that they owed their entire victory to him, they
finally acceded to his demands, and allowed the cannibals
to rest in peace within their palisade.

That night the village warriors held a big palaver to
celebrate their victories, and to choose a new chief.
Since old Waziri's death Tarzan had been directing the
warriors in battle, and the temporary command had been
tacitly conceded to him. There had been no time to choose
a new chief from among their own number, and, in fact,
so remarkably successful had they been under the ape-man's
generalship that they had had no wish to delegate the supreme
authority to another for fear that what they already had
gained might be lost. They had so recently seen the results
of running counter to this savage white man's advice in the
disastrous charge ordered by Waziri, in which he himself
had died, that it had not been difficult for them to accept
Tarzan's authority as final.

The principal warriors sat in a circle about a small fire
to discuss the relative merits of whomever might be suggested
as old Waziri's successor. It was Busuli who spoke first:

"Since Waziri is dead, leaving no son, there is but one
among us whom we know from experience is fitted to make
us a good king. There is only one who has proved that he
can successfully lead us against the guns of the white man,
and bring us easy victory without the loss of a single life.
There is only one, and that is the white man who has led
us for the past few days," and Busuli sprang to his feet, and
with uplifted spear and half-bent, crouching body commenced
to dance slowly about Tarzan, chanting in time to his steps:
"Waziri, king of the Waziri; Waziri, killer of Arabs;
Waziri, king of the Waziri."

One by one the other warriors signified their acceptance
of Tarzan as their king by joining in the solemn dance.
The women came and squatted about the rim of the circle,
beating upon tom-toms, clapping their hands in time to
the steps of the dancers, and joining in the chant of
the warriors. In the center of the circle sat Tarzan
of the Apes--Waziri, king of the Waziri, for, like his
predecessor, he was to take the name of his tribe as his own.

Faster and faster grew the pace of the dancers, louder and
louder their wild and savage shouts. The women rose and
fell in unison, shrieking now at the tops of their voices.
The spears were brandishing fiercely, and as the dancers stooped
down and beat their shields upon the hard-tramped earth of
the village street the whole sight was as terribly primeval
and savage as though it were being staged in the dim dawn
of humanity, countless ages in the past.

As the excitement waxed the ape-man sprang to his feet
and joined in the wild ceremony. In the center of the
circle of glittering black bodies he leaped and roared and
shook his heavy spear in the same mad abandon that enthralled
his fellow savages. The last remnant of his civilization was
forgotten--he was a primitive man to the fullest now; reveling
in the freedom of the fierce, wild life he loved, gloating in
his kingship among these wild blacks.

Ah, if Olga de Coude had but seen him then--could she
have recognized the well-dressed, quiet young man whose
well-bred face and irreproachable manners had so captivated
her but a few short months ago? And Jane Porter! Would
she have still loved this savage warrior chieftain, dancing
naked among his naked savage subjects? And D'Arnot!
Could D'Arnot have believed that this was the same man he
had introduced into half a dozen of the most select clubs
of Paris? What would his fellow peers in the House of
Lords have said had one pointed to this dancing giant, with
his barbaric headdress and his metal ornaments, and said:
"There, my lords, is John Clayton, Lord Greystoke."

And so Tarzan of the Apes came into a real kingship
among men--slowly but surely was he following the evolution
of his ancestors, for had he not started at the very bottom?

Chapter 18

The Lottery of Death

Jane Porter had been the first of those in the lifeboat
to awaken the morning after the wreck of the LADY ALICE.
The other members of the party were asleep upon the thwarts
or huddled in cramped positions in the bottom of the boat.

When the girl realized that they had become separated
from the other boats she was filled with alarm. The sense
of utter loneliness and helplessness which the vast expanse
of deserted ocean aroused in her was so depressing that,
from the first, contemplation of the future held not the
slightest ray of promise for her. She was confident that
they were lost--lost beyond possibility of succor.

Presently Clayton awoke. It was several minutes before he
could gather his senses sufficiently to realize where he was,
or recall the disaster of the previous night. Finally his
bewildered eyes fell upon the girl.

"Jane!" he cried. "Thank God that we are together!"

"Look," said the girl dully, indicating the horizon with an
apathetic gesture. "We are all alone."

Clayton scanned the water in every direction.

"Where can they be?" he cried. "They cannot have gone down,
for there has been no sea, and they were afloat after the
yacht sank--I saw them all."

He awoke the other members of the party, and explained their plight.

"It is just as well that the boats are scattered, sir," said
one of the sailors. "They are all provisioned, so that they
do not need each other on that score, and should a storm
blow up they could be of no service to one another even if
they were together, but scattered about the ocean there is a
much better chance that one at least will be picked up, and
then a search will be at once started for the others.
Were we together there would be but one chance of rescue,
where now there may be four."

They saw the wisdom of his philosophy, and were cheered
by it, but their joy was short-lived, for when it was
decided that they should row steadily toward the east and
the continent, it was discovered that the sailors who had
been at the only two oars with which the boat had been
provided had fallen asleep at their work, and allowed both
to slip into the sea, nor were they in sight anywhere upon
the water.

During the angry words and recriminations which followed
the sailors nearly came to blows, but Clayton succeeded in
quieting them; though a moment later Monsieur Thuran almost
precipitated another row by making a nasty remark about the
stupidity of all Englishmen, and especially English sailors.

"Come, come, mates," spoke up one of the men, Tompkins,
who had taken no part in the altercation, "shootin'
off our bloomin' mugs won't get us nothin'. As Spider 'ere
said afore, we'll all bloody well be picked up, anyway, sez
'e, so wot's the use o' squabblin'? Let's eat, sez I."

"That's not a bad idea," said Monsieur Thuran, and then,
turning to the third sailor, Wilson, he said: "Pass one of
those tins aft, my good man."

"Fetch it yerself," retorted Wilson sullenly. "I ain't a-takin'
no orders from no--furriner--you ain't captain o' this ship yet."

The result was that Clayton himself had to get the tin,
and then another angry altercation ensued when one of the
sailors accused Clayton and Monsieur Thuran of conspiring to
control the provisions so that they could have the lion's share.

"Some one should take command of this boat," spoke up Jane Porter,
thoroughly disgusted with the disgraceful wrangling that had
marked the very opening of a forced companionship that might
last for many days. "It is terrible enough to be alone
in a frail boat on the Atlantic, without having the added
misery and danger of constant bickering and brawling among
the members of our party. You men should elect a leader,
and then abide by his decisions in all matters. There is
greater need for strict discipline here than there is
upon a well-ordered ship."

She had hoped before she voiced her sentiments that it
would not be necessary for her to enter into the transaction
at all, for she believed that Clayton was amply able to cope
with every emergency, but she had to admit that so far at
least he had shown no greater promise of successfully handling
the situation than any of the others, though he had at least
refrained from adding in any way to the unpleasantness, even
going so far as to give up the tin to the sailors when they
objected to its being opened by him.

The girl's words temporarily quieted the men, and finally it
was decided that the two kegs of water and the four tins of
food should be divided into two parts, one-half going forward
to the three sailors to do with as they saw best, and the
balance aft to the three passengers.

Thus was the little company divided into two camps, and
when the provisions had been apportioned each immediately
set to work to open and distribute food and water. The sailors
were the first to get one of the tins of "food" open, and their
curses of rage and disappointment caused Clayton to ask
what the trouble might be.

"Trouble!" shrieked Spider. "Trouble! It's worse than
trouble--it's death! This --- tin is full of coal oil!"

Hastily now Clayton and Monsieur Thuran tore open one of
theirs, only to learn the hideous truth that it also contained,
not food, but coal oil. One after another the four tins on
board were opened. And as the contents of each became
known howls of anger announced the grim truth--there was
not an ounce of food upon the boat.

"Well, thank Gawd it wasn't the water," cried Thompkins.
"It's easier to get along without food than it is without water.
We can eat our shoes if worse comes to worst, but we
couldn't drink 'em."

As he spoke Wilson had been boring a hole in one of the water
kegs, and as Spider held a tin cup he tilted the keg to pour
a draft of the precious fluid. A thin stream of blackish,
dry particles filtered slowly through the tiny aperture into
the bottom of the cup. With a groan Wilson dropped the keg, and
sat staring at the dry stuff in the cup, speechless with horror.

"The kegs are filled with gunpowder," said Spider, in a low tone,
turning to those aft. And so it proved when the last had been opened.

"Coal oil and gunpowder!" cried Monsieur Thuran.
"SAPRISTI! What a diet for shipwrecked mariners!"

With the full knowledge that there was neither food nor
water on board, the pangs of hunger and thirst became
immediately aggravated, and so on the first day of their tragic
adventure real suffering commenced in grim earnest, and the
full horrors of shipwreck were upon them.

As the days passed conditions became horrible. Aching eyes
scanned the horizon day and night until the weak
and weary watchers would sink exhausted to the bottom of
the boat, and there wrest in dream-disturbed slumber a
moment's respite from the horrors of the waking reality.

The sailors, goaded by the remorseless pangs of hunger,
had eaten their leather belts, their shoes, the sweatbands
from their caps, although both Clayton and Monsieur
Thuran had done their best to convince them that these
would only add to the suffering they were enduring.

Weak and hopeless, the entire party lay beneath the pitiless
tropic sun, with parched lips and swollen tongues, waiting for
the death they were beginning to crave. The intense suffering
of the first few days had become deadened for the three
passengers who had eaten nothing, but the agony of the
sailors was pitiful, as their weak and impoverished stomachs
attempted to cope with the bits of leather with which they
had filled them. Tompkins was the first to succumb. Just a
week from the day the LADY ALICE went down the sailor died
horribly in frightful convulsions.

For hours his contorted and hideous features lay grinning
back at those in the stern of the little boat, until Jane
Porter could endure the sight no longer.
"Can you not drop his body overboard, William?" she asked.

Clayton rose and staggered toward the corpse. The two
remaining sailors eyed him with a strange, baleful light in
their sunken orbs. Futilely the Englishman tried to lift the
corpse over the side of the boat, but his strength was not
equal to the task.

"Lend me a hand here, please," he said to Wilson, who lay
nearest him.

"Wot do you want to throw 'im over for?" questioned the
sailor, in a querulous voice.

"We've got to before we're too weak to do it," replied Clayton.
"He'd be awful by tomorrow, after a day under that broiling sun."

"Better leave well enough alone," grumbled Wilson.
"We may need him before tomorrow."

Slowly the meaning of the man's words percolated into
Clayton's understanding. At last he realized the fellow's
reason for objecting to the disposal of the dead man.

"God!" whispered Clayton, in a horrified tone. "You don't mean--"

"W'y not?" growled Wilson. "Ain't we gotta live? He's dead,"
he added, jerking his thumb in the direction of the corpse.
"He won't care."

"Come here, Thuran," said Clayton, turning toward the Russian.
"We'll have something worse than death aboard us if we don't
get rid of this body before dark."

Wilson staggered up menacingly to prevent the contemplated act,
but when his comrade, Spider, took sides with Clayton and
Monsieur Thuran he gave up, and sat eying the corpse
hungrily as the three men, by combining their efforts,
succeeded in rolling it overboard.

All the balance of the day Wilson sat glaring at Clayton,
in his eyes the gleam of insanity. Toward evening, as the
sun was sinking into the sea, he commenced to chuckle and
mumble to himself, but his eyes never left Clayton.

After it became quite dark Clayton could still feel those terrible
eyes upon him. He dared not sleep, and yet so exhausted
was he that it was a constant fight to retain consciousness.
After what seemed an eternity of suffering his head dropped
upon a thwart, and he slept. How long he was unconscious
he did not know--he was awakened by a shuffling noise quite
close to him. The moon had risen, and as he opened his
startled eyes he saw Wilson creeping stealthily toward him,
his mouth open and his swollen tongue hanging out.

The slight noise had awakened Jane Porter at the same time,
and as she saw the hideous tableau she gave a shrill cry
of alarm, and at the same instant the sailor lurched forward
and fell upon Clayton. Like a wild beast his teeth sought
the throat of his intended prey, but Clayton, weak though he
was, still found sufficient strength to hold the maniac's
mouth from him.

At Jane Porter's scream Monsieur Thuran and Spider awoke.
On seeing the cause of her alarm, both men crawled to
Clayton's rescue, and between the three of them were able
to subdue Wilson and hurl him to the bottom of the boat.
For a few minutes he lay there chattering and laughing, and then,
with an awful scream, and before any of his companions
could prevent, he staggered to his feet and leaped overboard.

The reaction from the terrific strain of excitement left the
weak survivors trembling and prostrated. Spider broke down
and wept; Jane Porter prayed; Clayton swore softly to himself;
Monsieur Thuran sat with his head in his hands, thinking.
The result of his cogitation developed the following morning
in a proposition he made to Spider and Clayton.

"Gentlemen," said Monsieur Thuran, "you see the fate that
awaits us all unless we are picked up within a day or two.
That there is little hope of that is evidenced by the fact
that during all the days we have drifted we have seen no
sail, nor the faintest smudge of smoke upon the horizon.

"There might be a chance if we had food, but without food
there is none. There remains for us, then, but one of two
alternatives, and we must choose at once. Either we must
all die together within a few days, or one must be sacrificed
that the others may live. Do you quite clearly grasp my meaning?"

Jane Porter, who had overheard, was horrified. If the
proposition had come from the poor, ignorant sailor, she
might possibly have not been so surprised; but that it should
come from one who posed as a man of culture and refinement,
from a gentleman, she could scarcely credit.

"It is better that we die together, then," said Clayton.

"That is for the majority to decide," replied Monsieur Thuran.
"As only one of us three will be the object of sacrifice,
we shall decide. Miss Porter is not interested,
since she will be in no danger."

"How shall we know who is to be first?" asked Spider.

"It may be fairly fixed by lot," replied Monsieur Thuran.
"I have a number of franc pieces in my pocket. We can
choose a certain date from among them--the one to draw this
date first from beneath a piece of cloth will be the first."

"I shall have nothing to do with any such diabolical plan,"
muttered Clayton; "even yet land may be sighted or a ship
appear--in time."

"You will do as the majority decide, or you will be `the
first' without the formality of drawing lots," said Monsieur
Thuran threateningly. "Come, let us vote on the plan; I
for one am in favor of it. How about you, Spider?"
"And I," replied the sailor.

"It is the will of the majority," announced Monsieur
Thuran, "and now let us lose no time in drawing lots.
It is as fair for one as for another. That three may
live, one of us must die perhaps a few hours sooner
than otherwise."

Then he began his preparation for the lottery of death,
while Jane Porter sat wide-eyed and horrified at thought of
the thing that she was about to witness. Monsieur Thuran
spread his coat upon the bottom of the boat, and then from a
handful of money he selected six franc pieces. The other two
men bent close above him as he inspected them. Finally he
handed them all to Clayton.

"Look at them carefully," he said. "The oldest date is
eighteen-seventy-five, and there is only one of that year."

Clayton and the sailor inspected each coin. To them there
seemed not the slightest difference that could be detected
other than the dates. They were quite satisfied. Had they
known that Monsieur Thuran's past experience as a card
sharp had trained his sense of touch to so fine a point that
he could almost differentiate between cards by the mere feel
of them, they would scarcely have felt that the plan was so
entirely fair. The 1875 piece was a hair thinner than the
other coins, but neither Clayton nor Spider could have
detected it without the aid of a micrometer.

"In what order shall we draw?" asked Monsieur Thuran,
knowing from past experience that the majority of men
always prefer last chance in a lottery where the single prize
is some distasteful thing--there is always the chance and the
hope that another will draw it first. Monsieur Thuran, for
reasons of his own, preferred to draw first if the drawing
should happen to require a second adventure beneath the coat.

And so when Spider elected to draw last he graciously
offered to take the first chance himself. His hand was under
the coat for but a moment, yet those quick, deft fingers had
felt of each coin, and found and discarded the fatal piece.
When he brought forth his hand it contained an 1888 franc piece.
Then Clayton drew. Jane Porter leaned forward with a tense
and horrified expression on her face as the hand of the man
she was to marry groped about beneath the coat. Presently he
withdrew it, a franc piece lying in the palm. For an instant
he dared not look, but Monsieur Thuran, who had leaned
nearer to see the date, exclaimed that he was safe.

Jane Porter sank weak and trembling against the side of
the boat. She felt sick and dizzy. And now, if Spider
should not draw the 1875 piece she must endure the whole
horrid thing again.

The sailor already had his hand beneath the coat. Great beads
of sweat were standing upon his brow. He trembled as though
with a fit of ague. Aloud he cursed himself for having
taken the last draw, for now his chances for escape were
but three to one, whereas Monsieur Thuran's had been five to
one, and Clayton's four to one.

The Russian was very patient, and did not hurry the man,
for he knew that he himself was quite safe whether the 1875
piece came out this time or not. When the sailor withdrew
his hand and looked at the piece of money within, he
dropped fainting to the bottom of the boat. Both Clayton
and Monsieur Thuran hastened weakly to examine the coin,
which had rolled from the man's hand and lay beside him.
It was not dated 1875. The reaction from the state of fear he
had been in had overcome Spider quite as effectually as
though he had drawn the fated piece.

But now the whole proceeding must be gone through again.
Once more the Russian drew forth a harmless coin. Jane
Porter closed her eyes as Clayton reached beneath the coat.
Spider bent, wide-eyed, toward the hand that was to decide
his fate, for whatever luck was Clayton's on this last draw,
the opposite would be Spider's.
Then William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, removed his hand
from beneath the coat, and with a coin tight pressed within
his palm where none might see it, he looked at Jane Porter.
He did not dare open his hand.

"Quick!" hissed Spider. "My Gawd, let's see it."

Clayton opened his fingers. Spider was the first to see
the date, and ere any knew what his intention was he raised
himself to his feet, and lunged over the side of the boat,
to disappear forever into the green depths beneath--the coin
had not been the 1875 piece.

The strain had exhausted those who remained to such an
extent that they lay half unconscious for the balance of the
day, nor was the subject referred to again for several days.
Horrible days of increasing weakness and hopelessness.
At length Monsieur Thuran crawled to where Clayton lay.

"We must draw once more before we are too weak even to eat,"
he whispered.

Clayton was in such a state that he was scarcely master of
his own will. Jane Porter had not spoken for three days.
He knew that she was dying. Horrible as the thought was,
he hoped that the sacrifice of either Thuran or himself might
be the means of giving her renewed strength, and so he
immediately agreed to the Russian's proposal.

They drew under the same plan as before, but there
could be but one result--Clayton drew the 1875 piece.

"When shall it be?" he asked Thuran.

The Russian had already drawn a pocketknife from his trousers,
and was weakly attempting to open it.

"Now," he muttered, and his greedy eyes gloated upon the Englishman.

"Can't you wait until dark?" asked Clayton. "Miss Porter
must not see this thing done. We were to have been married,
you know."

A look of disappointment came over Monsieur Thuran's face.

"Very well," he replied hesitatingly. "It will not be long
until night. I have waited for many days--I can wait a few
hours longer."

"Thank you, my friend," murmured Clayton. "Now I shall go
to her side and remain with her until it is time. I would
like to have an hour or two with her before I die."

When Clayton reached the girl's side she was unconscious
--he knew that she was dying, and he was glad that she
should not have to see or know the awful tragedy that was
shortly to be enacted. He took her hand and raised it to his
cracked and swollen lips. For a long time he lay caressing the
emaciated, clawlike thing that had once been the beautiful,
shapely white hand of the young Baltimore belle.

It was quite dark before he knew it, but he was recalled
to himself by a voice out of the night. It was the Russian
calling him to his doom.

"I am coming, Monsieur Thuran," he hastened to reply.

Thrice he attempted to turn himself upon his hands and
knees, that he might crawl back to his death, but in the
few hours that he had lain there he had become too
weak to return to Thuran's side.

"You will have to come to me, monsieur," he called weakly.
"I have not sufficient strength to gain my hands and knees."

"SAPRISTI!" muttered Monsieur Thuran. "You are attempting
to cheat me out of my winnings."

Clayton heard the man shuffling about in the bottom of
the boat. Finally there was a despairing groan. "I cannot
crawl," he heard the Russian wail. "It is too late. You have
tricked me, you dirty English dog."

"I have not tricked you, monsieur," replied Clayton.
"I have done my best to rise, but I shall try again,
and if you will try possibly each of us can crawl halfway,
and then you shall have your `winnings.'"

Again Clayton exerted his remaining strength to the utmost,
and he heard Thuran apparently doing the same. Nearly an hour
later the Englishman succeeded in raising himself to his
hands and knees, but at the first forward movement
he pitched upon his face.

A moment later he heard an exclamation of relief from
Monsieur Thuran.

"I am coming," whispered the Russian.

Again Clayton essayed to stagger on to meet his fate, but
once more he pitched headlong to the boat's bottom, nor,
try as he would, could he again rise. His last effort caused
him to roll over on his back, and there he lay looking up at
the stars, while behind him, coming ever nearer and nearer,
he could hear the laborious shuffling, and the stertorous
breathing of the Russian.

It seemed that he must have lain thus an hour waiting for the
thing to crawl out of the dark and end his misery. It was quite
close now, but there were longer and longer pauses between
its efforts to advance, and each forward movement seemed
to the waiting Englishman to be almost imperceptible.

Finally he knew that Thuran was quite close beside him.
He heard a cackling laugh, something touched his face, and
he lost consciousness.

Chapter 19

The City of Gold

The very night that Tarzan of the Apes became chief of
the Waziri the woman he loved lay dying in a tiny boat
two hundred miles west of him upon the Atlantic.
As he danced among his naked fellow savages, the firelight
gleaming against his great, rolling muscles, the
personification of physical perfection and strength,
the woman who loved him lay thin and emaciated in the
last coma that precedes death by thirst and starvation.

The week following the induction of Tarzan into the kingship
of the Waziri was occupied in escorting the Manyuema of
the Arab raiders to the northern boundary of Waziri in
accordance with the promise which Tarzan had made them.
Before he left them he exacted a pledge from them that they
would not lead any expeditions against the Waziri in the
future, nor was it a difficult promise to obtain. They had had
sufficient experience with the fighting tactics of the new
Waziri chief not to have the slightest desire to accompany
another predatory force within the boundaries of his domain.

Almost immediately upon his return to the village Tarzan
commenced making preparations for leading an expedition
in search of the ruined city of gold which old Waziri had
described to him. He selected fifty of the sturdiest
warriors of his tribe, choosing only men who seemed anxious
to accompany him on the arduous march, and share the dangers
of a new and hostile country.

The fabulous wealth of the fabled city had been almost
constantly in his mind since Waziri had recounted the
strange adventures of the former expedition which had
stumbled upon the vast ruins by chance. The lure of
adventure may have been quite as powerful a factor in urging
Tarzan of the Apes to undertake the journey as the lure of
gold, but the lure of gold was there, too, for he had learned
among civilized men something of the miracles that may
be wrought by the possessor of the magic yellow metal. What
he would do with a golden fortune in the heart of savage
Africa it had not occurred to him to consider--it would be
enough to possess the power to work wonders, even though he
never had an opportunity to employ it.

So one glorious tropical morning Waziri, chief of the Waziri,
set out at the head of fifty clean-limbed ebon warriors
in quest of adventure and of riches. They followed the course
which old Waziri had described to Tarzan. For days they
marched--up one river, across a low divide; down another
river; up a third, until at the end of the twenty-fifth day
they camped upon a mountainside, from the summit of
which they hoped to catch their first view of the marvelous
city of treasure.

Early the next morning they were climbing the almost
perpendicular crags which formed the last, but greatest,
natural barrier between them and their destination.
It was nearly noon before Tarzan, who headed the thin
line of climbing warriors, scrambled over the top of
the last cliff and stood upon the little flat table-land
of the mountaintop.

On either hand towered mighty peaks thousands of feet
higher than the pass through which they were entering the
forbidden valley. Behind him stretched the wooded valley
across which they had marched for many days, and at the
opposite side the low range which marked the boundary of
their own country.

But before him was the view that centered his attention.
Here lay a desolate valley--a shallow, narrow valley dotted
with stunted trees and covered with many great bowlders.
And on the far side of the valley lay what appeared to be
a mighty city, its great walls, its lofty spires, its turrets,
minarets, and domes showing red and yellow in the sunlight.
Tarzan was yet too far away to note the marks of ruin--to
him it appeared a wonderful city of magnificent beauty,
and in imagination he peopled its broad avenues and its huge
temples with a throng of happy, active people.

For an hour the little expedition rested upon the mountain-
top, and then Tarzan led them down into the valley below.
There was no trail, but the way was less arduous than the
ascent of the opposite face of the mountain had been.
Once in the valley their progress was rapid, so that it
was still light when they halted before the towering walls
of the ancient city.

The outer wall was fifty feet in height where it had not
fallen into ruin, but nowhere as far as they could see had
more than ten or twenty feet of the upper courses fallen away.
It was still a formidable defense. On several occasions
Tarzan had thought that he discerned things moving behind
the ruined portions of the wall near to them, as though
creatures were watching them from behind the bulwarks of
the ancient pile. And often he felt the sensation of unseen
eyes upon him, but not once could he be sure that it was more
than imagination.

That night they camped outside the city. Once, at midnight,
they were awakened by a shrill scream from beyond the great wall.
It was very high at first, descending gradually until it
ended in a series of dismal moans. It had a strange effect
upon the blacks, almost paralyzing them with terror while
it lasted, and it was an hour before the camp settled
down to sleep once more. In the morning the effects of it
were still visible in the fearful, sidelong glances that the
Waziri continually cast at the massive and forbidding structure
which loomed above them.

It required considerable encouragement and urging on
Tarzan's part to prevent the blacks from abandoning the
venture on the spot and hastening back across the valley
toward the cliffs they had scaled the day before. But at length,
by dint of commands, and threats that he would enter the
city alone, they agreed to accompany him.

For fifteen minutes they marched along the face of the
wall before they discovered a means of ingress. Then they
came to a narrow cleft about twenty inches wide. Within, a
flight of concrete steps, worn hollow by centuries of use,
rose before them, to disappear at a sharp turning of the
passage a few yards ahead.

Into this narrow alley Tarzan made his way, turning his
giant shoulders sideways that they might enter at all.
Behind him trailed his black warriors. At the turn in the
cleft the stairs ended, and the path was level; but it wound
and twisted in a serpentine fashion, until suddenly at a sharp
angle it debouched upon a narrow court, across which
loomed an inner wall equally as high as the outer. This inner
wall was set with little round towers alternating along its
entire summit with pointed monoliths. In places these had
fallen, and the wall was ruined, but it was in a much better
state of preservation than the outer wall.

Another narrow passage led through this wall, and at its
end Tarzan and his warriors found themselves in a broad avenue,
on the opposite side of which crumbling edifices of hewn granite
loomed dark and forbidding. Upon the crumbling debris along the
face of the buildings trees had grown, and vines wound in and
out of the hollow, staring windows; but the building directly
opposite them seemed less overgrown than the others, and in
a much better state of preservation. It was a massive pile,
surmounted by an enormous dome. At either side of its great
entrance stood rows of tall pillars, each capped by a huge,
grotesque bird carved from the solid rock of the monoliths.

As the ape-man and his companions stood gazing in varying
degrees of wonderment at this ancient city in the midst
of savage Africa, several of them became aware of
movement within the structure at which they were looking.
Dim, shadowy shapes appeared to be moving about in the
semi-darkness of the interior. There was nothing tangible
that the eye could grasp--only an uncanny suggestion of life
where it seemed that there should be no life, for living
things seemed out of place in this weird, dead city of the
long-dead past.

Tarzan recalled something that he had read in the library at
Paris of a lost race of white men that native legend described
as living in the heart of Africa. He wondered if he were not
looking upon the ruins of the civilization that this strange
people had wrought amid the savage surroundings of their
strange and savage home. Could it be possible that even now
a remnant of that lost race inhabited the ruined grandeur that
had once been their progenitor? Again he became conscious
of a stealthy movement within the great temple before him.
"Come!" he said, to his Waziri. "Let us have a look at what
lies behind those ruined walls."

His men were loath to follow him, but when they saw that
he was bravely entering the frowning portal they trailed a few
paces behind in a huddled group that seemed the personification
of nervous terror. A single shriek such as they had
heard the night before would have been sufficient to have
sent them all racing madly for the narrow cleft that led
through the great walls to the outer world.

As Tarzan entered the building he was distinctly aware of
many eyes upon him. There was a rustling in the shadows
of a near-by corridor, and he could have sworn that he
saw a human hand withdrawn from an embrasure that
opened above him into the domelike rotunda in which he
found himself.

The floor of the chamber was of concrete, the walls of
smooth granite, upon which strange figures of men and beasts
were carved. In places tablets of yellow metal had been set
in the solid masonry of the walls.

When he approached closer to one of these tablets he saw
that it was of gold, and bore many hieroglyphics. Beyond this
first chamber there were others, and back of them the building
branched out into enormous wings. Tarzan passed through
several of these chambers, finding many evidences of the
fabulous wealth of the original builders. In one room were
seven pillars of solid gold, and in another the floor itself
was of the precious metal. And all the while that he explored,
his blacks huddled close together at his back, and
strange shapes hovered upon either hand and before them
and behind, yet never close enough that any might say that
they were not alone.

The strain, however, was telling upon the nerves of the Waziri.
They begged Tarzan to return to the sunlight. They said that
no good could come of such an expedition, for the ruins were
haunted by the spirits of the dead who had once inhabited them.

"They are watching us, O king," whispered Busuli. "They are
waiting until they have led us into the innermost recesses of
their stronghold, and then they will fall upon us and tear
us to pieces with their teeth. That is the way with spirits.
My mother's uncle, who is a great witch doctor, has
told me all about it many times."

Tarzan laughed. "Run back into the sunlight, my children,"
he said. "I will join you when I have searched this old ruin
from top to bottom, and found the gold, or found that there
is none. At least we may take the tablets from the walls,
though the pillars are too heavy for us to handle; but there
should be great storerooms filled with gold--gold that we
can carry away upon our backs with ease. Run on now, out
into the fresh air where you may breathe easier."

Some of the warriors started to obey their chief with alacrity,
but Busuli and several others hesitated to leave him--hesitated
between love and loyalty for their king, and superstitious fear
of the unknown. And then, quite unexpectedly, that occurred which
decided the question without the necessity for further discussion.
Out of the silence of the ruined temple there rang, close to
their ears, the same hideous shriek they had heard the previous
night, and with horrified cries the black warriors turned and
fled through the empty halls of the age-old edifice.

Behind them stood Tarzan of the Apes where they had left
him, a grim smile upon his lips--waiting for the enemy he
fully expected was about to pounce upon him. But again
silence reigned, except for the faint suggestion of the sound
of naked feet moving stealthily in near-by places.

Then Tarzan wheeled and passed on into the depths of the temple.
From room to room he went, until he came to one at which
a rude, barred door still stood, and as he put his shoulder
against it to push it in, again the shriek of warning
rang out almost beside him. It was evident that he was
being warned to refrain from desecrating this particular room.
Or could it be that within lay the secret to the treasure stores?

At any rate, the very fact that the strange, invisible
guardians of this weird place had some reason for wishing him
not to enter this particular chamber was sufficient to treble
Tarzan's desire to do so, and though the shrieking was repeated
continuously, he kept his shoulder to the door until it gave
before his giant strength to swing open upon creaking wooden hinges.

Within all was black as the tomb. There was no window
to let in the faintest ray of light, and as the corridor upon
which it opened was itself in semi-darkness, even the open door
shed no relieving rays within. Feeling before him upon the floor
with the butt of his spear, Tarzan entered the Stygian gloom.
Suddenly the door behind him closed, and at the same time
hands clutched him from every direction out of the darkness.

The ape-man fought with all the savage fury of self-
preservation backed by the herculean strength that was his.
But though he felt his blows land, and his teeth sink into soft
flesh, there seemed always two new hands to take the place
of those that he fought off. At last they dragged him down,
and slowly, very slowly, they overcame him by the mere
weight of their numbers. And then they bound him--his
hands behind his back and his feet trussed up to meet them.
He had heard no sound except the heavy breathing of his
antagonists, and the noise of the battle. He knew not what
manner of creatures had captured him, but that they were
human seemed evident from the fact that they had bound him.

Presently they lifted him from the floor, and half dragging,
half pushing him, they brought him out of the black
chamber through another doorway into an inner courtyard
of the temple. Here he saw his captors. There must have
been a hundred of them--short, stocky men, with great beards
that covered their faces and fell upon their hairy breasts.

The thick, matted hair upon their heads grew low over
their receding brows, and hung about their shoulders and
their backs. Their crooked legs were short and heavy, their
arms long and muscular. About their loins they wore the
skins of leopards and lions, and great necklaces of the
claws of these same animals depended upon their breasts.
Massive circlets of virgin gold adorned their arms and legs.
For weapons they carried heavy, knotted bludgeons, and in the
belts that confined their single garments each had a long,
wicked-looking knife.

But the feature of them that made the most startling
impression upon their prisoner was their white skins--neither
in color nor feature was there a trace of the negroid about them.
Yet, with their receding foreheads, wicked little close-set eyes,
and yellow fangs, they were far from prepossessing in appearance.

During the fight within the dark chamber, and while
they had been dragging Tarzan to the inner court, no word
had been spoken, but now several of them exchanged grunting,
monosyllabic conversation in a language unfamiliar to
the ape-man, and presently they left him lying upon the
concrete floor while they trooped off on their short legs into
another part of the temple beyond the court.

As Tarzan lay there upon his back he saw that the temple
entirely surrounded the little inclosure, and that on all sides
its lofty walls rose high above him. At the top a little patch
of blue sky was visible, and, in one direction, through an
embrasure, he could see foliage, but whether it was beyond
or within the temple he did not know.

About the court, from the ground to the top of the temple,
were series of open galleries, and now and then the captive
caught glimpses of bright eyes gleaming from beneath masses
of tumbling hair, peering down upon him from above.

The ape-man gently tested the strength of the bonds that
held him, and while he could not be sure it seemed that they
were of insufficient strength to withstand the strain of his
mighty muscles when the time came to make a break for
freedom; but he did not dare to put them to the crucial test
until darkness had fallen, or he felt that no spying eyes were
upon him.

He had lain within the court for several hours before
the first rays of sunlight penetrated the vertical shaft;
almost simultaneously he heard the pattering of bare feet
in the corridors about him, and a moment later saw the
galleries above fill with crafty faces as a score or more
entered the courtyard.

For a moment every eye was bent upon the noonday sun,
and then in unison the people in the galleries and those in
the court below took up the refrain of a low, weird chant.
Presently those about Tarzan began to dance to the cadence
of their solemn song. They circled him slowly, resembling in
their manner of dancing a number of clumsy, shuffling bears;
but as yet they did not look at him, keeping their little eyes
fixed upon the sun.

For ten minutes or more they kept up their monotonous
chant and steps, and then suddenly, and in perfect unison,
they turned toward their victim with upraised bludgeons
and emitting fearful howls, the while they contorted their
features into the most diabolical expressions, they rushed
upon him.

At the same instant a female figure dashed into the midst
of the bloodthirsty horde, and, with a bludgeon similar to
their own, except that it was wrought from gold, beat back
the advancing men.

Chapter 20

La

For a moment Tarzan thought that by some strange freak
of fate a miracle had saved him, but when he realized the
ease with which the girl had, single-handed, beaten off
twenty gorilla-like males, and an instant later, as he saw
them again take up their dance about him while she addressed
them in a singsong monotone, which bore every evidence of
rote, he came to the conclusion that it was all but a part
of the ceremony of which he was the central figure.

After a moment or two the girl drew a knife from her girdle,
and, leaning over Tarzan, cut the bonds from his legs.
Then, as the men stopped their dance, and approached, she
motioned to him to rise. Placing the rope that had been
about his legs around his neck, she led him across the
courtyard, the men following in twos.

Through winding corridors she led, farther and farther
into the remoter precincts of the temple, until they came to a
great chamber in the center of which stood an altar. Then it
was that Tarzan translated the strange ceremony that had
preceded his introduction into this holy of holies.

He had fallen into the hands of descendants of the ancient
sun worshippers. His seeming rescue by a votaress of the
high priestess of the sun had been but a part of the mimicry
of their heathen ceremony--the sun looking down upon him
through the opening at the top of the court had claimed him
as his own, and the priestess had come from the inner
temple to save him from the polluting hands of worldlings--
to save him as a human offering to their flaming deity.

And had he needed further assurance as to the correctness
of his theory he had only to cast his eyes upon the brownish-
red stains that caked the stone altar and covered the floor
in its immediate vicinity, or to the human skulls which
grinned from countless niches in the towering walls.

The priestess led the victim to the altar steps. Again the
galleries above filled with watchers, while from an arched
doorway at the east end of the chamber a procession of females
filed slowly into the room. They wore, like the men,
only skins of wild animals caught about their waists with
rawhide belts or chains of gold; but the black masses of their
hair were incrusted with golden headgear composed of many
circular and oval pieces of gold ingeniously held together to
form a metal cap from which depended at each side of
the head, long strings of oval pieces falling to the waist.

The females were more symmetrically proportioned than
the males, their features were much more perfect, the shapes
of their heads and their large, soft, black eyes denoting far
greater intelligence and humanity than was possessed by
their lords and masters.

Each priestess bore two golden cups, and as they formed in
line along one side of the altar the men formed opposite them,
advancing and taking each a cup from the female opposite.
Then the chant began once more, and presently from
a dark passageway beyond the altar another female
emerged from the cavernous depths beneath the chamber.

The high priestess, thought Tarzan. She was a young woman
with a rather intelligent and shapely face. Her ornaments
were similar to those worn by her votaries, but much more
elaborate, many being set with diamonds. Her bare arms
and legs were almost concealed by the massive, bejeweled
ornaments which covered them, while her single leopard
skin was supported by a close-fitting girdle of golden rings
set in strange designs with innumerable small diamonds.
In the girdle she carried a long, jeweled knife, and in her
hand a slender wand in lieu of a bludgeon.

As she advanced to the opposite side of the altar she
halted, and the chanting ceased. The priests and priestesses
knelt before her, while with wand extended above them she
recited a long and tiresome prayer. Her voice was soft and
musical--Tarzan could scarce realize that its possessor
in a moment more would be transformed by the fanatical
ecstasy of religious zeal into a wild-eyed and bloodthirsty
executioner, who, with dripping knife, would be the first to
drink her victim's red, warm blood from the little golden cup
that stood upon the altar.

As she finished her prayer she let her eyes rest for the first
time upon Tarzan. With every indication of considerable
curiosity she examined him from head to foot. Then she
addressed him, and when she had finished stood waiting, as
though she expected a reply.

"I do not understand your language," said Tarzan.
"Possibly we may speak together in another tongue?"
But she could not understand him, though he tried French,
English, Arab, Waziri, and, as a last resort, the mongrel
tongue of the West Coast.

She shook her head, and it seemed that there was a note of
weariness in her voice as she motioned to the priests to
continue with the rites. These now circled in a repetition of
their idiotic dance, which was terminated finally at a command
from the priestess, who had stood throughout, still
looking intently upon Tarzan.

At her signal the priests rushed upon the ape-man, and,
lifting him bodily, laid him upon his back across the altar,
his head hanging over one edge, his legs over the opposite.
Then they and the priestesses formed in two lines, with
their little golden cups in readiness to capture a share of the
victim's lifeblood after the sacrificial knife had accomplished
its work.

In the line of priests an altercation arose as to who
should have first place. A burly brute with all the refined
intelligence of a gorilla stamped upon his bestial face was
attempting to push a smaller man to second place, but the
smaller one appealed to the high priestess, who in a cold
peremptory voice sent the larger to the extreme end of the line.
Tarzan could hear him growling and rumbling as he went
slowly to the inferior station.

Then the priestess, standing above him, began reciting
what Tarzan took to be an invocation, the while she slowly
raised her thin, sharp knife aloft. It seemed ages to the
ape-man before her arm ceased its upward progress and the
knife halted high above his unprotected breast.

Then it started downward, slowly at first, but as the
incantation increased in rapidity, with greater speed. At the
end of the line Tarzan could still hear the grumbling of the
disgruntled priest. The man's voice rose louder and louder.
A priestess near him spoke in sharp tones of rebuke. The knife
was quite near to Tarzan's breast now, but it halted for an
instant as the high priestess raised her eyes to shoot her swift
displeasure at the instigator of this sacrilegious interruption.

There was a sudden commotion in the direction of the
disputants, and Tarzan rolled his head in their direction
in time to see the burly brute of a priest leap upon the
woman opposite him, dashing out her brains with a single
blow of his heavy cudgel. Then that happened which Tarzan
had witnessed a hundred times before among the wild denizens
of his own savage jungle. He had seen the thing fall
upon Kerchak, and Tublat, and Terkoz; upon a dozen of the
other mighty bull apes of his tribe; and upon Tantor,
the elephant; there was scarce any of the males of the forest
that did not at times fall prey to it. The priest went mad,
and with his heavy bludgeon ran amuck among his fellows.

His screams of rage were frightful as he dashed hither
and thither, dealing terrific blows with his giant weapon, or
sinking his yellow fangs into the flesh of some luckless victim.
And during it the priestess stood with poised knife above
Tarzan, her eyes fixed in horror upon the maniacal thing
that was dealing out death and destruction to her votaries.

Presently the room was emptied except for the dead and
dying on the floor, the victim upon the altar, the high
priestess, and the madman. As the cunning eyes of the latter
fell upon the woman they lighted with a new and sudden lust.
Slowly he crept toward her, and now he spoke; but this
time there fell upon Tarzan's surprised ears a language he
could understand; the last one that he would ever have
thought of employing in attempting to converse with human
beings--the low guttural barking of the tribe of great
anthropoids--his own mother tongue. And the woman answered
the man in the same language.

He was threatening--she attempting to reason with him, for it
was quite evident that she saw that he was past her authority.
The brute was quite close now--creeping with clawlike hands
extended toward her around the end of the altar.
Tarzan strained at the bonds which held his arms pinioned
behind him. The woman did not see--she had forgotten
her prey in the horror of the danger that threatened herself.
As the brute leaped past Tarzan to clutch his victim, the
ape-man gave one superhuman wrench at the thongs that held him.
The effort sent him rolling from the altar to the stone
floor on the opposite side from that on which the priestess
stood; but as he sprang to his feet the thongs dropped from
his freed arms, and at the same time he realized that he
was alone in the inner temple--the high priestess and the
mad priest had disappeared.

And then a muffled scream came from the cavernous mouth
of the dark hole beyond the sacrificial altar through which the
priestess had entered the temple. Without even a thought for
his own safety, or the possibility for escape which this rapid
series of fortuitous circumstances had thrust upon him,
Tarzan of the Apes answered the call of the woman in danger.
With a little bound he was at the gaping entrance to the
subterranean chamber, and a moment later was running down
a flight of age-old concrete steps that led he knew not where.

The faint light that filtered in from above showed him
a large, low-ceiled vault from which several doorways led off
into inky darkness, but there was no need to thread an unknown
way, for there before him lay the objects of his search--the
mad brute had the girl upon the floor, and gorilla-like
fingers were clutching frantically at her throat as she
struggled to escape the fury of the awful thing upon her.

As Tarzan's heavy hand fell upon his shoulder the priest
dropped his victim, and turned upon her would-be rescuer.
With foam-flecked lips and bared fangs the mad sun-worshiper
battled with the tenfold power of the maniac. In the
blood lust of his fury the creature had undergone a sudden
reversion to type, which left him a wild beast, forgetful of
the dagger that projected from his belt--thinking only of
nature's weapons with which his brute prototype had battled.

But if he could use his teeth and hands to advantage, he
found one even better versed in the school of savage warfare
to which he had reverted, for Tarzan of the Apes closed
with him, and they fell to the floor tearing and rending at one
another like two bull apes; while the primitive priestess
stood flattened against the wall, watching with wide, fear-
fascinated eyes the growing, snapping beasts at her feet.

At last she saw the stranger close one mighty hand upon
the throat of his antagonist, and as he forced the bruteman's
head far back rain blow after blow upon the upturned face.
A moment later he threw the still thing from him, and,
arising, shook himself like a lion. He placed a foot
upon the carcass before him, and raised his head to give the
victory cry of his kind, but as his eyes fell upon the opening
above him leading into the temple of human sacrifice he
thought better of his intended act.

The girl, who had been half paralyzed by fear as the two
men fought, had just commenced to give thought to her
probable fate now that, though released from the clutches of
a madman, she had fallen into the hands of one whom but a
moment before she had been upon the point of killing.
She looked about for some means of escape. The black mouth
of a diverging corridor was near at hand, but as she
turned to dart into it the ape-man's eyes fell upon her, and
with a quick leap he was at her side, and a restraining hand
was laid upon her arm.

"Wait!" said Tarzan of the Apes, in the language of the
tribe of Kerchak.

The girl looked at him in astonishment.

"Who are you," she whispered, "who speaks the language
of the first man?"

"I am Tarzan of the Apes," he answered in the vernacular
of the anthropoids.

"What do you want of me?" she continued. "For what
purpose did you save me from Tha?"

"I could not see a woman murdered?" It was a half question
that answered her.

"But what do you intend to do with me now?" she continued.

"Nothing," he replied, "but you can do something for me--you
can lead me out of this place to freedom." He made the
suggestion without the slightest thought that she would accede.
He felt quite sure that the sacrifice would go on from the
point where it had been interrupted if the high priestess
had her way, though he was equally positive that they would
find Tarzan of the Apes unbound and with a long dagger
in his hand a much less tractable victim than Tarzan
disarmed and bound.

The girl stood looking at him for a long moment before
she spoke.

"You are a very wonderful man," she said. "You are
such a man as I have seen in my daydreams ever since I
was a little girl. You are such a man as I imagine the
forbears of my people must have been--the great race of people
who built this mighty city in the heart of a savage world that
they might wrest from the bowels of the earth the fabulous
wealth for which they had sacrificed their far-distant civilization.

"I cannot understand why you came to my rescue in the
first place, and now I cannot understand why, having me
within your power, you do not wish to be revenged upon
me for having sentenced you to death--for having almost
put you to death with my own hand."

"I presume," replied the ape-man, "that you but followed
the teachings of your religion. I cannot blame YOU for that,
no matter what I may think of your creed. But who are you
--what people have I fallen among?"

"I am La, high priestess of the Temple of the Sun, in the
city of Opar. We are descendants of a people who came to
this savage world more than ten thousand years ago in search
of gold. Their cities stretched from a great sea under the
rising sun to a great sea into which the sun descends at night
to cool his flaming brow. They were very rich and very
powerful, but they lived only a few months of the year in
their magnificent palaces here; the rest of the time they
spent in their native land, far, far to the north.

"Many ships went back and forth between this new world
and the old. During the rainy season there were but few
of the inhabitants remained here, only those who
superintended the working of the mines by the black slaves,
and the merchants who had to stay to supply their wants,
and the soldiers who guarded the cities and the mines.

"It was at one of these times that the great calamity occurred.
When the time came for the teeming thousands to return none came.
For weeks the people waited. Then they sent out a great galley
to learn why no one came from the mother country, but though
they sailed about for many months, they were unable to find
any trace of the mighty land that had for countless ages
borne their ancient civilization--it had sunk into the sea.

"From that day dated the downfall of my people.
Disheartened and unhappy, they soon became a prey to the
black hordes of the north and the black hordes of the south.
One by one the cities were deserted or overcome. The last
remnant was finally forced to take shelter within this mighty
mountain fortress. Slowly we have dwindled in power, in
civilization, in intellect, in numbers, until now we are no
more than a small tribe of savage apes.

"In fact, the apes live with us, and have for many ages.
We call them the first men--we speak their language quite
as much as we do our own; only in the rituals of the temple
do we make any attempt to retain our mother tongue. In time
it will be forgotten, and we will speak only the language
of the apes; in time we will no longer banish those of our
people who mate with apes, and so in time we shall descend
to the very beasts from which ages ago our progenitors may
have sprung."

"But why are you more human than the others?" asked
the man.

"For some reason the women have not reverted to savagery
so rapidly as the men. It may be because only the
lower types of men remained here at the time of the great
catastrophe, while the temples were filled with the noblest
daughters of the race. My strain has remained clearer
than the rest because for countless ages my foremothers were
high priestesses--the sacred office descends from mother
to daughter. Our husbands are chosen for us from the noblest
in the land. The most perfect man, mentally and physically,
is selected to be the husband of the high priestess."

"From what I saw of the gentlemen above," said Tarzan,
with a grin, "there should be little trouble in choosing from
among them."

The girl looked at him quizzically for a moment.

"Do not be sacrilegious," she said. "They are very holy
men--they are priests."

"Then there are others who are better to look upon?" he asked.

"The others are all more ugly than the priests," she replied.

Tarzan shuddered at her fate, for even in the dim light of
the vault he was impressed by her beauty.

"But how about myself?" he asked suddenly. "Are you
going to lead me to liberty?"

"You have been chosen by The Flaming God as his own,"
she answered solemnly. "Not even I have the power to
save you--should they find you again. But I do not intend
that they shall find you. You risked your life to save mine.
I may do no less for you. It will be no easy matter--it may
require days; but in the end I think that I can lead you beyond
the walls. Come, they will look here for me presently, and
if they find us together we shall both be lost--they would
kill me did they think that I had proved false to my god."

"You must not take the risk, then," he said quickly. "I will
return to the temple, and if I can fight my way to freedom
there will be no suspicion thrown upon you."

But she would not have it so, and finally persuaded him
to follow her, saying that they had already remained in the
vault too long to prevent suspicion from falling upon her
even if they returned to the temple.

"I will hide you, and then return alone," she said, "telling
them that I was long unconscious after you killed Tha, and
that I do not know whither you escaped."

And so she led him through winding corridors of gloom,
until finally they came to a small chamber into which a little
light filtered through a stone grating in the ceiling.

"This is the Chamber of the Dead," she said. "None will
think of searching here for you--they would not dare. I will
return after it is dark. By that time I may have found a
plan to effect your escape."

She was gone, and Tarzan of the Apes was left alone in
the Chamber of the Dead, beneath the long-dead city of Opar.

Chapter 21

The Castaways

Clayton dreamed that he was drinking his fill of water,
pure, delightful drafts of fresh water. With a start he
gained consciousness to find himself wet through by
torrents of rain that were falling upon his body and his
upturned face. A heavy tropical shower was beating down
upon them. He opened his mouth and drank. Presently he
was so revived and strengthened that he was enabled to
raise himself upon his hands. Across his legs lay
Monsieur Thuran. A few feet aft Jane Porter was huddled
in a pitiful little heap in the bottom of the boat--she
was quite still. Clayton knew that she was dead.

After infinite labor he released himself from Thuran's
pinioning body, and with renewed strength crawled toward the girl.
He raised her head from the rough boards of the boat's bottom.
There might be life in that poor, starved frame even yet.
He could not quite abandon all hope, and so he seized a
water-soaked rag and squeezed the precious drops between
the swollen lips of the hideous thing that had but a few
short days before glowed with the resplendent life of
happy youth and glorious beauty.

For some time there was no sign of returning animation,
but at last his efforts were rewarded by a slight tremor of
the half-closed lids. He chafed the thin hands, and forced a
few more drops of water into the parched throat. The girl
opened her eyes, looking up at him for a long time before
she could recall her surroundings.

"Water?" she whispered. "Are we saved?"

"It is raining," he explained. "We may at least drink.
Already it has revived us both."

"Monsieur Thuran?" she asked. "He did not kill you. Is he dead?"

"I do not know," replied Clayton. "If he lives and this
rain revives him--" But he stopped there, remembering too
late that he must not add further to the horrors which the
girl already had endured.

But she guessed what he would have said.

"Where is he?" she asked.

Clayton nodded his head toward the prostrate form of
the Russian. For a time neither spoke.

"I will see if I can revive him," said Clayton at length.

"No," she whispered, extending a detaining hand toward him.
"Do not do that--he will kill you when the water has
given him strength. If he is dying, let him die. Do not leave
me alone in this boat with that beast."

Clayton hesitated. His honor demanded that he attempt
to revive Thuran, and there was the possibility, too, that the
Russian was beyond human aid. It was not dishonorable to
hope so. As he sat fighting out his battle he presently raised
his eyes from the body of the man, and as they passed above
the gunwale of the boat he staggered weakly to his feet with
a little cry of joy.

"Land, Jane!" he almost shouted through his cracked lips.
"Thank God, land!"

The girl looked, too, and there, not a hundred yards away,
she saw a yellow beach, and, beyond, the luxurious foliage
of a tropical jungle.

"Now you may revive him," said Jane Porter, for she, too,
had been haunted with the pangs of conscience which had
resulted from her decision to prevent Clayton from offering
succor to their companion.

It required the better part of half an hour before the
Russian evinced sufficient symptoms of returning consciousness
to open his eyes, and it was some time later before
they could bring him to a realization of their good fortune.
By this time the boat was scraping gently upon the sandy bottom.

Between the refreshing water that he had drunk and the
stimulus of renewed hope, Clayton found strength to stagger
through the shallow water to the shore with a line made
fast to the boat's bow. This he fastened to a small tree which
grew at the top of a low bank, for the tide was at flood, and
he feared that the boat might carry them all out to sea again
with the ebb, since it was quite likely that it would be beyond
his strength to get Jane Porter to the shore for several hours.
Next he managed to stagger and crawl toward the near-
by jungle, where he had seen evidences of profusion of
tropical fruit. His former experience in the jungle of
Tarzan of the Apes had taught him which of the many growing
things were edible, and after nearly an hour of absence he
returned to the beach with a little armful of food.

The rain had ceased, and the hot sun was beating down so
mercilessly upon her that Jane Porter insisted on making an
immediate attempt to gain the land. Still further invigorated
by the food Clayton had brought, the three were able to reach
the half shade of the small tree to which their boat was moored.
Here, thoroughly exhausted, they threw themselves down to rest,
sleeping until dark.

For a month they lived upon the beach in comparative safety.
As their strength returned the two men constructed a rude
shelter in the branches of a tree, high enough from the
ground to insure safety from the larger beasts of prey.
By day they gathered fruits and trapped small rodents; at night
they lay cowering within their frail shelter while savage
denizens of the jungle made hideous the hours of darkness.

They slept upon litters of jungle grasses, and for covering
at night Jane Porter had only an old ulster that belonged
to Clayton, the same garment that he had worn upon that
memorable trip to the Wisconsin woods. Clayton had erected
a frail partition of boughs to divide their arboreal shelter
into two rooms--one for the girl and the other for Monsieur
Thuran and himself.

From the first the Russian had exhibited every trait of his
true character--selfishness, boorishness, arrogance,
cowardice, and lust. Twice had he and Clayton come to
blows because of Thuran's attitude toward the girl.
Clayton dared not leave her alone with him for an instant.
The existence of the Englishman and his fiancee was one
continual nightmare of horror, and yet they lived on in
hope of ultimate rescue.

Jane Porter's thoughts often reverted to her other experience
on this savage shore. Ah, if the invincible forest god
of that dead past were but with them now. No longer would
there be aught to fear from prowling beasts, or from the
bestial Russian. She could not well refrain from comparing
the scant protection afforded her by Clayton with what she
might have expected had Tarzan of the Apes been for a
single instant confronted by the sinister and menacing
attitude of Monsieur Thuran. Once, when Clayton had gone
to the little stream for water, and Thuran had spoken coarsely
to her, she voiced her thoughts.

"It is well for you, Monsieur Thuran," she said, "that the
poor Monsieur Tarzan who was lost from the ship that brought
you and Miss Strong to Cape Town is not here now."

"You knew the pig?" asked Thuran, with a sneer.

"I knew the man," she replied. "The only real man, I
think, that I have ever known."

There was something in her tone of voice that led the Russian
to attribute to her a deeper feeling for his enemy than
friendship, and he grasped at the suggestion to be further
revenged upon the man whom he supposed dead by besmirching
his memory to the girl.

"He was worse than a pig," he cried. "He was a poltroon
and a coward. To save himself from the righteous wrath of
the husband of a woman he had wronged, he perjured his
soul in an attempt to place the blame entirely upon her.
Not succeeding in this, he ran away from France to escape
meeting the husband upon the field of honor. That is why
he was on board the ship that bore Miss Strong and myself to
Cape Town. I know whereof I speak, for the woman in the
case is my sister. Something more I know that I have never
told another--your brave Monsieur Tarzan leaped overboard
in an agony of fear because I recognized him, and insisted
that he make reparation to me the following morning--we
could have fought with knives in my stateroom."

Jane Porter laughed. "You do not for a moment imagine
that one who has known both Monsieur Tarzan and you
could ever believe such an impossible tale?"

"Then why did he travel under an assumed name?" asked
Monsieur Thuran.

"I do not believe you," she cried, but nevertheless the
seed of suspicion was sown, for she knew that Hazel Strong
had known her forest god only as John Caldwell, of London.

A scant five miles north of their rude shelter, all unknown
to them, and practically as remote as though separated by
thousands of miles of impenetrable jungle, lay the snug
little cabin of Tarzan of the Apes. While farther up the
coast, a few miles beyond the cabin, in crude but well-built
shelters, lived a little party of eighteen souls--the occupants
of the three boats from the LADY ALICE from which Clayton's
boat had become separated.

Over a smooth sea they had rowed to the mainland in less
than three days. None of the horrors of shipwreck had been
theirs, and though depressed by sorrow, and suffering from
the shock of the catastrophe and the unaccustomed hardships
of their new existence there was none much the worse
for the experience.

All were buoyed by the hope that the fourth boat had
been picked up, and that a thorough search of the coast
would be quickly made. As all the firearms and ammunition
on the yacht had been placed in Lord Tennington's boat,
the party was well equipped for defense, and for hunting
the larger game for food.

Professor Archimedes Q. Porter was their only immediate anxiety.
Fully assured in his own mind that his daughter had been
picked up by a passing steamer, he gave over the last
vestige of apprehension concerning her welfare, and
devoted his giant intellect solely to the consideration of
those momentous and abstruse scientific problems which he
considered the only proper food for thought in one of
his erudition. His mind appeared blank to the influence
of all extraneous matters.

"Never," said the exhausted Mr. Samuel T. Philander, to
Lord Tennington, "never has Professor Porter been more
difficult--er--I might say, impossible. Why, only this
morning, after I had been forced to relinquish my surveillance
for a brief half hour he was entirely missing upon my return.
And, bless me, sir, where do you imagine I discovered him?
A half mile out in the ocean, sir, in one of the lifeboats,
rowing away for dear life. I do not know how he attained
even that magnificent distance from shore, for he had but a
single oar, with which he was blissfully rowing about in circles.

"When one of the sailors had taken me out to him in
another boat the professor became quite indignant at my
suggestion that we return at once to land. `Why, Mr. Philander,'
he said, `I am surprised that you, sir, a man of letters
yourself, should have the temerity so to interrupt the
progress of science. I had about deduced from certain astronomic
phenomena I have had under minute observation during the
past several tropic nights an entirely new nebular hypothesis
which will unquestionably startle the scientific world. I wish
to consult a very excellent monograph on Laplace's hypothesis,
which I understand is in a certain private collection in
New York City. Your interference, Mr. Philander, will result
in an irreparable delay, for I was just rowing over to obtain
this pamphlet.' And it was with the greatest difficulty that I
persuaded him to return to shore, without resorting to force,"
concluded Mr. Philander.

Miss Strong and her mother were very brave under the
strain of almost constant apprehension of the attacks of
savage beasts. Nor were they quite able to accept so readily
as the others the theory that Jane, Clayton, and Monsieur Thuran
had been picked up safely.

Jane Porter's Esmeralda was in a constant state of tears at the
cruel fate which had separated her from her "po, li'le honey."

Lord Tennington's great-hearted good nature never deserted
him for a moment. He was still the jovial host, seeking
always for the comfort and pleasure of his guests. With the
men of his yacht he remained the just but firm commander
--there was never any more question in the jungle than there
had been on board the LADY ALICE as to who was the final
authority in all questions of importance, and in all
emergencies requiring cool and intelligent leadership.

Could this well-organized and comparatively secure party
of castaways have seen the ragged, fear-haunted trio a few
miles south of them they would scarcely have recognized in
them the formerly immaculate members of the little company
that had laughed and played upon the LADY ALICE.
Clayton and Monsieur Thuran were almost naked, so torn
had their clothes been by the thorn bushes and tangled
vegetation of the matted jungle through which they had been
compelled to force their way in search of their ever more
difficult food supply.

Jane Porter had of course not been subjected to these
strenuous expeditions, but her apparel was, nevertheless,
in a sad state of disrepair.

Clayton, for lack of any better occupation, had carefully
saved the skin of every animal they had killed. By stretching
them upon the stems of trees, and diligently scraping them,
he had managed to save them in a fair condition, and now
that his clothes were threatening to cover his nakedness no
longer, he commenced to fashion a rude garment of them,
using a sharp thorn for a needle, and bits of tough grass and
animal tendons in lieu of thread.

The result when completed was a sleeveless garment which
fell nearly to his knees. As it was made up of numerous
small pelts of different species of rodents, it presented a
rather strange and wonderful appearance, which, together
with the vile stench which permeated it, rendered it anything
other than a desirable addition to a wardrobe. But the time
came when for the sake of decency he was compelled to don
it, and even the misery of their condition could not prevent
Jane Porter from laughing heartily at sight of him.

Later, Thuran also found it necessary to construct a similar
primitive garment, so that, with their bare legs and heavily
bearded faces, they looked not unlike reincarnations of two
prehistoric progenitors of the human race. Thuran acted like one.

Nearly two months of this existence had passed when the
first great calamity befell them. It was prefaced by an
adventure which came near terminating abruptly the sufferings
of two of them--terminating them in the grim and horrible
manner of the jungle, forever.

Thuran, down with an attack of jungle fever, lay in the
shelter among the branches of their tree of refuge.
Clayton had been into the jungle a few hundred yards
in search of food. As he returned Jane Porter walked
to meet him. Behind the man, cunning and crafty,
crept an old and mangy lion. For three days his ancient
thews and sinews had proved insufficient for the task of
providing his cavernous belly with meat. For months he
had eaten less and less frequently, and farther and farther
had he roamed from his accustomed haunts in search of
easier prey. At last he had found nature's weakest and
most defenseless creature--in a moment more Numa would dine.

Clayton, all unconscious of the lurking death behind him,
strode out into the open toward Jane. He had reached her
side, a hundred feet from the tangled edge of jungle when
past his shoulder the girl saw the tawny head and the
wicked yellow eyes as the grasses parted, and the huge
beast, nose to ground, stepped softly into view.

So frozen with horror was she that she could utter no
sound, but the fixed and terrified gaze of her fear-widened
eyes spoke as plainly to Clayton as words. A quick glance
behind him revealed the hopelessness of their situation.
The lion was scarce thirty paces from them, and they were
equally as far from the shelter. The man was armed with
a stout stick--as efficacious against a hungry lion,
he realized, as a toy pop-gun charged with a tethered cork.

Numa, ravenous with hunger, had long since learned the
futility of roaring and moaning as he searched for prey,
but now that it was as surely his as though already he had
felt the soft flesh beneath his still mighty paw, he opened his
huge jaws, and gave vent to his long-pent rage in a series of
deafening roars that made the air tremble.

"Run, Jane!" cried Clayton. "Quick! Run for the shelter!"
But her paralyzed muscles refused to respond, and she stood
mute and rigid, staring with ghastly countenance at the
living death creeping toward them.

Thuran, at the sound of that awful roar, had come to
the opening of the shelter, and as he saw the tableau below
him he hopped up and down, shrieking to them in Russian.

"Run! Run!" he cried. "Run, or I shall be left all alone in
this horrible place," and then he broke down and commenced to weep.
For a moment this new voice distracted the attention of the
lion, who halted to cast an inquiring glance in the direction
of the tree. Clayton could endure the strain no longer.
Turning his back upon the beast, he buried his head in
his arms and waited.

The girl looked at him in horror. Why did he not do
something? If he must die, why not die like a man--bravely;
beating at that terrible face with his puny stick, no matter how
futile it might be. Would Tarzan of the Apes have done thus?
Would he not at least have gone down to his death fighting
heroically to the last?

Now the lion was crouching for the spring that would end
their young lives beneath cruel, rending, yellow fangs.
Jane Porter sank to her knees in prayer, closing her eyes
to shut out the last hideous instant. Thuran, weak
from fever, fainted.

Seconds dragged into minutes, long minutes into an eternity,
and yet the beast did not spring. Clayton was almost
unconscious from the prolonged agony of fright--his
knees trembled--a moment more and he would collapse.

Jane Porter could endure it no longer. She opened her eyes.
Could she be dreaming?

"William," she whispered; "look!"

Clayton mastered himself sufficiently to raise his head and
turn toward the lion. An ejaculation of surprise burst from
his lips. At their very feet the beast lay crumpled in death.
A heavy war spear protruded from the tawny hide. It had
entered the great back above the right shoulder, and, passing
entirely through the body, had pierced the savage heart.

Jane Porter had risen to her feet; as Clayton turned back
to her she staggered in weakness. He put out his arms to
save her from falling, and then drew her close to
him--pressing her head against his shoulder, he stooped
to kiss her in thanksgiving.

Gently the girl pushed him away.

"Please do not do that, William," she said. "I have lived a
thousand years in the past brief moments. I have learned in
the face of death how to live. I do not wish to hurt you more
than is necessary; but I can no longer bear to live out the
impossible position I have attempted because of a false sense
of loyalty to an impulsive promise I made you.

"The last few seconds of my life have taught me that it
would be hideous to attempt further to deceive myself and
you, or to entertain for an instant longer the possibility of
ever becoming your wife, should we regain civilization."

"Why, Jane," he cried, "what do you mean? What has our
providential rescue to do with altering your feelings toward me?
You are but unstrung--tomorrow you will be yourself again."

"I am more nearly myself this minute than I have been for
over a year," she replied. "The thing that has just happened
has again forced to my memory the fact that the bravest man
that ever lived honored me with his love. Until it was too
late I did not realize that I returned it, and so I sent him away.
He is dead now, and I shall never marry. I certainly could
not wed another less brave than he without harboring constantly
a feeling of contempt for the relative cowardice of my husband.
Do you understand me?"

"Yes," he answered, with bowed head, his face mantling
with the flush of shame.

And it was the next day that the great calamity befell.

Chapter 22

The Treasure Vaults of Opar

It was quite dark before La, the high priestess, returned to
the Chamber of the Dead with food and drink for Tarzan.
She bore no light, feeling with her hands along the
crumbling walls until she gained the chamber. Through the
stone grating above, a tropic moon served dimly to illuminate
the interior.

Tarzan, crouching in the shadows at the far side of the
room as the first sound of approaching footsteps reached him,
came forth to meet the girl as he recognized that it was she.

"They are furious," were her first words. "Never before
has a human sacrifice escaped the altar. Already fifty have
gone forth to track you down. They have searched the
temple--all save this single room."

"Why do they fear to come here?" he asked.

"It is the Chamber of the Dead. Here the dead return to worship.
See this ancient altar? It is here that the dead sacrifice the
living--if they find a victim here. That is the reason
our people shun this chamber. Were one to enter he knows
that the waiting dead would seize him for their sacrifice."

"But you?" he asked.

"I am high priestess--I alone am safe from the dead.
It is I who at rare intervals bring them a human sacrifice
from the world above. I alone may enter here in safety."

"Why have they not seized me?" he asked, humoring her
grotesque belief.

She looked at him quizzically for a moment. Then she replied:

"It is the duty of a high priestess to instruct, to interpret--
according to the creed that others, wiser than herself, have
laid down; but there is nothing in the creed which says that
she must believe. The more one knows of one's religion the
less one believes--no one living knows more of mine than I."

"Then your only fear in aiding me to escape is that your
fellow mortals may discover your duplicity?"

"That is all--the dead are dead; they cannot harm--or help.
We must therefore depend entirely upon ourselves, and the
sooner we act the better it will be. I had difficulty in
eluding their vigilance but now in bringing you this morsel
of food. To attempt to repeat the thing daily would be the
height of folly. Come, let us see how far we may go toward
liberty before I must return."

She led him back to the chamber beneath the altar room.
Here she turned into one of the several corridors leading
from it. In the darkness Tarzan could not see which one.
For ten minutes they groped slowly along a winding passage,
until at length they came to a closed door. Here he heard
her fumbling with a key, and presently came the sound of a
metal bolt grating against metal. The door swung in on
scraping hinges, and they entered.

"You will be safe here until tomorrow night," she said.

Then she went out, and, closing the door, locked it behind her.

Where Tarzan stood it was dark as Erebus. Not even his
trained eyes could penetrate the utter blackness.
Cautiously he moved forward until his out-stretched hand
touched a wall, then very slowly he traveled around the
four walls of the chamber.

Apparently it was about twenty feet square. The floor
was of concrete, the walls of the dry masonry that marked
the method of construction above ground. Small pieces of
granite of various sizes were ingeniously laid together
without mortar to construct these ancient foundations.

The first time around the walls Tarzan thought he detected
a strange phenomenon for a room with no windows but a
single door. Again he crept carefully around close to
the wall. No, he could not be mistaken! He paused before
the center of the wall opposite the door. For a moment he
stood quite motionless, then he moved a few feet to one side.
Again he returned, only to move a few feet to the other side.

Once more he made the entire circuit of the room, feeling
carefully every foot of the walls. Finally he stopped again
before the particular section that had aroused his curiosity.
There was no doubt of it! A distinct draft of fresh air was
blowing into the chamber through the intersection of the
masonry at that particular point--and nowhere else.

Tarzan tested several pieces of the granite which made up
the wall at this spot, and finally was rewarded by finding
one which lifted out readily. It was about ten inches wide,
with a face some three by six inches showing within the chamber.
One by one the ape-man lifted out similarly shaped stones.
The wall at this point was constructed entirely, it seemed,
of these almost perfect slabs. In a short time he had
removed some dozen, when he reached in to test the next
layer of masonry. To his surprise, he felt nothing behind the
masonry he had removed as far as his long arm could reach.

It was a matter of but a few minutes to remove enough
of the wall to permit his body to pass through the aperture.
Directly ahead of him he thought he discerned a faint glow
--scarcely more than a less impenetrable darkness.
Cautiously he moved forward on hands and knees, until at about
fifteen feet, or the average thickness of the foundation
walls, the floor ended abruptly in a sudden drop. As far out
as he could reach he felt nothing, nor could he find the
bottom of the black abyss that yawned before him, though,
clinging to the edge of the floor, he lowered his body into
the darkness to its full length.
Finally it occurred to him to look up, and there above him
he saw through a round opening a tiny circular patch of
starry sky. Feeling up along the sides of the shaft as far
as he could reach, the ape-man discovered that so much of
the wall as he could feel converged toward the center of
the shaft as it rose. This fact precluded possibility of
escape in that direction.

As he sat speculating on the nature and uses of this
strange passage and its terminal shaft, the moon topped
the opening above, letting a flood of soft, silvery light into
the shadowy place. Instantly the nature of the shaft became
apparent to Tarzan, for far below him he saw the shimmering
surface of water. He had come upon an ancient well--but
what was the purpose of the connection between the well
and the dungeon in which he had been hidden?

As the moon crossed the opening of the shaft its light
flooded the whole interior, and then Tarzan saw directly
across from him another opening in the opposite wall.
He wondered if this might not be the mouth of a passage
leading to possible escape. It would be worth investigating,
at least, and this he determined to do.

Quickly returning to the wall he had demolished to
explore what lay beyond it, he carried the stones into the
passageway and replaced them from that side. The deep deposit
of dust which he had noticed upon the blocks as he
had first removed them from the wall had convinced him
that even if the present occupants of the ancient pile had
knowledge of this hidden passage they had made no use of
it for perhaps generations.

The wall replaced, Tarzan turned to the shaft, which was
some fifteen feet wide at this point. To leap across the
intervening space was a small matter to the ape-man, and a
moment later he was proceeding along a narrow tunnel,
moving cautiously for fear of being precipitated into another
shaft such as he had just crossed.

He had advanced some hundred feet when he came to a
flight of steps leading downward into Stygian gloom.
Some twenty feet below, the level floor of the tunnel
recommenced, and shortly afterward his progress was stopped
by a heavy wooden door which was secured by massive wooden
bars upon the side of Tarzan's approach. This fact suggested
to the ape-man that he might surely be in a passageway
leading to the outer world, for the bolts, barring progress
from the opposite side, tended to substantiate this hypothesis,
unless it were merely a prison to which it led.

Along the tops of the bars were deep layers of dust--a further
indication that the passage had lain long unused. As he
pushed the massive obstacle aside, its great hinges shrieked
out in weird protest against this unaccustomed disturbance.
For a moment Tarzan paused to listen for any responsive
note which might indicate that the unusual night
noise had alarmed the inmates of the temple; but as he heard
nothing he advanced beyond the doorway.

Carefully feeling about, he found himself within a large
chamber, along the walls of which, and down the length of
the floor, were piled many tiers of metal ingots of an odd
though uniform shape. To his groping hands they felt not
unlike double-headed bootjacks. The ingots were quite
heavy, and but for the enormous number of them he would
have been positive that they were gold; but the thought of
the fabulous wealth these thousands of pounds of metal
would have represented were they in reality gold, almost
convinced him that they must be of some baser metal.

At the far end of the chamber he discovered another
barred door, and again the bars upon the inside renewed
the hope that he was traversing an ancient and forgotten
passageway to liberty. Beyond the door the passage ran
straight as a war spear, and it soon became evident to
the ape-man that it had already led him beyond the outer
walls of the temple. If he but knew the direction it was
leading him! If toward the west, then he must also be
beyond the city's outer walls.

With increasing hopes he forged ahead as rapidly as he
dared, until at the end of half an hour he came to another
flight of steps leading upward. At the bottom this
flight was of concrete, but as he ascended his naked feet
felt a sudden change in the substance they were treading.
The steps of concrete had given place to steps of granite.
Feeling with his hands, the ape-man discovered that these
latter were evidently hewed from rock, for there was no
crack to indicate a joint.

For a hundred feet the steps wound spirally up, until at a
sudden turning Tarzan came into a narrow cleft between
two rocky walls. Above him shone the starry sky, and before
him a steep incline replaced the steps that had terminated
at its foot. Up this pathway Tarzan hastened, and at
its upper end came out upon the rough top of a huge
granite bowlder.

A mile away lay the ruined city of Opar, its domes and
turrets bathed in the soft light of the equatorial moon.
Tarzan dropped his eyes to the ingot he had brought away
with him. For a moment he examined it by the moon's bright
rays, then he raised his head to look out upon the ancient
piles of crumbling grandeur in the distance.

"Opar," he mused, "Opar, the enchanted city of a dead
and forgotten past. The city of the beauties and the beasts.
City of horrors and death; but--city of fabulous riches."
The ingot was of virgin gold.

The bowlder on which Tarzan found himself lay well out
in the plain between the city and the distant cliffs he and his
black warriors had scaled the morning previous. To descend
its rough and precipitous face was a task of infinite labor
and considerable peril even to the ape-man; but at last he
felt the soft soil of the valley beneath his feet, and without
a backward glance at Opar he turned his face toward the
guardian cliffs, and at a rapid trot set off across the valley.

The sun was just rising as he gained the summit of the
flat mountain at the valley's western boundary. Far beneath
him he saw smoke arising above the tree-tops of the forest
at the base of the foothills.

"Man," he murmured. "And there were fifty who went
forth to track me down. Can it be they?"

Swiftly he descended the face of the cliff, and, dropping
into a narrow ravine which led down to the far forest, he
hastened onward in the direction of the smoke. Striking the
forest's edge about a quarter of a mile from the point at
which the slender column arose into the still air, he took to
the trees. Cautiously he approached until there suddenly
burst upon his view a rude BOMA, in the center of which,
squatted about their tiny fires, sat his fifty black Waziri.
He called to them in their own tongue:

"Arise, my children, and greet thy king!"

With exclamations of surprise and fear the warriors leaped
to their feet, scarcely knowing whether to flee or not.
Then Tarzan dropped lightly from an overhanging branch into
their midst. When they realized that it was indeed their
chief in the flesh, and no materialized spirit, they went mad
with joy.

"We were cowards, oh, Waziri," cried Busuli. "We ran
away and left you to your fate; but when our panic was
over we swore to return and save you, or at least take
revenge upon your murderers. We were but now preparing to
scale the heights once more and cross the desolate valley to
the terrible city."

"Have you seen fifty frightful men pass down from the
cliffs into this forest, my children?" asked Tarzan.

"Yes, Waziri," replied Busuli. "They passed us late yesterday,
as we were about to turn back after you. They had no woodcraft.
We heard them coming for a mile before we saw them, and as we
had other business in hand we withdrew into the forest and let
them pass. They were waddling rapidly along upon short legs,
and now and then one would go upon all fours like Bolgani,
the gorilla. They were indeed fifty frightful men, Waziri."

When Tarzan had related his adventures and told them
of the yellow metal he had found, not one demurred when
he outlined a plan to return by night and bring away what
they could carry of the vast treasure; and so it was that as
dusk fell across the desolate valley of Opar fifty ebon
warriors trailed at a smart trot over the dry and dusty
ground toward the giant bowlder that loomed before the city.

If it had seemed a difficult task to descend the face of
the bowlder, Tarzan soon found that it would be next to
impossible to get his fifty warriors to the summit. Finally the
feat was accomplished by dint of herculean efforts upon the
part of the ape-man. Ten spears were fastened end to end,
and with one end of this remarkable chain attached to his
waist, Tarzan at last succeeded in reaching the summit.

Once there, he drew up one of his blacks, and in this way
the entire party was finally landed in safety upon the
bowlder's top. Immediately Tarzan led them to the
treasure chamber, where to each was allotted a load of
two ingots, for each about eighty pounds.

By midnight the entire party stood once more at the
foot of the bowlder, but with their heavy loads it was mid-
forenoon ere they reached the summit of the cliffs.
From there on the homeward journey was slow, as these proud
fighting men were unaccustomed to the duties of porters.
But they bore their burdens uncomplainingly, and at the end
of thirty days entered their own country.

Here, instead of continuing on toward the northwest and
their village, Tarzan guided them almost directly west, until
on the morning of the thirty-third day he bade them break
camp and return to their own village, leaving the gold where
they had stacked it the previous night.

"And you, Waziri?" they asked.

"I shall remain here for a few days, my children," he replied.
"Now hasten back to thy wives and children."

When they had gone Tarzan gathered up two of the ingots
and, springing into a tree, ran lightly above the tangled and
impenetrable mass of undergrowth for a couple of hundred yards,
to emerge suddenly upon a circular clearing about which the
giants of the jungle forest towered like a guardian host.
In the center of this natural amphitheater, was a little
flat-topped mound of hard earth.

Hundreds of times before had Tarzan been to this secluded
spot, which was so densely surrounded by thorn bushes
and tangled vines and creepers of huge girth that
not even Sheeta, the leopard, could worm his sinuous way
within, nor Tantor, with his giant strength, force the
barriers which protected the council chamber of the great
apes from all but the harmless denizens of the savage jungle.

Fifty trips Tarzan made before he had deposited all the
ingots within the precincts of the amphitheater. Then from
the hollow of an ancient, lightning-blasted tree he produced
the very spade with which he had uncovered the chest of
Professor Archimedes Q. Porter which he had once, apelike,
buried in this selfsame spot. With this he dug a long trench,
into which he laid the fortune that his blacks had carried
from the forgotten treasure vaults of the city of Opar.

That night he slept within the amphitheater, and early the
next morning set out to revisit his cabin before returning to
his Waziri. Finding things as he had left them, he went
forth into the jungle to hunt, intending to bring his prey to
the cabin where he might feast in comfort, spending the
night upon a comfortable couch.

For five miles toward the south he roamed, toward the
banks of a fair-sized river that flowed into the sea about six
miles from his cabin. He had gone inland about half a mile
when there came suddenly to his trained nostrils the one
scent that sets the whole savage jungle aquiver--Tarzan
smelled man.

The wind was blowing off the ocean, so Tarzan knew that
the authors of the scent were west of him. Mixed with the
man scent was the scent of Numa. Man and lion.
"I had better hasten," thought the ape-man, for he had
recognized the scent of whites. "Numa may be a-hunting."

When he came through the trees to the edge of the jungle
he saw a woman kneeling in prayer, and before her stood a
wild, primitive-looking white man, his face buried in his arms.
Behind the man a mangy lion was advancing slowly toward this
easy prey. The man's face was averted; the woman's bowed
in prayer. He could not see the features of either.

Already Numa was about to spring. There was not a
second to spare. Tarzan could not even unsling his bow and
fit an arrow in time to send one of his deadly poisoned
shafts into the yellow hide. He was too far away to reach
the beast in time with his knife. There was but a single
hope--a lone alternative. And with the quickness of thought
the ape-man acted.

A brawny arm flew back--for the briefest fraction of an
instant a huge spear poised above the giant's shoulder--and
then the mighty arm shot out, and swift death tore through
the intervening leaves to bury itself in the heart of the
leaping lion. Without a sound he rolled over at the very
feet of his intended victims--dead.

For a moment neither the man nor the woman moved. Then the
latter opened her eyes to look with wonder upon the dead
beast behind her companion. As that beautiful head went
up Tarzan of the Apes gave a gasp of incredulous astonishment.
Was he mad? It could not be the woman he loved!
But, indeed, it was none other.

And the woman rose, and the man took her in his arms
to kiss her, and of a sudden the ape-man saw red through
a bloody mist of murder, and the old scar upon his
forehead burned scarlet against his brown hide.

There was a terrible expression upon his savage face as he
fitted a poisoned shaft to his bow. An ugly light gleamed
in those gray eyes as he sighted full at the back of the
unsuspecting man beneath him.

For an instant he glanced along the polished shaft,
drawing the bowstring far back, that the arrow might pierce
through the heart for which it was aimed.

But he did not release the fatal messenger. Slowly the
point of the arrow drooped; the scar upon the brown
forehead faded; the bowstring relaxed; and Tarzan of the Apes,
with bowed head, turned sadly into the jungle toward the
village of the Waziri.

Chapter 23

The Fifty Frightful Men

For several long minutes Jane Porter and William Cecil
Clayton stood silently looking at the dead body of the
beast whose prey they had so narrowly escaped becoming.

The girl was the first to speak again after her outbreak
of impulsive avowal.

"Who could it have been?" she whispered.

"God knows!" was the man's only reply.

"If it is a friend, why does he not show himself?"
continued Jane. "Wouldn't it be well to call out to him,
and at least thank him?"

Mechanically Clayton did her bidding, but there was no response.

Jane Porter shuddered. "The mysterious jungle," she murmured.
"The terrible jungle. It renders even the manifestations of
friendship terrifying."

"We had best return to the shelter," said Clayton. "You
will be at least a little safer there. I am no protection
whatever," he added bitterly.

"Do not say that, William," she hastened to urge, acutely
sorry for the wound her words had caused. "You have
done the best you could. You have been noble, and self-
sacrificing, and brave. It is no fault of yours that you are
not a superman. There is only one other man I have ever
known who could have done more than you. My words were
ill chosen in the excitement of the reaction--I did not wish
to wound you. All that I wish is that we may both understand
once and for all that I can never marry you--that such a
marriage would be wicked."

"I think I understand," he replied. "Let us not speak of
it again--at least until we are back in civilization."

The next day Thuran was worse. Almost constantly he was in
a state of delirium. They could do nothing to relieve him,
nor was Clayton over-anxious to attempt anything. On the
girl's account he feared the Russian--in the bottom
of his heart he hoped the man would die. The thought
that something might befall him that would leave her
entirely at the mercy of this beast caused him greater
anxiety than the probability that almost certain death
awaited her should she be left entirely alone upon the
outskirts of the cruel forest.

The Englishman had extracted the heavy spear from the body
of the lion, so that when he went into the forest to hunt
that morning he had a feeling of much greater security than
at any time since they had been cast upon the savage shore.
The result was that he penetrated farther from the shelter
than ever before.