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                          [Cover Illustration]

[Illustration: Standing above him was Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion]

                             TARZAN AND THE
                              GOLDEN LION

                                   BY

                          EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

                               AUTHOR OF

                           THE TARZAN BOOKS,
                            THE MARS BOOKS,
                            THE MUCKER, ETC.

                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                           J. ALLEN ST. JOHN

                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
                        PUBLISHERS     NEW YORK

                               Copyright
                          Edgar Rice Burroughs
                                  1923
                         Published March, 1923
                     _Copyrighted in Great Britain_

               _Printed in the United States of America_

                                CONTENTS

                       I The Golden Lion
                      II The Training of Jad-bal-ja
                     III A Meeting of Mystery
                      IV What the Footprints Told
                       V The Fatal Drops
                      VI Death Steals Behind
                     VII “You Must Sacrifice Him”
                    VIII Mystery of the Past
                      IX The Shaft of Death
                       X Mad Treachery
                      XI Strange Incense Burns
                     XII The Golden Ingots
                    XIII A Strange, Flat Tower
                     XIV The Chamber of Horrors
                      XV The Map of Blood
                     XVI The Diamond Hoard
                    XVII The Torture of Fire
                   XVIII The Spoor of Revenge
                     XIX A Barbed Shaft Kills
                      XX The Dead Return
                     XXI An Escape and a Capture

                             ILLUSTRATIONS

              Standing above him was Jad-bal-ja, the Golden
                Lion

              He caught the little lion by the scruff of
                its neck

              Before him was the body of a giant anthropoid

              “Upon the third day Tarzan shall die beneath
                my knife”

              Tarzan saw a white man, bald and old and
                shriveled with a long white beard

              The Golden Lion with two mighty bounds was
                upon the High Priest

              Hunting together, the man and the great lion
                trod the paths toward home

              With a cry of terror the Spaniard dived into
                the river

                       Tarzan and the Golden Lion

                               CHAPTER I
                            THE GOLDEN LION

SABOR, the lioness, suckled her young—a single fuzzy ball, spotted like
Sheeta, the leopard. She lay in the warm sunshine before the rocky
cavern that was her lair, stretched out upon her side with half closed
eyes, yet Sabor was alert. There had been three of these little, fuzzy
balls at first—two daughters and a son—and Sabor and Numa, their sire,
had been proud of them; proud and happy. But kills had not been
plentiful, and Sabor, undernourished, had been unable to produce
sufficient milk to nourish properly three lusty cubs, and then a cold
rain had come, and the little ones had sickened. Only the strongest
survived—the two daughters had died. Sabor had mourned, pacing to and
fro beside the pitiful bits of bedraggled fur, whining and moaning. Now
and again she would nose them with her muzzle as though she would awaken
them from the long sleep that knows no waking. At last, however, she
abandoned her efforts, and now her whole savage heart was filled with
concern for the little male cub that remained to her. That was why Sabor
was more alert than usual.

Numa, the lion, was away. Two nights before he had made a kill and
dragged it to their lair and last night he had fared forth again, but he
had not returned. Sabor was thinking, as she half dozed, of Wappi, the
plump antelope, that her splendid mate might this very minute be
dragging through the tangled jungle to her. Or perhaps it would be
Pacco, the zebra, whose flesh was the best beloved of her kind—juicy,
succulent Pacco. Sabor’s mouth watered.

Ah, what was that? The shadow of a sound had come to those keen ears.
She raised her head, cocking it first upon one side and then the other,
as with up-pricked ears she sought to catch the faintest repetition of
that which had disturbed her. Her nose sniffed the air. There was but
the suggestion of a breeze, but what there was moved toward her from the
direction of the sound she had heard, and which she still heard in a
slightly increasing volume that told her that whatever was making it was
approaching her. As it drew closer the beast’s nervousness increased and
she rolled over on her belly, shutting off the milk supply from the cub,
which vented its disapproval in miniature growls until a low, querulous
whine from the lioness silenced him, then he stood at her side, looking
first at her and then in the direction toward which she looked, cocking
his little head first on one side and then on the other.

Evidently there was a disturbing quality in the sound that Sabor
heard—something that inspired a certain restlessness, if not actual
apprehension—though she could not be sure as yet that it boded ill. It
might be her great lord returning, but it did not sound like the
movement of a lion, certainly not like a lion dragging a heavy kill. She
glanced at her cub, breathing as she did so a plaintive whine. There was
always the fear that some danger menaced him—this last of her little
family—but she, Sabor the lioness, was there to defend him.

Presently the breeze brought to her nostrils the scent spoor of the
thing that moved toward her through the jungle. Instantly the troubled
mother-face was metamorphosed into a bare-fanged, glittering-eyed mask
of savage rage, for the scent that had come up to her through the jungle
was the hated man-scent. She rose to her feet, her head flattened, her
sinuous tail twitching nervously. Through that strange medium by which
animals communicate with one another she cautioned her cub to lie down
and remain where he was until she returned, then she moved rapidly and
silently to meet the intruder.

The cub had heard what its mother heard and now he caught the smell of
man—an unfamiliar smell that had never impinged upon his nostrils
before, yet a smell that he knew at once for that of an enemy—a smell
that brought a reaction as typical as that which marked the attitude of
the grown lioness, bringing the hairs along his little spine erect and
baring his tiny fangs. As the adult moved quickly and stealthily into
the underbrush the small cub, ignoring her injunction, followed after
her, his hind quarters wobbling from side to side, after the manner of
the very young of his kind, the ridiculous gait comporting ill with the
dignified bearing of his fore quarters; but the lioness, intent upon
that which lay before her, did not know that he followed her.

There was dense jungle before the two for a hundred yards, but through
it the lions had worn a tunnel-like path to their lair; and then there
was a small clearing through which ran a well-worn jungle trail, out of
the jungle at one end of the clearing and into the jungle again at the
other. As Sabor reached the clearing she saw the object of her fear and
hatred well within it. What if the man-thing were not hunting her or
hers? What if he even dreamed not of their presence? These facts were as
nothing to Sabor, the lioness, today. Ordinarily she would have let him
pass unmolested, so long as he did not come close enough to threaten the
safety of her cub; or, cubless, she would have slunk away at the first
intimation of his approach. But today the lioness was nervous and
fearful—fearful because of the single cub that remained to her—her
maternal instincts centered threefold, perhaps, upon this lone and
triply loved survivor—and so she did not wait for the man to threaten
the safety of her little one; but instead she moved to meet him and to
stop him. From the soft mother she had become a terrifying creature of
destruction, her brain obsessed by a single thought—to kill.

She did not hesitate an instant at the edge of the clearing, nor did she
give the slightest warning. The first intimation that the black warrior
had that there was a lion within twenty miles of him, was the terrifying
apparition of this devil-faced cat charging across the clearing toward
him with the speed of an arrow. The black was not searching for lions.
Had he known that there was one near he would have given it a wide
berth. He would have fled now had there been anywhere to flee. The
nearest tree was farther from him than was the lioness. She could
overhaul him before he would have covered a quarter of the distance.
There was no hope and there was only one thing to do. The beast was
almost upon him and behind her he saw a tiny cub. The man bore a heavy
spear. He carried it far back with his right hand and hurled it at the
very instant that Sabor rose to seize him. The spear passed through the
savage heart and almost simultaneously the giant jaws closed upon the
face and skull of the warrior. The momentum of the lioness carried the
two heavily to the ground, dead except for a few spasmodic twitchings of
their muscles.

The orphaned cub stopped twenty feet away and surveyed the first great
catastrophe of his life with questioning eyes. He wanted to approach his
dam but a natural fear of the man-scent held him away. Presently he
commenced to whine in a tone that always brought his mother to him
hurriedly; but this time she did not come—she did not even rise and
look toward him. He was puzzled—he could not understand it. He
continued to cry, feeling all the while more sad and more lonely.
Gradually he crept closer to his mother. He saw that the strange
creature she had killed did not move and after a while he felt less
terror of it, so that at last he found the courage to come quite close
to his mother and sniff at her. He still whined to her, but she did not
answer. It dawned on him at last that there was something wrong—that
his great, beautiful mother was not as she had been—a change had come
over her; yet still he clung to her, crying much until at last he fell
asleep, cuddled close to her dead body.

It was thus that Tarzan found him—Tarzan and Jane, his wife, and their
son, Korak the Killer, returning from the mysterious land of Pal-ul-don
from which the two men had rescued Jane Clayton. At the sound of their
approach the cub opened his eyes and rising, flattened his ears and
snarled at them, backing close against his dead mother. At sight of him
the ape-man smiled.

“Plucky little devil,” he commented, taking in the story of the tragedy
at a single glance. He approached the spitting cub, expecting it to turn
and run away; but it did nothing of the sort. Instead it snarled more
ferociously and struck at his extended hand as he stooped and reached
for it.

“What a brave little fellow,” cried Jane. “Poor little orphan!”

“He’s going to make a great lion, or he would have if his dam had
lived,” said Korak. “Look at that back—as straight and strong as a
spear. Too bad the rascal has got to die.”

“He doesn’t have to die,” returned Tarzan.

“There’s not much chance for him—he’ll need milk for a couple of months
more, and who’s going to get it for him?”

“I am,” replied Tarzan.

“You’re going to adopt him?”

Tarzan nodded.

Korak and Jane laughed. “That’ll be fine,” commented the former.

“Lord Greystoke, foster mother to the son of Numa,” laughed Jane.

Tarzan smiled with them, but he did not cease his attentions toward the
cub. Reaching out suddenly he caught the little lion by the scruff of
its neck and then stroking it gently he talked to it in a low, crooning
tone. I do not know what he said; but perhaps the cub did, for presently
it ceased its struggles and no longer sought to scratch or bite the
caressing hand. After that he picked it up and held it against his
breast. It did not seem afraid now, nor did it even bare its fangs
against this close proximity to the erstwhile hated man-scent.

“How do you do it?” exclaimed Jane Clayton.

Tarzan shrugged his broad shoulders. “Your kind are not afraid of
you—these are really my kind, try to civilize me as you will, and
perhaps that is why they are not afraid of me when I give them the signs
of friendship. Even this little rascal seems to know it, doesn’t he?”

“I can never understand it,” commented Korak. “I think I am rather
familiar with African animals, yet I haven’t the power over them or the
understanding that you have. Why is it?”

“There is but one Tarzan,” said Lady Greystoke, smiling at her son
teasingly, and yet her tone was not without a note of pride.

“Remember that I was born among beasts and, raised by beasts,” Tarzan
reminded him. “Perhaps after all my father was an ape—you know Kala
always insisted that he was.”

“John! How can you?” exclaimed Jane. “You know perfectly well who your
father and mother were.”

Tarzan looked solemnly at his son and closed, one eye. “Your mother
never can learn to appreciate the fine qualities of the anthropoids. One
might almost think that she objected to the suggestion that she had
mated with one of them.”

“John Clayton, I shall never speak to you again if you don’t stop saying
such hideous things. I am ashamed of you. It is bad enough that you are
an unregenerate wild-man, without trying to suggest that you may be an
ape into the bargain.”

The long journey from Pal-ul-don was almost completed—inside the week
they should be again at the site of their former home. Whether anything
now remained of the ruins the Germans had left was problematical. The
barns and outhouses had all been burned and the interior of the bungalow
partially wrecked. Those of the Waziri, the faithful native retainers of
the Greystokes, who had not been killed by Hauptman Fritz Schneider’s
soldiers, had rallied to the beat of the war-drum and gone to place
themselves at the disposal of the English in whatever capacity they
might be found useful to the great cause of humanity. This much Tarzan
had known before he set out in search of Lady Jane; but how many of his
warlike Waziri had survived the war and what further had befallen his
vast estates he did not know. Wandering tribes of natives, or raiding
bands of Arab slavers might have completed the demolition inaugurated by
the Hun, and it was likely, too, that the jungle had swept up and
reclaimed its own, covering his clearings and burying amidst its riot of
lush verdure every sign of man’s brief trespass upon its world-old
preserves.

Following the adoption of the tiny Numa, Tarzan was compelled to an
immediate consideration of the needs of his _protégé_ in planning his
marches and his halts, for the cub must have sustenance and that
sustenance could be naught but milk. Lion’s milk was out of the
question, but fortunately they were now in a comparatively well peopled
country where villages were not infrequent and where the great Lord of
the Jungle was known, feared, and respected, and so it was that upon the
afternoon of the day he had found the young lion Tarzan approached a
village for the purpose of obtaining milk for the cub.

At first the natives appeared sullen and indifferent, looking with
contempt upon whites who traveled without a large safari—with contempt
and without fear. With no safari these strangers could carry no presents
for them, nor anything wherewith to repay for the food they would
doubtless desire, and with no askari they could not demand food, or
rather they could not enforce an order, nor could they protect
themselves should it seem worth while to molest them. Sullen and
indifferent the natives seemed, yet they were scarce unconcerned, their
curiosity being aroused by the unusual apparel and ornamentation of
these whites. They saw them almost as naked as themselves and armed
similarly except that one, the younger man, carried a rifle. All three
wore the trappings of Pal-ul-don, primitive and barbaric, and entirely
strange to the eyes of the simple blacks.

“Where is your chief?” asked Tarzan as he strode into the village
amongst the women, the children, and the yapping dogs.

A few dozing warriors rose from the shadows of the huts where they had
been lying and approached the newcomers.

“The chief sleeps,” replied one. “Who are you to awaken him? What do you
want?”

“I wish to speak to your chief. Go and fetch him!”

The warrior looked at him in wide-eyed amaze, and then broke into a loud
laugh.

“The chief must be brought to him,” he cried, addressing his fellows,
and then, laughing loudly, he slapped his thigh and nudged those nearest
him with his elbows.

“Tell him,” continued the ape-man, “that Tarzan would speak with him.”

Instantly the attitude of his auditors underwent a remarkable
transformation—they fell back from him and they ceased laughing—their
eyes very wide and round. He who had laughed loudest became suddenly
solemn. “Bring mats,” he cried, “for Tarzan and his people to sit upon,
while I fetch Umanga the chief,” and off he ran as fast as he could as
though glad of the excuse to escape the presence of the mighty one he
feared he had offended.

It made no difference now that they had no safari, no askari, nor any
presents. The villagers were vying with one another to do them honor.
Even before the chief came many had already brought presents of food and
ornaments. Presently Umanga appeared. He was an old man who had been a
chief even before Tarzan of the Apes was born. His manner was
patriarchal and dignified and he greeted his guest as one great man
might greet another, yet he was undeniably pleased that the Lord of the
Jungle had honored his village with a visit.

When Tarzan explained his wishes and exhibited the lion cub Umanga
assured him that there would be milk a-plenty so long as Tarzan honored
them with his presence—warm milk, fresh from the chief’s own goats. As
they palavered the ape-man’s keen eyes took in every detail of the
village and its people, and presently they alighted upon a large bitch
among the numerous curs that overran the huts and the street. Her udder
was swollen with milk and the sight of it suggested a plan to Tarzan. He
jerked a thumb in the direction of the animal. “I would buy her,” he
said to Umanga.

“She is yours, Bwana, without payment,” replied the chief. “She whelped
two days since and last night her pups were all stolen from her nest,
doubtless by a great snake; but if you will accept them I will give you
instead as many younger and fatter dogs as you wish, for I am sure that
this one would prove poor eating.”

“I do not wish to eat her,” replied Tarzan. “I will take her along with
me to furnish milk for the cub. Have her brought to me.”

Some boys then caught the animal and tying a thong about its neck
dragged it to the ape-man. Like the lion, the dog was at first afraid,
for the scent of the Tarmangani was not as the scent of the blacks, and
it snarled and snapped at its new master; but at length he won the
animal’s confidence so that it lay quietly beside him while he stroked
its head. To get the lion close to it was, however, another matter, for
here both were terrified by the enemy scent of the other—the lion
snarling and spitting and the dog bare-fanged and growling. It required
patience—infinite patience—but at last the thing was an accomplished
fact and the cur bitch suckled the son of Numa. Hunger had succeeded in
overcoming the natural suspicion of the lion, while the firm yet kindly
attitude of the ape-man had won the confidence of the canine, which had
been accustomed through life to more of cuffs and kicks than kindness.

That night Tarzan had the dog tied in the hut he occupied, and twice
before morning he made her lie while the cub fed. The next day they took
leave of Umanga and his people and with the dog still upon a leash
trotting beside them they set off once more toward home, the young lion
cuddled in the hollow of one of Tarzan’s arms or carried in a sack slung
across his shoulder.

They named the lion Jad-bal-ja, which in the language of the
pithecanthropi of Pal-ul-don, means the Golden Lion, because of his
color. Every day he became more accustomed to them and to his foster
mother, who finally came to accept him as flesh of her flesh. The bitch
they called Za, meaning girl. The second day they removed her leash and
she followed them willingly through the jungle, nor ever after did she
seek to leave them, nor was happy unless she was near one of the three.

As the moment approached when the trail should break from the jungle
onto the edge of the rolling plain where their home had been, the three
were filled with suppressed excitement, though none uttered a syllable
of the hope and fear that was in the heart of each. What would they
find? What _could_ they find other than the same tangled mass of
vegetation that the ape-man had cleared away to build his home when
first he had come there with his bride?

At last they stepped from the concealing verdure of the forest to look
out across the plain where, in the distance, the outlines of the
bungalow had once been clearly discernible nestled amidst the trees and
shrubs that had been retained or imported to beautify the grounds.

“Look!” cried Lady Jane. “It is there—it is still there!”

“But what are those other things to the left, beyond it?” asked Korak.

“They are the huts of natives,” replied Tarzan.

“The fields are being cultivated!” exclaimed the woman.

“And some of the outbuildings have been rebuilt,” said Tarzan. “It can
mean but one thing—the Waziri have come back from the war—my faithful
Waziri. They have restored what the Hun destroyed and are watching over
our home until we return.”

[Illustration: He caught the little lion by the scruff of its neck]

                               CHAPTER II
                       THE TRAINING OF JAD-BAL-JA

AND so Tarzan of the Apes, and Jane Clayton, and Korak came home after a
long absence and with them came Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion, and Za, the
bitch. Among the first to meet them and to welcome them home was old
Muviro, father of Wasimbu, who had given his life in defense of the home
and wife of the ape-man.

“Ah, Bwana,” cried the faithful black, “my old eyes are made young again
by the sight of you. It has been long that you have been gone, but
though many doubted that you would return, old Muviro knew that the
great world held nothing that might overcome his master. And so he knew,
too, that his master would return to the home of his love and the land
where his faithful Waziri awaited him; but that she, whom we have
mourned as dead, should have returned is beyond belief, and great shall
be the rejoicing in the huts of the Waziri tonight. And the earth shall
tremble to the dancing feet of the warriors and the heavens ring with
the glad cries of their women, since the three they love most on earth
have come back to them.”

And in truth, great indeed was the rejoicing in the huts of the Waziri.
And not for one night alone, but for many nights did the dancing and the
rejoicing continue until Tarzan was compelled to put a stop to the
festivities that he and his family might gain a few hours of unbroken
slumber. The ape-man found that not only had his faithful Waziri, under
the equally faithful guidance of his English foreman, Jervis, completely
rehabilitated his stables, corrals, and outbuildings as well as the
native huts, but had restored the interior of the bungalow, so that in
all outward appearances the place was precisely as it had been before
the raid of the Germans.

Jervis was at Nairobi on the business of the estate, and it was some
days after their arrival that he returned to the ranch. His surprise and
happiness were no less genuine than those of the Waziri. With the chief
and warriors he sat for hours at the feet of the Big Bwana, listening to
an account of the strange land of Pal-ul-don and the adventures that had
befallen the three during Lady Greystoke’s captivity there, and with the
Waziri he marveled at the queer pets the ape-man had brought back with
him. That Tarzan might have fancied a mongrel native cur was strange
enough, but that he should have adopted a cub of his hereditary enemies,
Numa and Sabor, seemed beyond all belief. And equally surprising to them
all was the manner of Tarzan’s education of the cub.

The golden lion and his foster mother occupied a corner of the ape-man’s
bedroom, and many was the hour each day that he spent in training and
educating the little spotted, yellow ball—all playfulness and affection
now, but one day to grow into a great, savage beast of prey.

As the days passed and the golden lion grew, Tarzan taught it many
tricks—to fetch and carry, to lie motionless in hiding at his almost
inaudible word of command, to move from point to point as he indicated,
to hunt for hidden things by scent and to retrieve them, and when meat
was added to its diet he fed it always in a way that brought grim smiles
to the savage lips of the Waziri warriors, for Tarzan had built for him
a dummy in the semblance of a man and the meat that the lion was to eat
was fastened always at the throat of the dummy. Never did the manner of
feeding vary. At a word from the ape-man the golden lion would crouch,
belly to the ground, and then Tarzan would point at the dummy and
whisper the single word “kill.” However hungry he might be, the lion
learned never to move toward his meat until that single word had been
uttered by its master; and then with a rush and a savage growl it drove
straight for the flesh. While it was little it had difficulty at first
in clambering up the dummy to the savory morsel fastened at the figure’s
throat, but as it grew older and larger it gained the objective more
easily, and finally a single leap would carry it to its goal and down
would go the dummy upon its back with the young lion tearing at its
throat.

There was one lesson that, of all the others, was most difficult to
learn and it is doubtful that any other than Tarzan of the Apes, reared
by beasts, among beasts, could have overcome the savage blood-lust of
the carnivore and rendered his natural instinct subservient to the will
of his master. It took weeks and months of patient endeavor to
accomplish this single item of the lion’s education, which consisted in
teaching him that at the word “fetch” he must find any indicated object
and return with it to his master, even the dummy with raw meat tied at
its throat, and that he must not touch the meat nor harm the dummy nor
any other article that he was fetching, but place them carefully at the
ape-man’s feet. Afterward he learned always to be sure of his reward,
which usually consisted in a double portion of the meat that he loved
best.

Lady Greystoke and Korak were often interested spectators of the
education of the golden lion, though the former expressed mystification
as to the purpose of such elaborate training of the young cub and some
misgivings as to the wisdom of the ape-man’s program.

“What in the world can you do with such a brute after he is grown?” she
asked. “He bids fair to be a mighty Numa. Being accustomed to men he
will be utterly fearless of them, and having fed always at the throat of
a dummy he will look there at the throat of living men for his food
hereafter.”

“He will feed only upon what I tell him to feed,” replied the ape-man.

“But you do not expect him to feed always upon men?” she interrogated,
laughingly.

“He will never feed upon men.”

“But how can you prevent it, having taught him from cubhood always to
feed upon men?”

“I am afraid, Jane, that you under-estimate the intelligence of a lion,
or else I very much over-estimate it. If your theory is correct the
hardest part of my work is yet before me, but if I am right it is
practically complete now. However, we will experiment a bit and see
which is right. We shall take Jad-bal-ja out upon the plain with us this
afternoon. Game is plentiful and we shall have no difficulty in
ascertaining just how much control I have over young Numa after all.”

“I’ll wager a hundred pounds,” said Korak, laughing, “that he does just
what he jolly well pleases after he gets a taste of live blood.”

“You’re on, my son,” said the ape-man. “I think I am going to show you
and your mother this afternoon what you or anyone else never dreamed
could be accomplished.”

“Lord Greystoke, the world’s premier animal trainer!” cried Lady
Greystoke, and Tarzan joined them in their laughter.

“It is not animal training,” said the ape-man. “The plan upon which I
work would be impossible to anyone but Tarzan of the Apes. Let us take a
hypothetical case to illustrate what I mean. There comes to you some
creature whom you hate, whom by instinct and heredity you consider a
deadly enemy. You are afraid of him. You understand no word that he
speaks. Finally, by means sometimes brutal he impresses upon your mind
his wishes. You may do the thing he wants, but do you do it with a
spirit of unselfish loyalty? You do not—you do it under compulsion,
hating the creature that forces his will upon you. At any moment that
you felt it was in your power to do so, you would disobey him. You would
even go further—you would turn upon him and destroy him. On the other
hand, there comes to you one with whom you are familiar; he is a friend,
a protector. He understands and speaks the language that you understand
and speak. He has fed you, he has gained your confidence by kindness and
protection, he asks you to do something for him. Do you refuse? No, you
obey willingly. It is thus that the golden lion will obey me.”

“As long as it suits his purpose to do so,” commented Korak.

“Let me go a step farther then,” said the ape-man. “Suppose that this
creature, whom you love and obey, has the power to punish, even to kill
you, if it is necessary so to do to enforce his commands. How then about
your obedience?”

“We’ll see,” said Korak, “how easily the golden lion will make one
hundred pounds for me.”

That afternoon they set out across the plain, Jad-bal-ja following
Tarzan’s horse’s heels. They dismounted at a little clump of trees some
distance from the bungalow and from there proceeded onward warily toward
a swale in which antelopes were usually to be found, moving up which
they came cautiously to the heavy brush that bordered the swale upon
their side. There was Tarzan, Jane, and Korak, and close beside Tarzan
the golden lion—four jungle hunters—and of the four Jad-bal-ja, the
lion, was the least accomplished. Stealthily they crawled through the
brush, scarce a leaf rustling to their passage, until at last they
looked down into the swale upon a small herd of antelope grazing
peacefully below. Closest to them was an old buck, and him Tarzan
pointed out in some mysterious manner to Jad-bal-ja.

“Fetch him,” he whispered, and the golden lion rumbled a scarce audible
acknowledgment of the command.

Stealthily he worked his way through the brush. The antelopes fed on,
unsuspecting. The distance separating the lion from his prey was over
great for a successful charge, and so Jad-bal-ja waited, hiding in the
brush, until the antelope should either graze closer to him or turn its
back toward him. No sound came from the four watching the grazing
herbivora, nor did the latter give any indication of a suspicion of the
nearness of danger. The old buck moved slowly closer to Jad-bal-ja.
Almost imperceptibly the lion was gathering for the charge. The only
noticeable movement was the twitching of his tail’s tip, and then, as
lightning from the sky, as an arrow from a bow, he shot from immobility
to tremendous speed in an instant. He was almost upon the buck before
the latter realized the proximity of danger, and then it was too late,
for scarcely had the antelope wheeled than the lion rose upon its hind
legs and seized it, while the balance of the herd broke into precipitate
flight.

“Now,” said Korak, “we shall see.”

“He will bring the antelope to me,” said Tarzan confidently.

The golden lion hesitated a moment, growling over the carcass of his
kill. Then he seized it by the back and with his head turned to one side
dragged it along the ground beside him, as he made his way slowly back
toward Tarzan. Through the brush he dragged the slain antelope until he
had dropped it at the feet of his master, where he stood, looking up at
the face of the ape-man with an expression that could not have been
construed into aught but pride in his achievement and a plea for
commendation.

Tarzan stroked his head and spoke to him in a low voice, praising him,
and then, drawing his hunting knife, he cut the jugular of the antelope
and let the blood from the carcass. Jane and Korak stood close, watching
Jad-bal-ja—what would the lion do with the smell of fresh, hot blood in
his nostrils? He sniffed at it and growled, and with bared fangs he eyed
the three wickedly. The ape-man pushed him away with his open palm and
the lion growled again angrily and snapped at him.

Quick is Numa, quick is Bara, the deer, but Tarzan of the Apes is
lightning. So swiftly did he strike, and so heavily, that Jad-bal-ja was
falling on his back almost in the very instant that he had growled at
his master. Swiftly he came to his feet again and the two stood facing
one another.

“Down!” commanded the ape-man. “Lie down, Jad-bal-ja!” His voice was low
and firm. The lion hesitated but for an instant, and then lay down as
Tarzan of the Apes had taught him to do at the word of command. Tarzan
turned and lifted the carcass of the antelope to his shoulder.

“Come,” he said to Jad-bal-ja. “Heel!” and without another glance at the
carnivore he moved off toward the horses.

“I might have known it,” said Korak, with a laugh, “and saved my hundred
pounds.”

“Of course you might have known it,” said his mother.

                          A MEETING OF MYSTERY

A RATHER attractive-looking, though overdressed, young woman was dining
in a second-rate chop-house in London. She was noticeable, not so much
for her fine figure and coarsely beautiful face as for the size and
appearance of her companion, a large, well-proportioned man in the
mid-twenties, with such a tremendous beard that it gave him the
appearance of hiding in ambush. He stood fully three inches over six
feet. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and his hips narrow. His
physique, his carriage, everything about him, suggested indubitably the
trained athlete.

The two were in close conversation, a conversation that occasionally
gave every evidence of bordering upon heated argument.

“I tell you,” said the man, “that I do not see what we need of the
others. Why should they share with us—why divide into six portions that
which you and I might have alone?”

“It takes money to carry the plan through,” she replied, “and neither
you nor I have any money. _They_ have it and they will back us with
it—me for my knowledge and you for your appearance and your strength.
They searched for you, Esteban, for two years, and, now that they have
found you, I should not care to be in your shoes if you betrayed them.
They would just as soon slit your throat as not, Esteban, if they no
more than thought they couldn’t use you, now that you have all the
details of their plan. But if you should try to take all the profit from
them—” She paused, shrugging her shoulders. “No, my dear, I love life
too well to join you in any such conspiracy as that.”

“But I tell you, Flora, we ought to get more out of it than they want to
give. You furnish all the knowledge and I take all the risk—why
shouldn’t we have more than a sixth apiece?”

“Talk to them yourself, then, Esteban,” said the girl, with a shrug,
“but if you will take my advice you will be satisfied with what you are
offered. Not only have I the information, without which they can do
nothing, but I found you into the bargain, yet I do not ask it all—I
shall be perfectly satisfied with one-sixth, and I can assure you that
if you do not muddle the thing, one-sixth of what you bring out will be
enough for any one of us for the rest of his natural life.”

The man did not seem convinced, and the young woman had a feeling that
he would bear watching. Really, she knew very little about him, and had
seen him in person only a few times since her first discovery of him
some two months before, upon the screen of a London cinema house in a
spectacular feature in which he had played the rôle of a Roman soldier
of the Pretorian Guard.

Here his heroic size and perfect physique had alone entitled him to
consideration, for his part was a minor one, and doubtless of all the
thousands who saw him upon the silver sheet Flora Hawkes was the only
one who took more than a passing interest in him, and her interest was
aroused, not by his histrionic ability, but rather because for some two
years she and her confederates had been searching for such a type as
Esteban Miranda so admirably represented. To find him in the flesh bade
fair to prove difficult of accomplishment, but after a month of
seemingly fruitless searching she finally discovered him among a score
of extra men at the studio of one of London’s lesser producing
companies. She needed no other credentials than her good looks to form
his acquaintance, and while that was ripening into intimacy she made no
mention to him of the real purpose of her association with him.

That he was a Spaniard and apparently of good family was evident to her,
and that he was unscrupulous was to be guessed by the celerity with
which he agreed to take part in the shady transaction that had been
conceived in the mind of Flora Hawkes, and the details of which had been
perfected by her and her four confederates. So, therefore, knowing that
he was unscrupulous, she was aware that every precaution must be taken
to prevent him taking advantage of the knowledge of their plan that he
must one day have in detail, the key to which she, up to the present
moment, had kept entirely to herself, not even confiding it to any one
of her four other confederates.

They sat for a moment in silence, toying with the empty glasses from
which they had been drinking. Presently she looked up to find his gaze
fixed upon her and an expression in his eyes that even a less
sophisticated woman than Flora Hawkes might readily have interpreted.

“You can make me do anything you want, Flora,” he said, “for when I am
with you I forget the gold, and think only of that other reward which
you continually deny me, but which one day I shall win.”

“Love and business do not mix well,” replied the girl. “Wait until you
have succeeded in this work, Esteban, and then we may talk of love.”

“You do not love me,” he whispered, hoarsely. “I know—I have seen—that
each of the others loves you. That is why I could hate them. And if I
thought that you loved one of them, I could cut his heart out. Sometimes
I have thought that you did—first one of them and then another. You are
too familiar with them, Flora. I have seen John Peebles squeeze your
hand when he thought no one was looking, and when you dance with Dick
Throck he holds you too close and you dance cheek to cheek. I tell you I
do not like it, Flora, and one of these days I shall forget all about
the gold and think only of you, and then something will happen and there
will not be so many to divide the ingots that I shall bring back from
Africa. And Bluber and Kraski are almost as bad; perhaps Kraski is the
worst of all, for he is a good-looking devil and I do not like the way
in which you cast sheep’s eyes at him.”

The fire of growing anger was leaping to the girl’s eyes. With an angry
gesture she silenced him.

“What business is it of yours, _Señor_ Miranda, who I choose for my
friends, or how I treat them or how they treat me? I will have you
understand that I have known these men for years, while I have known you
for but a few weeks, and if any has a right to dictate my behavior,
which, thank God, none has, it would be one of them rather than you.”

His eyes blazed angrily.

“It is as I thought!” he cried. “You love one of them.” He half rose
from the table and leaned across it toward her, menacingly. “Just let me
find out which one it is and I will cut him into pieces!”

He ran his fingers through his long, black hair until it stood up on end
like the mane of an angry lion. His eyes were blazing with a light that
sent a chill of dread through the girl’s heart. He appeared a man
temporarily bereft of reason—if he were not a maniac he most certainly
looked one, and the girl was afraid and realized that she must placate
him.

“Come, come, Esteban,” she whispered softly, “there is no need for
working yourself into a towering rage over nothing. I have not said that
I loved one of these, nor have I said that I do not love you, but I am
not used to being wooed in such fashion. Perhaps your Spanish
_señoritas_ like it, but I am an English girl and if you love me treat
me as an English lover would treat me.”

“You have not said that you loved one of these others—no, but on the
other hand you have not said that you do not love one of them—tell me,
Flora, which one of them is it that you love?”

His eyes were still blazing, and his great frame trembling with
suppressed passion.

“I do not love any of them, Esteban,” she replied, “nor, as yet, do I
love you. But I could, Esteban, that much I will tell you. I could love
you, Esteban, as I could never love another, but I shall not permit
myself to do so until after you have returned and we are free to live
where and how we like. Then, maybe—but, even so, I do not promise.”

“You had better promise,” he said, sullenly, though evidently somewhat
mollified. “You had better promise, Flora, for I care nothing for the
gold if I may not have you also.”

“Hush,” she cautioned, “here they come now, and it is about time; they
are fully a half-hour late.”

The man turned his eyes in the direction of her gaze, and the two sat
watching the approach of four men who had just entered the chop-house.
Two of them were evidently Englishmen—big, meaty fellows of the middle
class, who looked what they really were, former pugilists; the third,
Adolph Bluber, was a short, fat German, with a round, red face and a
bull neck; the other, the youngest of the four, was by far the best
looking. His smooth face, clear complexion, and large dark eyes might of
themselves have proven sufficient grounds for Miranda’s jealousy, but
supplementing these were a mop of wavy, brown hair, the figure of a
Greek god and the grace of a Russian dancer, which, in truth, was what
Carl Kraski was when he chose to be other than a rogue.

The girl greeted the four pleasantly, while the Spaniard vouchsafed them
but a single, surly nod, as they found chairs and seated themselves at
the table.

“Hale!” cried Peebles, pounding the table to attract the attention of a
waiter, “let us ’ave hale.”

The suggestion met with unanimous approval, and as they waited for their
drink they spoke casually of unimportant things; the heat, the
circumstance that had delayed them, the trivial occurrences since they
had last met; throughout which Esteban sat in sullen silence, but after
the waiter had returned and they drank to Flora, with which ceremony it
had long been their custom to signalize each gathering, they got down to
business.

“Now,” cried Peebles, pounding the table with his meaty fist, “’ere we
are, and that’s that! We ’ave everything, Flora—the plans, the money,
_Señor_ Miranda—and are jolly well ready, old dear, for your part of
it.”

“How much money have you?” asked Flora. “It is going to take a lot of
money, and there is no use starting unless you have plenty to carry on
with.”

Peebles turned to Bluber. “There,” he said, pointing a pudgy finger at
him, “is the bloomin’ treasurer. ’E can tell you ’ow much we ’ave, the
fat rascal of a Dutchman.”

Bluber smiled an oily smile and rubbed his fat palms together. “Vell,”
he said, “how much you t’ink, Miss Flora, ve should have?”

“Not less than two thousand pounds to be on the safe side,” she replied
quickly.

“_Oi! Oi!_” exclaimed Bluber. “But dot is a lot of money—two t’ousand
pounds. _Oi! Oi!_”

The girl made a gesture of disgust. “I told you in the first place that
I wouldn’t have anything to do with a bunch of cheap screws, and that
until you had enough money to carry the thing out properly I would not
give you the maps and directions, without which you cannot hope to reach
the vaults, where there is stored enough gold to buy this whole, tight,
little island if half that what I have heard them say about it is true.
You can go along and spend your own money, but you’ve got to show me
that you have at least two thousand pounds to spend before I give up the
information that will make you the richest men in the world.”

“The blighter’s got the money,” growled Throck. “Blime if I know what
he’s beefin’ about.”

“He can’t help it,” growled the Russian, “it’s a racial characteristic;
Bluber would try to jew down the marriage license clerk if he were going
to get married.”

“Oh, vell,” sighed Bluber, “for vy should we spend more money than is
necessary? If ve can do it for vone t’ousand pounds so much the better.”

“Certainly,” snapped the girl, “and if it don’t take but one thousand,
that is all that you will have to spend, but you’ve got to have the two
thousand in case of emergencies, and from what I have seen of that
country you are likely to run up against more emergencies than anything
else.

“_Oi! Oi!_” cried Bluber.

“’E’s got the money all right,” said Peebles, “now let’s get busy.”

“He may have it, but I want to see it first,” replied the girl.

“Vat you t’ink; I carry all dot money around in my pocket?” cried
Bluber.

“Can’t you take our word for it?” grumbled Throck.

“You’re a nice bunch of crooks to ask me that,” she replied, laughing in
the face of the burly ruffians. “I’ll take Carl’s word for it, though;
if he tells me that you have it, and that it is in such shape that it
can, and will, be used to pay all the necessary expenses of our
expedition, I will believe him.”

Peebles and Throck scowled angrily, and Miranda’s eyes closed to two
narrow, nasty slits, as he directed his gaze upon the Russian. Bluber,
on the contrary, was affected not at all; the more he was insulted, the
better, apparently, he liked it. Toward one who treated him with
consideration or respect he would have become arrogant, while he fawned
upon the hand that struck him. Kraski, alone, smiled a self-satisfied
smile that set the blood of the Spaniard boiling.

“Bluber has the money, Flora,” he said; “each of us has contributed his
share. We’ll make Bluber treasurer, because we know that he will squeeze
the last farthing until it shrieks before he will let it escape him. It
is our plan now to set out from London in pairs.”

He drew a map from his pocket, and unfolding it, spread it out upon the
table before them. With his finger he indicated a point marked X. “Here
we will meet and here we will equip our expedition. Bluber and Miranda
will go first; then Peebles and Throck. By the time that you and I
arrive everything will be in shape for moving immediately into the
interior, where we shall establish a permanent camp, off the beaten
track and as near our objective as possible. Miranda will disport
himself behind his whiskers until he is ready to set out upon the final
stage of his long journey. I understand that he is well schooled in the
part that he is to play and that he can depict the character to
perfection. As he will have only ignorant natives and wild beasts to
deceive it should not tax his histrionic ability too greatly.” There was
a veiled note of sarcasm in the soft, drawling tone that caused the
black eyes of the Spaniard to gleam wickedly.

“Do I understand,” asked Miranda, his soft tone belying his angry scowl,
“that you and Miss Hawkes travel alone to X?”

“You do, unless your understanding is poor,” replied the Russian.

The Spaniard half rose from the table and leaned across it menacingly
toward Kraski. The girl, who was sitting next to him, seized his coat.

“None of that!” she said, dragging him back into his chair. “There has
been too much of it among you already, and if there is any more I shall
cut you all and seek more congenial companions for my expedition.”

“Yes, cut it out; ’ere we are, and that’s that!” exclaimed Peebles
belligerently.

“John’s right,” rumbled Throck, in his deep bass, “and I’m here to back
him up. Flora’s right, and I’m here to back her up. And if there is any
more of it, blime if I don’t bash a couple of you pretty ’uns,” and he
looked first at Miranda and then at Kraski.

“Now,” soothed Bluber, “let’s all shake hands and be good friends.”

“Right-o,” cried Peebles, “that’s the talk. Give ’im your ’and, Esteban.
Come, Carl, bury the ’atchet. We can’t start in on this thing with no
hanimosities, and ’ere we are, and that’s that.”

The Russian, feeling secure in his position with Flora, and therefore in
a magnanimous mood, extended his hand across the table toward the
Spaniard. For a moment Esteban hesitated.

“Come, man, shake!” growled Throck, “or you can go back to your job as
an extra man, blime, and we’ll find someone else to do your work and
divvy the swag with.”

Suddenly the dark countenance of the Spaniard was lighted by a pleasant
smile. He extended his hand quickly and clasped Kraski’s. “Forgive me,”
he said, “I am hot-tempered, but I mean nothing. Miss Hawkes is right,
we must all be friends, and here’s my hand on it, Kraski, as far as I am
concerned.”

“Good,” said Kraski, “and I am sorry if I offended you;” but he forgot
that the other was an actor, and if he could have seen into the depths
of that dark soul he would have shuddered.

“Und now, dot ve are all good friends,” said Bluber, rubbing his hands
together unctuously, “vy not arrange for vhen ve shall commence starting
to finish up everyt’ings? Miss Flora, she gives me the map und der
directions und we start commencing immediately.”

“Loan me a pencil, Carl,” said the girl, and when the man had handed her
one she searched out a spot upon the map some distance into the interior
from X, where she drew a tiny circle. “This is O,” she said. “When we
all reach here you shall have the final directions and not before.”

Bluber threw up his hands. “_Oi!_ Miss Flora, vhat you t’ink, ve spend
two t’ousand pounds to buy a pig in a poke? _Oi! Oi!_ you vouldn’t ask
us to do dot? Ve must see everyt’ing, ve must know everyt’ing, before ve
spend vun farthing.”

“Yes, and ’ere we are, and that’s that!” roared John Peebles, striking
the table with his fist.

The girl rose leisurely from her seat. “Oh, very well,” she said with a
shrug. “If you feel that way about it we might as well call it all off.”

“Oh, vait, vait, Miss Flora,” cried Bluber, rising hurriedly. “Don’t be
ogcited. But can’t you see vere ve are? Two t’ousand pounds is a lot of
money, and ve are good business men. Ve shouldn’t be spending it all
vit’out getting not’ings for it.”

“I am not asking you to spend it and get nothing for it,” replied the
girl, tartly; “but if anyone has got to trust anyone else in this
outfit, it is you who are going to trust me. If I give you all the
information I have, there is nothing in the world that could prevent you
from going ahead and leaving me out in the cold, and I don’t intend that
that shall happen.”

“But we are not gonoffs, Miss Flora,” insisted the Jew. “Ve vould not
t’ink for vun minute of cheating you.”

“You’re not angels, either, Bluber, any of you,” retorted the girl. “If
you want to go ahead with this you’ve got to do it in my way, and I am
going to be there at the finish to see that I get what is coming to me.
You’ve taken my word for it, up to the present time, that I had the
dope, and now you’ve got to take it the rest of the way or all bets are
off. What good would it do me to go over into a bally jungle and suffer
all the hardships that we are bound to suffer, dragging you along with
me, if I were not going to be able to deliver the goods when I got
there? And I am not such a softy as to think I could get away with it
with a bunch of bandits like you if I tried to put anything of that kind
over on you. And as long as I do play straight I feel perfectly safe,
for I know that either Esteban or Carl will look after me, and I don’t
know but what the rest of you would, too. Is it a go or isn’t it?”

“Vell, John, vot do you und Dick t’ink?” asked Bluber, addressing the
two ex-prize-fighters. “Carl, I know he vill t’ink v’hatever Flora
t’inks. Hey? V’at?”

“Blime,” said Throck, “I never was much of a hand at trusting nobody
unless I had to, but it looks now as though we had to trust Flora.”

“Same ’ere,” said John Peebles. “If you try any funny work, Flora—” He
made a significant movement with his finger across his throat.

“I understand, John,” said the girl with a smile, “and I know that you
would do it as quickly for two pounds as you would for two thousand. But
you are all agreed, then, to carry on according to my plans? You too,
Carl?”

The Russian nodded. “Whatever the rest say goes with me,” he remarked.

And so the gentle little coterie discussed their plans in so far as they
could—each minutest detail that would be necessary to place them all at
the O which the girl had drawn upon the map.

                               CHAPTER IV
                        WHAT THE FOOTPRINTS TOLD

WHEN Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion, was two years old, he was as
magnificent a specimen of his kind as the Greystokes had ever looked
upon. In size he was far above the average of that attained by mature
males; in conformation he was superb, his noble head and his great black
mane giving him the appearance of a full-grown male, while in
intelligence he far outranked his savage brothers of the forest.

Jad-bal-ja was a never-ending source of pride and delight to the ape-man
who had trained him so carefully, and nourished him cunningly for the
purpose of developing to the full all the latent powers within him. The
lion no longer slept at the foot of his master’s bed, but occupied a
strong cage that Tarzan had had constructed for him at the rear of the
bungalow, for who knew better than the ape-man that a lion, wherever he
may be or however he may have been raised, is yet a lion—a savage
flesh-eater. For the first year he had roamed at will about the house
and grounds; after that he went abroad only in the company of Tarzan.
Often the two roamed the plain and the jungle hunting together. In a way
the lion was almost equally as familiar with Jane and Korak, and neither
of them feared or mistrusted him, but toward Tarzan of the Apes did he
show the greatest affection. The blacks of Tarzan’s household he
tolerated, nor did he ever offer to molest any of the domestic animals
or fowl, after Tarzan had impressed upon him in his early cubhood that
appropriate punishment followed immediately upon any predatory excursion
into the corrals or henhouses. The fact that he was never permitted to
become ravenously hungry was doubtless the deciding factor in
safeguarding the live stock of the farm.

The man and the beast seemed to understand one another perfectly. It is
doubtful that the lion understood all that Tarzan said to him, but be
that as it may the ease with which he communicated his wishes to the
lion bordered upon the uncanny. The obedience that a combination of
sternness and affection had elicited from the cub had become largely
habit in the grown lion. At Tarzan’s command he would go to great
distances and bring back antelope or zebra, laying his kill at his
master’s feet without offering to taste the flesh himself, and he had
even retrieved living animals without harming them. Such, then, was the
golden lion that roamed the primeval forest with his godlike master.

It was at about this time that there commenced to drift in to the
ape-man rumors of a predatory band to the west and south of his estate;
ugly stories of ivory-raiding, slave-running and torture, such as had
not disturbed the quiet of the ape-man’s savage jungle since the days of
Sheik Amor Ben Khatour, and there came other tales, too, that caused
Tarzan of the Apes to pucker his brows in puzzlement and thought, and
then a month elapsed during which Tarzan heard no more of the rumors
from the west.

The war had reduced the resources of the Greystokes to but a meager
income. They had given practically all to the cause of the Allies, and
now what little had remained to them had been all but exhausted in the
rehabilitation of Tarzan’s African estate.

“It looks very much, Jane,” he said to his wife one night, “as though
another trip to Opar were on the books.”

“I dread to think of it. I do not want you to go,” she said. “You have
come away from that awful city twice, but barely with your life. The
third time you may not be so fortunate. We have enough, John, to permit
us to live here in comfort and in happiness. Why jeopardize those two
things which are greater than all wealth in another attempt to raid the
treasure vaults?”

“There is no danger, Jane,” he assured her. “The last time Werper dogged
my footsteps, and between him and the earthquake I was nearly done for.
But there is no chance of any such combination of circumstances
thwarting me again.”

“You will not go alone, John?” she asked. “You will take Korak with
you?”

“No,” he said, “I shall not take him. He must remain here with you, for
really my long absences are more dangerous to you than to me. I shall
take fifty of the Waziri, as porters, to carry the gold, and thus we
should be able to bring out enough to last us for a long time.”

“And Jad-bal-ja,” she asked, “shall you take him?”

“No, he had better remain here; Korak can look after him and take him
out for a hunt occasionally. I am going to travel light and fast and it
would be too hard a trip for him—lions don’t care to move around much
in the hot sun, and as we shall travel mostly by day I doubt if
Jad-bal-ja would last long.”

And so it befell that Tarzan of the Apes set out once more upon the long
trail that leads to Opar. Behind him marched fifty giant Waziri, the
pick of the warlike tribe that had adopted Tarzan as its Chief. Upon the
veranda of the bungalow stood Jane and Korak waving their adieux, while
from the rear of the building there came to the ape-man’s ears the
rumbling roar of Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion. And as they marched away
the voice of Numa accompanied them out upon the rolling plain, until at
last it trailed off to nothingness in the distance.

His speed determined by that of the slowest of the blacks, Tarzan made
but comparatively rapid progress. Opar lay a good twenty-five days’ trek
from the farm for men traveling light, as were these, but upon the
return journey, laden as they would be with the ingots of gold, their
progress would be slower. And because of this the ape-man had allotted
two months for the venture. His safari, consisting of seasoned warriors
only, permitted of really rapid progress. They carried no supplies, for
they were all hunters and were moving through a country in which game
was abundant—no need then for burdening themselves with the cumbersome
impedimenta of white huntsmen.

A thorn boma and a few leaves furnished their shelter for the night,
while spears and arrows and the powers of their great white chief
insured that their bellies would never go empty. With the picked men
that he had brought with him Tarzan expected to make the trip to Opar in
twenty-one days, though had he been traveling alone he would have moved
two or three times as fast, since, when Tarzan elected to travel with
speed, he fairly flew through the jungle, equally at home in it by day
or by night and practically tireless.

It was a mid-afternoon the third week of the march that Tarzan, ranging
far ahead of his blacks in search of game, came suddenly upon the
carcass of Bara, the deer, a feathered arrow protruding from its flank.
It was evident that Bara had been wounded at some little distance from
where it had lain down to die, for the location of the missile indicated
that the wound could not have caused immediate death. But what
particularly caught the attention of the ape-man, even before he had
come close enough to make a minute examination, was the design of the
arrow, and immediately he withdrew it from the body of the deer he knew
it for what it was, and was filled with such wonderment as might come to
you or to me were we to see a native Swazi headdress upon Broadway or
the Strand, for the arrow was precisely such as one may purchase in most
any sporting-goods house in any large city of the world—such an arrow
as is sold and used for archery practice in the parks and suburbs.
Nothing could have been more incongruous than this silly toy in the
heart of savage Africa, and yet that it had done its work effectively
was evident by the dead body of Bara, though the ape-man guessed that
the shaft had been sped by no practiced, savage hand.

Tarzan’s curiosity was aroused and also his inherent jungle caution. One
must know his jungle well to survive long the jungle, and if one would
know it well he must let no unusual occurrence or circumstance go
unexplained. And so it was that Tarzan set out upon the back track of
Bara for the purpose of ascertaining, if possible, the nature of Bara’s
slayer. The bloody spoor was easily followed and the ape-man wondered
why it was that the hunter had not tracked and overtaken his quarry,
which had evidently been dead since the previous day. He found that Bara
had traveled far, and the sun was already low in the west before Tarzan
came upon the first indications of the slayer of the animal. These were
in the nature of footprints that filled him with quite as much surprise
as had the arrow. He examined them carefully, and, stooping low, even
sniffed at them with his sensitive nostrils. Improbable, nay impossible
though it seemed, the naked footprints were those of _a white man_—a
large man, probably as large as Tarzan himself. As the foster-son of
Kala stood gazing upon the spoor of the mysterious stranger he ran the
fingers of one hand through his thick, black hair in a characteristic
gesture indicative of deep puzzlement.

What naked white man could there be in Tarzan’s jungle who slew Tarzan’s
game with the pretty arrow of an archery club? It was incredible that
there should be such a one, and yet there recurred to the ape-man’s mind
the vague rumors that he had heard weeks before. Determined to solve the
mystery he set out now upon the trail of the stranger—an erratic trail
which wound about through the jungle, apparently aimlessly, prompted,
Tarzan guessed, by the ignorance of an inexperienced hunter. But night
fell before he had arrived at a solution of the riddle, and it was pitch
dark as the ape-man turned his steps toward camp.

He knew that his Waziri would be expecting meat and it was not Tarzan’s
intention to disappoint them, though he then discovered that he was not
the only carnivore hunting the district that night. The coughing grunt
of a lion close by apprised him of it first, and then, from the
distance, the deep roar of another. But of what moment was it to the
ape-man that others hunted? It would not be the first time that he had
pitted his cunning, his strength, and his agility against the other
hunters of his savage world—both man and beast.

And so it was that Tarzan made his kill at last, snatching it almost
from under the nose of a disappointed and infuriated lion—a fat
antelope that the latter had marked as his own. Throwing his kill to his
shoulder almost in the path of the charging Numa, the ape-man swung
lightly to the lower terraces and with a taunting laugh for the
infuriated cat, vanished noiselessly into the night.

He found the camp and his hungry Waziri without trouble, and so great
was their faith in him that they not for a moment doubted but that he
would return with meat for them.

Early the following morning Tarzan set out again toward Opar, and
directing his Waziri to continue the march in the most direct way, he
left them that he might pursue further his investigations of the
mysterious presence in his jungle that the arrow and the footsteps had
apprised him of. Coming again to the spot at which darkness had forced
him to abandon his investigations, he took up the spoor of the stranger.
Nor had he followed it far before he came upon further evidence of the
presence of this new and malign personality—stretched before him in the
trail was the body of a giant ape, one of the tribe of great anthropoids
among whom Tarzan had been raised. Protruding from the hairy abdomen of
the Mangani was another of the machine-made arrows of civilization. The
ape-man’s eyes narrowed and a scowl darkened his brow. Who was this who
dared invade his sacred preserves and slaughter thus ruthlessly Tarzan’s
people?

A low growl rumbled in the throat of the ape-man. Sloughed with the
habiliments of civilization was the thin veneer of civilization that
Tarzan wore among white men. No English lord was this who looked upon
the corpse of his hairy cousin, but another jungle beast in whose breast
raged the unquenchable fire of suspicion and hatred for the man-thing
that is the heritage of the jungle-bred. A beast of prey viewed the
bloody work of ruthless man. Nor was there in the consciousness of
Tarzan any acknowledgment of his blood relationship to the killer.

Realizing that the trail had been made upon the second day before,
Tarzan hastened on in pursuit of the slayer. There was no doubt in his
mind but that plain murder had been committed, for he was sufficiently
familiar with the traits of the Mangani to know that none of them would
provoke assault unless driven to it.

Tarzan was traveling up wind, and some half-hour after he had discovered
the body of the ape his keen nostrils caught the scent spoor of others
of its kind. Knowing the timidity of these fierce denizens of the jungle
he moved forward now with great wariness, lest, warned of his approach,
they take flight before they were aware of his identity. He did not see
them often, yet he knew that there were always those among them who
recalled him, and that through these he could always establish amicable
relations with the balance of the tribe.

Owing to the denseness of the undergrowth Tarzan chose the middle
terraces for his advance, and here, swinging freely and swiftly among
the leafy boughs, he came presently upon the giant anthropoids. There
were about twenty of them in the band, and they were engaged, in a
little natural clearing, in their never-ending search for caterpillars
and beetles, which formed important items in the diet of the Mangani.

A faint smile overspread the ape-man’s face as he paused upon a great
branch, himself hidden by the leafy foliage about him, and watched the
little band below him. Every action, every movement of the great apes,
recalled vividly to Tarzan’s mind the long years of his childhood, when,
protected by the fierce mother-love of Kala, the she-ape, he had ranged
the jungle with the tribe of Kerchak. In the romping young, he saw again
Neeta and his other childhood playmates and in the adults all the great,
savage brutes he had feared in youth and conquered in manhood. The ways
of man may change but the ways of the ape are the same, yesterday, today
and forever.

He watched them in silence for some minutes. How glad they would be to
see him when they discovered his identity! For Tarzan of the Apes was
known the length and the breadth of the great jungle as the friend and
protector of the Mangani. At first they would growl at him and threaten
him, for they would not depend solely on either their eyes or their ears
for confirmation of his identity. Not until he had entered the clearing,
and bristling bulls with bared fighting fangs had circled him stiffly
until they had come close enough for their nostrils to verify the
evidence of their eyes and ears, would they finally accept him. Then
doubtless there would be great excitement for a few minutes, until,
following the instincts of the ape mind, their attention was weaned from
him by a blowing leaf, a caterpillar, or a bird’s egg, and then they
would move about their business, taking no further notice of him more
than of any other member of the tribe. But this would not come until
after each individual had smelled of him, and perhaps, pawed his flesh
with calloused hands.

Now it was that Tarzan made a friendly sound of greeting, and as the
apes looked up stepped from his concealment into plain view of them. “I
am Tarzan of the Apes,” he said, “mighty fighter, friend of the Mangani.
Tarzan comes in friendship to his people,” and with these words he
dropped lightly to the lush grass of the clearing.

Instantly pandemonium reigned. Screaming warnings, the shes raced with
the young for the opposite side of the clearing, while the bulls,
bristling and growling, faced the intruder.

“Come,” cried Tarzan, “do you not know me? I am Tarzan of the Apes,
friend of the Mangani, son of Kala, and king of the tribe of Kerchak.”

“We know you,” growled one of the old bulls; “yesterday we saw you when
you killed Gobu. Go away or we shall kill you.”

“I did not kill Gobu,” replied the ape-man. “I found his dead body
yesterday and I was following the spoor of his slayer, when I came upon
you.”

“We saw you,” repeated the old bull; “go away or we shall kill you. You
are no longer the friend of the Mangani.”

The ape-man stood with brows contracted in thought. It was evident that
these apes really believed that they had seen him kill their fellow.
What was the explanation? How could it be accounted for? Did the naked
footprints of the great white man whom he had been following mean more,
then, than he had guessed? Tarzan wondered. He raised his eyes and again
addressed the bulls.

“It was not I who killed Gobu,” he insisted. “Many of you have known me
all your lives. You know that only in fair fight, as one bull fights
another, have I ever killed a Mangani. You know that, of all the jungle
people, the Mangani are my best friends, and that Tarzan of the Apes is
the best friend the Mangani have. How, then, could I slay one of my own
people?”

“We only know,” replied the old bull, “that we saw you kill Gobu. With
our own eyes we saw you kill him. Go away quickly, therefore, or we
shall kill you. Mighty fighter is Tarzan of the Apes, but mightier even
than he are all the great bulls of Pagth. I am Pagth, king of the tribe
of Pagth. Go away before we kill you.”

Tarzan tried to reason with them but they would not listen, so confident
were they that it was he who had slain their fellow, the bull Gobu.
Finally, rather than chance a quarrel in which some of them must
inevitably be killed, he turned sorrowfully away. But more than ever,
now, was he determined to seek out the slayer of Gobu that he might
demand an accounting of one who dared thus invade his life-long domain.

Tarzan trailed the spoor until it mingled with the tracks of many
men—barefooted blacks, mostly, but among them the footprints of booted
white men, and once he saw the footprints of a woman or a child, which,
he could not tell. The trail led apparently toward the rocky hills which
protected the barren valley of Opar.

Forgetful now of his original mission and imbued only with a savage
desire to wrest from the interlopers a full accounting for their
presence in the jungle, and to mete out to the slayer of Gobu his just
deserts, Tarzan forged ahead upon the now broad and well-marked trail of
the considerable party which could not now be much more than a
half-day’s march ahead of him, which meant that they were doubtless now
already upon the rim of the valley of Opar, if this was their ultimate
destination. And what other they could have in view Tarzan could not
imagine.

He had always kept closely to himself the location of Opar. In so far as
he knew no white person other than Jane, and their son, Korak, knew of
the location of the forgotten city of the ancient Atlantians. Yet what
else could have drawn these white men, with so large a party, into the
savage, unexplored wilderness which hemmed Opar upon all sides?

Such were the thoughts that occupied Tarzan’s mind as he followed
swiftly the trail that led toward Opar. Darkness fell, but so fresh was
the spoor that the ape-man could follow it by scent even when he could
not see the imprints upon the ground, and presently, in the distance, he
saw the light of a camp ahead of him.

[Illustration: Before him was the body of a giant anthropoid]

                               CHAPTER V
                            THE FATAL DROPS

AT home, the life in the bungalow and at the farm followed its usual
routine as it had before the departure of Tarzan. Korak, sometimes on
foot and sometimes on horseback, followed the activities of the farm
hands and the herders, sometimes alone, but more often in company with
the white foreman, Jervis, and often, especially when they rode, Jane
accompanied them.

The golden lion Korak exercised upon a leash, since he was not at all
confident of his powers of control over the beast, and feared lest, in
the absence of his master, Jad-bal-ja might take to the forest and
revert to his natural savage state. Such a lion, abroad in the jungle,
would be a distinct menace to human life, for Jad-bal-ja, reared among
men, lacked that natural timidity of men that is so marked a trait of
all wild beasts. Trained as he had been to make his kill at the throat
of a human effigy, it required no considerable powers of imagination
upon the part of Korak to visualize what might occur should the golden
lion, loosed from all restraint, be thrown upon his own resources in the
surrounding jungle.

It was during the first week of Tarzan’s absence that a runner from
Nairobi brought a cable message to Lady Greystoke, announcing the
serious illness of her father in London. Mother and son discussed the
situation. It would be five or six weeks before Tarzan could return,
even if they sent a runner after him, and, were Jane to await him, there
would be little likelihood of her reaching her father in time. Even
should she depart at once, there seemed only a faint hope that she would
arrive early enough to see him alive. It was decided, therefore, that
she should set out immediately, Korak accompanying her as far as
Nairobi, and then returning to the ranch and resuming its general
supervision until his father’s return.

It is a long trek from the Greystoke estate to Nairobi, and Korak had
not yet returned when, about three weeks after Tarzan’s departure, a
black, whose duty it was to feed and care for Jad-bal-ja, carelessly
left the door of the cage unfastened while he was cleaning it. The
golden lion paced back and forth while the black wielded his broom
within the cage. They were old friends, and the Waziri felt no fear of
the great lion, with the result that his back was as often turned to him
as not. The black was working in the far corner of the cage when
Jad-bal-ja paused a moment at the door at the opposite end. The beast
saw that the gate hung slightly ajar upon its hinges. Silently he raised
a great padded paw and inserted it in the opening—a slight pull and the
gate swung in. Instantly the golden lion inserted his snout in the
widened aperture, and as he swung the barrier aside the horrified black
looked up to see his charge drop softly to the ground outside.

“Stop, Jad-bal-ja! Stop!” screamed the frightened black, leaping after
him. But the golden lion only increased his pace, and leaping the fence,
loped off in the direction of the forest.

The black pursued him with brandishing broom, emitting loud yells that
brought the inmates of the Waziri huts into the open, where they joined
their fellow in pursuit of the lion. Across the rolling plains they
followed him, but as well have sought to snare the elusive
will-o’-the-wisp as this swift and wary fugitive, who heeded neither
their blandishments nor their threats. And so it was that they saw the
golden lion disappear into the primeval forest and, though they searched
diligently until almost dark, they were forced at length to give up
their quest and return crestfallen to the farm.

“Ah,” cried the unhappy black, who had been responsible for the escape
of Jad-bal-ja, “what will the Big Bwana say to me, what will he do to me
when he finds that I have permitted the golden lion to get away!”

“You will be banished from the bungalow for a long time, Keewazi,” old
Muviro assured him. “And doubtless you will be sent to the grazing
ground far to the east to guard the herd there, where you will have
plenty of lions for company, though they will not be as friendly as was
Jad-bal-ja. It is not half what you deserve, and were the heart of the
Big Bwana not filled with love for his black children—were he like
other white Bwanas old Muviro has seen—you would be lashed until you
could not stand, perhaps until you died.”

“I am a man,” replied Keewazi. “I am a warrior and a Waziri. Whatever
punishment the Big Bwana inflicts I will accept as a man should.”

It was that same night that Tarzan approached the camp-fires of the
strange party he had been tracking. Unseen by them, he halted in the
foliage of a tree directly in the center of their camp, which was
surrounded by an enormous thorn boma, and brilliantly lighted by
numerous fires which blacks were diligently feeding with branches from
an enormous pile of firewood that they had evidently gathered earlier in
the day for this purpose. Near the center of the camp were several
tents, and before one, in the light of a fire, sat four white men. Two
of them were great, bull-necked, red-faced fellows, apparently
Englishmen of the lower class, the third appeared to be a short, fat,
German Jew, while the fourth was a tall, slender, handsome fellow, with
dark, wavy brown hair and regular features. He and the German were most
meticulously garbed for Central African traveling, after the highly
idealized standard of motion pictures, in fact either one of them might
have stepped directly from a screening of the latest jungle thriller.
The young man was evidently not of English descent and Tarzan mentally
cataloged him, almost immediately, as a Slav. Shortly after Tarzan’s
arrival this one arose and entered one of the nearby tents, from which
Tarzan immediately heard the sound of voices in low conversation. He
could not distinguish the words, but the tones of one seemed quite
distinctly feminine. The three remaining at the fire were carrying on a
desultory conversation, when suddenly from near at hand beyond the boma
wall, a lion’s roar broke the silence of the jungle.

With a startled shriek the Jew leaped to his feet, so suddenly that he
cleared the ground a good foot, and then, stepping backward, he lost his
balance, tripped over his camp-stool, and sprawled upon his back.

“My Gord, Adolph!” roared one of his companions. “If you do that again,
damn me if I don’t break your neck. ’Ere we are, and that’s that.”

“Blime if ’e aint worse’n a bloomin’ lion,” growled the other.

The Jew crawled to his feet. “_Mein Gott!_” he cried, his voice
quavering, “I t’ought sure he vas coming over the fence. S’elp me if I
ever get out of diss, neffer again—not for all der gold in Africa vould
I go t’rough vat I haf been t’rough dese past t’ree mont’s. _Oi! Oi!_
ven I t’ink of it, _Oi! Oi!_ Lions, und leopards, und rhinoceroses und
hippopotamuses, _Oi! Oi!_”

His companions laughed. “Dick and I tells you right along from the
beginning that you ’adn’t oughter come into the interior,” said one of
them.

“But for vy I buy all dese clo’s?” wailed the German. “_Mein Gott_, dis
suit, it stands me tventy guineas, vot I stand in. Ach, had I know
somet’ing, vun guinea vould have bought me my whole wardrobe—tventy
guineas for dis und no vun to see it but niggers und lions.”

“And you look like ’ell in it, besides,” commented one of his friends.

“Und look at it, it’s all dirty and torn. How should I know it I spoil
dis suit? Mit mine own eyes I see it at der Princess Teayter, how der
hero spend t’ree mont’s in Africa hunting lions und killing cannibals,
und ven he comes ouid he hasn’t even got a grease spot on his pants—how
should I know it Africa was so dirty und full of thorns?”

It was at this point that Tarzan of the Apes elected to drop quietly
into the circle of firelight before them. The two Englishmen leaped to
their feet, quite evidently startled, and the Jew turned and took a half
step as though in flight, but immediately his eyes rested upon the
ape-man he halted, a look of relief supplanting that of terror which had
overspread his countenance, as Tarzan had dropped upon them apparently
from the heavens.

“_Mein Gott_, Esteban,” shrilled the German, “vy you come back so soon,
and for vy you come back like dot, sudden—don’t you suppose ve got
nerves?”

Tarzan was angry, angry at these raw intruders, who dared enter without
his permission, the wide domain in which he kept peace and order. When
Tarzan was angry there flamed upon his forehead the scar that Bolgani,
the gorilla, had placed there upon that long-gone day when the boy
Tarzan had met the great beast in mortal combat, and first learned the
true value of his father’s hunting knife—the knife that had placed him,
the comparatively weak little Tarmangani, upon an even footing with the
great beasts of the jungle.

His gray eyes were narrowed, his voice came cold and level as he
addressed them. “Who are you,” he demanded, “who dare thus invade the
country of the Waziri, the land of Tarzan, without permission from the
Lord of the Jungle?”

“Where do you get that stuff, Esteban,” demanded one of the Englishmen,
“and wat in ’ell are you doin’ back ’ere alone and so soon? Where are
your porters, where is the bloomin’ gold?”

The ape-man eyed the speaker in silence for a moment. “I am Tarzan of
the Apes,” he said. “I do not know what you are talking about. I only,
know that I come in search of him who slew Gobu, the great ape; him who
slew Bara, the deer, without my permission.”

“Oh, ’ell,” exploded the other Englishman, “stow the guff, Esteban—if
you’re tryin’ for to be funny we don’t see the joke, ’ere we are, and
that’s that.”

Inside the tent, which the fourth white man had entered while Tarzan was
watching the camp from his hiding place in the tree above, a woman,
evidently suddenly stirred by terror, touched the arm of her companion
frantically, and pointed toward the tall, almost naked figure of the
ape-man as he stood revealed in the full light of the beast fires. “God,
Carl,” she whispered, in trembling tones, “look!”

“What’s wrong, Flora?” inquired her companion. “I see only Esteban.”

“It is not Esteban,” hissed the girl. “It is Lord Greystoke himself—it
is Tarzan of the Apes!”

“You are mad, Flora,” replied the man, “it cannot be he.”

“It is he, though,” she insisted. “Do you suppose that I do not know
him? Did I not work in his town house for years? Did I not see him
nearly every day? Do you suppose that I do not know Tarzan of the Apes?
Look at that red scar flaming on his forehead—I have heard the story of
that scar and I have seen it burn scarlet when he was aroused to anger.
It is scarlet now, and Tarzan of the Apes is angry.”

“Well, suppose it _is_ Tarzan of the Apes, what can he do?”

“You do not know him,” replied the girl. “You do not guess the
tremendous power he wields here—the power of life and death over man
and beast. If he knew our mission here not one of us would ever reach
the coast alive. The very fact that he is here now makes me believe that
he may have discovered our purpose, and if he has, God help
us—unless—unless——”

“Unless what?” demanded the man.

The girl was silent in thought for a moment. “There is only one way,”
she said finally. “We dare not kill him. His savage blacks would learn
of it, and no power on earth could save us then. There is a way, though,
if we act quickly.” She turned and searched for a moment in one of her
bags, and presently she handed the man a small bottle, containing
liquid. “Go out and talk to him,” she said, “make friends with him. Lie
to him. Tell him anything. Promise anything. But get on friendly enough
terms with him so that you can offer him coffee. He does not drink wine
or anything with alcohol in it, but I know that he likes coffee. I have
often served it to him in his room late at night upon his return from
the theater or a ball. Get him to drink coffee and then you will know
what to do with this.” And she indicated the bottle which the man still
held in his hand.

Kraski nodded. “I understand,” he said, and, turning, left the tent.

He had taken but a step when the girl recalled him. “Do not let him see
me. Do not let him guess that I am here or that you know me.”

The man nodded and left her. Approaching the tense figures before the
fire he greeted Tarzan with a pleasant smile and a cheery word.

“Welcome,” he said, “we are always glad to see a stranger in our camp.
Sit down. Hand the gentleman a stool, John,” he said to Peebles.

The ape-man eyed Kraski as he had eyed the others. There was no
answering friendly light in his eyes responding to the Russian’s
greeting.

“I have been trying to find out what your party is doing here,” he said
sharply to the Russian, “but they still insist that I am someone whom I
am not. They are either fools or knaves, and I intend to find out which,
and deal with them accordingly.”

“Come, come,” cried Kraski, soothingly. “There must be some mistake, I
am sure. But tell me, who are you?”

“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” replied the ape-man. “No hunters enter this
part of Africa without my permission. That fact is so well known that
there is no chance of your having passed the coast without having been
so advised. I seek an explanation, and that quickly.”

“Ah, you are Tarzan of the Apes,” exclaimed Kraski. “Fortunate indeed
are we, for now may we be set straight upon our way, and escape from our
frightful dilemma is assured. We are lost, sir, inextricably lost, due
to the ignorance or knavery of our guide, who deserted us several weeks
ago. Surely we knew of you; who does not know of Tarzan of the Apes? But
it was not our intention to cross the boundaries of your territory. We
were searching farther south for specimens of the fauna of the district,
which our good friend and employer, here, Mr. Adolph Bluber, is
collecting at great expense for presentation to a museum in his home
city in America. Now I am sure that you can tell us where we are and
direct us upon our proper course.”

Peebles, Throck, and Bluber stood fascinated by Kraski’s glib lies, but
it was the German Jew who first rose to the occasion. Too thick were the
skulls of the English pugs to grasp quickly the clever ruse of the
Russian.

“Vy yes,” said the oily Bluber, rubbing his palms together, “dot iss it,
yust vot I vas going to tell you.”

Tarzan turned sharply upon him. “Then what was all this talk about
Esteban?” he asked. “Was it not by that name that these others addressed
me?”

“Ah,” cried Bluber, “John will haf his leetle joke. He iss ignorant of
Africa; he has neffer been here before. He t’ought perhaps dat you vere
a native. John he calls all der natives Esteban, und he has great jokes
by himself mit dem, because he knows dey cannot onderstand vot he says.
Hey John, iss it not so, vot it iss I say?” But the shrewd Bluber did
not wait for John to reply. “You see,” he went on, “ve are lost, und you
take us ouid mit dis jungle, ve pay you anyt’ing—you name your own
price.”

The ape-man only half believed him, yet he was somewhat mollified by
their evidently friendly intentions. Perhaps after all they were telling
him a half-truth and had, really, wandered into his territory
unwittingly. That, however, he would find out definitely from their
native carriers, from whom his own Waziri would wean the truth. But the
matter of his having been mistaken for Esteban still piqued his
curiosity, also he was still desirous of learning the identity of the
slayer of Gobu, the great ape.

“Please sit down,” urged Kraski. “We were about to have coffee and we
should be delighted to have you join us. We meant no wrong in coming
here, and I can assure you that we will gladly and willingly make full
amends to you, or to whomever else we may have unintentionally wronged.”

To take coffee with these men would do no harm. Perhaps he had wronged
them, but however that might be a cup of their coffee would place no
great obligation upon him. Flora had been right in her assertion that if
Tarzan of the Apes had any weakness whatsoever it was for an occasional
cup of black coffee late at night. He did not accept the proffered
camp-stool, but squatted, ape-fashion, before them, the flickering light
of the beast fires playing upon his bronzed hide and bringing into
relief the gracefully contoured muscles of his godlike frame. Not as the
muscles of the blacksmith or the professional strong man were the
muscles of Tarzan of the Apes, but rather those of Mercury or Apollo, so
symmetrically balanced were their proportions, suggesting only the great
strength that lay in them. Trained to speed and agility were they as
well as to strength, and thus, clothing as they did his giant frame,
they imparted to him the appearance of a demi-god.

Throck, Peebles, and Bluber sat watching him in spellbound fascination,
while Kraski walked over to the cook fire to arrange for the coffee. The
two Englishmen were as yet only half awakened to the fact that they had
mistaken this newcomer for another, and as it was, Peebles still
scratched his head and grumbled to himself in inarticulate half-denial
of Kraski’s assumption of the new identity of Tarzan. Bluber was
inwardly terror-stricken. His keener intelligence had quickly grasped
the truth of Kraski’s recognition of the man for what he was rather than
for what Peebles and Throck thought him to be, and, as Bluber knew
nothing of Flora’s plan, he was in quite a state of funk as he tried to
visualize the outcome of Tarzan’s discovery of them at the very
threshold of Opar. He did not realize, as did Flora, that their very
lives were in danger—that it was Tarzan of the Apes, a beast of the
jungle, with whom they had to deal, and not John Clayton, Lord
Greystoke, an English peer. Rather was Bluber considering the two
thousand pounds that they stood to lose through this deplorable
termination of their expedition, for he was sufficiently familiar with
the reputation of the ape-man to know that they would never be permitted
to take with them the gold that Esteban was very likely, at this moment,
pilfering from the vaults of Opar. Really Bluber was almost upon the
verge of tears when Kraski returned with the coffee, which he brought
himself.

From the dark shadows of the tent’s interior Flora Hawkes looked
nervously out upon the scene before her. She was terrified at the
possibility of discovery by her former employer, for she had been a maid
in the Greystokes’ London town house as well as at the African bungalow
and knew that Lord Greystoke would recognize her instantly should he
chance to see her. She entertained for him, now, in his jungle haunts, a
fear that was possibly greater than Tarzan’s true character warranted,
but none the less real was it to the girl whose guilty conscience
conjured all sorts of possible punishments for her disloyalty to those
who had always treated her with uniform kindliness and consideration.

Constant dreaming of the fabulous wealth of the treasure vaults of Opar,
concerning which she had heard so much in detail from the conversations
of the Greystokes, had aroused within her naturally crafty and
unscrupulous mind a desire for possession, and in consequence thereof
she had slowly visualized a scheme whereby she might loot the treasure
vaults of a sufficient number of the golden ingots to make her
independently wealthy for life. The entire plan had been hers. She had
at first interested Kraski, who had in turn enlisted the coöperation of
the two Englishmen and Bluber, and these four had raised the necessary
money to defray the cost of the expedition. It had been Flora who had
searched for a type of man who might successfully impersonate Tarzan in
his own jungle, and she had found Esteban Miranda, a handsome, powerful,
and unscrupulous Spaniard, whose histrionic ability aided by the art of
make-up, of which he was a past master, permitted him to almost
faultlessly impersonate the character they desired him to portray, in so
far, as least, as outward appearances were concerned.

The Spaniard was not only powerful and active, but physically courageous
as well, and since he had shaved his beard and donned the jungle
habiliments of a Tarzan, he had lost no opportunity for emulating the
ape-man in every way that lay within his ability. Of jungle craft he had
none of course, and personal combats with the more savage jungle beasts
caution prompted him to eschew, but he hunted the lesser game with spear
and with arrow and practiced continually with the grass rope that was a
part of his make-up.

And now Flora Hawkes saw all her well-laid plans upon the verge of
destruction. She trembled as she watched the men before the fire, for
her fear of Tarzan was very real, and then she became tense with nervous
anticipation as she saw Kraski approaching the group with the coffee pot
in one hand and cups in the other. Kraski set the pot and the cups upon
the ground a little in the rear of Tarzan, and, as he filled the latter,
she saw him pour a portion of the contents of the bottle she had given
him into one of the cups. A cold sweat broke out upon her forehead as
Kraski lifted this cup and offered it to the ape-man. Would he take it?
Would he suspect? If he did suspect what horrible punishment would be
meted to them all for their temerity? She saw Kraski hand another cup to
Peebles, Throck, and Bluber, then return to the circle with the last one
for himself. As the Russian raised it before his face and bowed politely
to the ape-man, she saw the five men drink. The reaction which ensued
left her weak and spent. Turning, she collapsed upon her cot, and lay
there trembling, her face buried in her arm. And, outside, Tarzan of the
Apes drained his cup to the last drop.

                               CHAPTER VI
                          DEATH STEALS BEHIND

DURING the afternoon of the day that Tarzan discovered the camp of the
conspirators, a watcher upon the crumbling outer wall of the ruined city
of Opar descried a party of men moving downward into the valley from the
summit of the encircling cliff. Tarzan, Jane Clayton, and their black
Waziri were the only strangers that the denizens of Opar had ever seen
within their valley during the lifetime of the oldest among them, and
only in half-forgotten legends of a by-gone past was there any
suggestion that strangers other than these had ever visited Opar. Yet
from time immemorial a guard had always remained upon the summit of the
outer wall. Now a single knurled and crippled man-like creature was all
that recalled the numerous, lithe warriors of lost Atlantis. For down
through the long ages the race had deteriorated and finally, through
occasional mating with the great apes, the men had become the beast-like
things of modern Opar. Strange and inexplicable had been the providence
of nature that had confined this deterioration almost solely to the
males, leaving the females straight, well-formed, often of comely and
even beautiful features, a condition that might be largely attributable
to the fact that female infants possessing ape-like characteristics were
immediately destroyed, while, on the other hand, boy babies who
possessed purely human attributes were also done away with.

Typical indeed of the male inhabitants of Opar was the lone watcher upon
the outer city wall, a short, stocky man with matted hair and beard, his
tangled locks growing low upon a low, receding forehead; small,
close-set eyes and fang-like teeth bore evidence of his simian ancestry,
as did his short, crooked legs and long, muscular ape-like arms, all
scantily hair-covered as was his torso.

As his wicked, blood-rimmed eyes watched the progress of the party
across the valley toward Opar, evidences of his growing excitement were
manifested in the increased rapidity of his breathing, and low, almost
inaudible growls that issued from his throat. The strangers were too far
distant to be recognizable only as human beings, and their number to be
roughly approximated as between two and three score. Having assured
himself of these two facts the watcher descended from the outer wall,
crossed the space between it and the inner wall, through which he
passed, and at a rapid trot crossed the broad avenue beyond and
disappeared within the crumbling but still magnificent temple beyond.

Cadj, the High Priest of Opar, squatted beneath the shade of the giant
trees which now overgrew what had once been one of the gardens of the
ancient temple. With him were a dozen members of the lesser priesthood,
the intimate cronies of the High Priest, who were startled by the sudden
advent of one of the inferior members of the clan of Opar. The fellow
hurried breathlessly to Cadj.

“Cadj,” he cried, “strange men descend upon Opar! From the northwest
they have come into the valley from beyond the barrier cliffs—fifty of
them at least, perhaps half again that number. I saw them as I watched
from the summit of the outer wall, but further than they are men I
cannot say, for they are still a great distance away. Not since the
great Tarmangani came among us last have there been strangers within
Opar.”

“It has been many moons since the great Tarmangani who called himself
Tarzan of the Apes was among us,” said Cadj. “He promised us to return
before the rain to see that no harm had befallen La, but he did not come
back and La has always insisted that he is dead. Have you told any other
of what you have seen?” he demanded, turning suddenly upon the
messenger.

“No,” replied the latter.

“Good!” exclaimed Cadj. “Come, we will all go to the outer wall and see
who it is who dares enter forbidden Opar, and let no one breathe a word
of what Blagh has told us until I give permission.”

“The word of Cadj is law until La speaks,” murmured one of the priests.

Cadj turned a scowling face upon the speaker. “I am High Priest of
Opar,” he growled. “Who dares disobey me?”

“But La is High Priestess,” said one, “and the High Priestess is the
queen of Opar.”

“But the High Priest can offer whom he will as sacrifice in the Chamber
of the Dead or to the Flaming God,” Cadj reminded the other meaningly.

“We shall keep silence, Cadj,” replied the priest, cringing.

“Good!” growled the High Priest and led the way from the garden through
the corridors of the temple back toward the outer wall of Opar. From
here they watched the approaching party that was in plain view of them,
far out across the valley. The watchers conversed in low gutturals in
the language of the great apes, interspersed with which were occasional
words and phrases of a strange tongue that were doubtless corrupted
forms of the ancient language of Atlantis handed down through countless
generations from their human progenitors—that now extinct race whose
cities and civilization lie buried deep beneath the tossing waves of the
Atlantic, and whose adventurous spirit had, in remote ages, caused them
to penetrate into the heart of Africa in search of gold and to build
there, in duplication of their far home cities, the magnificent city of
Opar.

As Cadj and his followers watched from beneath shaggy brows the
strangers plodding laboriously beneath the now declining equatorial sun
across the rocky, barren valley, a gray little monkey eyed them from
amidst the foliage of one of the giant trees that had forced its way
through the pavement of the ancient avenue behind them. A solemn,
sad-faced little monkey it was, but like all his kind overcome by
curiosity, and finally to such an extent that his fear of the fierce
males of Opar was so considerably overcome that he at last swung lightly
from the tree to the pavement, made his way through the inner wall and
up the inside of the outer wall to a position in their rear where he
could hide behind one of the massive granite blocks of the crumbling
wall in comparative safety from detection, the while he might overhear
the conversation of the Oparians, all of which that was carried on in
the language of the great apes he could understand perfectly.

The afternoon was drawing to a close before the slowly moving company
approaching Opar was close enough for individuals to be recognizable in
any way, and then presently one of the younger priests exclaimed
excitedly:

“It is he, Cadj. It is the great Tarmangani who calls himself Tarzan of
the Apes. I can see him plainly; the others are all black men. He is
urging them on, prodding them with his spear. They act as though they
were afraid and very tired, but he is forcing them forward.”

“You are sure,” demanded Cadj, “you are sure that it is Tarzan of the
Apes?”

“I am positive,” replied the speaker, and then another of the priests
joined his assurances to that of his fellow. At last they were close
enough so that Cadj himself, whose eyesight was not as good as that of
the younger members of the company, realized that it was indeed Tarzan
of the Apes who was returning to Opar. The High Priest scowled angrily
in thought. Suddenly he turned upon the others.

“He must not come,” he cried; “he must not enter Opar. Hasten and fetch
a hundred fighting men. We will meet them as they come through the outer
wall and slay them one by one.”

“But La,” cried he who had aroused Cadj’s anger in the garden, “I
distinctly recall that La offered the friendship of Opar to Tarzan of
the Apes upon that time, many moons ago, that he saved her from the
tusks of infuriated Tantor.”

“Silence,” growled Cadj, “he shall not enter; we shall slay them all,
though we need not know their identity until it is too late. Do you
understand? And know, too, that whosoever attempts to thwart my purpose
shall die—and he die not as a sacrifice, he shall die at my hands, but
die he shall. You hear me?” And he pointed an unclean finger at the
trembling priest.

Manu, the monkey, hearing all this, was almost bursting with excitement.
He knew Tarzan of the Apes—as all the migratory monkeys the length and
breadth of Africa knew him—he knew him for a friend and protector. To
Manu the males of Opar were neither beast, nor man, nor friend. He knew
them as cruel and surly creatures who ate the flesh of his kind, and he
hated them accordingly. He was therefore greatly exercised at the plot
that he had heard discussed which was aimed at the life of the great
Tarmangani. He scratched his little gray head, and the root of his tail,
and his belly, as he attempted to mentally digest what he had heard, and
bring forth from the dim recesses of his little brain a plan to foil the
priests and save Tarzan of the Apes. He made grotesque grimaces that
were aimed at the unsuspecting Cadj and his followers, but which failed
to perturb them, possibly because a huge granite block hid the little
monkey from them. This was quite the most momentous thing that had
occurred in the life of Manu. He wanted to jump up and down and dance
and screech and jabber—to scold and threaten the hated Oparians, but
something told him that nothing would be gained by this, other than,
perhaps, to launch in his direction a shower of granite missiles, which
the priests knew only too well how to throw with accuracy. Now Manu is
not a deep thinker, but upon this occasion he quite outdid himself, and
managed to concentrate his mind upon the thing at hand rather than
permit its being distracted by each falling leaf or buzzing insect. He
even permitted a succulent caterpillar to crawl within his reach and out
again with impunity.

Just before darkness fell, Cadj saw a little gray monkey disappear over
the summit of the outer wall fifty paces from where he crouched with his
fellows, waiting for the coming of the fighting men. But so numerous
were the monkeys about the ruins of Opar that the occurrence left Cadj’s
mind almost as quickly as the monkey disappeared from his view, and in
the gathering gloom he did not see the little gray figure scampering off
across the valley toward the band of intruders who now appeared to have
stopped to rest at the foot of a large kopje that stood alone out in the
valley, about a mile from the city.

Little Manu was very much afraid out there alone in the growing dusk,
and he scampered very fast with his tail bowed up and out behind him.
All the time he cast affrighted glances to the right and left. The
moment he reached the kopje he scampered up its face as fast as he
could. It was really a huge, precipitous granite rock with almost
perpendicular sides, but sufficiently weather-worn to make its ascent
easy to little Manu. He paused a moment at the summit to get his breath
and still the beatings of his frightened little heart, and then he made
his way around to a point where he could look down upon the party
beneath.

There, indeed, was the great Tarmangani Tarzan, and with him were some
fifty Gomangani. The latter were splicing together a number of long,
straight poles, which they had laid upon the ground in two parallel
lines. Across these two, at intervals of a foot or more, they were
lashing smaller straight branches about eighteen inches in length, the
whole forming a crude but substantial ladder. The purpose of all this
Manu, of course, did not understand, nor did he know that it had been
evolved from the fertile brain of Flora Hawkes as a means of scaling the
precipitous kopje, at the summit of which lay the outer entrance to the
treasure vaults of Opar. Nor did Manu know that the party had no
intention of entering the city of Opar and were therefore in no danger
of becoming victims of Cadj’s hidden assassins. To him, the danger to
Tarzan of the Apes was very real, and so, having regained his breath, he
lost no time in delivering his warning to the friend of his people.

“Tarzan,” he cried, in the language that was common to both.

The white man and the blacks looked up at the sound of his chattering
voice.

“It is Manu, Tarzan,” continued the little monkey, “who has come to tell
you not to go to Opar. Cadj and his people await within the outer wall
to slay you.”

The blacks, having discovered that the author of the disturbance was
nothing but a little gray monkey, returned immediately to their work,
while the white man similarly ignored his words of warning. Manu was not
surprised at the lack of interest displayed by the blacks, for he knew
that they did not understand his language, but he could not comprehend
why Tarzan failed to pay any attention whatsoever to him. Again and
again he called Tarzan by name. Again and again he shrieked his warning
to the ape-man, but without eliciting any reply or any information that
the great Tarmangani had either heard or understood him. Manu was
mystified. What had occurred to render Tarzan of the Apes so indifferent
to the warnings of his old friend?

At last the little monkey gave it up and looked longingly back in the
direction of the trees within the walled city of Opar. It was now very
dark and he trembled at the thought of recrossing the valley, where he
knew enemies might prowl by night. He scratched his head and he hugged
his knees, then sat there whimpering, a very forlorn and unhappy little
ball of a monkey. But however uncomfortable he was upon the high kopje,
he was comparatively safe, and so he decided to remain there during the
night rather than venture the terrifying return trip through the
darkness. Thus it was that he saw the ladder completed and erected
against the side of the kopje; and when the moon rose at last and
lighted the scene, he saw Tarzan of the Apes urging his men to mount the
ladder. He had never seen Tarzan thus rough and cruel with the blacks
who accompanied him. Manu knew how ferocious the great Tarmangani could
be with an enemy, whether man or beast, but he had never seen him accord
such treatment to the blacks who were his friends.

One by one and with evident reluctance the blacks ascended the ladder,
continually urged forward to greater speed by the sharp spear of the
white man; when they had all ascended Tarzan followed, and Manu saw them
disappear apparently into the heart of the great rock.

It was only a short time later that they commenced to reappear, and now
each was burdened by two heavy objects which appeared to Manu to be very
similar to some of the smaller stone blocks that had been used in the
construction of the buildings in Opar. He saw them take the blocks to
the edge of the kopje and cast them over to the ground beneath, and when
the last of the blacks had emerged with his load and cast it to the
valley below, one by one the party descended the ladder to the foot of
the kopje. But this time Tarzan of the Apes went first. Then they
lowered the ladder and took it apart and laid its pieces close to the
foot of the cliff, after which they took up the blocks which they had
brought from the heart of the kopje, and following Tarzan, who set out
in the lead, they commenced to retrace their steps toward the rim of the
valley.

Manu would have been very much mystified had he been a man, but being
only a monkey he saw only what he saw without attempting to reason very
much about it. He knew that the ways of men were peculiar, and
oftentimes unaccountable. For example, the Gomangani who could not
travel through the jungle and the forest with the ease of any other of
the animals which frequented them, added to their difficulties by
loading themselves down with additional weights in the form of metal
anklets and armlets, with necklaces and girdles, and with skins of
animals, which did nothing more than impede their progress and render
life much more complicated than that which the untrammeled beasts
enjoyed. Manu, whenever he gave the matter a thought, congratulated
himself that he was not a man—he pitied the foolish, unreasonable
creatures.

Manu must have slept. He thought that he had only closed his eyes a
moment, but when he opened them the rosy light of dawn had overspread
the desolate valley. Just disappearing over the cliffs to the northeast
he could see the last of Tarzan’s party commencing the descent of the
barrier, then Manu turned his face toward Opar and prepared to descend
from the kopje, and scamper back to the safety of his trees within the
walls of Opar. But first he would reconnoiter—Sheeta, the panther,
might be still abroad, and so he scampered around the edge of the kopje
to a point where he could see the entire valley floor between himself
and Opar. And there it was that he saw again that which filled him with
greatest excitement. For, debouching from the ruined outer wall of Opar
was a large company of Opar’s frightful men—fully a hundred of them
Manu could have counted had Manu been able to count.

They seemed to be coming toward the kopje, and he sat and watched them
as they approached, deciding to defer his return to the city until after
the path was cleared of hated Oparians. It occurred to him that they
were coming after him, for the egotism of the lower animals is
inordinate. Because he was a monkey, the idea did not seem at all
ridiculous and so he hid behind a jutting rock, with only one little,
bright eye exposed to the enemy. He saw them come closer and he grew
very much excited, though he was not at all afraid, for he knew that if
they ascended one side of the kopje he could descend the other and be
half-way to Opar before they could possibly locate him again.

On and on they came, but they did not stop at the kopje—as a matter of
fact they did not come very close to it, but continued on beyond it.
Then it was that the truth of the matter flashed into the little brain
of the monkey—Cadj and his people were pursuing Tarzan of the Apes to
slay him. If Manu had been offended by Tarzan’s indifference to him upon
the night before, he had evidently forgotten it, for now he was quite as
excited about the danger which he saw menace the ape-man as he had been
upon the afternoon previous. At first he thought of running ahead, and
again warning Tarzan, but he feared to venture so far from the trees of
Opar, even if the thought of having to pass the hated Oparians had not
been sufficient to deter him from carrying out this plan. For a few
minutes he sat watching them, until they had all passed the kopje, and
then it became quite clear to him that they were heading directly for
the spot at which the last of Tarzan’s party had disappeared from the
valley—there could be no doubt that they were in pursuit of the
ape-man.

Manu scanned the valley once more toward Opar. There was nothing in
sight to deter him from an attempted return, and so, with the agility of
his kind, he scampered down the vertical face of the kopje and was off
at great speed toward the city’s wall. Just when he formulated the plan
that he eventually followed it is difficult to say. Perhaps he thought
it all out as he sat upon the kopje, watching Cadj and his people upon
the trail of the ape-man, or perhaps it occurred to him while he was
scampering across the barren waste toward Opar. It may just have popped
into his mind from a clear sky after he had regained the leafy sanctuary
of his own trees. Be that, however as it may, the fact remains, that as
La, High Priestess and princess of Opar, in company with several of her
priestesses, was bathing in a pool in one of the temple gardens, she was
startled by the screaming of a monkey, swinging frantically by his tail
from the branch of a great tree which overspread the pool—it was a
little gray monkey with a face so wise and serious that one might easily
have imagined that the fate of nations lay constantly upon the shoulders
of its owner.

“La, La,” it screamed, “they have gone to kill Tarzan. They have gone to
kill Tarzan.”

At the sound of that name La was instantly all attention. Standing waist
deep in the pool she looked up at the little monkey questioningly. “What
do you mean, Manu?” she asked. “It has been many moons since Tarzan was
at Opar. He is not here now. What are you talking about?”

“I saw him,” screamed Manu, “I saw him last night with many Gomangani.
He came to the great rock that lies in the valley before Opar; with all
his men he climbed to the top of it, went into the heart of it, and came
out with stones which they threw down into the valley. Afterward they
descended from the rock, and picked up the stones again and left the
valley—there,” and Manu pointed toward the northeast with one of his
hairy little fingers.

“How do you know it was Tarzan of the Apes?” asked La.

“Does Manu not know his cousin and his friend?” demanded the monkey.
“With my eyes I saw him—it was Tarzan of the Apes.”

La of Opar puckered her brows in thought. Deep in her heart smoldered
the fires of her great love for Tarzan. Fires that had been quenched by
the necessity that had compelled her marriage with Cadj since last she
had seen the ape-man. For it is written among the laws of Opar that the
High Priestess of the Flaming God must take a mate within a certain
number of years after her consecration. For many moons had La longed to
make Tarzan that mate. The ape-man had not loved her, and finally she
had come to a realization that he could never love her. Afterward she
had bowed to the frightful fate that had placed her in the arms of Cadj.

As month after month had passed and Tarzan had not returned to Opar, as
he had promised he would do, to see that no harm befell La, she had come
to accept the opinion of Cadj that the ape-man was dead, and though she
hated the repulsive Cadj none the less, her love for Tarzan had
gradually become little more than a sorrowful memory. Now to learn that
he was alive and had been so near was like re-opening an old wound. At
first she comprehended little else than that Tarzan had been close to
Opar, but presently the cries of Manu aroused her to a realization that
the ape-man was in danger—just what the danger was, she did not know.

“Who has gone to kill Tarzan of the Apes?” she demanded suddenly.

“Cadj, Cadj!” shrieked Manu. “He has gone with many, many men, and is
following upon the spoor of Tarzan.”

La sprang quickly from the pool, seized her girdle and ornaments from
her attendant and adjusting them hurriedly, sped through the garden and
into the temple.

                              CHAPTER VII
                        “YOU MUST SACRIFICE HIM”

WARILY CADJ and his hundred frightful followers, armed with their
bludgeons and knives, crept stealthily down the face of the barrier into
the valley below, upon the trail of the white man and his black
companions. They made no haste, for they had noted from the summit of
Opar’s outer wall, that the party they were pursuing moved very slowly,
though why, they did not know, for they had been at too great a distance
to see the burden that each of the blacks carried. Nor was it Cadj’s
desire to overtake his quarry by daylight, his plans contemplating a
stealthy night attack, the suddenness of which, together with the great
number of his followers, might easily confuse and overwhelm a sleeping
camp.

The spoor they followed was well marked. There could be no mistaking it,
and they moved slowly down the now gentle declivity, toward the bottom
of the valley. It was close to noon that they were brought to a sudden
halt by the discovery of a thorn boma recently constructed in a small
clearing just ahead of them. From the center of the boma arose the thin
smoke of a dying fire. Here, then, was the camp of the ape-man.

Cadj drew his followers into the concealment of the thick bushes that
bordered the trail, and from there he sent ahead a single man to
reconnoiter. It was but a few moments later that the latter returned to
say that the camp was deserted, and once again Cadj moved forward with
his men. Entering the boma they examined it in an effort to estimate the
size of the party that accompanied Tarzan. As they were thus occupied
Cadj saw something lying half concealed by bushes at the far end of the
boma. Very warily he approached it, for there was that about it which
not only aroused his curiosity but prompted him to caution, for it
resembled indistinctly the figure of a man, lying huddled upon the
ground.

With ready bludgeons a dozen of them approached the thing that had
aroused Cadj’s curiosity, and when they had come close to it they saw
lying before them the lifeless figure of Tarzan of the Apes.

“The Flaming God has reached forth to avenge his desecrated altar,”
cried the High Priest, his eyes glowing with the maniacal fires of
fanaticism. But another priest, more practical, perhaps, or at least
more cautious, kneeled beside the figure of the ape-man and placed his
ear against the latter’s heart.

“He is not dead,” he whispered; “perhaps he only sleeps.”

“Seize him, then, quickly,” cried Cadj, and an instant later Tarzan’s
body was covered by the hairy forms of as many of the frightful men as
could pile upon him. He offered no resistance—he did not even open his
eyes, and presently his arms were securely bound behind him.

“Drag him forth where the eye of the Flaming God may rest upon him,”
cried Cadj. They dragged Tarzan out into the center of the boma into the
full light of the sun, and Cadj, the High Priest, drawing his knife from
his loin cloth, raised it above his head and stood over the prostrate
form of his intended victim. Cadj’s followers formed a rough circle
about the ape-man and some of them pressed close behind their leader.
They appeared uneasy, looking alternately at Tarzan and their High
Priest, and then casting furtive glances at the sun, riding high in a
cloud-mottled sky. But whatever the thoughts that troubled their
half-savage brains, there was only one who dared voice his, and he was
the same priest who, upon the preceding day, had questioned Cadj’s
proposal to slay the ape-man.

“Cadj,” he said now, “who are you to offer up a sacrifice to the Flaming
God? It is the privilege alone of La, our High Priestess and our queen,
and indeed will she be angry when she learns what you have done.”

“Silence, Dooth!” cried Cadj; “I, Cadj, am the High Priest of Opar. I,
Cadj, am the mate of La, the queen. My word, too, is law in Opar. And
you would remain a priest, and you would remain alive, keep silence.”

“Your word is not law,” replied Booth, angrily, “and if you anger La,
the High Priestess, or if you anger the Flaming God, you may be punished
as another. If you make this sacrifice both will be angry.”

“Enough,” cried Cadj; “the Flaming God has spoken to me and has demanded
that I offer up as sacrifice this defiler of his temple.”

He knelt beside the ape-man and touched his breast above the heart with
the point of his sharp blade, and then he raised the weapon high above
him, preparatory to the fatal plunge into the living heart. At that
instant a cloud passed before the face of the sun and a shadow rested
upon them. A murmur rose from the surrounding priests.

“Look,” cried Dooth, “the Flaming God is angry. He has hidden his face
from the people of Opar.”

Cadj paused. He cast a half-defiant, half-frightened look at the cloud
obscuring the face or the sun. Then he rose slowly to his feet, and
extending his arms upward toward the hidden god of day, he remained for
a moment silent in apparently attentive and listening attitude. Then,
suddenly, he turned upon his followers.

“Priests of Opar,” he cried, “the Flaming God has spoken to his High
Priest, Cadj. He is not angered. He but wishes to speak to me alone, and
he directs that you go away into the jungle and wait until he has come
and spoken to Cadj, after which I shall call you to return. Go!”

For the most part they seemed to accept the word of Cadj as law, but
Dooth and a few others, doubtless prompted by a certain skepticism,
hesitated.

“Be gone!” commanded Cadj. And so powerful is the habit of obedience
that the doubters finally turned away and melted into the jungle with
the others. A crafty smile lighted the cruel face of the High Priest as
the last of them disappeared from sight, and then he once again turned
his attention to the ape-man. That, deep within his breast however,
lurked an inherent fear of his deity, was evidenced by the fact that he
turned questioning glances toward the sky. He had determined to slay the
ape-man while Dooth and the others were absent, yet the fear of his god
restrained his hand until the light of his deity should shine forth upon
him once more and assure him that the thing he contemplated might meet
with favor.

It was a large cloud that overcast the sun, and while Cadj waited his
nervousness increased. Six times he raised his knife for the fatal blow,
yet in each instance his superstition prevented the consummation of the
act. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and still the sun remained
obscured. But now at last Cadj could see that it was nearing the edge of
the cloud, and once again he took his position kneeling beside the
ape-man with his blade ready for the moment that the sunlight should
flood again, for the last time, the living Tarzan. He saw it sweeping
slowly across the boma toward him, and as it came a look of demoniacal
hatred shone in his close-set, wicked eyes. Another instant and the
Flaming God would have set the seal of his approval upon the sacrifice.
Cadj trembled in anticipation. He raised the knife a trifle higher, his
muscles tensed for the downward plunge, and then the silence of the
jungle was broken by a woman’s voice, raised almost to a scream.

“Cadj!” came the single word, but with all the suddenness and all the
surprising effect of lightning from a clear sky.

His knife still poised on high, the High Priest turned in the direction
of the interruption to see at the clearing’s edge the figure of La, the
High Priestess, and behind her Dooth and a score of the lesser priests.

“What means this, Cadj?” demanded La, angrily, approaching rapidly
toward him across the clearing. Sullenly the High Priest rose.

“The Flaming God demanded the life of this unbeliever,” he cried.

“Speaker of lies,” retorted La, “the Flaming God communicates with men
through the lips of his High Priestess only. Too often already have you
attempted to thwart the will of your queen. Know, then, Cadj, that the
power of life and death which your queen holds is as potent over you as
another. During the long ages that Opar has endured, our legends tell us
that more than one High Priest has been offered upon the altar to the
Flaming God. And it is not unlikely that yet another may go the way of
the presumptuous. Curb, therefore, your vanity and your lust for power,
lest they prove your undoing.”

Cadj sheathed his knife and turned sullenly away, casting a venomous
look at Dooth, to whom he evidently attributed his undoing. That he was
temporarily abashed by the presence of his queen was evident, but to
those who knew Cadj there was little doubt that he still harbored his
intention to despatch the ape-man, and if the opportunity ever presented
itself that he would do so, for Cadj had a strong following among the
people and priests of Opar. There were many who doubted that La would
ever dare to incur the displeasure and anger of so important a portion
of her followers as to cause the death or degradation of their high
priest, who occupied his office by virtue of laws and customs so old
that their origin had been long lost in antiquity.

For years she had found first one excuse and then another to delay the
ceremonies that would unite her in marriage to the High Priest. She had
further aroused the antagonism of her people by palpable proofs of her
infatuation for the ape-man, and even though at last she had been
compelled to mate with Cadj, she had made no effort whatsoever to
conceal her hatred and loathing for the man. How much further she could
go with impunity was a question that often troubled those whose position
in Opar depended upon her favor, and, knowing all these conditions as he
did, it was not strange that Cadj should entertain treasonable thoughts
toward his queen. Leagued with him in his treachery was Oah, a priestess
who aspired to the power and offices of La. If La could be done away
with, then Cadj had the influence to see that Oah became High Priestess.
He also had Oah’s promise to mate with him and permit him to rule as
king, but as yet both were bound by the superstitious fear of their
flaming deity, and because of this fact was the life of La temporarily
made safe. It required, however, but the slightest spark to ignite the
flames of treason that were smoldering about her.

So far, she was well within her rights in forbidding the sacrifice of
Tarzan by the High Priest. But her fate, her very life, perhaps,
depended upon her future treatment of the prisoner. Should she spare
him, should she evidence in any way a return of the great love she had
once almost publicly avowed for him, it was likely that her doom would
be sealed. It was even questionable whether or not she might with
impunity spare his life and set him at liberty.

Cadj and the others watched her closely now as she crossed to the side
of Tarzan. Standing there silently for several moments she looked down