Part 11 (1/2)

”That for your welcoht, before my Ethiop friends eat you, I shall tell you what has already befallen your wife and child, and what further plans I have for their futures”

Chapter 8

The Dance of Death

Through the luxuriant, tangled vegetation of the Stygian jungle night a great lithe body made its way sinuously and in utter silence upon its soft padded feet Only two blazing points of yellow-green flaht of the equatorialroof rustling in the night wind

Occasionally the beast would stop with high-held nose, sniffing searchingly At other times a quick, brief incursion into the branches above delayed it momentarily in its steady journey toward the east To its sensitive nostrils came the subtle unseen spoor ofthe slaver of hunger to the cruel, drooping jowl

But steadfastly it kept on its way, strangely ignoring the cravings of appetite that at another ti at soht the creature pursued its lonely way, and the next day it halted only to h half famished for lack of food

It was dusk when it approached the palisade that surrounded a large native village Like the shadow of a swift and silent death it circled the village, nose to ground, halting at last close to the palisade, where it almost touched the backs of several huts Here the beast sniffed for aits head upon one side, listened with up-pricked ears

What it heard was no sound by the standards of huans of the beast a e brain A wondrous transforht in the motionless mass of statuesque bone and h carved out of the living bronze

As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly released, it rose quickly and silently to the top of the palisade, disappearing, stealthily and cat-like, into the dark space between the wall and the back of an adjacent hut

In the village street beyond wo-pots filled ater, for a great feast was to be celebrated ere the night was many hours older About a stout stake near the centre of the circling fires a little knot of black warriors stood conversing, their bodies srotesque bands Great circles of colour were drawn about their eyes and lips, their breasts and abdoay feathers and bits of long, straight wire

The village was preparing for the feast, while in a hut at one side of the scene of the coy the bound victi for the end And such an end!

Tarzan of the Apes, tensing his hty muscles, strained at the bonds that pinioned hiation of the Russian, so that not even the ape-e them

Death!

Tarzan had looked the Hideous Hunter in the face ht when he knew the end was cohts were not of himself, but of those others-the dear ones who

Jane would never know the manner of it For that he thanked Heaven; and he was thankful also that she at least was safe in the heart of the world's greatest city Safe ahten her ht of hile-he, Tarzan, King of the Apes, the only one in all the world fitted to find and save the child from the horrors that Rokoff's evil mind had planned-had been trapped like a silly, dumb creature He was to die in a few hours, and with hio the child's last chance of succour

Rokoff had been in to see and revile and abuse hi the afternoon; but he had been able to wring no word of reiant captive

So at last he had given up, reserving his particular bit of exquisite mental torture for the last e spears of the cannibals should for ever , the Russian planned to reveal to his eneht safe in England

Dusk had fallen upon the village, and the ape- forward for the torture and the feast The dance of death he could picture in hisure, bound to the stake

The torture of the slow death as the circling warriors cut him to bits with the fiendish skill, thatunconsciousness, had no terrors for hiht of blood and to cruel death; but the desire to live was no less strong within hio out, his whole being would remain quick with hope and determination Let them relax their watchfulness but for an instant, he knew that his cunning iant e

As he lay, thinking furiously on every possibility of self-salvation, there came to his sensitive nostrils a faint and a familiar scent Instantly every faculty of his ht the sound of the soundless presence without-behind the hut wherein he lay His lips ht have been appreciable to a human ear beyond the walls of his prison, yet he realized that the one beyond would hear Already he kneho that one was, for his nostrils had told him as plainly as your eyes or mine tell us of the identity of an old friend e coht