Part 12 (2/2)

”Yes,” spoke up an old ape, ”he is Tarzan I know hiood hunting”

The other apes came closer and sniffed at the ape-s half bared, and his muscles tense and ready for action; but there was none there to question his right to be with them, and presently, the inspection satisfactorily concluded, the apes again returned their attention to the other survivor

He too was but slightly wounded, a bullet, grazing his skull, having stunned hiained consciousness he was apparently as fit as ever

The apes told Tarzan that they had been traveling toward the east when the scent spoor of the she had attracted them and they had stalked her Now they wished to continue upon their interrupted march; but Tarzan preferred to follow the Arabs and take the woument it was decided that they should first hunt toward the east for a few days and then return and search for the Arabs, and as time is of little moment to the ape folk, Tarzan acceded to their de reverted to a mental state but little superior to their own

Another circumstance which decided him to postpone pursuit of the Arabs was the painfulness of his wound It would be better to wait until that had healed before he pitted hiani

And so, as Jane Clayton was pushed into her prison hut and her hands and feet securely bound, her natural protector roamed off toward the east in company with a score of hairy monsters, hom he rubbed shoulders as faled with his immaculate fellow-members of one of London's most select and exclusive clubs

But all the time there lurked in the back of his injured brain a troublesome conviction that he had no business where he was-that he should be, for so another sort of creature Also, there was the co the rescue of the woe sentiht-hich naturally occurred to him in the contemplation of the venture, was ”capture,” rather than ”rescue”

To hile she, and he had set his heart upon her as his mate For an instant, as he had approached closer to her in the clearing where the Arabs had seized her, the subtle aroma which had first aroused his desires in the hut that had imprisoned her had fallen upon his nostrils, and told him that he had found the creature for whom he had developed so sudden and inexplicable a passion

The hts to soe for his return to the camp of the raiders He would obtain possession of both his pretty pebbles and the she Then he would return to the great apes with his newhis hairy companions into a far wilderness beyond the ken ofthe lower orders after the only manner which he now recollected

He spoke to his fellow-apes upon the matter, in an attelat and Chulk refused The latter was young and strong, endoith a greater intelligence than his fellows, and therefore the possessor of better developed powers of iination To hily With Taglat there was another incentive-a secret and sinister incentive, which, had Tarzan of the Apes had knowledge of it, would have sent hilat was no longer young; but he was still a forreater experience, crafty and cunning Too, he was of giant proportions, the very weight of his huge bulk serving ofttier antagonist

He was of ahis frowning fellohere such characteristics are the rule rather than the exception, and, though Tarzan did not guess it, he hated the ape-man with a ferocity that he was able to hide only because the dominant spirit of the nobler creature had inspired within him a species of dread which was as powerful as it was inexplicable to him

These two, then, were to be Tarzan's coe of Achmet Zek As they set off, the balance of the tribe vouchsafed the stare, and then resu

Tarzan found difficulty in keeping the minds of his fellows set upon the purpose of their adventure, for the -sustained concentration To set out upon a long journey, with a definite destination in view, is one thing, to remember that purpose and keep it uppermost in one's s to distract one's attention along the way

Chulk was, at first, for rushi+ng rapidly ahead as though the village of the raiders lay but an hour's march before them instead of several days; but within a few estion of rich and succulent forage beneath, and when Tarzan,beside the rotting bole, fro out the grubs and beetles, whose kind form a considerable proportion of the diet of the apes

Unless Tarzan desired to fight there was nothing to do but wait until Chulk had exhausted the storehouse, and this he did, only to discover that Taglat was now entles of an injured rodent he had pounced upon He would sit in apparent indifference, gazing in another direction, while the crippled creature wriggled slowly and painfully away from him, and then, just as his victiiant palain he repeated this operation, until, tiring of the sport, he ended the sufferings of his plaything by devouring it

Such were the exasperating causes of delay which retarded Tarzan's return journey toward the village of Achmet Zek; but the ape-man was patient, for in his mind was a plan which necessitated the presence of Chulk and Taglat when he should have arrived at his destination

It was not always an easy thing tominds of the anthropoids a sustained interest in their venture Chulk earying of the continuedand the infrequency and short duration of the rests He would gladly have abandoned this search for adventure had not Tarzan continually filled his reat stores of food which were to be found in the village of Tarlat nursed his secret purpose to better advantage than ht have been expected of an ape, yet there were times when he, too, would have abandoned the adventure had not Tarzan cajoled him on

It was mid-afternoon of a sultry, tropical day when the keen senses of the three warned them of the proxi to the dense tangle of growing things which le craft

First ca with the sweat of exertion in the close, hot confines of the jungle Behind hiy caricatures of their Godlike leader