AS the huge, man-like entered the compound the closed the gate, and fell back respectfully as he advanced to the center of the village where he stood for a moment, looking about.  
“Where are the shes and the balus?” he asked, . “Call them.”
 
The women and the children must have heard the command, but they did not emerge from their hiding places. The warriors moved about uneasily, evidently torn by the conflicting emotions of fear of the creature who had issued the order, and to fulfil his commands.
 
“Call them,” he repeated, “or go and fetch them.” But at last one of the warriors the courage to address him.
 
“This village has already furnished one woman within the moon,” he said. “It is the turn of another village.”
 
“Silence!” roared the gorilla-man, advancing threateningly toward him. “You are a rash Gomangani to threaten the will of a Bolgani—I speak with the voice of Numa, the Emperor; obey or die.”
 
Trembling, the black turned and called the women and children, but none responded to his summons. The Bolgani gestured impatiently.
 
“Go and fetch them,” he demanded. And the blacks, , moved across the compound toward the hiding places of their women and children. Presently they returned, dragging them with them, by the arms sometimes, but usually by the hair. Although they had seemed to give them up, they showed no gentleness toward them, nor any indication of affection. Their attitude toward them, however, was presently explained to Tarzan by the next words of the who had spoken .
 
“Great Bolgani,” he said, addressing the gorilla-man, “if Numa takes always from this village, there will soon be not enough women for the warriors here, and there will be too few children, and in a little time there will be none of us left.”
 
“What of that?” the gorilla-man. “There are already too many Gomangani in the world. For what other purpose were you created than to serve Numa, the Emperor, and his chosen people, the Bolgani?” As he he was examining the women and children, pinching their flesh and pounding upon their chests and backs. Presently he returned to a comparatively young woman, straddling whose was a small child.
 
“This one will do,” he said, snatching the child from its mother and it roughly across the compound, where it lay against the face of the palisade, moaning pitifully, and perchance broken and dying. The poor, stupid mother, more beast than human, stood for a moment trembling in dumb , and then she started to rush forward to her child. But the gorilla-man seized her with one of his great hands and her to the ground. there arose from the silent above them the fierce and terrible scream of the challenging bull ape. In terror the simple blacks cast affrighted glances upward, while the gorilla-man raised his face in anger toward the author of the cry.
 
Swaying upon a leafy they such a creature as none of them had ever looked upon before—a white man, a Tarmangani, with hide as hairless as the body of Histah, the snake. In the instant that they looked they saw the spear hand of the stranger drive forward, and the , speeding with the swiftness of thought, bury itself in the breast of the Bolgani. With a single scream of rage and pain, the gorilla-man to the earth, where he struggled spasmodically for a moment and then lay still, in death.
 
The ape-man held no great love for the Gomangani as a race, but inherent in his English brain and heart was the spirit of fair play, which prompted him to spontaneous espousal of the cause of the weak. On the other hand Bolgani was his enemy. His first battle had been with Bolgani, and his first kill.
 
The poor blacks were still in stupefied wonderment when he dropped from the tree to the ground among them. They stepped back in terror, and simultaneously they raised their spears menacingly against him.
 
“I am a friend,” he said. “I am Tarzan of the Apes. Lower your spears.” And then he turned and withdrew his own weapon from the carcass of Bolgani. “Who is this creature, that may come into your village and your balus and steal your shes? Who is he, that you dare not drive your spears through him?”
 
“He is one of the great Bolgani,” said the warrior, who seemed to be spokesman, and the leader in the village. “He is one of the chosen people of Numa, the Emperor, and when Numa learns that he has been killed in our village, we shall all die for what you have done.”
 
“Who is Numa?” demanded the ape-man, to whom Numa, in the language of the great apes, meant only lion.
 
“Numa is the Emperor,” replied the black, “who lives with the Bolgani in the Palace of Diamonds.”
 
He did not express himself in just these words, for the language of the great apes, even though by the higher intelligence and greater development of the Oparians, is still in the extreme. What he had really said was more nearly “Numa, the king of kings, who lives in the king’s hut of glittering stones,” which carried to the ape-man’s mind the faithful impression of the fact. Numa, evidently, was the name adopted by the king of the Bolgani, and the title emperor, indicated merely his among the chiefs.
 
The instant that Bolgani had fallen the mother rushed forward and gathered her injured infant into her arms. She now against the palisade, cuddling it to her breast, and crooning softly to its cries, which Tarzan suddenly discovered were more the result of fright than injury. At first the mother had been frightened when he had attempted to examine the child, drawing away and baring her fighting , much after the manner of a wild beast. But presently there had seemed to come to her dull brain a that this creature had saved her from Bolgani, that he had permitted her to recover her infant and that he was making no effort to harm either of them. Convinced at last that the child was only , Tarzan turned again toward the warriors, who were talking together in an excited little group a few paces away. As they saw him advancing, they spread into a semi-circle and stood facing him.
 
“The Bolgani will send and slay us all,” they said, “when they learn what has happened in our village, unless we can take to them the creature that cast the spear. Therefore, Tarmangani, you shall go with us to the Palace of Diamonds, and there we shall give you over to the Bolgani and perhaps Numa will forgive us.”
 
The ape-man smiled. What kind of creature did the simple blacks think him, to believe that he would permit himself to be easily led into the hands of Numa, the Emperor of the Bolgani. Although he was aware of the risk that he had taken in entering the village, he knew too that because he was Tarzan of the Apes there was a greater chance that he would be able to escape than that they could hold him. He had faced spearmen before and knew what to expect in the event of . He preferred, however, to make peace with these people, for it had been in his mind to find some means of questioning them the moment that he had discovered their village hidden away in this wild forest.
 
“Wait,” he said, therefore. “Would you betray a friend who enters your village to protect you from an enemy?”
 
“We will not slay you, Tarmangani. We will take you to the Bolgani for Numa, the Emperor.”
 
“But that would amount to the same thing,” returned Tarzan, “for you well know that Numa, the Emperor, will have me .”
 
“That we cannot help,” replied the spokesman. “If we could save you we would, but when the Bolgani discover what has happened in our village, it is we who must suffer, unless, perhaps, they are satisfied to punish you instead.”
 
“But why need they know that the Bolgani has been slain in your village?” asked Tarzan.
 
“Will they not see his body next time they come?” asked the spokesman.
 
“Not if you remove his body,” replied Tarzan.
 
The blacks scratched their heads. Into their dull, ignorant minds had crept no such suggestion of a solution of their problem. What the stranger said was true. None but they and he knew that Bolgani had been slain within their palisade. To remove the body, then, would be to remove all suspicion from their village. But where were they to take ............