not a particularly difficult
matter, though their narrow and limited vocabulary was strained in the
effort; but to impress upon the little, wicked brain of Sheeta that he
was to hunt with and not for his legitimate prey proved a task almost
beyond the powers of the ape-man.

Tarzan, among his other weapons, possessed a long, stout cudgel, and
after fastening his rope about the panther's neck he used this
instrument freely upon the snarling beast, endeavouring in this way to
impress upon its memory that it must not attack the great, shaggy
manlike creatures that had approached more closely once they had seen
the purpose of the rope about Sheeta's neck.

That the cat did not turn and rend Tarzan is something of a miracle
which may possibly be accounted for by the fact that twice when it
turned growling upon the ape-man he had rapped it sharply upon its
sensitive nose, inculcating in its mind thereby a most wholesome fear
of the cudgel and the ape-beasts behind it.

It is a question if the original cause of his attachment for Tarzan was
still at all clear in the mind of the panther, though doubtless some
subconscious suggestion, superinduced by this primary reason and aided
and abetted by the habit of the past few days, did much to compel the
beast to tolerate treatment at his hands that would have sent it at the
throat of any other creature.

Then, too, there was the compelling force of the manmind exerting its
powerful influence over this creature of a lower order, and, after all,
it may have been this that proved the most potent factor in Tarzan's
supremacy over Sheeta and the other beasts of the jungle that had from
time to time fallen under his domination.

Be that as it may, for days the man, the panther, and the great apes
roamed their savage haunts side by side, making their kills together
and sharing them with one another, and of all the fierce and savage
band none was more terrible than the smooth-skinned, powerful beast
that had been but a few short months before a familiar figure in many a
London drawing room.

Sometimes the beasts separated to follow their own inclinations for an
hour or a day, and it was upon one of these occasions when the ape-man
had wandered through the tree-tops toward the beach, and was stretched
in the hot sun upon the sand, that from the low summit of a near-by
promontory a pair of keen eyes discovered him.

For a moment the owner of the eyes looked in astonishment at the figur