ned to him fought like
demons; but one by one they fell, until only Mugambi remained to defend
the life and honor of the ape-man's mate.

From across the room Achmet Zek watched the unequal struggle and urged
on his minions. In his hands was a jeweled musket. Slowly he raised
it to his shoulder, waiting until another move should place Mugambi at
his mercy without endangering the lives of the woman or any of his own
followers.

At last the moment came, and Achmet Zek pulled the trigger. Without a
sound the brave Mugambi sank to the floor at the feet of Jane Clayton.

An instant later she was surrounded and disarmed. Without a word they
dragged her from the bungalow. A giant Negro lifted her to the pommel
of his saddle, and while the raiders searched the bungalow and
outhouses for plunder he rode with her beyond the gates and waited the
coming of his master.

Jane Clayton saw the raiders lead the horses from the corral, and drive
the herds in from the fields. She saw her home plundered of all that
represented intrinsic worth in the eyes of the Arabs, and then she saw
the torch applied, and the flames lick up what remained.

And at last, when the raiders assembled after glutting their fury and
their avarice, and rode away with her toward the north, she saw the
smoke and the flames rising far into the heavens until the winding of
the trail into the thick forests hid the sad view from her eyes.

As the flames ate their way into the living-room, reaching out forked
tongues to lick up the bodies of the dead, one of that gruesome company
whose bloody welterings had long since been stilled, moved again. It
was a huge black who rolled over upon his side and opened blood-shot,
suffering eyes. Mugambi, whom the Arabs had left for dead, still
lived. The hot flames were almost upon him as he raised himself
painfully upon his hands and knees and crawled slowly toward the
doorway.

Again and again he sank weakly to the floor; but each time he rose
again and continued his pitiful way toward safety. After what seemed
to him an interminable time, during which the flames had become a
veritable fiery furnace at the far side of the room, the great black
managed to reach the veranda, roll down the steps, and crawl off into
the cool safety of some nearby shrubbery.

All night he lay there, alternately unconscious and painfully sentient;
and in the latter state watching with savage hatred the lurid flames
which still rose fr