he superiors in nobility of the men he hunted. Today
Tarzan was in quest of weapons. He wondered if the women and children
had remained in Mbonga's village after the punitive expedition from the
French cruiser had massacred all the warriors in revenge for D'Arnot's
supposed death. He hoped that he should find warriors there, for he
knew not how long a quest he should have to make were the village
deserted.

The ape-man traveled swiftly through the forest, and about noon came to
the site of the village, but to his disappointment found that the
jungle had overgrown the plantain fields and that the thatched huts had
fallen in decay. There was no sign of man. He clambered about among
the ruins for half an hour, hoping that he might discover some
forgotten weapon, but his search was without fruit, and so he took up
his quest once more, following up the stream, which flowed from a
southeasterly direction. He knew that near fresh water he would be
most likely to find another settlement.

As he traveled he hunted as he had hunted with his ape people in the
past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find
some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's
nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat.
There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the
account of an ape's diet, the better--and Tarzan was again an ape, the
same fierce, brutal anthropoid that Kala had taught him to be, and that
he had been for the first twenty years of his life.

Occasionally he smiled as he recalled some friend who might even at the
moment be sitting placid and immaculate within the precincts of his
select Parisian club--just as Tarzan had sat but a few months before;
and then he would stop, as though turned suddenly to stone as the
gentle breeze carried to his trained nostrils the scent of some new
prey or a formidable enemy.

That night he slept far inland from his cabin, securely wedged into the
crotch of a giant tree, swaying a hundred feet above the ground. He
had eaten heartily again--this time from the flesh of Bara, the deer,
who had fallen prey to his quick noose.

Early the next morning he resumed his journey, always following the
course of the stream. For three days he continued his quest, until he
had come to a part of the jungle in which he never before had been.
Occasionally upon the higher ground the forest was much thinner, and in
the far distan