alance of the day they will feel
reassured, and the relapse into fear will be even more nerve-racking
than as though we continued to frighten them all afternoon."

So they marched back to their camp of the previous night, and, lighting
great fires, ate and recounted the adventures of the day until long
after dark. Tarzan slept until midnight, then he arose and crept into
the Cimmerian blackness of the forest. An hour later he came to the
edge of the clearing before the village. There was a camp-fire burning
within the palisade. The ape-man crept across the clearing until he
stood before the barred gates. Through the interstices he saw a lone
sentry sitting before the fire.

Quietly Tarzan went to the tree at the end of the village street. He
climbed softly to his place, and fitted an arrow to his bow. For
several minutes he tried to sight fairly upon the sentry, but the
waving branches and flickering firelight convinced him that the danger
of a miss was too great--he must touch the heart full in the center to
bring the quiet and sudden death his plan required.

He had brought, besides, his bow, arrows, and rope, the gun he had
taken the previous day from the other sentry he had killed. Caching
all these in a convenient crotch of the tree, he dropped lightly to the
ground within the palisade, armed only with his long knife. The
sentry's back was toward him. Like a cat Tarzan crept upon the dozing
man. He was within two paces of him now--another instant and the knife
would slide silently into the fellow's heart.

Tarzan crouched for a spring, for that is ever the quickest and surest
attack of the jungle beast--when the man, warned, by some subtle sense,
sprang to his feet and faced the ape-man.

Chapter 17

The White Chief of the Waziri

When the eyes of the black Manyuema savage fell upon the strange
apparition that confronted him with menacing knife they went wide in
horror. He forgot the gun within his hands; he even forgot to cry
out--his one thought was to escape this fearsome-looking white savage,
this giant of a man upon whose massive rolling muscles and mighty chest
the flickering firelight played.

But before he could turn Tarzan was upon him, and then the sentry
thought to scream for aid, but it was too late. A great hand was upon
his windpipe, and he was being borne to the earth. He battled
furiously but futilely--with the grim tenacity of a bulldog those awful
fingers were cling