human life
remained.

They had looked in vain for the owner of the voice which had frightened
off the men who had been detailed to put the torch to the huts, but not
even the keenest eye among them had been able to locate him. They had
seen the puff of smoke from the tree following the shot that brought
down the Arab, but, though a volley had immediately been loosed into
its foliage, there had been no indication that it had been effective.

Tarzan was too intelligent to be caught in any such trap, and so the
report of his shot had scarcely died away before the ape-man was on the
ground and racing for another tree a hundred yards away. Here he again
found a suitable perch from which he could watch the preparations of
the raiders. It occurred to him that he might have considerable more
fun with them, so again he called to them through his improvised
trumpet.

"Leave the ivory!" he cried. "Leave the ivory! Dead men have no use
for ivory!"

Some of the Manyuema started to lay down their loads, but this was
altogether too much for the avaricious Arabs. With loud shouts and
curses they aimed their guns full upon the bearers, threatening instant
death to any who might lay down his load. They could give up firing
the village, but the thought of abandoning this enormous fortune in
ivory was quite beyond their conception--better death than that.

And so they marched out of the village of the Waziri, and on the
shoulders of their slaves was the ivory ransom of a score of kings.
Toward the north they marched, back toward their savage settlement in
the wild and unknown country which lies back from the Kongo in the
uttermost depths of The Great Forest, and on either side of them
traveled an invisible and relentless foe.

Under Tarzan's guidance the black Waziri warriors stationed themselves
along the trail on either side in the densest underbrush. They stood
at far intervals, and, as the column passed, a single arrow or a heavy
spear, well aimed, would pierce a Manyuema or an Arab. Then the Waziri
would melt into the distance and run ahead to take his stand farther
on. They did not strike unless success were sure and the danger of
detection almost nothing, and so the arrows and the spears were few and
far between, but so persistent and inevitable that the slow-moving
column of heavy-laden raiders was in a constant state of panic--panic
at the uncertainty of who the next would be to fall, and when.

It was with the