y and he would be king again as he had
in the past. He would try to teach them some of the better things
that he had learned from man, yet knowing the ape-mind as only
Tarzan could, he feared that his labors would be for naught.

The ape-man found the country he was crossing rough in the extreme,
the roughest he ever had encountered. The plateau was cut by frequent
canyons the passage of which often entailed hours of wearing effort.
The vegetation was sparse and of a faded brown color that lent to
the whole landscape a most depressing aspect. Great rocks were strewn
in every direction as far as the eye could see, lying partially
embedded in an impalpable dust that rose in clouds about him at
every step. The sun beat down mercilessly out of a cloudless sky.

For a day Tarzan toiled across this now hateful land and at the
going down of the sun the distant mountains to the west seemed no
nearer than at morn. Never a sign of living thing had the ape-man
seen, other than Ska, that bird of ill omen, that had followed him
tirelessly since he had entered this parched waste.

No littlest beetle that he might eat had given evidence that life
of any sort existed here, and it was a hungry and thirsty Tarzan who
lay down to rest in the evening. He decided now to push on during
the cool of the night, for he realized that even mighty Tarzan had
his limitations and that where there was no food one could not eat
and where there was no water the greatest woodcraft in the world
could find none. It was a totally new experience to Tarzan to find
so barren and terrible a country in his beloved Africa. Even the
Sahara had its oases; but this frightful world gave no indication
of containing a square foot of hospitable ground.

However, he had no misgivings but that he would fare forth into
the wonder country of which little Manu had told him, though it
was certain that he would do it with a dry skin and an empty belly.
And so he fought on until daylight, when he again felt the need
of rest. He was at the edge of another of those terrible canyons,
the eighth he had crossed, whose precipitous sides would have taxed
to the uttermost the strength of an untired man well fortified by
food and water, and for the first time, as he looked down into the
abyss and then at the opposite side that he must scale, misgivings
began to assail his mind.

He did not fear death--with the memory of his murdered mate still
fresh in his mind he almost courted i