arers were ashamed of what the clothes
covered, of the human form made in the semblance of God. Tarzan
knew how silly and pathetic the lower orders of animals appeared in
the clothing of civilization, for he had seen several poor creatures
thus appareled in various traveling shows in Europe, and he knew,
too, how silly and pathetic man appears in them since the only men
he had seen in the first twenty years of his life had been, like
himself, naked savages. The ape-man had a keen admiration for a
well-muscled, well-proportioned body, whether lion, or antelope,
or man, and it had ever been beyond him to understand how clothes
could be considered more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy
skin, or coat and trousers more graceful than the gentle curves of
rounded muscles playing beneath a flexible hide.

In civilization Tarzan had found greed and selfishness and cruelty
far beyond that which he had known in his familiar, savage jungle,
and though civilization had given him his mate and several friends
whom he loved and admired, he never had come to accept it as you
and I who have known little or nothing else; so it was with a sense
of relief that he now definitely abandoned it and all that it stood
for, and went forth into the jungle once again stripped to his loin
cloth and weapons.

The hunting knife of his father hung at his left hip, his bow and
his quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders, while around
his chest over one shoulder and beneath the opposite arm was coiled
the long grass rope without which Tarzan would have felt quite as
naked as would you should you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway
clad only in a union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes
carried in one hand and again slung by a thong about his neck so
that it hung down his back completed his armament and his apparel.
The diamond-studded locket with the pictures of his mother and
father that he had worn always until he had given it as a token
of his highest devotion to Jane Clayton before their marriage was
missing. She always had worn it since, but it had not been upon
her body when he found her slain in her boudoir, so that now his
quest for vengeance included also a quest for the stolen trinket.

Toward midnight Tarzan commenced to feel the physical strain of
his long hours of travel and to realize that even muscles such as
his had their limitations. His pursuit of the murderers had not
been characterized by excessive speed; bu