he great lion knew the habits and frailties of man, though he never
before had hunted man for food. He knew the despised Gomangani as
the slowest, the most stupid, and the most defenseless of creatures.
No woodcraft, no cunning, no stealth was necessary in the hunting
of man, nor had Numa any stomach for either delay or silence.

His rage had become an almost equally consuming passion with
his hunger, so that now, as his delicate nostrils apprised him of
the recent passage of man, he lowered his head and rumbled forth
a thunderous roar, and at a swift walk, careless of the noise he
made, set forth upon the trail of his intended quarry.

Majestic and terrible, regally careless of his surroundings, the
king of beasts strode down the beaten trail. The natural caution
that is inherent to all creatures of the wild had deserted him.
What had he, lord of the jungle, to fear and, with only man to hunt,
what need of caution? And so he did not see or scent what a more
wary Numa might readily have discovered until, with the cracking of
twigs and a tumbling of earth, he was precipitated into a cunningly
devised pit that the wily Wamabos had excavated for just this
purpose in the center of the game trail.

Tarzan of the Apes stood in the center of the clearing watching the
plane shrinking to diminutive toy-like proportions in the eastern
sky. He had breathed a sigh of relief as he saw it rise safely with
the British flier and Fraulein Bertha Kircher. For weeks he had
felt the hampering responsibility of their welfare in this savage
wilderness where their utter helplessness would have rendered them
easy prey for the savage carnivores or the cruel Wamabos. Tarzan
of the Apes loved unfettered freedom, and now that these two were
safely off his hands, he felt that he could continue upon his
journey toward the west coast and the long-untenanted cabin of his
dead father.

And yet, as he stood there watching the tiny speck in the east,
another sigh heaved his broad chest, nor was it a sigh of relief,
but rather a sensation which Tarzan had never expected to feel
again and which he now disliked to admit even to himself. It could
not be possible that he, the jungle bred, who had renounced forever
the society of man to return to his beloved beasts of the wilds,
could be feeling anything akin to regret at the departure of these
two, or any slightest loneliness now that they were gone. Lieutenant
Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick Tarzan had like