ting of the drum of the
great apes. They were sleeping in the safety of a huge tree when the
booming sound smote upon their ears. Both awoke at once. Akut was the
first to interpret the strange cadence.

"The great apes!" he growled. "They dance the Dum-Dum. Come, Korak,
son of Tarzan, let us go to our people."

Months before Akut had given the boy a name of his own choosing, since
he could not master the man given name of Jack. Korak is as near as it
may be interpreted into human speech. In the language of the apes it
means Killer. Now the Killer rose upon the branch of the great tree
where he had been sleeping with his back braced against the stem. He
stretched his lithe young muscles, the moonlight filtering through the
foliage from above dappling his brown skin with little patches of light.

The ape, too, stood up, half squatting after the manner of his kind.
Low growls rumbled from the bottom of his deep chest--growls of excited
anticipation. The boy growled in harmony with the ape. Then the
anthropoid slid softly to the ground. Close by, in the direction of
the booming drum, lay a clearing which they must cross. The moon
flooded it with silvery light. Half-erect, the great ape shuffled into
the full glare of the moon. At his side, swinging gracefully along in
marked contrast to the awkwardness of his companion, strode the boy,
the dark, shaggy coat of the one brushing against the smooth, clear
hide of the other. The lad was humming now, a music hall air that had
found its way to the forms of the great English public school that was
to see him no more. He was happy and expectant. The moment he had
looked forward to for so long was about to be realized. He was coming
into his own. He was coming home. As the months had dragged or flown
along, retarded or spurred on as privation or adventure predominated,
thoughts of his own home, while oft recurring, had become less vivid.
The old life had grown to seem more like a dream than a reality, and
the balking of his determination to reach the coast and return to
London had finally thrown the hope of realization so remotely into the
future that it too now seemed little more than a pleasant but hopeless
dream.

Now all thoughts of London and civilization were crowded so far into
the background of his brain that they might as well have been
non-existent. Except for form and mental development he was as much an
ape as the great, fierce creature at his