ping stealthily, entered the tree that overhung
the palisade. He glanced behind him. The pack were close upon his
heels. The time had come. He had warned them continuously during the
long march that no harm must befall the white she who lay a prisoner
within the village. All others were their legitimate prey. Then,
raising his face toward the sky, he gave voice to a single cry. It was
the signal.

In response three thousand hairy bulls leaped screaming and barking
into the village of the terrified blacks. Warriors poured from every
hut. Mothers gathered their babies in their arms and fled toward the
gates as they saw the horrid horde pouring into the village street.
Kovudoo marshaled his fighting men about him and, leaping and yelling
to arouse their courage, offered a bristling, spear tipped front to the
charging horde.

Korak, as he had led the march, led the charge. The blacks were struck
with horror and dismay at the sight of this white-skinned youth at the
head of a pack of hideous baboons. For an instant they held their
ground, hurling their spears once at the advancing multitude; but
before they could fit arrows to their bows they wavered, gave, and
turned in terrified rout. Into their ranks, upon their backs, sinking
strong fangs into the muscles of their necks sprang the baboons and
first among them, most ferocious, most blood-thirsty, most terrible was
Korak, The Killer.

At the village gates, through which the blacks poured in panic, Korak
left them to the tender mercies of his allies and turned himself
eagerly toward the hut in which Meriem had been a prisoner. It was
empty. One after another the filthy interiors revealed the same
disheartening fact--Meriem was in none of them. That she had not been
taken by the blacks in their flight from the village Korak knew for he
had watched carefully for a glimpse of her among the fugitives.

To the mind of the ape-man, knowing as he did the proclivities of the
savages, there was but a single explanation--Meriem had been killed and
eaten. With the conviction that Meriem was dead there surged through
Korak's brain a wave of blood red rage against those he believed to be
her murderer. In the distance he could hear the snarling of the
baboons mixed with the screams of their victims, and towards this he
made his way. When he came upon them the baboons had commenced to tire
of the sport of battle, and the blacks in a little knot were making a
new sta