and disfigured old man watched the
tableau in the box, his pock-marked features working spasmodically in
varying expressions that might have marked every sensation in the gamut
from pleasure to terror.

"Long have I looked for you, Tarzan," said Akut. "Now that I have
found you I shall come to your jungle and live there always."

The man stroked the beast's head. Through his mind there was running
rapidly a train of recollection that carried him far into the depths of
the primeval African forest where this huge, man-like beast had fought
shoulder to shoulder with him years before. He saw the black Mugambi
wielding his deadly knob-stick, and beside them, with bared fangs and
bristling whiskers, Sheeta the terrible; and pressing close behind the
savage and the savage panther, the hideous apes of Akut. The man
sighed. Strong within him surged the jungle lust that he had thought
dead. Ah! if he could go back even for a brief month of it, to feel
again the brush of leafy branches against his naked hide; to smell the
musty rot of dead vegetation--frankincense and myrrh to the jungle
born; to sense the noiseless coming of the great carnivora upon his
trail; to hunt and to be hunted; to kill! The picture was alluring.
And then came another picture--a sweet-faced woman, still young and
beautiful; friends; a home; a son. He shrugged his giant shoulders.

"It cannot be, Akut," he said; "but if you would return, I shall see
that it is done. You could not be happy here--I may not be happy
there."

The trainer stepped forward. The ape bared his fangs, growling.

"Go with him, Akut," said Tarzan of the Apes. "I will come and see you
tomorrow."

The beast moved sullenly to the trainer's side. The latter, at John
Clayton's request, told where they might be found. Tarzan turned
toward his son.

"Come!" he said, and the two left the theater. Neither spoke for
several minutes after they had entered the limousine. It was the boy
who broke the silence.

"The ape knew you," he said, "and you spoke together in the ape's
tongue. How did the ape know you, and how did you learn his language?"

And then, briefly and for the first time, Tarzan of the Apes told his
son of his early life--of the birth in the jungle, of the death of his
parents, and of how Kala, the great she ape had suckled and raised him
from infancy almost to manhood. He told him, too, of the dangers and
the horrors of the jungle; of the great beasts th