d him. He heard them growl; but he did not
even turn his head. He was a beast with a man's brain. The beast in
him refused to show fear in the face of a death which the man-mind
already admitted to be inevitable.

Bukawai, not yet ready to give his victim to the beasts, rushed upon
the hyenas with his knob-stick. There was a short scrimmage in which
the brutes came off second best, as they always did. Tarzan watched
it. He saw and realized the hatred which existed between the two
animals and the hideous semblance of a man.

With the hyenas subdued, Bukawai returned to the baiting of Tarzan; but
finding that the ape-man understood nothing he said, the witch-doctor
finally desisted. Then he withdrew into the corridor and pulled the
latticework barrier across the opening. He went back into the cave and
got a sleeping mat, which he brought to the opening, that he might lie
down and watch the spectacle of his revenge in comfort.

The hyenas were sneaking furtively around the ape-man. Tarzan strained
at his bonds for a moment, but soon realized that the rope he had
braided to hold Numa, the lion, would hold him quite as successfully.
He did not wish to die; but he could look death in the face now as he
had many times before without a quaver.

As he pulled upon the rope he felt it rub against the small tree about
which it was passed. Like a flash of the cinematograph upon the
screen, a picture was flashed before his mind's eye from the storehouse
of his memory. He saw a lithe, boyish figure swinging high above the
ground at the end of a rope. He saw many apes watching from below, and
then he saw the rope part and the boy hurtle downward toward the
ground. Tarzan smiled. Immediately he commenced to draw the rope
rapidly back and forth across the tree trunk.

The hyenas, gaining courage, came closer. They sniffed at his legs;
but when he struck at them with his free arms they slunk off. He knew
that with the growth of hunger they would attack. Coolly,
methodically, without haste, Tarzan drew the rope back and forth
against the rough trunk of the small tree.

In the entrance to the cavern Bukawai fell asleep. He thought it would
be some time before the beasts gained sufficient courage or hunger to
attack the captive. Their growls and the cries of the victim would
awaken him. In the meantime he might as well rest, and he did.

Thus the day wore on, for the hyenas were not famished, and the rope
with whic