entries thereafter, who watched upon three sides while the tribe
hunted, scattered less than had been their wont.

But Tarzan went abroad alone, for Tarzan was a man-thing and sought
amusement and adventure and such humor as the grim and terrible jungle
offers to those who know it and do not fear it--a weird humor shot with
blazing eyes and dappled with the crimson of lifeblood. While others
sought only food and love, Tarzan of the Apes sought food and joy.

One day he hovered above the palisaded village of Mbonga, the chief,
the jet cannibal of the jungle primeval. He saw, as he had seen many
times before, the witch-doctor, Rabba Kega, decked out in the head and
hide of Gorgo, the buffalo. It amused Tarzan to see a Gomangani
parading as Gorgo; but it suggested nothing in particular to him until
he chanced to see stretched against the side of Mbonga's hut the skin
of a lion with the head still on. Then a broad grin widened the
handsome face of the savage beast-youth.

Back into the jungle he went until chance, agility, strength, and
cunning backed by his marvelous powers of perception, gave him an easy
meal. If Tarzan felt that the world owed him a living he also realized
that it was for him to collect it, nor was there ever a better
collector than this son of an English lord, who knew even less of the
ways of his forbears than he did of the forbears themselves, which was
nothing.

It was quite dark when Tarzan returned to the village of Mbonga and
took his now polished perch in the tree which overhangs the palisade
upon one side of the walled enclosure. As there was nothing in
particular to feast upon in the village there was little life in the
single street, for only an orgy of flesh and native beer could draw out
the people of Mbonga. Tonight they sat gossiping about their cooking
fires, the older members of the tribe; or, if they were young, paired
off in the shadows cast by the palm-thatched huts.

Tarzan dropped lightly into the village, and sneaking stealthily in the
concealment of the denser shadows, approached the hut of the chief,
Mbonga. Here he found that which he sought. There were warriors all
about him; but they did not know that the feared devil-god slunk
noiselessly so near them, nor did they see him possess himself of that
which he coveted and depart from their village as noiselessly as he had
come.

Later that night, as Tarzan curled himself for sleep, he lay for a long
time looking up