who knew them better than they knew themselves, was
confident that they had ceased to place the watchers about them the
moment that he had left them, and now he planned not only to have a
little fun at their expense but to teach them a lesson in preparedness,
which, by the way, is even a more vital issue in the jungle than in
civilized places. That you and I exist today must be due to the
preparedness of some shaggy anthropoid of the Oligocene. Of course the
apes of Kerchak were always prepared, after their own way--Tarzan had
merely suggested a new and additional safeguard.

Gunto was posted today to the north of the clearing. He squatted in
the fork of a tree from where he might view the jungle for quite a
distance about him. It was he who first discovered the enemy. A
rustling in the undergrowth attracted his attention, and a moment later
he had a partial view of a shaggy mane and tawny yellow back. Just a
glimpse it was through the matted foliage beneath him; but it brought
from Gunto's leathern lungs a shrill "Kreeg-ah!" which is the ape for
beware, or danger.

Instantly the tribe took up the cry until "Kreeg-ahs!" rang through the
jungle about the clearing as apes swung quickly to places of safety
among the lower branches of the trees and the great bulls hastened in
the direction of Gunto.

And then into the clearing strode Numa, the lion--majestic and mighty,
and from a deep chest issued the moan and the cough and the rumbling
roar that set stiff hairs to bristling from shaggy craniums down the
length of mighty spines.

Inside the clearing, Numa paused and on the instant there fell upon him
from the trees near by a shower of broken rock and dead limbs torn from
age-old trees. A dozen times he was hit, and then the apes ran down
and gathered other rocks, pelting him unmercifully.

Numa turned to flee, but his way was barred by a fusilade of
sharp-cornered missiles, and then, upon the edge of the clearing, great
Taug met him with a huge fragment of rock as large as a man's head, and
down went the Lord of the Jungle beneath the stunning blow.

With shrieks and roars and loud barkings the great apes of the tribe of
Kerchak rushed upon the fallen lion. Sticks and stones and yellow
fangs menaced the still form. In another moment, before he could
regain consciousness, Numa would be battered and torn until only a
bloody mass of broken bones and matted hair remained of what had once
been the most dreaded