were for something which lay in the grass beneath a
tree--something upon which he was sneaking with the cautious stealth of
his breed.

Taug, always cautious himself, as it behooves one to be who fares up
and down the jungle and desires to survive, swung noiselessly into a
tree, where he could have a better view of the clearing. He did not
fear Dango; but he wanted to see what it was that Dango stalked. In a
way, possibly, he was actuated as much by curiosity as by caution.

And when Taug reached a place in the branches from which he could have
an unobstructed view of the clearing he saw Dango already sniffing at
something directly beneath him--something which Taug instantly
recognized as the lifeless form of his little Gazan.

With a cry so frightful, so bestial, that it momentarily paralyzed the
startled Dango, the great ape launched his mighty bulk upon the
surprised hyena. With a cry and a snarl, Dango, crushed to earth,
turned to tear at his assailant; but as effectively might a sparrow
turn upon a hawk. Taug's great, gnarled fingers closed upon the
hyena's throat and back, his jaws snapped once on the mangy neck,
crushing the vertebrae, and then he hurled the dead body contemptuously
aside.

Again he raised his voice in the call of the bull ape to its mate, but
there was no reply; then he leaned down to sniff at the body of Gazan.
In the breast of this savage, hideous beast there beat a heart which
was moved, however slightly, by the same emotions of paternal love
which affect us. Even had we no actual evidence of this, we must know
it still, since only thus might be explained the survival of the human
race in which the jealousy and selfishness of the bulls would, in the
earliest stages of the race, have wiped out the young as rapidly as
they were brought into the world had not God implanted in the savage
bosom that paternal love which evidences itself most strongly in the
protective instinct of the male.

In Taug the protective instinct was not alone highly developed; but
affection for his offspring as well, for Taug was an unusually
intelligent specimen of these great, manlike apes which the natives of
the Gobi speak of in whispers; but which no white man ever had seen,
or, if seeing, lived to tell of until Tarzan of the Apes came among
them.

And so Taug felt sorrow as any other father might feel sorrow at the
loss of a little child. To you little Gazan might have seemed a
hideous and repulsive c