utward and downward from
the tree above upon his broad shoulders. The impact of the springing
creature carried Rabba Kega to the ground. He felt strong jaws close
upon his neck, and when he tried to scream, steel fingers throttled his
throat. The powerful black warrior struggled to free himself; but he
was as a child in the grip of his adversary.

Presently Tarzan released his grip upon the other's throat; but each
time that Rabba Kega essayed a scream, the cruel fingers choked him
painfully. At last the warrior desisted. Then Tarzan half rose and
kneeled upon his victim's back, and when Rabba Kega struggled to arise,
the ape-man pushed his face down into the dirt of the trail. With a
bit of the rope that had secured the kid, Tarzan made Rabba Kega's
wrists secure behind his back, then he rose and jerked his prisoner to
his feet, faced him back along the trail and pushed him on ahead.

Not until he came to his feet did Rabba Kega obtain a square look at
his assailant. When he saw that it was the white devil-god his heart
sank within him and his knees trembled; but as he walked along the
trail ahead of his captor and was neither injured nor molested his
spirits slowly rose, so that he took heart again. Possibly the
devil-god did not intend to kill him after all. Had he not had little
Tibo in his power for days without harming him, and had he not spared
Momaya, Tibo's mother, when he easily might have slain her?

And then they came upon the cage which Rabba Kega, with the other black
warriors of the village of Mbonga, the chief, had placed and baited for
Numa. Rabba Kega saw that the bait was gone, though there was no lion
within the cage, nor was the door dropped. He saw and he was filled
with wonder not unmixed with apprehension. It entered his dull brain
that in some way this combination of circumstances had a connection
with his presence there as the prisoner of the white devil-god.

Nor was he wrong. Tarzan pushed him roughly into the cage, and in
another moment Rabba Kega understood. Cold sweat broke from every pore
of his body--he trembled as with ague--for the ape-man was binding him
securely in the very spot the kid had previously occupied. The
witch-doctor pleaded, first for his life, and then for a death less
cruel; but he might as well have saved his pleas for Numa, since
already they were directed toward a wild beast who understood no word
of what he said.

But his constant jabbering not o