th which they had secured the kid. Who could have done
this thing? They looked at one another.

Tubuto was the first to speak. He had come hopefully out with the
expedition that morning. Somewhere he might find evidence of the death
of Rabba Kega. Now he had found it, and he was the first to find an
explanation.

"The white devil-god," he whispered. "It is the work of the white
devil-god!"

No one contradicted Tubuto, for, indeed, who else could it have been
but the great, hairless ape they all so feared? And so their hatred of
Tarzan increased again with an increased fear of him. And Tarzan sat
in his tree and hugged himself.

No one there felt sorrow because of the death of Rabba Kega; but each
of the blacks experienced a personal fear of the ingenious mind which
might discover for any of them a death equally horrible to that which
the witch-doctor had suffered. It was a subdued and thoughtful company
which dragged the captive lion along the broad elephant path back to
the village of Mbonga, the chief.

And it was with a sigh of relief that they finally rolled it into the
village and closed the gates behind them. Each had experienced the
sensation of being spied upon from the moment they left the spot where
the trap had been set, though none had seen or heard aught to give
tangible food to his fears.

At the sight of the body within the cage with the lion, the women and
children of the village set up a most frightful lamentation, working
themselves into a joyous hysteria which far transcended the happy
misery derived by their more civilized prototypes who make a business
of dividing their time between the movies and the neighborhood funerals
of friends and strangers--especially strangers.

From a tree overhanging the palisade, Tarzan watched all that passed
within the village. He saw the frenzied women tantalizing the great
lion with sticks and stones. The cruelty of the blacks toward a
captive always induced in Tarzan a feeling of angry contempt for the
Gomangani. Had he attempted to analyze this feeling he would have
found it difficult, for during all his life he had been accustomed to
sights of suffering and cruelty. He, himself, was cruel. All the
beasts of the jungle were cruel; but the cruelty of the blacks was of a
different order. It was the cruelty of wanton torture of the helpless,
while the cruelty of Tarzan and the other beasts was the cruelty of
necessity or of passion.

Perhaps,