bove them, lightly balanced upon a leafy tree limb, a gray-eyed youth
watched with eager intentness their every move. The fire of hate,
restrained, smoldered beneath the lad's evident desire to know the
purpose of the black men's labors. Such a one as these it was who had
slain his beloved Kala. For them there could be naught but enmity, yet
he liked well to watch them, avid as he was for greater knowledge of
the ways of man.

He saw the pit grow in depth until a great hole yawned the width of the
trail--a hole which was amply large enough to hold at one time all of
the six excavators. Tarzan could not guess the purpose of so great a
labor. And when they cut long stakes, sharpened at their upper ends,
and set them at intervals upright in the bottom of the pit, his
wonderment but increased, nor was it satisfied with the placing of the
light cross-poles over the pit, or the careful arrangement of leaves
and earth which completely hid from view the work the black men had
performed.

When they were done they surveyed their handiwork with evident
satisfaction, and Tarzan surveyed it, too. Even to his practiced eye
there remained scarce a vestige of evidence that the ancient game trail
had been tampered with in any way.

So absorbed was the ape-man in speculation as to the purpose of the
covered pit that he permitted the blacks to depart in the direction of
their village without the usual baiting which had rendered him the
terror of Mbonga's people and had afforded Tarzan both a vehicle of
revenge and a source of inexhaustible delight.

Puzzle as he would, however, he could not solve the mystery of the
concealed pit, for the ways of the blacks were still strange ways to
Tarzan. They had entered his jungle but a short time before--the first
of their kind to encroach upon the age-old supremacy of the beasts
which laired there. To Numa, the lion, to Tantor, the elephant, to the
great apes and the lesser apes, to each and all of the myriad creatures
of this savage wild, the ways of man were new. They had much to learn
of these black, hairless creatures that walked erect upon their hind
paws--and they were learning it slowly, and always to their sorrow.

Shortly after the blacks had departed, Tarzan swung easily to the
trail. Sniffing suspiciously, he circled the edge of the pit.
Squatting upon his haunches, he scraped away a little earth to expose
one of the cross-bars. He sniffed at this, touched it, cocked his he