w eyes close to Goro. They
fear the fire! It is the fire that saves Goro from Numa. Do you see
them, Taug? Some night Numa will be very hungry and very angry--then he
will leap over the thorn bushes which encircle Goro and we will have no
more light after Kudu seeks his lair--the night will be black with the
blackness that comes when Goro is lazy and sleeps late into the night,
or when he wanders through the skies by day, forgetting the jungle and
its people."

Taug looked stupidly at the heavens and then at Tarzan. A meteor fell,
blazing a flaming way through the sky.

"Look!" cried Tarzan. "Goro has thrown a burning branch at Numa."

Taug grumbled. "Numa is down below," he said. "Numa does not hunt
above the trees." But he looked curiously and a little fearfully at the
bright stars above him, as though he saw them for the first time, and
doubtless it was the first time that Taug ever had seen the stars,
though they had been in the sky above him every night of his life. To
Taug they were as the gorgeous jungle blooms--he could not eat them and
so he ignored them.

Taug fidgeted and was nervous. For a long time he lay sleepless,
watching the stars--the flaming eyes of the beasts of prey surrounding
Goro, the moon--Goro, by whose light the apes danced to the beating of
their earthen drums. If Goro should be eaten by Numa there could be no
more Dum-Dums. Taug was overwhelmed by the thought. He glanced at
Tarzan half fearfully. Why was his friend so different from the others
of the tribe? No one else whom Taug ever had known had had such queer
thoughts as Tarzan. The ape scratched his head and wondered, dimly, if
Tarzan was a safe companion, and then he recalled slowly, and by a
laborious mental process, that Tarzan had served him better than any
other of the apes, even the strong and wise bulls of the tribe.

Tarzan it was who had freed him from the blacks at the very time that
Taug had thought Tarzan wanted Teeka. It was Tarzan who had saved
Taug's little balu from death. It was Tarzan who had conceived and
carried out the plan to pursue Teeka's abductor and rescue the stolen
one. Tarzan had fought and bled in Taug's service so many times that
Taug, although only a brutal ape, had had impressed upon his mind a
fierce loyalty which nothing now could swerve--his friendship for
Tarzan had become a habit, a tradition almost, which would endure while
Taug endured. He never showed any outward demonstration