d aloud the victorious
cries of successful warriors, so that by the time they reached the
gate, dancing and waving their spears, a great crowd of men, women, and
children were gathered there to greet them and hear the story of their
adventure.

As the eyes of the villagers fell upon the prisoner, they went wild,
and heavy jaws fell open in astonishment and incredulity. For months
they had lived in perpetual terror of a weird, white demon whom but few
had ever glimpsed and lived to describe. Warriors had disappeared from
the paths almost within sight of the village and from the midst of
their companions as mysteriously and completely as though they had been
swallowed by the earth, and later, at night, their dead bodies had
fallen, as from the heavens, into the village street.

This fearsome creature had appeared by night in the huts of the
village, killed, and disappeared, leaving behind him in the huts with
his dead, strange and terrifying evidences of an uncanny sense of humor.

But now he was in their power! No longer could he terrorize them.
Slowly the realization of this dawned upon them. A woman, screaming,
ran forward and struck the ape-man across the face. Another and
another followed her example, until Tarzan of the Apes was surrounded
by a fighting, clawing, yelling mob of natives.

And then Mbonga, the chief, came, and laying his spear heavily across
the shoulders of his people, drove them from their prey.

"We will save him until night," he said.

Far out in the jungle Tantor, the elephant, his first panic of fear
allayed, stood with up-pricked ears and undulating trunk. What was
passing through the convolutions of his savage brain? Could he be
searching for Tarzan? Could he recall and measure the service the
ape-man had performed for him? Of that there can be no doubt. But did
he feel gratitude? Would he have risked his own life to have saved
Tarzan could he have known of the danger which confronted his friend?
You will doubt it. Anyone at all familiar with elephants will doubt
it. Englishmen who have hunted much with elephants in India will tell
you that they never have heard of an instance in which one of these
animals has gone to the aid of a man in danger, even though the man had
often befriended it. And so it is to be doubted that Tantor would have
attempted to overcome his instinctive fear of the black men in an
effort to succor Tarzan.

The screams of the infuriated villagers came fa