an of the Apes looked with growing wonder at these strange
creatures. Dozing in the shade he saw several men, while at the
extreme outskirts of the clearing he occasionally caught glimpses of
armed warriors apparently guarding the village against surprise from an
attacking enemy.

He noticed that the women alone worked. Nowhere was there evidence of
a man tilling the fields or performing any of the homely duties of the
village.

Finally his eyes rested upon a woman directly beneath him.

Before her was a small cauldron standing over a low fire and in it
bubbled a thick, reddish, tarry mass. On one side of her lay a
quantity of wooden arrows the points of which she dipped into the
seething substance, then laying them upon a narrow rack of boughs which
stood upon her other side.

Tarzan of the Apes was fascinated. Here was the secret of the terrible
destructiveness of The Archer's tiny missiles. He noted the extreme
care which the woman took that none of the matter should touch her
hands, and once when a particle spattered upon one of her fingers he
saw her plunge the member into a vessel of water and quickly rub the
tiny stain away with a handful of leaves.

Tarzan knew nothing of poison, but his shrewd reasoning told him that
it was this deadly stuff that killed, and not the little arrow, which
was merely the messenger that carried it into the body of its victim.

How he should like to have more of those little death-dealing slivers.
If the woman would only leave her work for an instant he could drop
down, gather up a handful, and be back in the tree again before she
drew three breaths.

As he was trying to think out some plan to distract her attention he
heard a wild cry from across the clearing. He looked and saw a black
warrior standing beneath the very tree in which he had killed the
murderer of Kala an hour before.

The fellow was shouting and waving his spear above his head. Now and
again he would point to something on the ground before him.

The village was in an uproar instantly. Armed men rushed from the
interior of many a hut and raced madly across the clearing toward the
excited sentry. After them trooped the old men, and the women and
children until, in a moment, the village was deserted.

Tarzan of the Apes knew that they had found the body of his victim, but
that interested him far less than the fact that no one remained in the
village to prevent his taking a supply of the arrows which