He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an
officer and a gentleman died.

Tarzan of the Apes needed no interpreter to translate the story of
those distant shots. With Jane Porter's kisses still warm upon his
lips he was swinging with incredible rapidity through the forest trees
straight toward the village of Mbonga.

He was not interested in the location of the encounter, for he judged
that that would soon be over. Those who were killed he could not aid,
those who escaped would not need his assistance.

It was to those who had neither been killed or escaped that he
hastened. And he knew that he would find them by the great post in the
center of Mbonga village.

Many times had Tarzan seen Mbonga's black raiding parties return from
the northward with prisoners, and always were the same scenes enacted
about that grim stake, beneath the flaring light of many fires.

He knew, too, that they seldom lost much time before consummating the
fiendish purpose of their captures. He doubted that he would arrive in
time to do more than avenge.

On he sped. Night had fallen and he traveled high along the upper
terrace where the gorgeous tropic moon lighted the dizzy pathway
through the gently undulating branches of the tree tops.

Presently he caught the reflection of a distant blaze. It lay to the
right of his path. It must be the light from the camp fire the two men
had built before they were attacked--Tarzan knew nothing of the
presence of the sailors.

So sure was Tarzan of his jungle knowledge that he did not turn from
his course, but passed the glare at a distance of a half mile. It was
the camp fire of the Frenchmen.

In a few minutes more Tarzan swung into the trees above Mbonga's
village. Ah, he was not quite too late! Or, was he? He could not
tell. The figure at the stake was very still, yet the black warriors
were but pricking it.

Tarzan knew their customs. The death blow had not been struck. He
could tell almost to a minute how far the dance had gone.

In another instant Mbonga's knife would sever one of the victim's
ears--that would mark the beginning of the end, for very shortly after
only a writhing mass of mutilated flesh would remain.

There would still be life in it, but death then would be the only
charity it craved.

The stake stood forty feet from the nearest tree. Tarzan coiled his
rope. Then there rose suddenly above the fiendish cries of the dancing