Through the luxuriant, tangled vegetation of the Stygianjungle night a great lithe body made its way sinuouslyand in utter silence upon its soft padded feet. Only twoblazing points of yellow-green flame shone occasionally withthe reflected light of the equatorial moon that now and againpierced the softly sighing roof rustling in the night wind.

Occasionally the beast would stop with high-held nose,sniffing searchingly. At other times a quick, brief incursioninto the branches above delayed it momentarily in its steadyjourney toward the east. To its sensitive nostrils came thesubtle unseen spoor of many a tender four-footed creature,bringing the slaver of hunger to the cruel, drooping jowl.

But steadfastly it kept on its way, strangely ignoring thecravings of appetite that at another time would have sentthe rolling, fur-clad muscles flying at some soft throat.

All that night the creature pursued its lonely way, and thenext day it halted only to make a single kill, which it toreto fragments and devoured with sullen, grumbling rumbles asthough half famished for lack of food.

It was dusk when it approached the palisade that surroundeda large native village. Like the shadow of a swift and silentdeath it circled the village, nose to ground, halting at lastclose to the palisade, where it almost touched the backsof several huts. Here the beast sniffed for a moment, and then,turning its head upon one side, listened with up-pricked ears.

What it heard was no sound by the standards of human ears,yet to the highly attuned and delicate organs of the beasta message seemed to be borne to the savage brain. A wondroustransformation was wrought in the motionless mass ofstatuesque bone and muscle that had an instant before stoodas though carved out of the living bronze.

As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly released,it rose quickly and silently to the top of the palisade,disappearing, stealthily and catlike, into the dark spacebetween the wall and the back of an adjacent hut.

In the village street beyond women were preparing many littlefires and fetching cooking-pots filled with water, for a greatfeast was to be celebrated ere the night was many hours older. About a stout stake near the centre of the circling firesa little knot of black warriors stood conversing, their bodiessmeared with white and blue and ochre in broad and grotesque bands. Great circles of colour were drawn about their eyes and lips,their breasts and abdomens, and from their clay-plasteredcoiffures rose gay feathers and bits of long, straight wire.

The village was preparing for the feast, while in a hut atone side of the scene of the coming orgy the bound victim oftheir bestial appetites lay waiting for the end. And such an end!

Tarzan of the Apes, tensing his mighty muscles, strainedat the bonds that pinioned him; but they had been re-enforcedmany times at the instigation of the Russian, so that not eventhe ape-man's giant brawn could budge them.

Death!

Tarzan had looked the Hideous Hunter in the face many a time,and smiled. And he would smile again tonight when he knewthe end was coming quickly; but now his thoughts were notof himself, but of those others--the dear ones who mustsuffer most because of his passing.

Jane would never know the manner of it. For that he thanked Heaven;and he was thankful also that she at least was safe in the heart ofthe world's greatest city. Safe among kind and loving friends whowould do their best to lighten her misery.

But the boy!

Tarzan writhed at the thought of him. His son! And nowhe--the mighty Lord of the Jungle--he, Tarzan, King of theApes, the only one in all the world fitted to find and save thechild from the horrors that Rokoff's evil mind had planned--had been trapped like a silly, dumb creature. He was to diein a few hours, and with him would go the child's last chanceof succour.

Rokoff had been in to see and revile and abuse him severaltimes during the afternoon; but he had been able to wring noword of remonstrance or murmur of pain from the lips of thegiant captive.

So at last he had given up, reserving his particular bit ofexquisite mental torture for the last moment, when, justbefore the savage spears of the cannibals should for ever makethe object of his hatred immune to further suffering, theRussian planned to reveal to his enemy the true whereabouts ofhis wife whom he thought safe in England.

Dusk had fallen upon the village, and the ape-men could hearthe preparations going forward for the torture and the feast. The dance of death he could picture in his mind's eye--forhe had seen the thing many times in the past. Now he wasto be the central figure, bound to the stake.

The torture of the slow death as the circling warriors cuthim to bits with the fiendish skill, that mutilated withoutbringing unconsciousness, had no terrors for him. He wasinured to suffering and to the sight of blood and to crueldeath; but the desire to live was no less strong within him,and until the last spark of life should flicker and go out, hiswhole being would remain quick with hope and determination. Let them relax their watchfulness but for an instant, heknew that his cunning mind and giant muscles would find away to escape--escape and revenge.

As he lay, thinking furiously on every possibility of self-salvation, there came to his sensitive nostrils a faint and afamiliar scent. Instantly every faculty of his mind was uponthe alert. Presently his trained ears caught the sound of thesoundless presence without--behind the hut wherein he lay. His lips moved, and though no sound came forth that mighthave been appreciable to a human ear beyond the walls ofhis prison, yet he realized that the one beyond would hear. Already he knew who that one was, for his nostrils had toldhim as plainly as your eyes or mine tell us of the identity ofan old friend whom we come upon in broad daylight.

An instant later he heard the soft sound of a fur-cladbody and padded feet scaling the outer wall behind thehut and then a tearing at the poles which formed the wall. Presently through the hole thus made slunk a great beast,pressing its cold muzzle close to his neck.

It was Sheeta, the panther.

The beast snuffed round the prostrate man, whining a little. There was a limit to the interchange of ideas which couldtake place between these two, and so Tarzan could not besure that Sheeta understood all that he attempted tocommunicate to him. That the man was tied and helpless Sheetacould, of course, see; but that to the mind of the panther thiswould carry any suggestion of harm in so far as his masterwas concerned, Tarzan could not guess.

What had brought the beast to him? The fact that he hadcome augured well for what he might accomplish; but whenTarzan tried to get Sheeta to gnaw his bonds asunder the greatanimal could not seem to understand what was expected of him,and, instead, but licked the wrists and arms of the prisoner.

Presently there came an interruption. Some one wasapproaching the hut. Sheeta gave a low growl and slunk intothe blackness of a far corner. Evidently the visitor did nothear the warning sound, for almost immediately he enteredthe hut--a tall, naked, savage warrior.

He came to Tarzan's side and pricked him with a spear. From the lips of the ape-man came a weird, uncanny sound,and in answer to it there leaped from the blackness of thehut's farthermost corner a bolt of fur-clad death. Full uponthe breast of the painted savage the great beast struck,burying sharp talons in the black flesh and sinkinggreat yellow fangs in the ebon throat.

There was a fearful scream of anguish and terror from the black,and mingled with it was the hideous challenge of the killing panther.Then came silence--silence except for the rending of bloody fleshand the crunching of human bones between mighty jaws.

The noise had brought sudden quiet to the village without. Then there came the sound of voices in consultation.

High-pitched, fear-filled voices, and deep, low tones ofauthority, as the chief spoke. Tarzan and the panther heardthe approaching footsteps of many men, and then, to Tarzan'ssurprise, the great cat rose from across the body of its kill,and slunk noiselessly from the hut through the aperturethrough which it had entered.

The man heard the soft scraping of the body as it passedover the top of the palisade, and then silence. From theopposite side of the hut he heard the savages approachingto investigate.

He had little hope that Sheeta would return, for had the greatcat intended to defend him against all comers it would haveremained by his side as it heard the approaching savages without.

Tarzan knew how strange were the workings of the brainsof the mighty carnivora of the jungle--how fiendishly fearlessthey might be in the face of certain death, and again how timidupon the slightest provocation. There was doubt in his mindthat some note of the approaching blacks vibrating with fearhad struck an answering chord in the nervous system of the panther,sending him slinking through the jungle, his tail between his legs.

The man shrugged. Well, what of it? He had expectedto die, and, after all, what might Sheeta have done for himother than to maul a couple of his enemies before a rifle inthe hands of one of the whites should have dispatched him!

If the cat could have released him! Ah! that would haveresulted in a very different story; but it had proved beyondthe understanding of Sheeta, and now the beast was goneand Tarzan must definitely abandon hope.

The natives were at the entrance to the hut now, peeringfearfully into the dark interior. Two in advance held lightedtorches in their left hands and ready spears in their right. They held back timorously against those behind, who werepushing them forward.

The shrieks of the panther's victim, mingled with those ofthe great cat, had wrought mightily upon their poor nerves,and now the awful silence of the dark interior seemed evenmore terribly ominous than had the frightful screaming.

Presently one of those who was being forced unwillinglywithin hit upon a happy scheme for learning first the precisenature of the danger which menaced him from the silent interior. With a quick movement he flung his lighted torch into thecentre of the hut. Instantly all within was illuminatedfor a brief second before the burning brand was dashed outagainst the earth floor.

There was the figure of the white prisoner still securelybound as they had last seen him, and in the centre of the hutanother figure equally as motionless, its throat and breastshorribly torn and mangled.

The sight that met the eyes of the foremost savagesinspired more terror within their superstitious breaststhan would the presence of Sheeta, for they saw only theresult of a ferocious attack upon one of their fellows.

Not seeing the cause, their fear-ridden minds were free toattribute the ghastly work to supernatural causes, and withthe thought they turned, screaming, from the hut, bowlingover those who stood directly behind them in the exuberanceof their terror.

For an hour Tarzan heard only the murmur of excited voicesfrom the far end of the village. Evidently the savageswere once more attempting to work up their flickering courageto a point that would permit them to make another invasionof the hut, for now and then came a savage yell, suchas the warriors give to bolster up their bravery upon thefield of battle.

But in the end it was two of the whites who first entered,carrying torches and guns. Tarzan was not surprised todiscover that neither of them was Rokoff. He would havewagered his soul that no power on earth could have temptedthat great coward to face the unknown menace of the hut.

When the natives saw that the white men were not attackedthey, too, crowded into the interior, their voices hushed withterror as they looked upon the mutilated corpse of their comrade. The whites tried in vain to elicit an explanation fromTarzan; but to all their queries he but shook his head, a grimand knowing smile curving his lips.

At last Rokoff came.

His face grew very white as his eyes rested upon the bloodything grinning up at him from the floor, the face set in adeath mask of excruciating horror.

"Come!" he said to the chief. "Let us get to work andfinish this demon before he has an opportunity to repeat thisthing upon more of your people."

The chief gave orders that Tarzan should be lifted andcarried to the stake; but it was several minutes before hecould prevail upon any of his men to touch the prisoner.

At last, however, four of the younger warriors draggedTarzan roughly from the hut, and once outside the pall ofterror seemed lifted from the savage hearts.

A score of howling blacks pushed and buffeted the prisonerdown the village street and bound him to the post in thecentre of the circle of little fires and boiling cooking-pots.

When at last he was made fast and seemed quite helplessand beyond the faintest hope of succour, Rokoff's shrivelledwart of courage swelled to its usual proportions when dangerwas not present.

He stepped close to the ape-man, and, seizing a spear fromthe hands of one of the savages, was the first to prod thehelpless victim. A little stream of blood trickled down thegiant's smooth skin from the wound in his side; but no murmurof pain passed his lips.

The smile of contempt upon his face seemed to infuriatethe Russian. With a volley of oaths he leaped at the helplesscaptive, beating him upon the face with his clenched fistsand kicking him mercilessly about the legs.

Then he raised the heavy spear to drive it through themighty heart, and still Tarzan of the Apes smiledcontemptuously upon him.

Before Rokoff could drive the weapon home the chief sprangupon him and dragged him away from his intended victim.

"Stop, white man!" he cried. "Rob us of this prisoner andour death-dance, and you yourself may have to take his place."

The threat proved most effective in keeping the Russianfrom further assaults upon the prisoner, though he continuedto stand a little apart and hurl taunts at his enemy. He toldTarzan that he himself was going to eat the ape-man's heart. He enlarged upon the horrors of the future life of Tarzan'sson, and intimated that his vengeance would reach as well toJane Clayton.

"You think your wife safe in England," said Rokoff. "Poor fool! She is even now in the hands of one not even ofdecent birth, and far from the safety of London and theprotection of her friends. I had not meant to tell you thisuntil I could bring to you upon Jungle Island proof of her fate.

"Now that you are about to die the most unthinkably horriddeath that it is given a white man to die--let this word ofthe plight of your wife add to the torments that you mustsuffer before the last savage spear-thrust releases you fromyour torture."

The dance had commenced now, and the yells of the circlingwarriors drowned Rokoff's further attempts to distresshis victim.

The leaping savages, the flickering firelight playing upontheir painted bodies, circled about the victim at the stake.

To Tarzan's memory came a similar scene, when he hadrescued D'Arnot from a like predicament at the last momentbefore the final spear-thrust should have ended his sufferings. Who was there now to rescue him? In all the world there wasnone able to save him from the torture and the death.

The thought that these human fiends would devour himwhen the dance was done caused him not a single qualm ofhorror or disgust. It did not add to his sufferings as it wouldhave to those of an ordinary white man, for all his life Tarzanhad seen the beasts of the jungle devour the flesh of their kills.

Had he not himself battled for the grisly forearm of a greatape at that long-gone Dum-Dum, when he had slain the fierceTublat and won his niche in the respect of the Apes of Kerchak?

The dancers were leaping more closely to him now. The spearswere commencing to find his body in the first torturing pricksthat prefaced the more serious thrusts.

It would not be long now. The ape-man longed for the lastsavage lunge that would end his misery.

And then, far out in the mazes of the weird jungle, rose ashrill scream.

For an instant the dancers paused, and in the silence ofthe interval there rose from the lips of the fast-boundwhite man an answering shriek, more fearsome and more terriblethan that of the jungle-beast that had roused it.

For several minutes the blacks hesitated; then, at the urgingof Rokoff and their chief, they leaped in to finish thedance and the victim; but ere ever another spear touched thebrown hide a tawny streak of green-eyed hate and ferocitybounded from the door of the hut in which Tarzan had beenimprisoned, and Sheeta, the panther, stood snarling besidehis master.

For an instant the blacks and the whites stood transfixedwith terror. Their eyes were riveted upon the bared fangs ofthe jungle cat.

Only Tarzan of the Apes saw what else there was emergingfrom the dark interior of the hut.