Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, Royal AirService, was on reconnaissance. A report, or it would bebetter to say a rumor, had come to the British headquar-ters in German East Africa that the enemy had landed inforce on the west coast and was marching across the darkcontinent to reinforce their colonial troops. In fact the newarmy was supposed to be no more than ten or twelve days'march to the west. Of course the thing was ridiculous -- pre-posterous -- but preposterous things often happen in war; andanyway no good general permits the least rumor of enemyactivity to go uninvestigated.

Therefore Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick flew lowtoward the west, searching with keen eyes for signs of a Hunarmy. Vast forests unrolled beneath him in which a Germanarmy corps might have lain concealed, so dense was theoverhanging foliage of the great trees. Mountain, meadow-land, and desert passed in lovely panorama; but never a sightof man had the young lieutenant.

Always hoping that he might discover some sign of theirpassage -- a discarded lorry, a broken limber, or an old campsite -- he continued farther and farther into the west until wellinto the afternoon. Above a tree-dotted plain through thecenter of which flowed a winding river he determined to turnabout and start for camp. It would take straight flying at topspeed to cover the distance before dark; but as he had amplegasoline and a trustworthy machine there was no doubt in hismind but that he could accomplish his aim. It was then thathis engine stalled.

He was too low to do anything but land, and that immedi-ately, while he had the more open country accessible, fordirectly east of him was a vast forest into which a stalledengine could only have plunged him to certain injury andprobable death; and so he came down in the meadowlandnear the winding river and there started to tinker with hismotor.

As he worked he hummed a tune, some music-hall air thathad been popular in London the year before, so that one mighthave thought him working in the security of an English flyingfield surrounded by innumerable comrades rather than alonein the heart of an unexplored African wilderness. It wastypical of the man that he should be wholly indifferent to hissurroundings, although his looks entirely belied any assump-tion that he was of particularly heroic strain.

Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick was fair-hatred,blue-eyed, and slender, with a rosy, boyish face that mighthave been molded more by an environment of luxury, indo-lence, and ease than the more strenuous exigencies of life'ssterner requirements.

And not only was the young lieutenant outwardly carelessof the immediate future and of his surroundings, but actuallyso. That the district might be infested by countless enemiesseemed not to have occurred to him in the remotest degree.He bent assiduously to the work of correcting the adjustmentthat had caused his motor to stall without so much as an up-ward glance at the surrounding country. The forest to theeast of him, and the more distant jungle that bordered thewinding river, might have harbored an army of bloodthirstysavages, but neither could elicit even a passing show of inter-est on the part of Lieutenant Smith-Oldwick

And even had he looked, it is doubtful if he would haveseen the score of figures crouching in the concealment of theundergrowth at the forest's edge. There are those who arereputed to be endowed with that which is sometimes, for wantof a better appellation, known as the sixth sense -- a species ofintuition which apprises them of the presence of an unseendanger. The concentrated gaze of a hidden observer provokesa warning sensation of nervous unrest in such as these, butthough twenty pairs of savage eyes were gazing fixedly atLieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, the fact aroused noresponsive sensation of impending danger in his placid breast.He hummed peacefully and, his adjustment completed, triedout his motor for a minute or two, then shut it off and de-scended to the ground with the intention of stretching his legsand taking a smoke before continuing his return flight tocamp. Now for the first time he took note of his surroundings,to be immediately impressed by both the wildness and thebeauty of the scene. In some respects the tree-dotted meadow-land reminded him of a parklike English forest, and thatwild beasts and savage men could ever be a part of so quieta scene seemed the remotest of contingencies.

Some gorgeous blooms upon a flowering shrub at a littledistance from his machine caught the attention of his aestheticeye, and as he puffed upon his cigarette, he walked over toexamine the flowers more closely. As he bent above them hewas probably some hundred yards from his plane and it wasat this instant that Numabo, chief of the Wamabo, chose toleap from his ambush and lead his warriors in a sudden rushupon the white man.

The young Englishman's first intimation of danger was achorus of savage yells from the forest behind him. Turning,he saw a score of naked, black warriors advancing rapidlytoward him. They moved in a compact mass and as theyapproached more closely their rate of speed noticeably di-minished. Lieutenant Smith-Oldwick realized in a quick glancethat the direction of their approach and their proximity hadcut off all chances of retreating to his plane, and he alsounderstood that their attitude was entirely warlike and menac-ing. He saw that they were armed with spears and with bowsand arrows, and he felt quite confident that notwithstandingthe fact that he was armed with a pistol they could overcomehim with the first rush. What he did not know about theirtactics was that at any show of resistance they would fallback, which is the nature of the native Negroes, but that afternumerous advances and retreats, during which they wouldwork themselves into a frenzy of rage by much shrieking,leaping, and dancing, they would eventually come to the pointof a determined and final assault.

Numabo was in the forefront, a fact which taken in con-nection with his considerably greater size and more warlikeappearance, indicated him as the natural target and it was atNumabo that the Englishman aimed his first shot. Unfortu-nately for him it missed its target, as the killing of the chiefmight have permanently dispersed the others. The bulletpassed Numabo to lodge in the breast of a warrior behind himand as the fellow lunged forward with a scream the othersturned and retreated, but to the lieutenant's chagrin they ranin the direction of the plane instead of back toward the forestso that he was still cut off from reaching his machine.

Presently they stopped and faced him again. They weretalking loudly and gesticulating, and after a moment one ofthem leaped into the air, brandishing his spear and utteringsavage war cries, which soon had their effect upon his fellowsso that it was not long ere all of them were taking part in thewild show of savagery, which would bolster their waningcourage and presently spur them on to another attack.

The second charge brought them closer to the Englishman,and though he dropped another with his pistol, it was notbefore two or three spears had been launched at him. Henow had five shots remaining and there were still eighteenwarriors to be accounted for, so that unless he could frightenthem off, it was evident that his fate was sealed.

That they must pay the price of one life for every attemptto take his had its effect upon them and they were longer nowin initiating a new rush and when they did so it was moreskilfully ordered than those that had preceded it, for theyscattered into three bands which, partially surrounding him,came simultaneously toward him from different directions,and though he emptied his pistol with good effect, theyreached him at last. They seemed to know that his ammuni-tion was exhausted, for they circled close about him now withthe evident intention of taking him alive, since they mighteasily have riddled him with their sharp spears with perfectsafety to themselves.

For two or three minutes they circled about him until, at aword from Numabo, they closed in simultaneously, and thoughthe slender young lieutenant struck out to right and left, hewas soon overwhelmed by superior numbers and beaten downby the hafts of spears in brawny hands.

He was all but unconscious when they finally dragged himto his feet, and after securing his hands behind his back,pushed him roughly along ahead of them toward the jungle.

As the guard prodded him along the narrow trail, Lieuten-ant Smith-Oldwick could not but wonder why they hadwished to take him alive. He knew that he was too far inlandfor his uniform to have any significance to this native tribe towhom no inkling of the World War probably ever had come,and he could only assume that he had fallen into the handsof the warriors of some savage potentate upon whose royalcaprice his fate would hinge.

They had marched for perhaps half an hour when theEnglishman saw ahead of them, in a little clearing upon thebank of the river, the thatched roofs of native huts showingabove a crude but strong palisade; and presently he wasushered into a village street where he was immediately sur-rounded by a throng of women and children and warriors.Here he was soon the center of an excited mob whose intentseemed to be to dispatch him as quickly as possible. Thewomen were more venomous than the men, striking andscratching him whenever they could reach him, until at lastNumabo, the chief, was obliged to interfere to save his pris-oner for whatever purpose he was destined.

As the warriors pushed the crowd back, opening a spacethrough which the white man was led toward a hut, Lieu-tenant Smith-Oldwick saw coming from the opposite end ofthe village a number of Negroes wearing odds and ends ofGerman uniforms. He was not a little surprised at this, andhis first thought was that he had at last come in contact withsome portion of the army which was rumored to be crossingfrom the west coast and for signs of which he had been search-ing.

A rueful smile touched his lips as he contemplated theunhappy circumstances which surrounded the accession ofthis knowledge for though he was far from being withouthope, he realized that only by the merest chance could heescape these people and regain his machine.

Among the partially uniformed blacks was a huge fellowin the tunic of a sergeant and as this man's eyes fell upon theBritish officer, a loud cry of exultation broke from his lips,and immediately his followers took up the cry and pressedforward to bait the prisoner.

"Where did you get the Englishman?" asked Usanga, theblack sergeant, of the chief Numabo. "Are there many morewith him?"

"He came down from the sky," replied the native chief"in a strange thing which flies like a bird and which frightenedus very much at first; but we watched for a long time andsaw that it did not seem to be alive, and when this white manleft it we attacked him and though he killed some of mywarriors, we took him, for we Wamabos are brave men andgreat warriors."

Usanga's eyes went wide. "He flew here through the sky?"he asked.

"Yes," said Numabo. "In a great thing which resembled abird he flew down out of the sky. The thing is still therewhere it came down close to the four trees near the secondbend in the river. We left it there because, not knowing whatit was, we were afraid to touch it and it is still there if ithasnot flown away again."

"It cannot fly," said Usanga, "without this man in it. It is aterrible thing which filled the hearts of our soldiers with ter-ror, for it flew over our camps at night and dropped bombsupon us. It is well that you captured this white man, Numabo,for with his great bird he would have flown over your villagetonight and killed all your people. These Englishman arevery wicked white men."

"He will fly no more," said Numabo "It is not intendedthat a man should fly through the air; only wicked demons dosuch things as that and Numabo, the chief, will see that thiswhite man does not do it again," and with the words he pushedthe young officer roughly toward a hut in the center of thevillage, where he was left under guard of two stalwart warriors.

For an hour or more the prisoner was left to his own devices,which consisted in vain and unremitting attempts to loosenthe strands which fettered his wrists, and then he was inter-rupted by the appearance of the black sergeant Usanga, whoentered his hut and approached him.

"What are they going to do with me?" asked the English-man. "My country is not at war with these people. Youspeak their language. Tell them that I am not an enemy, thatmy people are the friends of the black people and that theymust let me go in peace."

Usanga laughed. "They do not know an Englishman froma German," he replied. "It is nothing to them what you are,except that you are a white man and an enemy."

"Then why did they take me alive?" asked the lieutenant.

"Come," said Usanga and he led the Englishman to thedoorway of the hut. "Look," he said, and pointed a blackforefinger toward the end of the village street where a widerspace between the huts left a sort of plaza.

Here Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick saw a num-ber of Negresses engaged in laying fagots around a stake andin preparing fires beneath a number of large cooking vessels.The sinister suggestion was only too obvious.

Usanga was eyeing the white man closely, but if he expectedto be rewarded by any signs of fear, he was doomed to dis-appointment and the young lieutenant merely turned towardhim with a shrug: "Really now, do you beggars intend eatingme?"

"Not my people," replied Usanga. "We do not eat humanflesh, but the Wamabos do. It is they who will eat you, butwe will kill you for the feast, Englishman."

The Englishman remained standing in the doorway of thehut, an interested spectator of the preparations for the comingorgy that was so horribly to terminate his earthly existence. Itcan hardly be assumed that he felt no fear; yet, if he did, hehid it perfectly beneath an imperturbable mask of coolness.Even the brutal Usanga must have been impressed by thebravery of his victim since, though he had come to abuse andpossibly to torture the helpless prisoner, he now did neither,contenting himself merely with berating whites as a race andEnglishmen especially, because of the terror the British avia-tors had caused Germany's native troops in East Africa.

"No more," he concluded, "will your great bird fly over ourpeople dropping death among them from the skies -- Usangawill see to that," and he walked abruptly away toward a groupof his own fighting men who were congregated near the stakewhere they were laughing and joking with the women.

A few minutes later the Englishman saw them pass out ofthe village gate, and once again his thoughts reverted to variousfutile plans for escape.

Several miles north of the village on a little rise of groundclose to the river where the jungle, halting at the base of aknoll, had left a few acres of grassy land sparsely wooded, aman and a girl were busily engaged in constructing a smallboma, in the center of which a thatched hut already had beenerected.

They worked almost in silence with only an occasional wordof direction or interrogation between them.

Except for a loin cloth, the man was naked, his smooth skintanned to a deep brown by the action of sun and wind. Hemoved with the graceful ease of a jungle cat and when helifted heavy weights, the action seemed as effortless as theraising of empty hands.

When he was not looking at her, and it was seldom that hedid, the girl found her eyes wandering toward him, and at suchtimes there was always a puzzled expression upon her face asthough she found in him an enigma which she could not solve.As a matter of fact, her feelings toward him were not un-tinged with awe, since in the brief period of their associationshe had discovered in this handsome, godlike giant the attri-butes of the superman and the savage beast closely intermin-gled. At first she had felt only that unreasoning feminine terrorwhich her unhappy position naturally induced.

To be alone in the heart of an unexplored wilderness ofCentral Africa with a savage wild man was in itself sufficientlyappalling, but to feel also that this man was a blood enemy,that he hated her and her kind and that in addition thereto heowed her a personal grudge for an attack she had made uponhim in the past, left no loophole for any hope that he mightaccord her even the minutest measure of consideration.

She had seen him first months since when he had enteredthe headquarters of the German high command in East Africaand carried off the luckless Major Schneider, of whose fateno hint had ever reached the German officers; and she hadseen him again upon that occasion when he had rescued herfrom the clutches of the lion and, after explaining to her thathe had recognized her in the British camp, had made herprisoner. It was then that she had struck him down with thebutt of her pistol and escaped. That he might seek no personalrevenge for her act had been evidenced in Wilhelmstal thenight that he had killed Hauptmann Fritz Schneider and leftwithout molesting her.

No, she could not fathom him. He hated her and at thesame time he had protected her as had been evidenced againwhen he had kept the great apes from tearing her to piecesafter she had escaped from the Wamabo village to whichUsanga, the black sergeant, had brought her a captive; butwhy was he saving her? For what sinister purpose could thissavage enemy be protecting her from the other denizens of hiscruel jungle? She tried to put from her mind the probablefate which awaited her, yet it persisted in obtruding itselfupon her thoughts, though always she was forced to admitthat there was nothing in the demeanor of the man to indicatethat her fears were well grounded. She judged him perhapsby the standards other men had taught her and because shelooked upon him as a savage creature, she felt that she couldnot expect more of chivalry from him than was to be found inthe breasts of the civilized men of her acquaintance.

Fraulein Bertha Kircher was by nature a companionableand cheerful character. She was not given to morbid fore-bodings, and above all things she craved the society of herkind and that interchange of thought which is one of themarked distinctions between man and the lower animals.Tarzan, on the other hand, was sufficient unto himself. Longyears of semi-solitude among creatures whose powers of oralexpression are extremely limited had thrown him almost en-tirely upon his own resources for entertainment.

His active mind was never idle, but because his junglemates could neither follow nor grasp the vivid train of imag-inings that his man-mind wrought, he had long since learnedto keep them to himself; and so now he found no need forconfiding them in others. This fact, linked with that of hisdislike for the girl, was sufficient to seal his lips for otherthannecessary conversation, and so they worked on together incomparative silence. Bertha Kircher, however, was nothing ifnot feminine and she soon found that having someone to talkto who would not talk was extremely irksome. Her fear ofthe man was gradually departing, and she was full of a thou-sand unsatisfied curiosities as to his plans for the future in sofar as they related to her, as well as more personal questionsregarding himself, since she could not but wonder as to hisantecedents and his strange and solitary life in the jungle, aswell as his friendly intercourse with the savage apes amongwhich she had found him.

With the waning of her fears she became sufficiently em-boldened to question him, and so she asked him what he in-tended doing after the hut and boma were completed.

"I am going to the west coast where I was born," repliedTarzan. "I do not know when. I have all my life before meand in the jungle there is no reason for haste. We are notforever running as fast as we can from one place to anotheras are you of the outer world. When I have been here longenough I will go on toward the west, but first I must see thatyou have a safe place in which to sleep, and that you havelearned how to provide yourself with necessaries. That willtake time."

"You are going to leave me here alone?" cried the girl; hertones marked the fear which the prospect induced. "You aregoing to leave me here alone in this terrible jungle, a preyto wild beasts and savage men, hundreds of miles from awhite settlement and in a country which gives every evidenceof never having been touched by the foot of civilized men?"

"Why not?" asked Tarzan. "I did not bring you here. Wouldone of your men accord any better treatment to an enemywoman?"

"Yes," she exclaimed. "They certainly would. No man of myrace would leave a defenseless white woman alone in this hor-rible place."

Tarzan shrugged his broad shoulders. The conversationseemed profitless and it was further distasteful to him for thereason that it was carried on in German, a tongue which hedetested as much as he did the people who spoke it. He wishedthat the girl spoke English and then it occurred to him that ashe had seen her in disguise in the British camp carrying on hernefarious work as a German spy, she probably did speak Eng-lish and so he asked her.

"Of course I speak English," she exclaimed, "but I did notknow that you did."

Tarzan looked his wonderment but made no comment. Heonly wondered why the girl should have any doubts as to theability of an Englishman to speak English, and then suddenlyit occurred to him that she probably looked upon him merelyas a beast of the jungle who by accident had learned to speakGerman through frequenting the district which Germany hadcolonized. It was there only that she had seen him and soshe might not know that he was an Englishman by birth,and that he had had a home in British East Africa. It was aswell, he thought, that she knew little of him, as the less sheknew the more he might learn from her as to her activitiesin behalf of the Germans and of the German spy system ofwhich she was a representative; and so it occurred to him tolet her continue to think that he was only what he appearedto be -- a savage denizen of his savage jungle, a man of norace and no country, hating all white men impartially; andthis in truth, was what she did think of him. It explained per-fectly his attacks upon Major Schneider and the Major'sbrother, Hauptmann Fritz.

Again they worked on in silence upon the boma which wasnow nearly completed, the girl helping the man to the bestof her small ability. Tarzan could not but note with grudgingapproval the spirit of helpfulness she manifested in the oft-times painful labor of gathering and arranging the thornbushes which constituted the temporary protection againstroaming carnivores. Her hands and arms gave bloody tokenof the sharpness of the numerous points that had lacerated hersoft flesh, and even though she were an enemy Tarzan couldnot but feel compunction that he had permitted her to dothis work, and at last he bade her stop.

"Why?" she asked. "It is no more painful to me than it mustbe to you, and, as it is solely for my protection that you arebuilding this boma, there is no reason why I should not do myshare."

"You are a woman," replied Tarzan. "This is not a wom-an's work. If you wish to do something, take those gourdsI brought this morning and fill them with water at the river.You may need it while I am away."

"While you are away --" she said. "You are going away?"

"When the boma is built I am going out after meat," hereplied. "Tomorrow I will go again and take you and showyou how you may make your own kills after I am gone."

Without a word she took the gourds and walked towardthe river. As she filled them, her mind was occupied withpainful forebodings of the future. She knew that Tarzan hadpassed a death sentence upon her, and that the moment thathe left her, her doom was sealed, for it could be but a questionof time -- a very short time -- before the grim jungle wouldclaim her, for how could a lone woman hope successfully tocombat the savage forces of destruction which constituted solarge a part of existence in the jungle?

So occupied was she with the gloomy prophecies that shehad neither ears nor eyes for what went on about her. Me-chanically she filled the gourds and, taking them up, turnedslowly to retrace her steps to the boma only to voice im-mediately a half-stifled scream and shrank back from themenacing figure looming before her and blocking her way tothe hut.

Go-lat, the king ape, hunting a little apart from his tribe,had seen the woman go to the river for water, and it was hewho confronted her when she turned back with her filledgourds. Go-lat was not a pretty creature when judged bystandards of civilized humanity, though the shes of his tribeand even Go-lat himself, considered his glossy black coat shotwith silver, his huge arms dangling to his knees, his bullethead sunk between his mighty shoulders, marks of great per-sonal beauty. His wicked, bloodshot eyes and broad nose, hisample mouth and great fighting fangs only enhanced the claimof this Adonis of the forest upon the affections of his shes.

Doubtless in the little, savage brain there was a well-formedconviction that this strange she belonging to the Tarmanganimust look with admiration upon so handsome a creature asGo-lat, for there could be no doubt in the mind of any thathis beauty entirely eclipsed such as the hairless white apemight lay claim to.

But Bertha Kircher saw only a hideous beast, a fierce andterrible caricature of man. Could Go-lat have known whatpassed through her mind, he must have been terribly cha-grined, though the chances are that he would have attributedit to a lack of discernment on her part. Tarzan heard thegirl's cry and looking up saw at a glance the cause of herterror. Leaping lightly over the boma, he ran swiftly towardher as Go-lat lumbered closer to the girl the while he voicedhis emotions in low gutturals which, while in reality the mostamicable of advances, sounded to the girl like the growling ofan enraged beast. As Tarzan drew nearer he called aloud tothe ape and the girl heard from the human lips the samesounds that had fallen from those of the anthropoid.

"I will not harm your she," Go-lat called to Tarzan.

"I know it," replied the ape-man, "but she does not. She islike Numa and Sheeta, who do not understand our talk. Shethinks you come to harm her."

By this time Tarzan was beside the girl. "He will not harmyou," he said to her. "You need not be afraid. This ape haslearned his lesson. He has learned that Tarzan is lord ofthe jungle. He will not harm that which is Tarzan's."

The girl cast a quick glance at the man's face. It was evi-dent to her that the words he had spoken meant nothing tohim and that the assumed proprietorship over her was, likethe boma, only another means for her protection.

"But I am afraid of him," she said.

"You must not show your fear. You will be often sur-rounded by these apes. At such times you will be safest. Be-fore I leave you I will give you the means of protecting your-self against them should one of them chance to turn uponyou. If I were you I would seek their society. Few are theanimals of the jungle that dare attack the great apes whenthere are several of them together. If you let them know thatyou are afraid of them, they will take advantage of it andyour life will be constantly menaced. The shes especially wouldattack you. I will let them know that you have the means ofprotecting yourself and of killing them. If necessary, I willshow you how and then they will respect and fear you."

"I will try," said the girl, "but I am afraid that it will bedifficult. He is the most frightful creature I ever have seen."Tarzan smiled. "Doubtless he thinks the same of you," hesaid.

By this time other apes had entered the clearing and theywere now the center of a considerable group, among whichwere several bulls, some young shes, and some older ones withtheir little balus clinging to their backs or frolicking aroundat their feet. Though they had seen the girl the night of theDum-Dum when Sheeta had forced her to leap from her con-cealment into the arena where the apes were dancing, theystill evinced a great curiosity regarding her. Some of the shescame very close and plucked at her garments, commentingupon them to one another in their strange tongue. The girl,by the exercise of all the will power she could command, suc-ceeded in passing through the ordeal without evincing any ofthe terror and revulsion that she felt. Tarzan watched herclosely, a half-smile upon his face. He was not so far removedfrom recent contact with civilized people that he could notrealize the torture that she was undergoing, but he felt nopity for this woman of a cruel enemy who doubtless deservedthe worst suffering that could be meted to her. Yet, not-withstanding his sentiments toward her, he was forced to ad-mire her fine display of courage. Suddenly he turned to theapes.

"Tarzan goes to hunt for himself and his she," he said. "Theshe will remain there," and he pointed toward the hut. "Seethat no member of the tribe harms her. Do you understand?"

The apes nodded. "We will not harm her," said Go-lat.

"No," said Tarzan. "You will not. For if you do, Tarzanwill kill you," and then turning to the girl, "Come," he said,"I am going to hunt now. You had better remain at the hut.The apes have promised not to harm you. I will leave myspear with you. It will be the best weapon you could have incase you should need to protect yourself, but I doubt if youwill be in any danger for the short time that I am away."

He walked with her as far as the boma and when she hadentered he closed the gap with thorn bushes and turned awaytoward the forest. She watched him moving across the clear-ing, noting the easy, catlike tread and the grace of every move-ment that harmonized so well with the symmetry and perfec-tion of his figure. At the forest's edge she saw him swinglightlyinto a tree and disappear from view, and then, being a woman,she entered the hut and, throwing herself upon the ground,burst into tears.