AMONG THE BOOKS of his dead father in the little cabinby the land-locked harbor, Tarzan of the Apes foundmany things to puzzle his young head. By much labor andthrough the medium of infinite patience as well, he had,without assistance, discovered the purpose of the littlebugs which ran riot upon the printed pages. He had learnedthat in the many combinations in which he found them theyspoke in a silent language, spoke in a strange tongue,spoke of wonderful things which a little ape-boy couldnot by any chance fully understand, arousing his curiosity,stimulating his imagination and filling his soul witha mighty longing for further knowledge.

A dictionary had proven itself a wonderful storehouseof information, when, after several years of tirelessendeavor, he had solved the mystery of its purposeand the manner of its use. He had learned to makea species of game out of it, following up the spoor ofa new thought through the mazes of the many definitionswhich each new word required him to consult. It was likefollowing a quarry through the jungle-- it was hunting,and Tarzan of the Apes was an indefatigable huntsman.

There were, of course, certain words which aroused hiscuriosity to a greater extent than others, words which,for one reason or another, excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning of which wasrather difficult to grasp. It was the word GOD.Tarzan first had been attracted to it by the fact that itwas very short and that it commenced with a larger g-bugthan those about it--a male g-bug it was to Tarzan,the lower-case letters being females. Another factwhich attracted him to this word was the number of he-bugswhich figured in its definition--Supreme Deity, Creator orUpholder of the Universe. This must be a very importantword indeed, he would have to look into it, and he did,though it still baffled him after many months of thoughtand study.

However, Tarzan counted no time wasted which he devotedto these strange hunting expeditions into the gamepreserves of knowledge, for each word and each definitionled on and on into strange places, into new worlds where,with increasing frequency, he met old, familiar faces. And always he added to his store of knowledge.

But of the meaning of GOD he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he had grasped it--that God was amighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani. He was notquite sure, however, since that would mean that God wasmightier than Tarzan-- a point which Tarzan of the Apes,who acknowledged no equal in the jungle, was loath to concede.

But in all the books he had there was no picture of God,though he found much to confirm his belief that God wasa great, an all-powerful individual. He saw pictures ofplaces where God was worshiped; but never any sign of God. Finally he began to wonder if God were not of a differentform than he, and at last he determined to set out in searchof Him.

He commenced by questioning Mumga, who was very old andhad seen many strange things in her long life; but Mumga,being an ape, had a faculty for recalling the trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a sting-bug for an ediblebeetle had made more impression upon Mumga than allthe innumerable manifestations of the greatness of Godwhich she had witnessed, and which, of course, she hadnot understood.

Numgo, overhearing Tarzan's questions, managed to wresthis attention long enough from the diversion of fleahunting to advance the theory that the power which madethe lightning and the rain and the thunder came from Goro,the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dumalways was danced in the light of Goro. This reasoning,though entirely satisfactory to Numgo and Mumga,failed fully to convince Tarzan. However, it gave hima basis for further investigation along a new line. He would investigate the moon.

That night he clambered to the loftiest pinnacle of thetallest jungle giant. The moon was full, a great, glorious,equatorial moon. The ape-man, upright upon a slender,swaying limb, raised his bronzed face to the silver orb. Now that he had clambered to the highest point withinhis reach, he discovered, to his surprise, that Gorowas as far away as when he viewed him from the ground. He thought that Goro was attempting to elude him.

"Come, Goro!" he cried, "Tarzan of the Apes will notharm you!" But still the moon held aloof.

"Tell me," he continued, "if you be the great kingwho sends Ara, the lightning; who makes the great noiseand the mighty winds, and sends the waters down uponthe jungle people when the days are dark and it is cold. Tell me, Goro, are you God?"

Of course he did not pronounce God as you or I wouldpronounce His name, for Tarzan knew naught of the spokenlanguage of his English forbears; but he had a name of hisown invention for each of the little bugs which constitutedthe alphabet. Unlike the apes he was not satisfied merelyto have a mental picture of the things he knew, he musthave a word descriptive of each. In reading he graspeda word in its entirety; but when he spoke the words hehad learned from the books of his father, he pronouncedeach according to the names he had given the various littlebugs which occurred in it, usually giving the gender prefix foreach.

Thus it was an imposing word which Tarzan made of GOD.The masculine prefix of the apes is BU, the feminineMU; g Tarzan had named LA, o he pronounced TU,and d was MO. So the word God evolved itselfinto BULAMUTUMUMO, or, in English, he-g-she-o-she-d.

Similarly he had arrived at a strange and wonderfulspelling of his own name. Tarzan is derived from thetwo ape words TAR and ZAN, meaning white skin.It was given him by his foster mother, Kala, the greatshe-ape. When Tarzan first put it into the written languageof his own people he had not yet chanced upon either WHITEor SKIN in the dictionary; but in a primerhe had seen the picture of a little white boy and so hewrote his name BUMUDE-MUTOMURO, or he-boy.

To follow Tarzan's strange system of spelling would belaborious as well as futile, and so we shall in the future,as we have in the past, adhere to the more familiar formsof our grammar school copybooks. It would tire youto remember that DO meant b, TU o, and RO y,and that to say he-boy you must prefix the ape masculinegender sound BU before the entire word and the femininegender sound MU before each of the lower-case letterswhich go to make up boy--it would tire you and it wouldbring me to the nineteenth hole several strokes under par.

And so Tarzan harangued the moon, and when Goro did not reply,Tarzan of the Apes waxed wroth. He swelled his giantchest and bared his fighting fangs, and hurled into theteeth of the dead satellite the challenge of the bull ape.

"You are not Bulamutumumo," he cried. "You are not kingof the jungle folk. You are not so great as Tarzan,mighty fighter, mighty hunter. None there is so greatas Tarzan. If there be a Bulamutumumo, Tarzan can kill him. Come down, Goro, great coward, and fight with Tarzan. Tarzan will kill you. I am Tarzan, the killer."

But the moon made no answer to the boasting of theape-man, and when a cloud came and obscured her face,Tarzan thought that Goro was indeed afraid, and was hidingfrom him, so he came down out of the trees and awokeNumgo and told him how great was Tarzan--how he hadfrightened Goro out of the sky and made him tremble. Tarzan spoke of the moon as HE, for all things largeor awe inspiring are male to the ape folk.

Numgo was not much impressed; but he was very sleepy,so he told Tarzan to go away and leave his betters alone.

"But where shall I find God?" insisted Tarzan. "You arevery old; if there is a God you must have seen Him. What does He look like? Where does He live?"

"I am God," replied Numgo. "Now sleep and disturb meno more."

Tarzan looked at Numgo steadily for several minutes,his shapely head sank just a trifle between his great shoulders,his square chin shot forward and his short upper lipdrew back, exposing his white teeth. Then, with a lowgrowl he leaped upon the ape and buried his fangsin the other's hairy shoulder, clutching the great neckin his mighty fingers. Twice he shook the old ape,then he released his tooth-hold.

"Are you God?" he demanded.

"No," wailed Numgo. "I am only a poor, old ape. Leave me alone. Go ask the Gomangani where God is. They are hairless like yourself and very wise, too. They should know."

Tarzan released Numgo and turned away. The suggestionthat he consult the blacks appealed to him, and thoughhis relations with the people of Mbonga, the chief,were the antithesis of friendly, he could at least spy uponhis hated enemies and discover if they had intercoursewith God.

So it was that Tarzan set forth through the trees towardthe village of the blacks, all excitement at the prospectof discovering the Supreme Being, the Creator of all things. As he traveled he reviewed, mentally, his armament--thecondition of his hunting knife, the number of his arrows,the newness of the gut which strung his bow--he heftedthe war spear which had once been the pride of some blackwarrior of Mbonga's tribe.

If he met God, Tarzan would be prepared. One could nevertell whether a grass rope, a war spear, or a poisoned arrowwould be most efficacious against an unfamiliar foe. Tarzan of the Apes was quite content--if God wished to fight,the ape-man had no doubt as to the outcome of the struggle. There were many questions Tarzan wished to put to theCreator of the Universe and so he hoped that God wouldnot prove a belligerent God; but his experience of lifeand the ways of living things had taught him that anycreature with the means for offense and defense was quitelikely to provoke attack if in the proper mood.

It was dark when Tarzan came to the village of Mbonga. As silently as the silent shadows of the night hesought his accustomed place among the branches of thegreat tree which overhung the palisade. Below him,in the village street, he saw men and women. The menwere hideously painted--more hideously than usual. Among them moved a weird and grotesque figure, a tall figurethat went upon the two legs of a man and yet had the headof a buffalo. A tail dangled to his ankles behind him,and in one hand he carried a zebra's tail while the otherclutched a bunch of small arrows.

Tarzan was electrified. Could it be that chance had givenhim thus early an opportunity to look upon God? Surelythis thing was neither man nor beast, so what could itbe then other than the Creator of the Universe! Theape-man watched the every move of the strange creature. He saw the black men and women fall back at its approachas though they stood in terror of its mysterious powers.

Presently he discovered that the deity was speaking andthat all listened in silence to his words. Tarzan wassure that none other than God could inspire such awein the hearts of the Gomangani, or stop their mouthsso effectually without recourse to arrows or spears. Tarzan had come to look with contempt upon the blacks,principally because of their garrulity. The small apestalked a great deal and ran away from an enemy. The big,old bulls of Kerchak talked but little and fought uponthe slightest provocation. Numa, the lion, was not givento loquacity, yet of all the jungle folk there were fewwho fought more often than he.

Tarzan witnessed strange things that night, none of whichhe understood, and, perhaps because they were strange,he thought that they must have to do with the God he couldnot understand. He saw three youths receive their first warspears in a weird ceremony which the grotesque witch-doctorstrove successfully to render uncanny and awesome.

Hugely interested, he watched the slashing of the three brownarms and the exchange of blood with Mbonga, the chief,in the rites of the ceremony of blood brotherhood. He saw the zebra's tail dipped into a caldron of waterabove which the witch-doctor had made magical passesthe while he danced and leaped about it, and he sawthe breasts and foreheads of each of the three novitiatessprinkled with the charmed liquid. Could the ape-manhave known the purpose of this act, that it was intendedto render the recipient invulnerable to the attacksof his enemies and fearless in the face of any danger,he would doubtless have leaped into the village streetand appropriated the zebra's tail and a portion of thecontents of the caldron.

But he did not know, and so he only wondered, not aloneat what he saw but at the strange sensations which playedup and down his naked spine, sensations induced, doubtless,by the same hypnotic influence which held the blackspectators in tense awe upon the verge of a hysteric upheaval.

The longer Tarzan watched, the more convinced he becamethat his eyes were upon God, and with the conviction camedetermination to have word with the deity. With Tarzanof the Apes, to think was to act.

The people of Mbonga were keyed to the highest pitchof hysterical excitement. They needed little to releasethe accumulated pressure of static nerve force whichthe terrorizing mummery of the witch-doctor had induced.

A lion roared, suddenly and loud, close without the palisade. The blacks started nervously, dropping into utter silenceas they listened for a repetition of that all-too-familiarand always terrorizing voice. Even the witch-doctor pausedin the midst of an intricate step, remaining momentarilyrigid and statuesque as he plumbed his cunning mindfor a suggestion as how best he might take advantageof the condition of his audience and the timely interruption.

Already the evening had been vastly profitable to him. There would be three goats for the initiation of thethree youths into full-fledged warriorship, and besidesthese he had received several gifts of grain and beads,together with a piece of copper wire from admiring andterrified members of his audience.

Numa's roar still reverberated along taut nerves when awoman's laugh, shrill and piercing, shattered the silenceof the village. It was this moment that Tarzan choseto drop lightly from his tree into the village street. Fearless among his blood enemies he stood, taller by a fullhead than many of Mbonga's warriors, straight as theirstraightest arrow, muscled like Numa, the lion.

For a moment Tarzan stood looking straight at thewitch-doctor. Every eye was upon him, yet no one hadmoved-- a paralysis of terror held them, to be brokena moment later as the ape-man, with a toss of head,stepped straight toward the hideous figure beneath the buffalohead.

Then the nerves of the blacks could stand no more. For months the terror of the strange, white, jungle godhad been upon them. Their arrows had been stolen fromthe very center of the village; their warriors had beensilently slain upon the jungle trails and their deadbodies dropped mysteriously and by night into the villagestreet as from the heavens above.

One or two there were who had glimpsed the strange figureof the new demon and it was from their oft-repeateddescriptions that the entire village now recognized Tarzanas the author of many of their ills. Upon another occasionand by daylight, the warriors would doubtless have leapedto attack him, but at night, and this night of all others,when they were wrought to such a pitch of nervous dreadby the uncanny artistry of their witch-doctor, they werehelpless with terror. As one man they turned and fled,scattering for their huts, as Tarzan advanced. For a moment one and one only held his ground. It wasthe witch-doctor. More than half self-hypnotized intoa belief in his own charlatanry he faced this new demonwho threatened to undermine his ancient and lucrative profession.

"Are you God?" asked Tarzan.

The witch-doctor, having no idea of the meaning of theother's words, danced a few strange steps, leaped highin the air, turning completely around and alighting in astooping posture with feet far outspread and head thrustout toward the ape-man. Thus he remained for an instantbefore he uttered a loud "Boo!" which was evidently intendedto frighten Tarzan away; but in reality had no such effect.

Tarzan did not pause. He had set out to approach and examineGod and nothing upon earth might now stay his feet. Seeing that his antics had no potency with the visitor,the witch-doctor tried some new medicine. Spitting uponthe zebra's tail, which he still clutched in one hand,he made circles above it with the arrows in the other hand,meanwhile backing cautiously away from Tarzan and speakingconfidentially to the bushy end of the tail.

This medicine must be short medicine, however, for the creature,god or demon, was steadily closing up the distance which hadseparated them. The circles therefore were few and rapid,and when they were completed, the witch-doctor struck an attitudewhich was intended to be awe inspiring and waving the zebra'stail before him, drew an imaginary line between himself andTarzan.

"Beyond this line you cannot pass, for my medicine isstrong medicine," he cried. "Stop, or you will falldead as your foot touches this spot. My mother wasa voodoo, my father was a snake; I live upon lions'hearts and the entrails of the panther; I eat young babiesfor breakfast and the demons of the jungle are my slaves. I am the most powerful witch-doctor in the world;I fear nothing, for I cannot die. I--" But he got no further;instead he turned and fled as Tarzan of the Apes crossedthe magical dead line and still lived.

As the witch-doctor ran, Tarzan almost lost his temper. This was no way for God to act, at least not in accordancewith the conception Tarzan had come to have of God.

"Come back!" he cried. "Come back, God, I will not harm you."But the witch-doctor was in full retreat by this time,stepping high as he leaped over cooking pots and thesmoldering embers of small fires that had burned beforethe huts of villagers. Straight for his own hut ranthe witch-doctor, terror-spurred to unwonted speed;but futile was his effort--the ape-man bore down uponhim with the speed of Bara, the deer.

Just at the entrance to his hut the witch-doctor was overhauled. A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder to drag him back. It seized upon a portion of the buffalo hide, dragging thedisguise from him. It was a naked black man that Tarzansaw dodge into the darkness of the hut's interior.

So this was what he had thought was God! Tarzan's lipcurled in an angry snarl as he leaped into the hut afterthe terror-stricken witch-doctor. In the blackness withinhe found the man huddled at the far side and dragged himforth into the comparative lightness of the moonlit night.

The witch-doctor bit and scratched in an attempt to escape;but a few cuffs across the head brought him to a betterrealization of the futility of resistance. Beneath the moonTarzan held the cringing figure upon its shaking feet.

"So you are God!" he cried. "If you be God, then Tarzanis greater than God," and so the ape-man thought. "I am Tarzan," he shouted into the ear of the black. "In all the jungle, or above it, or upon the runningwaters, or the sleeping waters, or upon the big water,or the little water, there is none so great as Tarzan. Tarzan is greater than the Mangani; he is greater thanthe Gomangani. With his own hands he has slain Numa,the lion, and Sheeta, the panther; there is none so greatas Tarzan. Tarzan is greater than God. See!" and witha sudden wrench he twisted the black's neck until thefellow shrieked in pain and then slumped to the earthin a swoon.

Placing his foot upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor,the ape-man raised his face to the moon and utteredthe long, shrill scream of the victorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra's tail from thenerveless fingers of the unconscious man and withouta backward glance retraced his footsteps across the village.

From several hut doorways frightened eyes watched him. Mbonga, the chief, was one of those who had seenwhat passed before the hut of the witch-doctor. Mbongawas greatly concerned. Wise old patriarch that he was,he never had more than half believed in witch-doctors,at least not since greater wisdom had come with age;but as a chief he was well convinced of the power of thewitch-doctor as an arm of government, and often it wasthat Mbonga used the superstitious fears of his peopleto his own ends through the medium of the medicine-man.

Mbonga and the witch-doctor had worked together and dividedthe spoils, and now the "face" of the witch-doctorwould be lost forever if any saw what Mbonga had seen;nor would this generation again have as much faithin any future witch-doctor.

Mbonga must do something to counteract the evil influenceof the forest demon's victory over the witch-doctor. Heraised his heavy spear and crept silently from his hutin the wake of the retreating ape-man. Down the villagestreet walked Tarzan, as unconcerned and as deliberateas though only the friendly apes of Kerchak surroundedhim instead of a village full of armed enemies.

Seeming only was the indifference of Tarzan,for alert and watchful was every well-trained sense. Mbonga, wily stalker of keen-eared jungle creatures,moved now in utter silence. Not even Bara, the deer,with his great ears could have guessed from any soundthat Mbonga was near; but the black was not stalking Bara;he was stalking man, and so he sought only to avoid noise.

Closer and closer to the slowly moving ape-man he came. Now he raised his war spear, throwing his spear-hand far backabove his right shoulder. Once and for all would Mbonga,the chief, rid himself and his people of the menaceof this terrifying enemy. He would make no poor cast;he would take pains, and he would hurl his weapon with suchgreat force as would finish the demon forever.

But Mbonga, sure as he thought himself, erred inhis calculations. He might believe that he was stalkinga man-- he did not know, however, that it was a manwith the delicate sense perception of the lower orders. Tarzan, when he had turned his back upon his enemies,had noted what Mbonga never would have thought of consideringin the hunting of man--the wind. It was blowing in thesame direction that Tarzan was proceeding, carrying tohis delicate nostrils the odors which arose behind him. Thus it was that Tarzan knew that he was being followed,for even among the many stenches of an African village,the ape-man's uncanny faculty was equal to the taskof differentiating one stench from another and locatingwith remarkable precision the source from whence it came.

He knew that a man was following him and coming closer,and his judgment warned him of the purpose of the stalker. When Mbonga, therefore, came within spear rangeof the ape-man, the latter suddenly wheeled upon him,so suddenly that the poised spear was shot a fractionof a second before Mbonga had intended. It went a triflehigh and Tarzan stooped to let it pass over his head;then he sprang toward the chief. But Mbonga did not waitto receive him. Instead, he turned and fled for the darkdoorway of the nearest hut, calling as he went for hiswarriors to fall upon the stranger and slay him.

Well indeed might Mbonga scream for help, for Tarzan,young and fleet-footed, covered the distance betweenthem in great leaps, at the speed of a charging lion. He was growling, too, not at all unlike Numa himself. Mbonga heard and his blood ran cold. He could feel the woolstiffen upon his pate and a prickly chill run up his spine,as though Death had come and run his cold finger alongMbonga's back.

Others heard, too, and saw, from the darkness of theirhuts--bold warriors, hideously painted, grasping heavywar spears in nerveless fingers. Against Numa, the lion,they would have charged fearlessly. Against many timestheir own number of black warriors would they have racedto the protection of their chief; but this weird jungledemon filled them with terror. There was nothing humanin the bestial growls that rumbled up from his deep chest;there was nothing human in the bared fangs, or the catlike leaps.

Mbonga's warriors were terrified--too terrified to leavethe seeming security of their huts while they watchedthe beast-man spring full upon the back of their old chieftain.

Mbonga went down with a scream of terror. He wastoo frightened even to attempt to defend himself. He just lay beneath his antagonist in a paralysis of fear,screaming at the top of his lungs. Tarzan half roseand kneeled above the black. He turned Mbonga over andlooked him in the face, exposing the man's throat, then hedrew his long, keen knife, the knife that John Clayton,Lord Greystoke, had brought from England many years before. He raised it close above Mbonga's neck. The old blackwhimpered with terror. He pleaded for his life in a tonguewhich Tarzan could not understand.

For the first time the ape-man had a close view of the chief. He saw an old man, a very old man with scrawny neckand wrinkled face--a dried, parchment-like face whichresembled some of the little monkeys Tarzan knew so well. He saw the terror in the man's eyes--never before hadTarzan seen such terror in the eyes of any animal, or sucha piteous appeal for mercy upon the face of any creature.

Something stayed the ape-man's hand for an instant. He wondered why it was that he hesitated to make the kill;never before had he thus delayed. The old man seemed towither and shrink to a bag of puny bones beneath his eyes. So weak and helpless and terror-stricken he appearedthat the ape-man was filled with a great contempt;but another sensation also claimed him--something newto Tarzan of the Apes in relation to an enemy. It waspity--pity for a poor, frightened, old man.

Tarzan rose and turned away, leaving Mbonga, the chief, unharmed.

With head held high the ape-man walked through the village,swung himself into the branches of the tree which overhungthe palisade and disappeared from the sight of the villagers.

All the way back to the stamping ground of the apes,Tarzan sought for an explanation of the strange power whichhad stayed his hand and prevented him from slaying Mbonga. It was as though someone greater than he had commandedhim to spare the life of the old man. Tarzan couldnot understand, for he could conceive of nothing, or no one,with the authority to dictate to him what he should do,or what he should refrain from doing.

It was late when Tarzan sought a swaying couch amongthe trees beneath which slept the apes of Kerchak,and he was still absorbed in the solution of his strangeproblem when he fell asleep.

The sun was well up in the heavens when he awoke. The apes were astir in search of food. Tarzan watchedthem lazily from above as they scratched in the rottingloam for bugs and beetles and grubworms, or sought amongthe branches of the trees for eggs and young birds,or luscious caterpillars.

An orchid, dangling close beside his head, opened slowly,unfolding its delicate petals to the warmth and lightof the sun which but recently had penetrated to itsshady retreat. A thousand times had Tarzan of the Apeswitnessed the beauteous miracle; but now it arouseda keener interest, for the ape-man was just commencingto ask himself questions about all the myriad wonderswhich heretofore he had but taken for granted.

What made the flower open? What made it grow from a tinybud to a full-blown bloom? Why was it at all? Why was he?Where did Numa, the lion, come from? Who planted the firsttree? How did Goro get way up into the darkness of the nightsky to cast his welcome light upon the fearsome nocturnaljungle? And the sun! Did the sun merely happen there?

Why were all the peoples of the jungle not trees? Why werethe trees not something else? Why was Tarzan differentfrom Taug, and Taug different from Bara, the deer,and Bara different from Sheeta, the panther, and whywas not Sheeta like Buto, the rhinoceros? Where and how,anyway, did they all come from--the trees, the flowers,the insects, the countless creatures of the jungle?

Quite unexpectedly an idea popped into Tarzan's head. In following out the many ramifications of the dictionarydefinition of GOD he had come upon the word CREATE--"to cause to come into existence; to form out of nothing."

Tarzan almost had arrived at something tangible when adistant wail startled him from his preoccupation intosensibility of the present and the real. The wail camefrom the jungle at some little distance from Tarzan'sswaying couch. It was the wail of a tiny balu. Tarzan recognized it at once as the voice of Gazan,Teeka's baby. They had called it Gazan because its soft,baby hair had been unusually red, and GAZAN in thelanguage of the great apes, means red skin.

The wail was immediately followed by a real screamof terror from the small lungs. Tarzan was electrifiedinto instant action. Like an arrow from a bow he shotthrough the trees in the direction of the sound. Ahead of him he heard the savage snarling of an adultshe-ape. It was Teeka to the rescue. The danger mustbe very real. Tarzan could tell that by the note of ragemingled with fear in the voice of the she.

Running along bending limbs, swinging from one treeto another, the ape-man raced through the middleterraces toward the sounds which now had risen in volumeto deafening proportions. From all directions the apesof Kerchak were hurrying in response to the appeal inthe tones of the balu and its mother, and as they came,their roars reverberated through the forest.

But Tarzan, swifter than his heavy fellows, distanced them all. It was he who was first upon the scene. What he sawsent a cold chill through his giant frame, for the enemywas the most hated and loathed of all the jungle creatures.

Twined in a great tree was Histah, the snake--huge, ponderous,slimy--and in the folds of its deadly embrace was Teeka'slittle balu, Gazan. Nothing in the jungle inspired withinthe breast of Tarzan so near a semblance to fear as didthe hideous Histah. The apes, too, loathed the terrifyingreptile and feared him even more than they did Sheeta,the panther, or Numa, the lion. Of all their enemies therewas none they gave a wider berth than they gave Histah,the snake.

Tarzan knew that Teeka was peculiarly fearful of this silent,repulsive foe, and as the scene broke upon his vision,it was the action of Teeka which filled him with thegreatest wonder, for at the moment that he saw her,the she-ape leaped upon the glistening body of the snake,and as the mighty folds encircled her as well as her offspring,she made no effort to escape, but instead grasped the writhingbody in a futile effort to tear it from her screaming balu.

Tarzan knew all too well how deep-rooted was Teeka's terrorof Histah. He scarce could believe the testimony of hisown eyes then, when they told him that she had voluntarilyrushed into that deadly embrace. Nor was Teeka's innatedread of the monster much greater than Tarzan's own. Never, willingly, had he touched a snake. Why, he couldnot say, for he would admit fear of nothing; nor was it fear,but rather an inherent repulsion bequeathed to him by manygenerations of civilized ancestors, and back of them, perhaps,by countless myriads of such as Teeka, in the breastsof each of which had lurked the same nameless terror of the slimyreptile.

Yet Tarzan did not hesitate more than had Teeka,but leaped upon Histah with all the speed and impetuositythat he would have shown had he been springing upon Bara,the deer, to make a kill for food. Thus beset the snakewrithed and twisted horribly; but not for an instantdid it loose its hold upon any of its intended victims,for it had included the ape-man in its cold embracethe minute that he had fallen upon it.

Still clinging to the tree, the mighty reptile heldthe three as though they had been without weight,the while it sought to crush the life from them. Tarzan had drawn his knife and this he now plunged rapidlyinto the body of the enemy; but the encircling foldspromised to sap his life before he had inflicted a deathwound upon the snake. Yet on he fought, nor once did heseek to escape the horrid death that confronted him--hissole aim was to slay Histah and thus free Teeka and her balu.

The great, wide-gaping jaws of the snake turned and hoveredabove him. The elastic maw, which could accommodate a rabbitor a horned buck with equal facility, yawned for him;but Histah, in turning his attention upon the ape-man, broughthis head within reach of Tarzan's blade. Instantly a brownhand leaped forth and seized the mottled neck, and anotherdrove the heavy hunting knife to the hilt into the little brain.

Convulsively Histah shuddered and relaxed, tensed andrelaxed again, whipping and striking with his great body;but no longer sentient or sensible. Histah was dead,but in his death throes he might easily dispatch a dozenapes or men.

Quickly Tarzan seized Teeka and dragged her from theloosened embrace, dropping her to the ground beneath,then he extricated the balu and tossed it to its mother. Still Histah whipped about, clinging to the ape-man;but after a dozen efforts Tarzan succeeded in wrigglingfree and leaping to the ground out of range of the mightybattering of the dying snake.

A circle of apes surrounded the scene of the battle;but the moment that Tarzan broke safely from the enemy theyturned silently away to resume their interrupted feeding,and Teeka turned with them, apparently forgetful of allbut her balu and the fact that when the interruption hadoccurred she just had discovered an ingeniously hiddennest containing three perfectly good eggs.

Tarzan, equally indifferent to a battle that was over,merely cast a parting glance at the still writhingbody of Histah and wandered off toward the littlepool which served to water the tribe at this point. Strangely, he did not give the victory cry over thevanquished Histah. Why, he could not have told you,other than that to him Histah was not an animal. He differed in some peculiar way from the other denizensof the jungle. Tarzan only knew that he hated him.

At the pool Tarzan drank his fill and lay stretchedupon the soft grass beneath the shade of a tree. His mind reverted to the battle with Histah, the snake. It seemed strange to him that Teeka should have placedherself within the folds of the horrid monster. Why had she done it? Why, indeed, had he? Teeka didnot belong to him, nor did Teeka's balu. They were bothTaug's. Why then had he done this thing? Histah was notfood for him when he was dead. There seemed to Tarzan,now that he gave the matter thought, no reason in the worldwhy he should have done the thing he did, and presently itoccurred to him that he had acted almost involuntarily,just as he had acted when he had released the old Gomanganithe previous evening.

What made him do such things? Somebody more powerful than he mustforce him to act at times. "All-powerful," thought Tarzan. "The little bugs say that God is all-powerful. It mustbe that God made me do these things, for I never did themby myself. It was God who made Teeka rush upon Histah. Teeka would never go near Histah of her own volition. It was God who held my knife from the throat of theold Gomangani. God accomplishes strange things for he is'all-powerful.' I cannot see Him; but I know that it mustbe God who does these things. No Mangani, no Gomangani,no Tarmangani could do them."

And the flowers--who made them grow? Ah, now itwas all explained--the flowers, the trees, the moon,the sun, himself, every living creature in the jungle--theywere all made by God out of nothing.

And what was God? What did God look like? Of that he hadno conception; but he was sure that everything that was goodcame from God. His good act in refraining from slayingthe poor, defenseless old Gomangani; Teeka's love that hadhurled her into the embrace of death; his own loyalty toTeeka which had jeopardized his life that she might live. The flowers and the trees were good and beautiful. God had made them. He made the other creatures,too, that each might have food upon which to live. He had made Sheeta, the panther, with his beautiful coat;and Numa, the lion, with his noble head and his shaggy mane. He had made Bara, the deer, lovely and graceful.

Yes, Tarzan had found God, and he spent the whole dayin attributing to Him all of the good and beautiful thingsof nature; but there was one thing which troubled him. He could not quite reconcile it to his conception of hisnew-found God.

Who made Histah, the snake?