Swinging back through the jungle in a wide circle theape-man came to the river at another point, drank andtook to the trees again and while he hunted, alloblivious of his past and careless of his future, therecame through the dark jungles and the open, parklikeplaces and across the wide meadows, where grazed thecountless herbivora of the mysterious continent, aweird and terrible caravan in search of him. Therewere fifty frightful men with hairy bodies and gnarledand crooked legs. They were armed with knives andgreat bludgeons and at their head marched an almostnaked woman, beautiful beyond compare. It was La ofOpar, High Priestess of the Flaming God, and fifty ofher horrid priests searching for the purloiner of thesacred sacrificial knife.

Never before had La passed beyond the crumbling outerwalls of Opar; but never before had need been soinsistent. The sacred knife was gone! Handed downthrough countless ages it had come to her as a heritageand an insignia of her religious office and regalauthority from some long-dead progenitor of lost andforgotten Atlantis. The loss of the crown jewels orthe Great Seal of England could have brought no greaterconsternation to a British king than did the pilferingof the sacred knife bring to La, the Oparian, Queen andHigh Priestess of the degraded remnants of the oldestcivilization upon earth. When Atlantis, with all hermighty cities and her cultivated fields and her greatcommerce and culture and riches sank into the sea longages since, she took with her all but a handful of hercolonists working the vast gold mines of CentralAfrica. From these and their degraded slaves and alater intermixture of the blood of the anthropoidssprung the gnarled men of Opar; but by some queer freakof fate, aided by natural selection, the old Atlanteanstrain had remained pure and undegraded in the femalesdescended from a single princess of the royal house ofAtlantis who had been in Opar at the time of the greatcatastrophe. Such was La.

Burning with white-hot anger was the High Priestess,her heart a seething, molten mass of hatred for Tarzanof the Apes. The zeal of the religious fanatic whosealtar has been desecrated was triply enhanced by therage of a woman scorned. Twice had she thrown herheart at the feet of the godlike ape-man and twice hadshe been repulsed. La knew that she was beautiful--andshe was beautiful, not by the standards of prehistoricAtlantis alone, but by those of modern times was Laphysically a creature of perfection. Before Tarzancame that first time to Opar, La had never seen a humanmale other than the grotesque and knotted men of herclan. With one of these she must mate sooner or laterthat the direct line of high priestesses might not bebroken, unless Fate should bring other men to Opar.Before Tarzan came upon his first visit, La had had nothought that such men as he existed, for she knew onlyher hideous little priests and the bulls of the tribeof great anthropoids that had dwelt from timeimmemorial in and about Opar, until they had come to belooked upon almost as equals by the Oparians. Amongthe legends of Opar were tales of godlike men of theolden time and of black men who had come more recently;but these latter had been enemies who killed androbbed. And, too, these legends always held forth thehope that some day that nameless continent from whichtheir race had sprung, would rise once more out of thesea and with slaves at the long sweeps would send hercarven, gold-picked galleys forth to succor thelong-exiled colonists.

The coming of Tarzan had aroused within La's breast thewild hope that at last the fulfillment of this ancientprophecy was at hand; but more strongly still had itaroused the hot fires of love in a heart that neverotherwise would have known the meaning of thatall-consuming passion, for such a wondrous creature asLa could never have felt love for any of the repulsivepriests of Opar. Custom, duty and religious zeal mighthave commanded the union; but there could have been nolove on La's part. She had grown to young womanhood acold and heartless creature, daughter of a thousandother cold, heartless, beautiful women who had neverknown love. And so when love came to her it liberatedall the pent passions of a thousand generations,transforming La into a pulsing, throbbing volcano ofdesire, and with desire thwarted this great force oflove and gentleness and sacrifice was transmuted by itsown fires into one of hatred and revenge.

It was in a state of mind superinduced by theseconditions that La led forth her jabbering company toretrieve the sacred emblem of her high office and wreakvengeance upon the author of her wrongs. To Werper shegave little thought. The fact that the knife had beenin his hand when it departed from Opar brought down nothoughts of vengeance upon his head. Of course, heshould be slain when captured; but his death would giveLa no pleasure--she looked for that in the contemplateddeath agonies of Tarzan. He should be tortured.His should be a slow and frightful death. His punishmentshould be adequate to the immensity of his crime.He had wrested the sacred knife from La; he had lainsacreligious hands upon the High Priestess of theFlaming God; he had desecrated the altar and thetemple. For these things he should die; but he hadscorned the love of La, the woman, and for this heshould die horribly with great anguish.

The march of La and her priests was not without itsadventures. Unused were these to the ways of thejungle, since seldom did any venture forth from behindOpar's crumbling walls, yet their very numbersprotected them and so they came without fatalities faralong the trail of Tarzan and Werper. Three great apesaccompanied them and to these was delegated thebusiness of tracking the quarry, a feat beyond thesenses of the Oparians. La commanded. She arrangedthe order of march, she selected the camps, she set thehour for halting and the hour for resuming and thoughshe was inexperienced in such matters, her nativeintelligence was so far above that of the men or theapes that she did better than they could have done.She was a hard taskmaster, too, for she looked downwith loathing and contempt upon the misshapen creaturesamongst which cruel Fate had thrown her and to someextent vented upon them her dissatisfaction and herthwarted love. She made them build her a strongprotection and shelter each night and keep a great fireburning before it from dusk to dawn. When she tired ofwalking they were forced to carry her upon animprovised litter, nor did one dare to question herauthority or her right to such services. In fact theydid not question either. To them she was a goddess andeach loved her and each hoped that he would be chosenas her mate, so they slaved for her and bore thestinging lash of her displeasure and the habituallyhaughty disdain of her manner without a murmur.

For many days they marched, the apes following thetrail easily and going a little distance ahead of thebody of the caravan that they might warn the others ofimpending danger. It was during a noonday halt whileall were lying resting after a tiresome march that oneof the apes rose suddenly and sniffed the breeze. In alow guttural he cautioned the others to silence and amoment later was swinging quietly up wind into thejungle. La and the priests gathered silently together,the hideous little men fingering their knives andbludgeons, and awaited the return of the shaggyanthropoid.

Nor had they long to wait before they saw him emergefrom a leafy thicket and approach them. Straight to Lahe came and in the language of the great apes which wasalso the language of decadent Opar he addressed her.

"The great Tarmangani lies asleep there," he said,pointing in the direction from which he had just come."Come and we can kill him."

"Do not kill him," commanded La in cold tones."Bring the great Tarmangani to me alive and unhurt.The vengeance is La's. Go; but make no sound!" and shewaved her hands to include all her followers.

Cautiously the weird party crept through the jungle inthe wake of the great ape until at last he halted themwith a raised hand and pointed upward and a littleahead. There they saw the giant form of the ape-manstretched along a low bough and even in sleep one handgrasped a stout limb and one strong, brown leg reachedout and overlapped another. At ease lay Tarzan of theApes, sleeping heavily upon a full stomach and dreamingof Numa, the lion, and Horta, the boar, and othercreatures of the jungle. No intimation of dangerassailed the dormant faculties of the ape-man--he sawno crouching hairy figures upon the ground beneath himnor the three apes that swung quietly into the treebeside him.

The first intimation of danger that came to Tarzan wasthe impact of three bodies as the three apes leapedupon him and hurled him to the ground, where healighted half stunned beneath their combined weight andwas immediately set upon by the fifty hairy men or asmany of them as could swarm upon his person. Instantlythe ape-man became the center of a whirling, striking,biting maelstrom of horror. He fought nobly but theodds against him were too great. Slowly they overcamehim though there was scarce one of them that did notfeel the weight of his mighty fist or the rending ofhis fangs.