Numa, the lion, was hungry. He had come out of thedesert country to the east into a land of plenty butthough he was young and strong, the wary grass-eatershad managed to elude his mighty talons each time he hadthought to make a kill.

Numa, the lion, was hungry and very savage. For two dayshe had not eaten and now he hunted in the ugliest of humors.No more did Numa roar forth a rumbling challenge to theworld but rather he moved silent and grim, stepping softlythat no cracking twig might betray his presence to the keen-eared quarry he sought.

Fresh was the spoor of Bara, the deer, that Numa pickedup in the well-beaten game trail he was following. No hourhad passed since Bara had come this way; the time could bemeasured in minutes and so the great lion redoubled thecautiousness of his advance as he crept stealthily in pursuit ofhis quarry.

A light wind was moving through the jungle aisles, and itwafted down now to the nostrils of the eager carnivore thestrong scent spoor of the deer, exciting his already avid appe-tite to a point where it became a gnawing pain. Yet Numadid not permit himself to be carried away by his desires intoany premature charge such as had recently lost him the juicymeat of Pacco, the zebra. Increasing his gait but slightly hefollowed the tortuous windings of the trail until suddenly justbefore him, where the trail wound about the bole of a hugetree, he saw a young buck moving slowly ahead of him.

Numa judged the distance with his keen eyes, glowing nowlike two terrible spots of yellow fire in his wrinkled, snarlingface. He could do it -- this time he was sure. One terrificroar that would paralyze the poor creature ahead of him intomomentary inaction, and a simultaneous charge of lightning-like rapidity and Numa, the lion, would feed. The sinuoustail, undulating slowly at its tufted extremity, whipped sud-denly erect. It was the signal for the charge and the vocalorgans were shaped for the thunderous roar when, as light-ning out of a clear sky, Sheeta, the panther, leaped suddenlyinto the trail between Numa and the deer.

A blundering charge made Sheeta, for with the first crash ofhis spotted body through the foliage verging the trail, Baragave a single startled backward glance and was gone.

The roar that was intended to paralyze the deer brokehorribly from the deep throat of the great cat -- an angry roarof rage against the meddling Sheeta who had robbed him ofhis kill, and the charge that was intended for Bara waslaunched against the panther; but here too Numa was doomedto disappointment, for with the first notes of his fearsomeroar Sheeta, considering well the better part of valor, leapedinto a near-by tree.

A half-hour later it was a thoroughly furious Numa whocame unexpectedly upon the scent of man. Heretofore thelord of the jungle had disdained the unpalatable flesh of thedespised man-thing. Such meat was only for the old, thetoothless, and the decrepit who no longer could make theirkills among the fleet-footed grass-eaters. Bara, the deer, Horta,the boar, and, best and wariest, Pacco, the zebra, were for theyoung, the strong, and the agile, but Numa was hungry --hungrier than he ever had been in the five short years ofhis life.

What if he was a young, powerful, cunning, and ferociousbeast? In the face of hunger, the great leveler, he was as theold, the toothless, and the decrepit. His belly cried aloud inanguish and his jowls slavered for flesh. Zebra or deer orman, what mattered it so that it was warm flesh, red with thehot juices of life? Even Dango, the hyena, eater of offal,would, at the moment, have seemed a tidbit to Numa.

The great lion knew the habits and frailties of man, thoughhe never before had hunted man for food. He knew thedespised Gomangani as the slowest, the most stupid, and themost defenseless of creatures. No woodcraft, no cunning, nostealth was necessary in the hunting of man, nor had Numaany stomach for either delay or silence.

His rage had become an almost equally consuming passionwith his hunger, so that now, as his delicate nostrils apprisedhim of the recent passage of man, he lowered his head andrumbled forth a thunderous roar, and at a swift walk, carelessof the noise he made, set forth upon the trail of his intendedquarry.

Majestic and terrible, regally careless of his surroundings,the king of beasts strode down the beaten trail. The naturalcaution that is inherent to all creatures of the wild had de-serted him. What had he, lord of the jungle, to fear and, withonly man to hunt, what need of caution? And so he did notsee or scent what a more wary Numa might readily havediscovered until, with the cracking of twigs and a tumblingof earth, he was precipitated into a cunningly devised pit thatthe wily Wamabos had excavated for just this purpose in thecenter of the game trail.

Tarzan of the Apes stood in the center of the clearing watch-ing the plane shrinking to diminutive toylike proportions inthe eastern sky. He had breathed a sigh of relief as he saw itrise safely with the British flier and Fraulein Bertha Kircher.For weeks he had felt the hampering responsibility of theirwelfare in this savage wilderness where their utter helplessnesswould have rendered them easy prey for the savage carnivoresor the cruel Wamabos. Tarzan of the Apes loved unfetteredfreedom, and now that these two were safely off his hands, hefelt that he could continue upon his journey toward thewest coast and the long-untenanted cabin of his dead father.

And yet, as he stood there watching the tiny speck in theeast, another sigh heaved his broad chest, nor was it a sighof relief, but rather a sensation which Tarzan had neverexpected to feel again and which he now disliked to admiteven to himself. It could not be possible that he, the junglebred, who had renounced forever the society of man to returnto his beloved beasts of the wilds, could be feeling anythingakin to regret at the departure of these two, or any slightestloneliness now that they were gone. Lieutenant Harold PercySmith-Oldwick Tarzan had liked, but the woman whom hehad known as a German spy he had hated, though he neverhad found it in his heart to slay her as he had sworn to slayall Huns. He had attributed this weakness to the fact thatshe was a woman, although he had been rather troubled bythe apparent inconsistency of his hatred for her and his re-peated protection of her when danger threatened.

With an irritable toss of his head he wheeled suddenlytoward the west as though by turning his back upon the fastdisappearing plane he might expunge thoughts of its passen-gers from his memory. At the edge of the clearing he paused;a giant tree loomed directly ahead of him and, as thoughactuated by sudden and irresistible impulse, he leaped intothe branches and swung himself with apelike agility to thetopmost limbs that would sustain his weight. There, balanc-ing lightly upon a swaying bough, he sought in the directionof the eastern horizon for the tiny speck that would be theBritish plane bearing away from him the last of his own raceand kind that he expected ever again to see.

At last his keen eyes picked up the ship flying at a con-siderable altitude far in the east. For a few seconds hewatched it speeding evenly eastward, when, to his horror, hesaw the speck dive suddenly downward. The fall seemedinterminable to the watcher and he realized how great musthave been the altitude of the plane before the drop com-menced. Just before it disappeared from sight its downwardmomentum appeared to abate suddenly, but it was still movingrapidly at a steep angle when it finally disappeared from viewbehind the far hills.

For half a minute the ape-man stood noting distant land-marks that he judged might be in the vicinity of the fallenplane, for no sooner had he realized that these people wereagain in trouble than his inherent sense of duty to his ownkind impelled him once more to forego his plans and seek toaid them.

The ape-man feared from what he judged of the locationof the machine that it had fallen among the almost impassablegorges of the arid country just beyond the fertile basin thatwas bounded by the hills to the east of him. He had crossedthat parched and desolate country of the dead himself andhe knew from his own experience and the narrow escape hehad had from succumbing to its relentless cruelty no lesserman could hope to win his way to safety from any considerabledistance within its borders. Vividly he recalled the bleachedbones of the long-dead warrior in the bottom of the pre-cipitous gorge that had all but proved a trap for him as well.He saw the helmet of hammered brass and the corrodedbreastplate of steel and the long straight sword in its scabbardand the ancient harquebus -- mute testimonials to the mightyphysique and the warlike spirit of him who had somehowwon, thus illy caparisoned and pitifully armed, to the centerof savage, ancient Africa; and he saw the slender Englishyouth and the slight figure of the girl cast into the same fate-ful trap from which this giant of old had been unable to escape-- cast there wounded and broken perhaps, if not killed.

His judgment told him that the latter possibility was prob-ably the fact, and yet there was a chance that they mighthave landed without fatal injuries, and so upon this slimchance he started out upon what he knew would be an ardu-ous journey, fraught with many hardships and unspeakableperil, that he might attempt to save them if they still lived.

He had covered a mile perhaps when his quick ears caughtthe sound of rapid movement along the game trail ahead ofhim. The sound, increasing in volume, proclaimed the factthat whatever caused it was moving in his direction andmoving rapidly. Nor was it long before his trained sensesconvinced him that the footfalls were those of Bara, the deer,in rapid flight. Inextricably confused in Tarzan's characterwere the attributes of man and of beasts. Long experiencehad taught him that he fights best or travels fastest who isbest nourished, and so, with few exceptions, Tarzan coulddelay his most urgent business to take advantage of an op-portunity to kill and feed. This perhaps was the predominantbeast trait in him. The transformation from an English gentle-man, impelled by the most humanitarian motives, to that ofa wild beast crouching in the concealment of a dense bushready to spring upon its approaching prey, was instantaneous.

And so, when Bara came, escaping the clutches of Numaand Sheeta, his terror and his haste precluded the possibilityof his sensing that other equally formidable foe lying in am-bush for him. Abreast of the ape-man came the deer; a light-brown body shot from the concealing verdure of the bush,strong arms encircled the sleek neck of the young buck andpowerful teeth fastened themselves in the soft flesh. Togetherthe two rolled over in the trail and a moment later the ape-man rose, and, with one foot upon the carcass of his kill,raised his voice in the victory cry of the bull ape.

Like an answering challenge came suddenly to the ears ofthe ape-man the thunderous roar of a lion, a hideous angryroar in which Tarzan thought that he discerned a note ofsurprise and terror. In the breast of the wild things of thejungle, as in the breasts of their more enlightened brothersand sisters of the human race, the characteristic of curiosityis well developed. Nor was Tarzan far from innocent of it.The peculiar note in the roar of his hereditary enemy arouseda desire to investigate, and so, throwing the carcass of Bara,the deer, across his shoulder, the ape-man took to the lowerterraces of the forest and moved quickly in the directionfrom which the sound had come, which was in line with thetrail he had set out upon.

As the distance lessened, the sounds increased in volume,which indicated that he was approaching a very angry lionand presently, where a jungle giant overspread the broad gametrail that countless thousands of hoofed and padded feet hadworn and trampled into a deep furrow during perhaps count-less ages, he saw beneath him the lion pit of the Wamabos andin it, leaping futilely for freedom such a lion as even Tarzanof the Apes never before had beheld. A mighty beast it wasthat glared up at the ape-man -- large, powerful and young,with a huge black mane and a coat so much darker than anyTarzan ever had seen that in the depths of the pit it lookedalmost black -- a black lion!

Tarzan who had been upon the point of taunting and re-viling his captive foe was suddenly turned to open admira-tion for the beauty of the splendid beast. What a creature!How by comparison the ordinary forest lion was dwarfed intoinsignificance! Here indeed was one worthy to be called kingof beasts. With his first sight of the great cat the ape-manknew that he had heard no note of terror in that initial roar;surprise doubtless, but the vocal chords of that mighty throatnever had reacted to fear.

With growing admiration came a feeling of quick pity for thehapless situation of the great brute rendered futile and help-less by the wiles of the Gomangani. Enemy though the beastwas, he was less an enemy to the ape-man than those blackswho had trapped him, for though Tarzan of the Apes claimedmany fast and loyal friends among certain tribes of Africannatives, there were others of degraded character and bestialhabits that he looked upon with utter loathing, and of suchwere the human flesh-eaters of Numabo the chief. For a mo-ment Numa, the lion, glared ferociously at the naked man-thing upon the tree limb above him. Steadily those yellow-green eyes bored into the clear eyes of the ape-man, and thenthe sensitive nostrils caught the scent of the fresh blood ofBara and the eyes moved to the carcass lying across the brownshoulder, and there came from the cavernous depths of thesavage throat a low whine.

Tarzan of the Apes smiled. As unmistakably as though ahuman voice had spoken, the lion had said to him "I am hun-gry, even more than hungry. I am starving," and the ape-man looked down upon the lion beneath him and smiled, aslow quizzical smile, and then he shifted the carcass from hisshoulder to the branch before him and, drawing the longblade that had been his father's, deftly cut off a hind quarterand, wiping the bloody blade upon Bara's smooth coat, hereturned it to its scabbard. Numa, with watering jaws, lookedup at the tempting meat and whined again and the ape-mansmiled down upon him his slow smile and, raising the hindquarter in his strong brown hands buried his teeth in the ten-der, juicy flesh.

For the third time Numa, the lion, uttered that low pleadingwhine and then, with a rueful and disgusted shake of hishead, Tarzan of the Apes raised the balance of the carcass ofBara, the deer, and hurled it to the famished beast below.

"Old woman," muttered the ape-man. "Tarzan has becomea weak old woman. Presently he would shed tears because hehas killed Bara, the deer. He cannot see Numa, his enemy,go hungry, because Tarzan's heart is turning to water by con-tact with the soft, weak creatures of civilization." But yet hesmiled, nor was he sorry that he had given way to the dic-tates of a kindly impulse.

As Tarzan tore the flesh from that portion of the kill he hadretained for himself his eyes were taking in each detail of thescene below. He saw the avidity with which Numa devouredthe carcass; he noted with growing admiration the finer pointsof the beast, and also the cunning construction of the trap.The ordinary lion pit with which Tarzan was familiar hadstakes imbedded in the bottom, upon whose sharpened pointsthe hapless lion would be impaled, but this pit was not somade. Here the short stakes were set at intervals of about afoot around the walls near the top, their sharpened points in-clining downward so that the lion had fallen unhurt into thetrap but could not leap out because each time he essayed it hishead came in contact with the sharp end of a stake above him.

Evidently, then, the purpose of the Wamabos was to capturea lion alive. As this tribe had no contact whatsoever withwhite men in so far as Tarzan knew, their motive was doubt-less due to a desire to torture the beast to death that theymight enjoy to the utmost his dying agonies.

Having fed the lion, it presently occurred to Tarzan that hisact would be futile were he to leave the beast to the merciesof the blacks, and then too it occurred to him that he couldderive more pleasure through causing the blacks discomfiturethan by leaving Numa to his fate. But how was he to releasehim? By removing two stakes there would be left plenty ofroom for the lion to leap from the pit, which was not of anygreat depth. However, what assurance had Tarzan that Numawould not leap out instantly the way to freedom was open,and before the ape-man could gain the safety of the trees?Regardless of the fact that Tarzan felt no such fear of the lionas you and I might experience under like circumstances, he yetwas imbued with the sense of caution that is necessary to allcreatures of the wild if they are to survive. Should necessityrequire, Tarzan could face Numa in battle, although he wasnot so egotistical as to think that he could best a full-grownlion in mortal combat other than through accident or the utili-zation of the cunning of his superior man-mind. To lay him-self liable to death futilely, he would have considered as repre-hensible as to have shunned danger in time of necessity; butwhen Tarzan elected to do a thing he usually found the meansto accomplish it.

He had now fully determined to liberate Numa, and havingso determined, he would accomplish it even though it entailedconsiderable personal risk. He knew that the lion would beoccupied with his feeding for some time, but he also knewthat while feeding he would be doubly resentful of any fanciedinterference. Therefore Tarzan must work with caution.

Coming to the ground at the side of the pit, he examined thestakes and as he did so was rather surprised to note that Numagave no evidence of anger at his approach. Once he turneda searching gaze upon the ape-man for a moment and thenreturned to the flesh of Bara. Tarzan felt of the stakes andtested them with his weight. He pulled upon them with themuscles of his strong arms, presently discovering that by work-ing them back and forth he could loosen them: and then anew plan was suggested to him so that he fell to work excavat-ing with his knife at a point above where one of the stakeswas imbedded. The loam was soft and easily removed, andit was not long until Tarzan had exposed that part of one ofthe stakes which was imbedded in the wall of the pit to almostits entire length, leaving only enough imbedded to prevent thestake from falling into the excavation. Then he turned his at-tention to an adjoining stake and soon had it similarly ex-posed, after which he threw the noose of his grass rope overthe two and swung quickly to the branch of the tree above.Here he gathered in the slack of the rope and, bracing him-self against the bole of the tree, pulled steadily upward. Slowlythe stakes rose from the trench in which they were imbeddedand with them rose Numa's suspicion and growling.

Was this some new encroachment upon his rights and hisliberties? He was puzzled and, like all lions, being short oftemper, he was irritated. He had not minded it when the Tar-mangani squatted upon the verge of the pit and looked downupon him, for had not this Tarmangani fed him? But nowsomething else was afoot and the suspicion of the wild beastwas aroused. As he watched, however, Numa saw the stakesrise slowly to an erect position, tumble against each other andthen fall backwards out of his sight upon the surface of theground above. Instantly the lion grasped the possibilities ofthe situation, and, too, perhaps he sensed the fact that theman-thing had deliberately opened a way for his escape. Seiz-ing the remains of Bara in his great jaws, Numa, the lion,leaped agilely from the pit of the Wamabos and Tarzan of theApes melted into the jungles to the east.

On the surface of the ground or through the swayingbranches of the trees the spoor of man or beast was an openbook to the ape-man, but even his acute senses were baffledby the spoorless trail of the airship. Of what good were eyes,or ears, or the sense of smell in following a thing whose pathhad lain through the shifting air thousands of feet above thetree tops? Only upon his sense of direction could Tarzan de-pend in his search for the fallen plane. He could not evenjudge accurately as to the distance it might lie from him, andhe knew that from the moment that it disappeared beyond thehills it might have traveled a considerable distance at rightangles to its original course before it crashed to earth. If itsoccupants were killed or badly injured the ape-man mightsearch futilely in their immediate vicinity for some time be-fore finding them.

There was but one thing to do and that was to travel to apoint as close as possible to where he judged the plane hadlanded, and then to follow in ever-widening circles until hepicked up their scent spoor. And this he did.

Before he left the valley of plenty he made several kills andcarried the choicest cuts of meat with him, leaving all the deadweight of bones behind. The dense vegetation of the jungleterminated at the foot of the western slope, growing less andless abundant as he neared the summit beyond which was asparse growth of sickly scrub and sunburned grasses, with hereand there a gnarled and hardy tree that had withstood thevicissitudes of an almost waterless existence.

From the summit of the hills Tarzan's keen eyes searchedthe arid landscape before him. In the distance he discernedthe ragged tortuous lines that marked the winding course of thehideous gorges which scored the broad plain at intervals -- theterrible gorges that had so nearly claimed his life in punish-ment for his temerity in attempting to invade the sanctity oftheir ancient solitude.

For two days Tarzan sought futilely for some clew to thewhereabouts of the machine or its occupants. He cached por-tions of his kills at different points, building cairns of rocktomark their locations. He crossed the first deep gorge and cir-cled far beyond it. Occasionally he stopped and called aloud,listening for some response but only silence rewarded him --a sinister silence that his cries only accentuated.

Late in the evening of the second day he came to the well-remembered gorge in which lay the clean-picked bones of theancient adventurer, and here, for the first time, Ska, the vul-ture, picked up his trail. "Not this time, Ska," cried the ape-man in a taunting voice, "for now indeed is Tarzan Tarzan.Before, you stalked the grim skeleton of a Tarmangani andeven then you lost. Waste not your time upon Tarzan of theApes in the full of his strength. But still Ska, the vulture,circledand soared above him, and the ape-man, notwithstanding hisboasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brainran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarilyset two words, repeated over and over again in horrible mo-notony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself inanger, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the grim scav-enger.

Lowering himself over the precipitous side of the gorge Tar-zan half clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath.He had come upon the rift at almost the exact spot at whichhe had clambered from it weeks before, and there he saw, justas he had left it, just, doubtless, as it had lain for centuries,the mighty skeleton and its mighty armor.

As he stood looking down upon this grim reminder that an-other man of might had succumbed to the cruel powers of thedesert, he was brought to startled attention by the report of afirearm, the sound of which came from the depths of the gorgeto the south of him, and reverberated along the steep walls ofthe narrow rift.