f peril.

"And," he continued, "when they hear Tarzan call to them, let them
remember what he has done for Akut and come to him with great speed.
Shall it be as Tarzan says?"

"Huh!" assented Akut, and from the members of his tribe there rose a
unanimous "Huh."

Then, presently, they went to feeding again as though nothing had
happened, and with them fed John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.

He noticed, however, that Akut kept always close to him, and was often
looking at him with a strange wonder in his little bloodshot eyes, and
once he did a thing that Tarzan during all his long years among the
apes had never before seen an ape do--he found a particularly tender
morsel and handed it to Tarzan.

As the tribe hunted, the glistening body of the ape-man mingled with
the brown, shaggy hides of his companions. Oftentimes they brushed
together in passing, but the apes had already taken his presence for
granted, so that he was as much one of them as Akut himself.

If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare
her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a
truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while
the former was eating. But in those things the treatment was no
different from that which they accorded any other member of the tribe.

Tarzan on his part felt very much at home with these fierce, hairy
progenitors of primitive man. He skipped nimbly out of reach of each
threatening female--for such is the way of apes, if they be not in one
of their occasional fits of bestial rage--and he growled back at the
truculent young bulls, baring his canine teeth even as they. Thus
easily he fell back into the way of his early life, nor did it seem
that he had ever tasted association with creatures of his own kind.

For the better part of a week he roamed the jungle with his new
friends, partly because of a desire for companionship and partially
through a well-laid plan to impress himself indelibly upon their
memories, which at best are none too long; for Tarzan from past
experience knew that it might serve him in good stead to have a tribe
of these powerful and terrible beasts at his call.

When he was convinced that he had succeeded to some extent in fixing
his identity upon them he decided to again take up his exploration. To
this end he set out toward the north early one day, and, keeping
parallel with the shore, travelled rapidly until almost nightfall.

W