ath led into the forest from the clearing. Parallel to this
slunk Numa, while above him Tarzan moved through the trees, the shadow
of a wraith. The savage cat and the savage man saw Numa's quarry
almost simultaneously, though both had known before it came within the
vision of their eyes that it was a black man. Their sensitive nostrils
had told them this much and Tarzan's had told him that the scent spoor
was that of a stranger--old and a male, for race and sex and age each
has its own distinctive scent. It was an old man that made his way
alone through the gloomy jungle, a wrinkled, dried up, little old man
hideously scarred and tattooed and strangely garbed, with the skin of a
hyena about his shoulders and the dried head mounted upon his grey
pate. Tarzan recognized the ear-marks of the witch-doctor and awaited
Numa's charge with a feeling of pleasurable anticipation, for the
ape-man had no love for witch-doctors; but in the instant that Numa did
charge, the white man suddenly recalled that the lion had stolen his
kill a few minutes before and that revenge is sweet.

The first intimation the black man had that he was in danger was the
crash of twigs as Numa charged through the bushes into the game trail
not twenty yards behind him. Then he turned to see a huge, black-maned
lion racing toward him and even as he turned, Numa seized him. At the
same instant the ape-man dropped from an overhanging limb full upon the
lion's back and as he alighted he plunged his knife into the tawny side
behind the left shoulder, tangled the fingers of his right hand in the
long mane, buried his teeth in Numa's neck and wound his powerful legs
about the beast's torso. With a roar of pain and rage, Numa reared up
and fell backward upon the ape-man; but still the mighty man-thing
clung to his hold and repeatedly the long knife plunged rapidly into
his side. Over and over rolled Numa, the lion, clawing and biting at
the air, roaring and growling horribly in savage attempt to reach the
thing upon its back. More than once was Tarzan almost brushed from his
hold. He was battered and bruised and covered with blood from Numa and
dirt from the trail, yet not for an instant did he lessen the ferocity
of his mad attack nor his grim hold upon the back of his antagonist.
To have loosened for an instant his grip there, would have been to
bring him within reach of those tearing talons or rending fangs, and
have ended forever the grim career of