y shaped, golden ingots of Opar. In the
meantime he would carry as much of the precious metal to the summit of
the kopje as he could.

Six trips he made in the five hours before Basuli reached the kopje,
and at the end of that time he had transported forty-eight ingots to
the edge of the great boulder, carrying upon each trip a load which
might well have staggered two ordinary men, yet his giant frame showed
no evidence of fatigue, as he helped to raise his ebon warriors to the
hill top with the rope that had been brought for the purpose.

Six times he had returned to the treasure chamber, and six times
Werper, the Belgian, had cowered in the black shadows at the far end of
the long vault. Once again came the ape-man, and this time there came
with him fifty fighting men, turning porters for love of the only
creature in the world who might command of their fierce and haughty
natures such menial service. Fifty-two more ingots passed out of the
vaults, making the total of one hundred which Tarzan intended taking
away with him.

As the last of the Waziri filed from the chamber, Tarzan turned back
for a last glimpse of the fabulous wealth upon which his two inroads
had made no appreciable impression. Before he extinguished the single
candle he had brought with him for the purpose, and the flickering
light of which had cast the first alleviating rays into the
impenetrable darkness of the buried chamber, that it had known for the
countless ages since it had lain forgotten of man, Tarzan's mind
reverted to that first occasion upon which he had entered the treasure
vault, coming upon it by chance as he fled from the pits beneath the
temple, where he had been hidden by La, the High Priestess of the Sun
Worshipers.

He recalled the scene within the temple when he had lain stretched upon
the sacrificial altar, while La, with high-raised dagger, stood above
him, and the rows of priests and priestesses awaited, in the ecstatic
hysteria of fanaticism, the first gush of their victim's warm blood,
that they might fill their golden goblets and drink to the glory of
their Flaming God.

The brutal and bloody interruption by Tha, the mad priest, passed
vividly before the ape-man's recollective eyes, the flight of the
votaries before the insane blood lust of the hideous creature, the
brutal attack upon La, and his own part of the grim tragedy when he had
battled with the infuriated Oparian and left him dead at the feet of
the prie