y-colored stones,
with which he purposed fashioning a necklace, and that he had found
them far beneath the sacrificial court of the temple of the Flaming God.

Werper was relieved to find that Tarzan had no conception of the value
of the gems. This would make it easier for the Belgian to obtain
possession of them. Possibly the man would give them to him for the
asking. Werper reached out his hand toward the little pile that Tarzan
had arranged upon a piece of flat wood before him.

"Let me see them," said the Belgian.

Tarzan placed a large palm over his treasure. He bared his fighting
fangs, and growled. Werper withdrew his hand more quickly than he had
advanced it. Tarzan resumed his playing with the gems, and his
conversation with Werper as though nothing unusual had occurred. He
had but exhibited the beast's jealous protective instinct for a
possession. When he killed he shared the meat with Werper; but had
Werper ever, by accident, laid a hand upon Tarzan's share, he would
have aroused the same savage, and resentful warning.

From that occurrence dated the beginning of a great fear in the breast
of the Belgian for his savage companion. He had never understood the
transformation that had been wrought in Tarzan by the blow upon his
head, other than to attribute it to a form of amnesia. That Tarzan had
once been, in truth, a savage, jungle beast, Werper had not known, and
so, of course, he could not guess that the man had reverted to the
state in which his childhood and young manhood had been spent.

Now Werper saw in the Englishman a dangerous maniac, whom the slightest
untoward accident might turn upon him with rending fangs. Not for a
moment did Werper attempt to delude himself into the belief that he
could defend himself successfully against an attack by the ape-man.
His one hope lay in eluding him, and making for the far distant camp of
Achmet Zek as rapidly as he could; but armed only with the sacrificial
knife, Werper shrank from attempting the journey through the jungle.
Tarzan constituted a protection that was by no means despicable, even
in the face of the larger carnivora, as Werper had reason to
acknowledge from the evidence he had witnessed in the Oparian temple.

Too, Werper had his covetous soul set upon the pouch of gems, and so he
was torn between the various emotions of avarice and fear. But avarice
it was that burned most strongly in his breast, to the end that he
dared the dangers