f blacks, some garbed in the uniform of German
East African native troops, others wearing a single garment of the
same uniform, while many had reverted to the simple dress of their
forbears--approximating nudity. There were many black women with
them, laughing and talking as they kept pace with the men, all of
whom were armed with German rifles and equipped with German belts
and ammunition.

There were no white officers there, but it was none the less apparent
to Tarzan that these men were from some German native command,
and he guessed that they had slain their officers and taken to the
jungle with their women, or had stolen some from native villages
through which they must have passed. It was evident that they were
putting as much ground between themselves and the coast as possible
and doubtless were seeking some impenetrable fastness of the vast
interior where they might inaugurate a reign of terror among the
primitively armed inhabitants and by raiding, looting, and rape
grow rich in goods and women at the expense of the district upon
which they settled themselves.

Between two of the black women marched a slender white girl. She
was hatless and with torn and disheveled clothing that had evidently
once been a trim riding habit. Her coat was gone and her waist half
torn from her body. Occasionally and without apparent provocation
one or the other of the Negresses struck or pushed her roughly.
Tarzan watched through half-closed eyes. His first impulse was to
leap among them and bear the girl from their cruel clutches. He had
recognized her immediately and it was because of this fact that he
hesitated.

What was it to Tarzan of the Apes what fate befell this enemy
spy? He had been unable to kill her himself because of an inherent
weakness that would not permit him to lay hands upon a woman, all
of which of course had no bearing upon what others might do to
her. That her fate would now be infinitely more horrible than the
quick and painless death that the ape-man would have meted to her
only interested Tarzan to the extent that the more frightful the
end of a German the more in keeping it would be with what they all
deserved.

And so he let the blacks pass with Fraulein Bertha Kircher in their
midst, or at least until the last straggling warrior suggested to
his mind the pleasures of black-baiting--an amusement and a sport
in which he had grown ever more proficient since that long-gone day
when Kulonga, the son