uted so large a part of existence in the jungle?

So occupied was she with the gloomy prophecies that she had neither
ears nor eyes for what went on about her. Mechanically she filled
the gourds and, taking them up, turned slowly to retrace her steps
to the boma only to voice immediately a half-stifled scream and
shrank back from the menacing figure looming before her and blocking
her way to the hut.

Go-lat, the king ape, hunting a little apart from his tribe, had seen
the woman go to the river for water, and it was he who confronted
her when she turned back with her filled gourds. Go-lat was not
a pretty creature when judged by standards of civilized humanity,
though the shes of his tribe and even Go-lat himself, considered
his glossy black coat shot with silver, his huge arms dangling to
his knees, his bullet head sunk between his mighty shoulders, marks
of great personal beauty. His wicked, bloodshot eyes and broad
nose, his ample mouth and great fighting fangs only enhanced the
claim of this Adonis of the forest upon the affections of his shes.

Doubtless in the little, savage brain there was a well-formed
conviction that this strange she belonging to the Tarmangani must
look with admiration upon so handsome a creature as Go-lat, for
there could be no doubt in the mind of any that his beauty entirely
eclipsed such as the hairless white ape might lay claim to.

But Bertha Kircher saw only a hideous beast, a fierce and terrible
caricature of man. Could Go-lat have known what passed through her
mind, he must have been terribly chagrined, though the chances are
that he would have attributed it to a lack of discernment on her
part. Tarzan heard the girl's cry and looking up saw at a glance
the cause of her terror. Leaping lightly over the boma, he ran
swiftly toward her as Go-lat lumbered closer to the girl the while
he voiced his emotions in low gutturals which, while in reality the
most amicable of advances, sounded to the girl like the growling
of an enraged beast. As Tarzan drew nearer he called aloud to the
ape and the girl heard from the human lips the same sounds that
had fallen from those of the anthropoid.

"I will not harm your she," Go-lat called to Tarzan.

"I know it," replied the ape-man, "but she does not. She is like
Numa and Sheeta, who do not understand our talk. She thinks you
come to harm her."

By this time Tarzan was beside the girl. "He will not harm you,"
he said to her. "You need not be