nd over again in horrible monotony: "Ska
knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up
a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger.

Lowering himself over the precipitous side of the gorge Tarzan half
clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath. He had come
upon the rift at almost the exact spot at which he had clambered
from it weeks before, and there he saw, just as he had left it,
just, doubtless, as it had lain for centuries, the mighty skeleton
and its mighty armor.

As he stood looking down upon this grim reminder that another man
of might had succumbed to the cruel powers of the desert, he was
brought to startled attention by the report of a firearm, the sound
of which came from the depths of the gorge to the south of him,
and reverberated along the steep walls of the narrow rift.

Chapter XV

Mysterious Footprints

As the British plane piloted by Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick
rose above the jungle wilderness where Bertha Kircher's life had
so often been upon the point of extinction, and sped toward the
east, the girl felt a sudden contraction of the muscles of her
throat. She tried very hard to swallow something that was not there.
It seemed strange to her that she should feel regret in leaving
behind her such hideous perils, and yet it was plain to her that
such was the fact, for she was also leaving behind something beside
the dangers that had menaced her--a unique figure that had entered
her life, and for which she felt an unaccountable attraction.

Before her in the pilot's seat sat an English officer and gentleman
whom, she knew, loved her, and yet she dared to feel regret in his
company at leaving the stamping ground of a wild beast!

Lieutenant Smith-Oldwick, on his part, was in the seventh heaven
of elation. He was in possession again of his beloved ship, he was
flying swiftly in the direction of his comrades and his duty, and
with him was the woman he loved. The fly in the ointment, however,
was the accusation Tarzan had made against this woman. He had said
that she was a German, and a spy, and from the heights of bliss the
English officer was occasionally plunged to the depths of despair
in contemplation of the inevitable, were the ape-man's charges to
prove true. He found himself torn between sentiments of love and
honor. On the one hand he could not surrender the woman he loved
to the certain fate that must be meted out to her if she were in
truth a