n enemy spy, while on the other it would be equally impossible
for him as an Englishman and an officer to give her aid or protection.

The young man contented himself therefore with repeated mental
denials of her guilt. He tried to convince himself that Tarzan was
mistaken, and when he conjured upon the screen of recollection the
face of the girl behind him, he was doubly reassured that those
lines of sweet femininity and character, those clear and honest
eyes, could not belong to one of the hated alien race.

And so they sped toward the east, each wrapped in his own thoughts.
Below them they saw the dense vegetation of the jungle give place
to the scantier growth upon the hillside, and then before them
there spread the wide expanse of arid wastelands marked by the deep
scarring of the narrow gorges that long-gone rivers had cut there
in some forgotten age.

Shortly after they passed the summit of the ridge which formed
the boundary between the desert and the fertile country, Ska, the
vulture, winging his way at a high altitude toward his aerie, caught
sight of a strange new bird of gigantic proportions encroaching upon
the preserves of his aerial domain. Whether with intent to give
battle to the interloper or merely impelled by curiosity, Ska rose
suddenly upward to meet the plane. Doubtless he misjudged the speed
of the newcomer, but be that as it may, the tip of the propeller
blade touched him and simultaneously many things happened. The
lifeless body of Ska, torn and bleeding, dropped plummet-like toward
the ground; a bit of splintered spruce drove backward to strike
the pilot on the forehead; the plane shuddered and trembled and
as Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick sank forward in momentary
unconsciousness the ship dived headlong toward the earth.

Only for an instant was the pilot unconscious, but that instant
almost proved their undoing. When he awoke to a realization of
their peril it was also to discover that his motor had stalled.
The plane had attained frightful momentum, and the ground seemed
too close for him to hope to flatten out in time to make a safe
landing. Directly beneath him was a deep rift in the plateau, a
narrow gorge, the bottom of which appeared comparatively level and
sand covered.

In the brief instant in which he must reach a decision, the safest
plan seemed to attempt a landing in the gorge, and this he did, but
not without considerable damage to the plane and a severe shaking-u