linging desperately to the girl,
had backed toward the opposite door. At the sight of the blood two
of the guardsmen, as though suddenly aroused to maniacal frenzy,
dropped their sabers to the floor and fell upon each other with
nails and teeth, while some sought to reach the prince and some
to defend him. In a corner of the room sat one of the guardsmen
laughing uproariously and just as Metak succeeded in reaching the
door and taking the girl through, she thought that she saw another
of the men spring upon the corpse of the dead messenger and bury
his teeth in its flesh.

During the orgy of madness Xanila had kept closely at the girl's
side but at the door of the room Metak had seen her and, wheeling
suddenly, cut viciously at her. Fortunately for Xanila she was
halfway through the door at the time, so that Metak's blade but
dented itself upon the stone arch of the portal, and then Xanila,
guided doubtless by the wisdom of sixty years of similar experiences,
fled down the corridor as fast as her old and tottering legs would
carry her.

Metak, once outside the door, returned his saber to its scabbard
and lifting the girl bodily from the ground carried her off in the
opposite direction from that taken by Xanila.

Chapter XX

Came Tarzan

Just before dark that evening, an almost exhausted flier entered
the headquarters of Colonel Capell of the Second Rhodesians and
saluted.

"Well, Thompson," asked the superior, "what luck? The others have
all returned. Never saw a thing of Oldwick or his plane. I guess
we shall have to give it up unless you were more successful."

"I was," replied the young officer. "I found the plane."

"No!" ejaculated Colonel Capell. "Where was it? Any sign of Oldwick?"

"It is in the rottenest hole in the ground you ever saw, quite a
bit inland. Narrow gorge. Saw the plane all right but can't reach
it. There was a regular devil of a lion wandering around it. I
landed near the edge of the cliff and was going to climb down and
take a look at the plane. But this fellow hung around for an hour
or more and I finally had to give it up."

"Do you think the lions got Oldwick?" asked the colonel.

"I doubt it," replied Lieutenant Thompson, "from the fact that there
was no indication that the lion had fed anywhere about the plane.
I arose after I found it was impossible to get down around the
plane and reconnoitered up and down the gorge. Several miles to the
south I found a small, wood