ng," replied Dan, still a little
greenish about the gills. "I'm not feeling very well."

"Have some more stew!"

Ray slapped Dick's arm and cried, "Don't tease the poor boy!"

"All right," Dick extended his hand. "Come on, Dan! Shake on it!
We'll change the subject."

The Taharans were the next to dance and with a great brandishing of
flint knives and stone axes they went through an imaginary battle. Two
warriors would break away from the line and face each other like
duellists, while the rest danced about them, uttering war cries that
made the forest ring.

"These mock battles look like the real thing!" said Dick. "Look at
that! I thought sure that the tall fellow was going to split the other
one with his axe."

"I don't like it," said Ray. "What if he got excited and landed a
blow?"

"Then there would be one Taharan the less.--Watch out! Now the
Kungoras are going to it!"

With a howl like jungle beasts, the black men were on their feet and
rushing to the firelight with spears and painted shields waving above
their heads.

At the same time the boom-boom-boom of the hollowed log resounded, the
huge drum that the Muta-Kungas used for sending alarms through the
forest.

"Now it's getting good!" exclaimed Dan, forgetting his attack of
indigestion. "I wondered whether the natives were going to forget the
old tom-tom."

"Boom-boom-boom," went the big drum like a challenge, and at that the
Kungora dancers lined up in two bands facing each other and howled
defiance and threats back and forth.

"What's going to happen?" whispered Ray clinging to Dick's arm. "Are
they really going to kill each other?"

"Can't say. Ask the Mahatma. He knows this tribe."

"If they do slay a few warriors, it will be an accident," said Mahatma
Sikandar. "This is a dance of battle and they sometimes forget it is
not the real thing."

"How terrible!" cried Ray.

"Can't you make them be reasonable?" asked Dick as the Hindu watched
the apparently enraged savages.

"Reasonable? What human being is ever reasonable?" asked the wise man.
"Are your own people reasonable when they slaughter each other with
guns and poison gas? No, the savages are on a low plane, but the
civilized men are also far from the path of wisdom."

"Go it, Mutaba!" shouted Dan, clapping his hands.

The guide and chief warrior of the Kungoras was dancing in front of his
own band, shaking his spear in the face of the rival leader. The pair
ru