rength,
and agility, and bravery--of the brown skin and the handsome face.

"I cannot make it out at all," he concluded. "At first I thought he
might be Tarzan of the Apes; but he neither speaks nor understands
English, so that theory is untenable."

"Well, whatever he may be," cried the girl, "we owe him our lives, and
may God bless him and keep him in safety in his wild and savage jungle!"

"Amen," said Clayton, fervently.

"For the good Lord's sake, ain't I dead?"

The two turned to see Esmeralda sitting upright upon the floor, her
great eyes rolling from side to side as though she could not believe
their testimony as to her whereabouts.

And now, for Jane Porter, the reaction came, and she threw herself upon
the bench, sobbing with hysterical laughter.

Chapter XVI

"Most Remarkable"

Several miles south of the cabin, upon a strip of sandy beach, stood
two old men, arguing.

Before them stretched the broad Atlantic. At their backs was the Dark
Continent. Close around them loomed the impenetrable blackness of the
jungle.

Savage beasts roared and growled; noises, hideous and weird, assailed
their ears. They had wandered for miles in search of their camp, but
always in the wrong direction. They were as hopelessly lost as though
they suddenly had been transported to another world.

At such a time, indeed, every fiber of their combined intellects must
have been concentrated upon the vital question of the minute--the
life-and-death question to them of retracing their steps to camp.

Samuel T. Philander was speaking.

"But, my dear professor," he was saying, "I still maintain that but for
the victories of Ferdinand and Isabella over the fifteenth-century
Moors in Spain the world would be today a thousand years in advance of
where we now find ourselves. The Moors were essentially a tolerant,
broad-minded, liberal race of agriculturists, artisans and
merchants--the very type of people that has made possible such
civilization as we find today in America and Europe--while the
Spaniards--"

"Tut, tut, dear Mr. Philander," interrupted Professor Porter; "their
religion positively precluded the possibilities you suggest. Moslemism
was, is, and always will be, a blight on that scientific progress which
has marked--"

"Bless me! Professor," interjected Mr. Philander, who had turned his
gaze toward the jungle, "there seems to be someone approaching."

Professor Archimedes Q. Porter turned in th