Tarzan followed close above his quarry, waiting for a clearer space in which to hurl his rope.As he stalked the unconscious man, new thoughts presented themselves to the ape-man--thoughts born of the refining influences of civilization, and of its cruelties.It came to him that seldom if ever did civilized man kill a fellow being without some pretext, however slight.It was true that Tarzan wished this man's weapons and ornaments, but was it necessary to take his life to obtain them?
The longer he thought about it, the more repugnant became the thought of taking human life needlessly; and thus it happened that while he was trying to decide just what to do, they had come to a little clearing, at the far side of which lay a palisaded village of beehive huts.
As the warrior emerged from the forest, Tarzan caught a fleeting glimpse of a tawny hide worming its way through the matted jungle grasses in his wake--it was Numa, the lion.
He, too, was stalking the black man.With the instant that Tarzan realized the native's danger his attitude toward his erstwhile prey altered completely--now he was a fellow man threatened by a common enemy.
Numa was about to charge--there was little time in which to compare various methods or weigh the probable results of any.And then a number of things happened, almost simultaneously--the lion sprang from his ambush toward the retreating black--Tarzan cried out in warning--and the black turned just in time to see Numa halted in mid-flight by a slender strand of grass rope, the noosed end of which had fallen cleanly about his neck.
The ape-man had acted so quickly that he had been unable to prepare himself to withstand the strain and shock of Numa's great weight upon the rope, and so it was that though the rope stopped the beast before his mighty talons could fasten themselves in the flesh of the black, the strain overbalanced Tarzan, who came tumbling to the ground not six paces from the infuriated animal.Like lightning Numa turned upon this new enemy, and, defenseless as he was, Tarzan of the Apes was nearer to death that instant than he ever before had been.It was the black who saved him.
The warrior realized in an instant that he owed his life to this strange white man, and he also saw that only a miracle could save his preserver from those fierce yellow fangs that had been so near to his own flesh.
With the quickness of thought his spear arm flew back, and then shot forward with all the force of the sinewy muscles that rolled beneath the shimmering ebon hide.
True to its mark the iron-shod weapon flew, transfixing Numa's sleek carcass from the right groin to beneath the left shoulder.With a hideous scream of rage and pain the brute turned again upon the black.A dozen paces he had gone when Tarzan's rope brought him to a stand once more--then he wheeled again upon the ape-man, only to feel the painful prick of a barbed arrow as it sank half its length in his quivering flesh.Again he stopped, and by this time Tarzan had run twice around the stem of a great tree with his rope, and made the end fast.
The black saw the trick, and grinned, but Tarzan knew that Numa must be quickly finished before those mighty teeth had found and parted the slender cord that held him.
It was a matter of but an instant to reach the black's side and drag his long knife from its scabbard.Then he signed the warrior to continue to shoot arrows into the great beast while he attempted to close in upon him with the knife; so as one tantalized upon one side, the other sneaked cautiously in upon the other.Numa was furious.He raised his voice in a perfect frenzy of shrieks, growls, and hideous moans, the while he reared upon his hind legs in futile attempt to reach first one and then the other of his tormentors.
But at length the agile ape-man saw his chance, and rushed in upon the beast's left side behind the mighty shoulder.
A giant arm encircled the tawny throat, and a long blade sank once, true as a die, into the fierce heart.Then Tarzan arose, and the black man and the white looked into each other's eyes across the body of their kill--and the black made the sign of peace and friendship, and Tarzan of the Apes answered in kind.