The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-01-12

tier placed sentries about the little camp, and the tired and hungry men threw themselves upon the ground to sleep.
 The groans of the wounded, min gled with the roaring and growing of the great beasts, kept sleep except in its. most ftfuI form from the tired eyes. It was sad and hungry party that lay through the long night pray ing for dawn. .--s.---
 The blacks who had seized D'Arnot had not waited to participate in the fight. They hurried their ptisoner along, the sounds of battle growing fainter and fainter as they drew away from the contesta nts. until there sud denly broke upon D'Arnot's vision a good sized clearing, at one end of which stood thatched and palisaded village. M
 A cry went up within the palisade. A great throng of women and children rushed out to meet the party
 And then began for the French ofh- cer. the most ~terriJying experience which man can encounter upon earth the reception of white prisoner into village of African cannibals.
 They fell upon D'Arnot tooth and nail, beating him with sticks and stones and tearing at him with claw like hands. Every vestige of clothing was torn from him, and the merefless blows fell upon his bare and qufvering flesh. -gs sg v -. =.
 But not once did the Frenchnian cry out in pain. A silent prayer rose that he be quickly delivered from his tor ture.
 The death he prayed for was not to f.e SiI h0d a beat the women away from their pris- oner.
 He was to be saved for nobIer sport than this, and, the first wave of their passion having subsided, they. content. ed themselves with crying out taunts and insults and spitting upon him.
 Presently they gained the center of the village. There D'Arnot was bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever been released
 A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while others built 8 row Of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled.
 The festivities were delayed, await ing the return of the warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the white men, so that 1t was quite late when all were in the village and the dance of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.
 Half fainting from pain and exhaus- ton, D'Arnot watched what seemed but vagary of delirium or some hor- rid nightmare from which he must soon awake. He closed his eyes and held his teeth firm set. He would not cry out
 He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an off, cer and gentleman died.
 Tarzan of the apes needed no inter- preter to translate the story of those distant shots. With Jane Porter's kisses still warm upon his lips he was swinging with incredible rapidity through the forest trees. straight tp- ward the villa ge of Afbonga.
 He was not interested in the loca- ton of the encounter, for he judged that that would soon be over. Those who were killed he could not aid; those who escaped would not need his as- sistance.
 It was to those who had neither been killed nor escaped that he hastened. And he knew that he could find them by the great post in the center of Mbonga's village.
 Many times had Tarzan seen Mbon- gals black raiding parties return from the northward with prisoners, and al ways were the same scenes enacted about that grim stake, beneath. the l faring light of many fires. Tarzan had looked with complacency upon their former orgies, only occa- sionally interfering for the pleasure of batting the blacks. But heretofore r..a AL town color. Tonight it was different. I White men, men of Tarzan's own race, might be even now suffering the agonies of torture. l On he sped. In a few minutes he l swung into the trees above Mbonga' $ village Ah, he was not quite too late!
 The figure atsthe stake was very still. Tarzan knew their customs. The deathblow had been struck. He could | tell almost to a minute how far the dance had gone.
 l h. another instant Mbonga's knife l would sever one of the victims ears.
 That would mark the beginning of the
 end. for very shortly after only a
 writhing mass of mutilated flesh would
 remain.
 | The stake stood forty feet from the
 nearest tree. Tarzan coi1ed his rope.
 Then there rose suddenly above the fendish cries of the dancing demons
 the awful challenge of the ape man. The dancers halted as though turned I to stone. The rope sped with 8 sing
 ing whir high above the~heads of sthe blacks. If was qaite<ilivisIbIe in. the
 dafing lights oss She canlRfres. 1 D'Arnot openad his eyes. A huge black, standing directly be | fore him, lunged backward as thougE
 felled by an invisible hand. l Struggling and shrieking, his body | rolling from side to side, moved quick 1 ly toward. the shadows beneath tht frees. The blacks, their eyes protrud
 ing in horror, watched spellbound-
 Once beneath the trees the body rose ! lrA,.e sseri.& it. d saS,