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Good-bye!" she cried.

Good-bye, and God bless you!" he called back--his voice the least bit husky--and

then: "The thing I wanted to say-may I say it now, we are so very near the end?"

Her lips moved but whether they voiced consent or refusal he did not know, for

the words were drowned in the whir of the propeller.

The black had learned his lesson sufficiently well so that the motor was started

without bungling and the machine was soon under way across the meadowland.

A groan escaped the lips of the distracted Englishman as he watched the woman

he loved being carried to almost certain death. He saw the plane tilt and the

machine rise from the ground. It was a good take-off--as good as Lieutenant

Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick could make himself but he realized that it was only

so by chance. At any instant the machine might plunge to earth and even if, by

some miracle of chance, the black could succeed in rising above the tree tops and

make a successful flight, there was not one chance in one hundred thousand that

he could ever land again without killing his fair captive and himself.

But what was that? His heart stood still.

128

Tarzan the Untamed