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each other and then fall backwards out of his sight upon the surface of the

ground above. Instantly the lion grasped the possibilities of the situation, and,

too, perhaps he sensed the fact that the man-thing had deliberately opened a way

for his escape. Seizing the remains of Bara in his great jaws, Numa, the lion,

leaped agilely from the pit of the Wamabos and Tarzan of the Apes melted into the

jungles to the east.

On the surface of the ground or through the swaying branches of the trees the

spoor of man or beast was an open book to the ape-man, but even his acute

senses were baffled by the spoorless trail of the airship. Of what good were eyes,

or ears, or the sense of smell in following a thing whose path had lain through the

shifting air thousands of feet above the tree tops? Only upon his sense of

direction could Tarzan depend in his search for the fallen plane. He could not

even judge accurately as to the distance it might lie from him, and he knew that

from the moment that it disappeared beyond the hills it might have traveled a

considerable distance at right angles to its original course before it crashed to

earth. If its occupants were killed or badly injured the ape-man might search

futilely in their immediate vicinity for some time before finding them.

There was but one thing to do and that was to travel to a point as close as

possible to where he judged the plane had landed, and then to follow in ever-

widening circles until he picked up their scent spoor. And this he did.

Before he left the valley of plenty he made several kills and carried the choicest

cuts of meat with him, leaving all the dead weight of bones behind. The dense

vegetation of the jungle terminated at the foot of the western slope, growing less

and less abundant as he neared the summit beyond which was a sparse growth

of sickly scrub and sunburned grasses, with here and there a gnarled and hardy

tree that had withstood the vicissitudes of an almost waterless existence.

From the summit of the hills Tarzan's keen eyes searched the arid landscape

before him. In the distance he discerned the ragged tortuous lines that marked

the winding course of the hideous gorges which scored the broad plain at

intervals--the terrible gorges that had so nearly claimed his life in punishment for

his temerity in attempting to invade the sanctity of their ancient solitude.

For two days Tarzan sought futilely for some clew to the whereabouts of the

machine or its occupants. He cached portions of his kills at different points,

building cairns of rock to mark their locations. He crossed the first deep gorge

and circled far beyond it. Occasionally he stopped and called aloud, listening for

some response but only silence rewarded him-a sinister silence that his cries only

accentuated.

143

Tarzan the Untamed