"KING OF THE APES"
from the hut, and, with aim made true by years of fruit and cocoanut throwing, launched it toward the group of savages.
Squarely among them it fell, striking one of the warriors full upon the head and felling him to the ground. Then it rolled among the women and stopped beside the half butchered thing they were preparing to feast upon.
All gazed in consternation at it for an instant, and then, with one accord, broke and ran for their huts.
It was a grinning human skull which looked up at them from the ground. The dropping of the thing out of the open sky was a miracle well aimed to work upon their superstitious fears.
Thus Tarzan of the Apes left them filled with terror at this new manifestation of the presence of some unseen and unearthly evil power which lurked in the forest about their village.
Later, when they discovered the overturned cauldron, and that once more their arrows had been pilfered, it commenced to dawn upon them that they had offended some great god who ruled this part of the jungle by placing their village there without propitiating him. From then on an offering of food was daily placed below the great tree from whence the arrows had disappeared, in an effort to conciliate the mighty one.
But the seed of fear was deep sown, and had he but known it, Tarzan of the Apes had laid the
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