It was a happy company that marched in buoyant spirits toward the spot where the Waziri had cached the gold for Esteban. The blacks were overflowing with good nature because they had found their master and their mistress, while the relief and joy of Tarzan and Jane were too deep for expression. When at last they came to the place beside the river where they had buried the gold the Waziri, singing and laughing, commenced to dig for the treasure, but presently their singing ceased and their laughter was replaced by expressions of puzzled concern. For a while Tarzan watched them in silence and then a slow smile overspread his countenance. “You must have buried it deep, Usula,” he said. The black scratched his head. “No, not so deep as this, Bwana,” he cried. “I cannot understand it. We should have found the gold before this.” “Are you sure you are looking in the right place?” asked Tarzan. “This is the exact spot, Bwana,” the black assured him, “but the gold is not here. Someone has removed it since we buried it.” “The Spaniard again,” commented Tarzan. “He was a slick customer.” “But he could not have taken it alone,” said Usula. “There were many ingots of it.” “No,” said Tarzan, “he could not, and yet it is not here.” The Waziri and Tarzan searched carefully about the spot where the gold had been buried, but so clever had been the woodcraft of Owaza that he had obliterated even from the keen senses of the ape-man every vestige of the spoor that he and the Spaniard had made in carrying the gold from the old hiding place to the new. “It is gone,” said the ape-man, “but I shall see that it does not get out of Africa,” and he despatched runners in various directions to notify the chiefs of the friendly tribes surrounding his domain to watch carefully every safari crossing their territory, and to let none pass who carried gold. “That will stop them,” he said after the runners had departed. That night as they made their camp upon the trail toward home, the three whites were seated about a small fire with Jad-bal-ja lying just behind the ape-man, who was examining the leopard skin that the golden lion had retrieved in his pursuit of the Spaniard, when Tarzan turned toward his wife. “You were right, Jane,” he said. “The treasure vaults of Opar are not for me. This time I have lost not only the gold but a fabulous fortune in diamonds as well, beside risking that greatest of all treasures—yourself.” “Let the gold and the diamonds go, John,” she said; “we have one another, and Korak.” “And a bloody leopard skin,” he supplemented, “with a mystery map painted upon it in blood.” Jad-bal-ja sniffed the hide and licked his chops in—anticipation or retrospection—which? [Illustration: With a cry of terror the Spaniard dived into the river] CHAPTER XXI AN ESCAPE AND A CAPTURE