“Owaza will get it,” he muttered to himself. “I never trusted the black dog, and when he deserted me I knew well enough what his plans were.” All night long Esteban Miranda floated down stream upon the fallen tree, seeing no sign of life, until shortly after daybreak, he passed a native village upon the shore. It was the village of Obebe, the cannibal, and at sight of the strange figure of the white giant floating down the stream upon the bole of a tree, the young woman who espied him raised a great hue and cry until the population of the village lined the shore watching him pass. “It is a strange god,” cried one. “It is the river devil,” said the witch doctor. “He is a friend of mine. Now, indeed, shall we catch many fish if for each ten that you catch you give one to me.” “It is not the river devil,” rumbled the deep voice of Obebe, the cannibal. “You are getting old,” he said to the witch doctor, “and of late your medicine has been poor medicine, and now you tell me that Obebe’s greatest enemy is the river devil. That is Tarzan of the Apes. Obebe knows him well.” And in truth every cannibal chief in the vicinity knew Tarzan of the Apes well and feared and hated him, for relentless had been the ape-man’s war against them. “It is Tarzan of the Apes,” repeated Obebe, “and he is in trouble. Perhaps it is our chance to capture him.” He called his warriors about him, and presently half a hundred brawny young bucks started at a jog trot down the trail that paralleled the river. For miles they followed the slowly moving tree which carried Esteban Miranda until at last at a bend in the river the tree was caught in the outer circle of a slow-moving eddy, which carried it beneath the overhanging limbs of trees growing close to the river’s edge. Cramped and chilled and hungry as he was, Esteban was glad of the opportunity to desert his craft and gain the shore. And so, laboriously, he drew himself up among the branches of the tree that momentarily offered him a haven of retreat from the river, and crawling to its stem lowered himself to the ground beneath, unconscious of the fact that in the grasses around him squatted half a hundred cannibal warriors. Leaning against the bole of the tree the Spaniard rested for a moment. He felt for the diamonds and found that they were safe. “I am a lucky devil, after all,” he said aloud, and almost simultaneously the fifty blacks arose about him and leaped upon him. So sudden was the attack, so overwhelming the force, that the Spaniard had no opportunity to defend himself against them, with the result that he was down and securely bound almost before he could realize what was happening to him. “Ah, Tarzan of the Apes, I have you at last,” gloated Obebe, the cannibal, but Esteban did not understand a word the man said, and so he could make no reply. He talked to Obebe in English, but that language the latter did not understand.