The ape-man held no great love for the Gomangani as a race, but inherent in his English brain and heart was the spirit of fair play, which prompted him to spontaneous espousal of the cause of the weak. On the other hand Bolgani was his hereditary enemy. His first battle had been with Bolgani, and his first kill. The poor blacks were still standing in stupefied wonderment when he dropped from the tree to the ground among them. They stepped back in terror, and simultaneously they raised their spears menacingly against him. “I am a friend,” he said. “I am Tarzan of the Apes. Lower your spears.” And then he turned and withdrew his own weapon from the carcass of Bolgani. “Who is this creature, that may come into your village and slay your balus and steal your shes? Who is he, that you dare not drive your spears through him?” “He is one of the great Bolgani,” said the warrior, who seemed to be spokesman, and the leader in the village. “He is one of the chosen people of Numa, the Emperor, and when Numa learns that he has been killed in our village, we shall all die for what you have done.” “Who is Numa?” demanded the ape-man, to whom Numa, in the language of the great apes, meant only lion. “Numa is the Emperor,” replied the black, “who lives with the Bolgani in the Palace of Diamonds.” He did not express himself in just these words, for the meager language of the great apes, even though amplified by the higher intelligence and greater development of the Oparians, is still primitive in the extreme. What he had really said was more nearly “Numa, the king of kings, who lives in the king’s hut of glittering stones,” which carried to the ape-man’s mind the faithful impression of the fact. Numa, evidently, was the name adopted by the king of the Bolgani, and the title _emperor_, indicated merely his preeminence among the chiefs. The instant that Bolgani had fallen the bereaved mother rushed forward and gathered her injured infant into her arms. She squatted now against the palisade, cuddling it to her breast, and crooning softly to pacify its cries, which Tarzan suddenly discovered were more the result of fright than injury. At first the mother had been frightened when he had attempted to examine the child, drawing away and baring her fighting fangs, much after the manner of a wild beast. But presently there had seemed to come to her dull brain a realization that this creature had saved her from Bolgani, that he had permitted her to recover her infant and that he was making no effort to harm either of them. Convinced at last that the child was only bruised, Tarzan turned again toward the warriors, who were talking together in an excited little group a few paces away. As they saw him advancing, they spread into a semi-circle and stood facing him.