Chapter

Sound Above the Storm

THE LORD of the Jungle rose from a crude, leaf-covered platform constructed in the crotch of two branches of a mighty patriarch of the jungle. He stretched luxuriously. The slanting rays of the morning sun mottled his bronze body through the leafy canopy that stretched interminably above him.

Little Nkima stirred and awoke. With a scream, he leaped to the shoulder of the ape-man and encircled his neck with his hairy arms.

"Sheeta!" screamed the monkey."He was about to spring on little Nkima."

The ape-man smiled."Nkima has been seeing things in his sleep," he said.

The monkey looked about him among the branches of the trees and down at the ground below. Then, seeing that no danger threatened, he commenced to dance and chatter; but presently the ape-man silenced him and listened.

"Sheeta comes," he said."He is coming up wind toward us. We cannot smell him but if Manu had the ears of Tar-zan, he could hear him."

The monkey cocked an ear down wind and listened."Little Nkima hears him," he said."He comes slowly." Presently the sinuous, tawny body of the panther forced its way through the brush and came into view below them.

"Sheeta is not hunting," said Tarzan."He has fed and he is not hungry." And thus reassured, Nkima commenced to hurl invectives at the savage beast below them. The great cat paused and looked up, and when he saw Tarzan and Nkima he bared his fangs in an angry snarl. But he started on again, for he had no business with them.

Feeling secure in the protection of Tarzan, little Nkima waxed belligerent, as he always did under similar circumstances when the possibility of danger seemed remote. He hurled at his hereditary enemy every jungle epithet that he could put his tongue to, but as these seemed to make no impression upon Sheeta he leaped from Tarzan's shoulder to a trailing vine that bore a soft, ill-smelling fruit, and gathering one of these he hurled it at the panther.

By accident, his aim proved true; and the missile struck Sheeta on the back of the head.

With an angry snarl, the beast wheeled about and started toward the tree that harbored his annoyer. Screaming with terror, little Nkima fled upwards to the safety of the smaller branches that would not bear the weight of the great cat.

The ape-man grinned up after the fleeing monkey and then glanced down at the angry panther. A low, growling"Kreeg-ah" rumbled from his throat, and the other beast below returned an answering growl. Then it turned and slunk away into the jungle, rumbling in its throat.

The ape-man was returning leisurely from an excursion into a remote district of the great forest, far from his own haunts.

He had heard strange rumors, and he had gone to investigate