bleeding, but the dried and clotted blood smeared his face and
clothing. He had said no word since he had fallen into the hands
of these Arabs, nor had they addressed him other than to issue a
few brief commands to him when the horses had been reached.

For six hours they rode rapidly across the burning desert, avoiding
the oases near which their way led. About noon they came to a
DOUAR of about twenty tents. Here they halted, and as one of the
Arabs was releasing the alfa-grass ropes which bound him to his
mount they were surrounded by a mob of men, women, and children.
Many of the tribe, and more especially the women, appeared to take
delight in heaping insults upon the prisoner, and some had even
gone so far as to throw stones at him and strike him with sticks,
when an old sheik appeared and drove them away.

"Ali-ben-Ahmed tells me," he said, "that this man sat alone in the
mountains and slew EL ADREA. What the business of the stranger
who sent us after him may be, I know not, and what he may do with
this man when we turn him over to him, I care not; but the prisoner
is a brave man, and while he is in our hands he shall be treated
with the respect that be due one who hunts THE LORD WITH THE LARGE
HEAD alone and by night--and slays him."

Tarzan had heard of the respect in which Arabs held a lion-killer,
and he was not sorry that chance had played into his hands thus
favorably to relieve him of the petty tortures of the tribe. Shortly
after this he was taken to a goat-skin tent upon the upper side of
the DOUAR. There he was fed, and then, securely bound, was left
lying on a piece of native carpet, alone in the tent.