while he was trying to decide just what to do, they had come to a
little clearing, at the far side of which lay a palisaded village
of beehive huts.

As the warrior emerged from the forest, Tarzan caught a fleeting
glimpse of a tawny hide worming its way through the matted jungle
grasses in his wake--it was Numa, the lion. He, too, was stalking
the black man. With the instant that Tarzan realized the native's
danger his attitude toward his erstwhile prey altered completely--now
he was a fellow man threatened by a common enemy.

Numa was about to charge--there was little time in which to compare
various methods or weigh the probable results of any. And then a
number of things happened, almost simultaneously--the lion sprang
from his ambush toward the retreating black--Tarzan cried out in
warning--and the black turned just in time to see Numa halted in
mid-flight by a slender strand of grass rope, the noosed end of
which had fallen cleanly about his neck.

The ape-man had acted so quickly that he had been unable to prepare
himself to withstand the strain and shock of Numa's great weight
upon the rope, and so it was that though the rope stopped the beast
before his mighty talons could fasten themselves in the flesh of
the black, the strain overbalanced Tarzan, who came tumbling to the
ground not six paces from the infuriated animal. Like lightning
Numa turned upon this new enemy, and, defenseless as he was, Tarzan
of the Apes was nearer to death that instant than he ever before
had been. It was the black who saved him. The warrior realized in
an instant that he owed his life to this strange white man, and he
also saw that only a miracle could save his preserver from those