As Busuli talked he fingered a heavy gold armlet that encircled
the glossy hide of his left arm. Tarzan's eyes had been upon the
ornament, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Presently he recalled
the question he had tried to ask when he first came to the tribe--the
question he could not at that time make them understand. For weeks
he had forgotten so trivial a thing as gold, for he had been for
the time a truly primeval man with no thought beyond today. But
of a sudden the sight of gold awakened the sleeping civilization
that was in him, and with it came the lust for wealth. That lesson
Tarzan had learned well in his brief experience of the ways of
civilized man. He knew that gold meant power and pleasure. He
pointed to the bauble.

"From whence came the yellow metal, Busuli?" he asked.

The black pointed toward the southeast.

"A moon's march away--maybe more," he replied.

"Have you been there?" asked Tarzan.

"No, but some of our people were there years ago, when my father
was yet a young man. One of the parties that searched farther for
a location for the tribe when first they settled here came upon
a strange people who wore many ornaments of yellow metal. Their
spears were tipped with it, as were their arrows, and they cooked
in vessels made all of solid metal like my armlet.

"They lived in a great village in huts that were built of stone
and surrounded by a great wall. They were very fierce, rushing out