The recollection of the horrid days that had just passed was the
thing that finally decided the Manyuema, and so, after a short
conference, they took up their burdens and set off to retrace their
steps toward the village of the Waziri. At the end of the third
day they marched into the village gate, and were greeted by the
survivors of the recent massacre, to whom Tarzan had sent a messenger
in their temporary camp to the south on the day that the raiders
had quitted the village, telling them that they might return in
safety.

It took all the mastery and persuasion that Tarzan possessed
to prevent the Waziri falling on the Manyuema tooth and nail, and
tearing them to pieces, but when he had explained that he had given
his word that they would not be molested if they carried the ivory
back to the spot from which they had stolen it, and had further
impressed upon his people that they owed their entire victory to
him, they finally acceded to his demands, and allowed the cannibals
to rest in peace within their palisade.

That night the village warriors held a big palaver to celebrate
their victories, and to choose a new chief. Since old Waziri's
death Tarzan had been directing the warriors in battle, and the
temporary command had been tacitly conceded to him. There had been
no time to choose a new chief from among their own number, and, in
fact, so remarkably successful had they been under the ape-man's
generalship that they had had no wish to delegate the supreme
authority to another for fear that what they already had gained
might be lost. They had so recently seen the results of running
counter to this savage white man's advice in the disastrous charge
ordered by Waziri, in which he himself had died, that it had not