except on the occasions when one of them ran amuck in the

throes of one of those strange, wild fits of insane rage which

attacks the males of many of the fiercer animals of the jungle.

Then none was safe.

On the day that Tarzan established his right to respect, the

tribe was gathered about a small natural amphitheater which

the jungle had left free from its entangling vines and creepers

in a hollow among some low hills.

The open space was almost circular in shape. Upon every

hand rose the mighty giants of the untouched forest, with the

matted undergrowth banked so closely between the huge

trunks that the only opening into the little, level arena was

through the upper branches of the trees.

Here, safe from interruption, the tribe often gathered. In

the center of the amphitheater was one of those strange

earthen drums which the anthropoids build for the queer rites

the sounds of which men have heard in the fastnesses of the

jungle, but which none has ever witnessed.

Many travelers have seen the drums of the great apes, and

some have heard the sounds of their beating and the noise of

the wild, weird revelry of these first lords of the jungle, but

Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, is, doubtless, the only human being

who ever joined in the fierce, mad, intoxicating revel of the

Dum-Dum.

From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all

the forms and ceremonials of modern church and state, for

through all the countless ages, back beyond the uttermost

ramparts of a dawning humanity our fierce, hairy forebears

danced out the rites of the Dum-Dum to the sound of their

earthen drums, beneath the bright light of a tropical moon in

the depth of a mighty jungle which stands unchanged today

as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim, unthinkable

vistas of the long dead past when our first shaggy ancestor

swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon

the soft turf of the first meeting place.

On the day that Tarzan won his emancipation from the

persecution that had followed him remorselessly for twelve of

his thirteen years of life, the tribe, now a full hundred strong,