The appearance of Patrick and Obambi caused a commotion in the camp that was wholly out of proportion to its true significance. The white men leaped to their feet and drew their revolvers while strange blacks, in response to the commands of one of these, seized rifles and stood nervously alert.
"You don't have to throw no fit," called Danny, "it's only me and the smoke."
The white men were advancing to meet him now, and the two parties halted face to face near one of the fires. It was then that the eyes of one of the two strange white men alighted on the Thompson submachine gun. Raising his revolver he covered Danny.
"Put up your hands!" he commanded sharply.
"Wotell?" demanded the "Gunner," but he put them up as every sensible man does when thus invited at the business end of a pistol.
"Where is the ape-man?" asked the stranger.
"What ape-man? What you talkin' about? What's your racket?"
"You know who I mean—Tarzan," snapped the other.
The "Gunner" glanced quickly about the camp. He saw his own men herded under guard of villainous looking blacks in long robes that had once been white; he saw the horses tethered just beyond them; he saw nothing of Lafayette Smith. The training and the ethics of gangland controlled him on the instant. "Don't know the guy," he replied sullenly.
"You were with him today," snarled the bearded white. "You fired on my village."