Now Mugambi had been to London with his master. He was not the
unsophisticated savage that his apparel proclaimed him. He had
mingled with the cosmopolitan hordes of the greatest city in the
world; he had visited museums and inspected shop windows; and,
besides, he was a shrewd and intelligent man.

The instant that the jewels of Opar rolled, scintillating, before
his astonished eyes, he recognized them for what they were; but
he recognized something else, too, that interested him far more
deeply than the value of the stones. A thousand times he had seen
the leathern pouch which dangled at his master's side, when Tarzan
of the Apes had, in a spirit of play and adventure, elected to
return for a few hours to the primitive manners and customs of his
boyhood, and surrounded by his naked warriors hunt the lion and
the leopard, the buffalo and the elephant after the manner he loved
best.

Werper saw that Mugambi had seen the pouch and the stones. Hastily
he gathered up the precious gems and returned them to their container,
while Mugambi, assuming an air of indifference, strolled down to
the river for his bath.

The following morning Abdul Mourak was enraged and chagrined
to discover that this huge, black prisoner had escaped during the
night, while Werper was terrified for the same reason, until his
trembling fingers discovered the pouch still in its place beneath
his shirt, and within it the hard outlines of its contents.