As Tarzan let the pebbles from the recovered pouch run through his
fingers, his thoughts returned to the pile of yellow ingots about
which the Arabs and the Abyssinians had waged their relentless
battle.

What was there in common between that pile of dirty metal and the
beautiful, sparkling pebbles that had formerly been in his pouch?
What was the metal? From whence had it come? What was that
tantalizing half-conviction which seemed to demand the recognition
of his memory that the yellow pile for which these men had fought
and died had been intimately connected with his past--that it had
been his?

What had been his past? He shook his head. Vaguely the memory of
his apish childhood passed slowly in review--then came a strangely
tangled mass of faces, figures and events which seemed to have no
relation to Tarzan of the Apes, and yet which were, even in their
fragmentary form, familiar.

Slowly and painfully, recollection was attempting to reassert
itself, the hurt brain was mending, as the cause of its recent
failure to function was being slowly absorbed or removed by the
healing processes of perfect circulation.

The people who now passed before his mind's eye for the first time
in weeks wore familiar faces; but yet he could neither place them
in the niches they had once filled in his past life, nor call them
by name. One was a fair she, and it was her face which most often