Tarzan the Untamed | Page 5

home," said the lieutenant, "that we may take
him with us when we report to Kraut at Nairobi. It will go well indeed
with Herr Hauptmann Fritz Schneider if he brings in the famous Tarzan
of the Apes as a prisoner of war."
Schneider smiled and puffed out his chest. "You are right, my friend,"
he said, "it will go well with both of us; but I shall have to travel far to
catch General Kraut before he reaches Mombasa. These English pigs
with their contemptible army will make good time to the Indian
Ocean."
It was in a better frame of mind that the small force set out across the
open country toward the trim and well-kept farm buildings of John
Clayton, Lord Greystoke; but disappointment was to be their lot since
neither Tarzan of the Apes nor his son was at home.
Lady Jane, ignorant of the fact that a state of war existed between Great
Britain and Germany, welcomed the officers most hospitably and gave
orders through her trusted Waziri to prepare a feast for the black
soldiers of the enemy.
Far to the east, Tarzan of the Apes was traveling rapidly from Nairobi
toward the farm. At Nairobi he had received news of the World War
that had already started, and, anticipating an immediate invasion of
British East Africa by the Germans, was hurrying homeward to fetch
his wife to a place of greater security. With him were a score of his
ebon warriors, but far too slow for the ape-man was the progress of
these trained and hardened woodsmen.
When necessity demanded, Tarzan of the Apes sloughed the thin

veneer of his civilization and with it the hampering apparel that was its
badge. In a moment the polished English gentleman reverted to the
naked ape man.
His mate was in danger. For the time, that single thought dominated.
He did not think of her as Lady Jane Greystoke, but rather as the she he
had won by the might of his steel thews, and that he must hold and
protect by virtue of the same offensive armament.
It was no member of the House of Lords who swung swiftly and grimly
through the tangled forest or trod with untiring muscles the wide
stretches of open plain--it was a great he ape filled with a single
purpose that excluded all thoughts of fatigue or danger.
Little Manu, the monkey, scolding and chattering in the upper terraces
of the forest, saw him pass. Long had it been since he had thus beheld
the great Tarmangani naked and alone hurtling through the jungle.
Bearded and gray was Manu, the monkey, and to his dim old eyes came
the fire of recollection of those days when Tarzan of the Apes had ruled
supreme, Lord of the Jungle, over all the myriad life that trod the
matted vegetation between the boles of the great trees, or flew or swung
or climbed in the leafy fastness upward to the very apex of the loftiest
terraces.
And Numa, the lion, lying up for the day close beside last night's
successful kill, blinked his yellow-green eyes and twitched his tawny
tail as he caught the scent spoor of his ancient enemy.
Nor was Tarzan senseless to the presence of Numa or Manu or any of
the many jungle beasts he passed in his rapid flight towards the west.
No particle had his shallow probing of English society dulled his
marvelous sense faculties. His nose had picked out the presence of
Numa, the lion, even before the majestic king of beasts was aware of
his passing.
He had heard noisy little Manu, and even the soft rustling of the parting
shrubbery where Sheeta passed before either of these alert animals
sensed his presence.

But however keen the senses of the ape-man, however swift his
progress through the wild country of his adoption, however mighty the
muscles that bore him, he was still mortal. Time and space placed their
inexorable limits upon him; nor was there another who realized this
truth more keenly than Tarzan. He chafed and fretted that he could not
travel with the swiftness of thought and that the long tedious miles
stretching far ahead of him must require hours and hours of tireless
effort upon his part before he would swing at last from the final bough
of the fringing forest into the open plain and in sight of his goal.
Days it took, even though he lay up at night for but a few hours and left
to chance the finding of meat directly on his trail. If Wappi, the
antelope, or Horta, the boar, chanced in his way when he was hungry,
he ate, pausing but long enough to make the kill and cut himself a
steak.
Then at last the