Tarzan the Untamed | Page 8

that it hung
down his back completed his armament and his apparel. The
diamond-studded locket with the pictures of his mother and father that
he had worn always until he had given it as a token of his highest
devotion to Jane Clayton before their marriage was missing. She
always had worn it since, but it had not been upon her body when he
found her slain in her boudoir, so that now his quest for vengeance
included also a quest for the stolen trinket.
Toward midnight Tarzan commenced to feel the physical strain of his
long hours of travel and to realize that even muscles such as his had
their limitations. His pursuit of the murderers had not been
characterized by excessive speed; but rather more in keeping with his
mental attitude, which was marked by a dogged determination to
require from the Germans more than an eye for an eye and more than a
tooth for a tooth, the element of time entering but slightly into his

calculations.
Inwardly as well as outwardly Tarzan had reverted to beast and in the
lives of beasts, time, as a measurable aspect of duration, has no
meaning. The beast is actively interested only in NOW, and as it is
always NOW and always shall be, there is an eternity of time for the
accomplishment of objects. The ape-man, naturally, had a slightly more
comprehensive realization of the limitations of time; but, like the beasts,
he moved with majestic deliberation when no emergency prompted him
to swift action.
Having dedicated his life to vengeance, vengeance became his natural
state and, therefore, no emergency, so he took his time in pursuit. That
he had not rested earlier was due to the fact that he had felt no fatigue,
his mind being occupied by thoughts of sorrow and revenge; but now
he realized that he was tired, and so he sought a jungle giant that had
harbored him upon more than a single other jungle night.
Dark clouds moving swiftly across the heavens now and again eclipsed
the bright face of Goro, the moon, and forewarned the ape-man of
impending storm. In the depth of the jungle the cloud shadows
produced a thick blackness that might almost be felt--a blackness that
to you and me might have proven terrifying with its accompaniment of
rustling leaves and cracking twigs, and its even more suggestive
intervals of utter silence in which the crudest of imaginations might
have conjured crouching beasts of prey tensed for the fatal charge; but
through it Tarzan passed unconcerned, yet always alert. Now he swung
lightly to the lower terraces of the overarching trees when some subtle
sense warned him that Numa lay upon a kill directly in his path, or
again he sprang lightly to one side as Buto, the rhinoceros, lumbered
toward him along the narrow, deep-worn trail, for the ape-man, ready
to fight upon necessity's slightest pretext, avoided unnecessary quarrels.
When he swung himself at last into the tree he sought, the moon was
obscured by a heavy cloud, and the tree tops were waving wildly in a
steadily increasing wind whose soughing drowned the lesser noises of
the jungle. Upward went Tarzan toward a sturdy crotch across which he
long since had laid and secured a little platform of branches. It was

very dark now, darker even than it had been before, for almost the
entire sky was overcast by thick, black clouds.
Presently the man-beast paused, his sensitive nostrils dilating as he
sniffed the air about him. Then, with the swiftness and agility of a cat,
he leaped far outward upon a swaying branch, sprang upward through
the darkness, caught another, swung himself upon it and then to one
still higher. What could have so suddenly transformed his
matter-of-fact ascent of the giant bole to the swift and wary action of
his detour among the branches? You or I could have seen nothing-not
even the little platform that an instant before had been just above him
and which now was immediately below--but as he swung above it we
should have heard an ominous growl; and then as the moon was
momentarily uncovered, we should have seen both the platform, dimly,
and a dark mass that lay stretched upon it--a dark mass that presently,
as our eyes became accustomed to the lesser darkness, would take the
form of Sheeta, the panther.
In answer to the cat's growl, a low and equally ferocious growl rumbled
upward from the ape-man's deep chest--a growl of warning that told the
panther he was trespassing upon the other's lair; but Sheeta was in no
mood to be dispossessed. With upturned, snarling face he glared at the
brown-skinned Tarmangani above him. Very slowly the ape-man
moved inward along the branch until he was directly above the