Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 61837-h.htm or 61837-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61837/61837-h/61837-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61837/61837-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A caret character is used to denote superscription. A single character following the caret is superscripted (example: 800^3+21). TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN [Illustration] TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN by EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS [Illustration: Decoration] This book, while produced under wartime conditions, in full compliance with government regulations for the conservation of paper and other essential materials, is Complete and Unabridged [Illustration: Decoration] Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York Copyright, 1924, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Copyrighted in Great Britain Made in the United States of America TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN Tarzan and the Ant Men CHAPTER I In the filth of a dark hut, in the village of Obebe the cannibal, upon the banks of the Ugogo, Esteban Miranda squatted upon his haunches and gnawed upon the remnants of a half-cooked fish. About his neck was an iron slave collar from which a few feet of rusty chain ran to a stout post set deep in the ground near the low entranceway that let upon the village street not far from the hut of Obebe himself. For a year Esteban Miranda had been chained thus, like a dog, and like a dog he sometimes crawled through the low doorway of his kennel and basked in the sun outside. Two diversions had he; and only two. One was the persistent idea that he was Tarzan of the Apes, whom he had impersonated for so long and with such growing success that, like the good actor he was, he had come not only to act the part, but to live it--to _be_ it. He _was_, as far as he was concerned, Tarzan of the Apes--there was no other--and he was Tarzan of the Apes to Obebe, too; but the village witch doctor still insisted that he was the river devil and as such, one to propitiate rather than to anger.