Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
The ape-man scrutinized the huge, brutish female standing at the far
end of the corral with her savage eyes upon him. She had not seen him
before as she had been in the forest hunting at the time that The First
Woman had brought her prize back to the amphitheater. She had not
known that The First Woman had any male in her corral other than her
own spawn. Here, indeed, was a prize. She would remove him to her own
corral. With this idea in mind, and knowing that, unless he succeeded
in dodging past her and reaching the entranceway ahead of her, he could
not escape her, she moved very slowly toward him, ignoring now the
other occupants of the corral.
Tarzan, not guessing her real purpose, thought that she was about to
attack him as a dangerous alien in the sacred precincts of her home. He
viewed her great bulk, her enormous muscular development and the huge
bludgeon swinging in her hamlike hand and compared them with his own
defenseless nakedness.
To the jungle-born flight from useless and uneven combat carries with
it no stigma of cowardice, and not only was Tarzan of the Apes jungle
born and jungle raised, but the stripping of his clothes from him
had now, as always before, stripped also away the thin and unnatural
veneer of his civilization. It was, then, a savage beast that faced the
oncoming Alalus woman--a cunning beast as well as a powerful one--a
beast that knew when to fight and when to flee.
Tarzan cast a quick glance behind him. There crouched the Alalus lad,
trembling in fear. Beyond was the rear wall of the corral, one of the
great stone slabs of which tilted slightly outward. Slow is the mind
of man, slower his eye by comparison with the eye and the mind of the
trapped beast seeking escape. So quick was the ape-man that he was gone
before The Third Woman had guessed that he was contemplating flight,
and with him had gone the eldest Alalus boy.
Wheeling, all in a single motion Tarzan had swung the young male to
his shoulder, leaped swiftly the few paces that had separated him from
the rear wall of the corral, and, catlike, run up the smooth surface
of the slightly tilted slab until his fingers closed upon the top,
drawn himself over without a single backward glance, dropped the youth
to the ground upon the opposite side, following him so quickly that
they alighted almost together. Then he glanced about. For the first
time he saw the natural amphitheater and the caves before several of
which women still squatted. It would soon be dark. The sun was dropping
behind the crest of the western hills. Tarzan saw but a single avenue
of escape--the opening at the lower end of the amphitheater through
which the trail led down into the valley and the forest below. Toward
this he ran, followed by the youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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