Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Manu must have slept. He thought that he had only closed his eyes a
moment, but when he opened them the rosy light of dawn had overspread
the desolate valley. Just disappearing over the cliffs to the northeast
he could see the last of Tarzan’s party commencing the descent of the
barrier, then Manu turned his face toward Opar and prepared to descend
from the kopje, and scamper back to the safety of his trees within the
walls of Opar. But first he would reconnoiter—Sheeta, the panther,
might be still abroad, and so he scampered around the edge of the kopje
to a point where he could see the entire valley floor between himself
and Opar. And there it was that he saw again that which filled him with
greatest excitement. For, debouching from the ruined outer wall of Opar
was a large company of Opar’s frightful men—fully a hundred of them
Manu could have counted had Manu been able to count.
They seemed to be coming toward the kopje, and he sat and watched them
as they approached, deciding to defer his return to the city until after
the path was cleared of hated Oparians. It occurred to him that they
were coming after him, for the egotism of the lower animals is
inordinate. Because he was a monkey, the idea did not seem at all
ridiculous and so he hid behind a jutting rock, with only one little,
bright eye exposed to the enemy. He saw them come closer and he grew
very much excited, though he was not at all afraid, for he knew that if
they ascended one side of the kopje he could descend the other and be
half-way to Opar before they could possibly locate him again.
On and on they came, but they did not stop at the kopje—as a matter of
fact they did not come very close to it, but continued on beyond it.
Then it was that the truth of the matter flashed into the little brain
of the monkey—Cadj and his people were pursuing Tarzan of the Apes to
slay him. If Manu had been offended by Tarzan’s indifference to him upon
the night before, he had evidently forgotten it, for now he was quite as
excited about the danger which he saw menace the ape-man as he had been
upon the afternoon previous. At first he thought of running ahead, and
again warning Tarzan, but he feared to venture so far from the trees of
Opar, even if the thought of having to pass the hated Oparians had not
been sufficient to deter him from carrying out this plan. For a few
minutes he sat watching them, until they had all passed the kopje, and
then it became quite clear to him that they were heading directly for
the spot at which the last of Tarzan’s party had disappeared from the
valley—there could be no doubt that they were in pursuit of the
ape-man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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