Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"The ghost of my grandfather!" he exclaimed. "I saw him again. He came
out of the mouth of the white man who calls himself Tarzan. He has put
a curse upon us because we kept the white man prisoner. Now we are
prisoners ourselves and soon we shall be killed and eaten." The others
nodded their heads solemnly in confirmation.
Food similar to that given to them the night before was given to the
prisoners, and after they and the legionaries had eaten, the march was
resumed in a southerly direction along the dusty road.
Until noon they plodded through the dust toward the south, passing
through other villages similar to that at which they had camped during
the night, and then they turned directly east into a road that joined
the main road at this point. Shortly afterward Tarzan saw before him
stretching across the road to the right and left as far as he could
see through the forest, a lofty rampart surmounted by palisades and
battlements. Directly ahead the roadway swung to the left just inside
the outer line of the rampart and passed through a gateway that was
flanked by lofty towers. At the base of the rampart was a wide moat
through which a stream of water moved slowly, the moat being spanned by
a bridge where the road crossed it.
There was a brief halt at the gateway while the officer commanding
the company conferred with the commander of the gate, and then the
legionaries and their prisoners filed through and Tarzan saw stretching
before him not a village of native huts, but a city of substantial
buildings.
Those near the gate were one-story stucco houses, apparently built
around an inner courtyard, as he could see the foliage of trees rising
high above the roofs, but at a distance down the vista of a long avenue
he saw the outlines of more imposing edifices rising to a greater
height.
As they proceeded along the avenue they saw many people upon the
streets and in the doorways of the houses--brown and black people,
clothed for the most part in tunics and cloaks, though many of the
blacks were almost naked. In the vicinity of the gateway there were a
few shops, but as they proceeded along the avenue these gave way to
dwellings that continued for a considerable distance until they reached
a section that seemed to be devoted to shops of a better grade and to
public buildings. Here they began to encounter white men, though the
proportion of them of the total population seemed quite small.
The people they passed stopped to look at the legionaries and their
prisoners and at intersections little crowds formed and quite a number
followed them, but there were mostly small boys.
The ape-man could see that he was attracting a great deal of attention
and the people seemed to be commenting and speculating upon him. Some
of them called to the legionaries, who answered them good-naturedly,
and there was considerable joking and chaffing--probably, Tarzan
surmised, at the expense of the unfortunate prisoners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account