Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Immediately the ape-man's plans were changed. Pan-at-lee lived, or at
least she had lived after the leap from the cliff's summit. He had
started in search of her for Om-at, his friend, and for Om-at he would
continue upon the trail he had picked up thus fortuitously by accident.
It led him into the jungle and across the gorge and then to the point
at which Pan-at-lee had commenced the ascent of the opposite cliffs.
Here Tarzan abandoned the head of In-tan, tying it to the lower branch
of a tree, for he knew that it would handicap him in his ascent of the
steep escarpment. Apelike he ascended, following easily the scent
spoor of Pan-at-lee. Over the summit and across the ridge the trail
lay, plain as a printed page to the delicate senses of the jungle-bred
tracker.
Tarzan knew naught of the Kor-ul-GRYF. He had seen, dimly in the
shadows of the night, strange, monstrous forms and Ta-den and Om-at had
spoken of great creatures that all men feared; but always, everywhere,
by night and by day, there were dangers. From infancy death had
stalked, grim and terrible, at his heels. He knew little of any other
existence. To cope with danger was his life and he lived his life as
simply and as naturally as you live yours amidst the dangers of the
crowded city streets. The black man who goes abroad in the jungle by
night is afraid, for he has spent his life since infancy surrounded by
numbers of his own kind and safeguarded, especially at night, by such
crude means as lie within his powers. But Tarzan had lived as the lion
lives and the panther and the elephant and the ape--a true jungle
creature dependent solely upon his prowess and his wits, playing a lone
hand against creation. Therefore he was surprised at nothing and feared
nothing and so he walked through the strange night as undisturbed and
unapprehensive as the farmer to the cow lot in the darkness before the
dawn.
Once more Pan-at-lee's trail ended at the verge of a cliff; but this
time there was no indication that she had leaped over the edge and a
moment's search revealed to Tarzan the stone pegs upon which she had
made her descent. As he lay upon his belly leaning over the top of the
cliff examining the pegs his attention was suddenly attracted by
something at the foot of the cliff. He could not distinguish its
identity, but he saw that it moved and presently that it was ascending
slowly, apparently by means of pegs similar to those directly below
him. He watched it intently as it rose higher and higher until he was
able to distinguish its form more clearly, with the result that he
became convinced that it more nearly resembled some form of great ape
than a lower order. It had a tail, though, and in other respects it did
not seem a true ape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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