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rather more in keeping with his mental attitude, which was marked by a dogged
determination to require from the Germans more than an eye for an eye and more
than a tooth for a tooth, the element of time entering but slightly into his
calculations.
Inwardly as well as outwardly Tarzan had reverted to beast and in the lives of
beasts, time, as a measurable aspect of duration, has no meaning. The beast is
actively interested only in NOW, and as it is always NOW and always shall be,
there is an eternity of time for the accomplishment of objects. The ape-man,
naturally, had a slightly more comprehensive realization of the limitations of time;
but, like the beasts, he moved with majestic deliberation when no emergency
prompted him to swift action.
Having dedicated his life to vengeance, vengeance became his natural state and,
therefore, no emergency, so he took his time in pursuit. That he had not rested
earlier was due to the fact that he had felt no fatigue, his mind being occupied by
thoughts of sorrow and revenge; but now he realized that he was tired, and so he
sought a jungle giant that had harbored him upon more than a single other
jungle night.
Dark clouds moving swiftly across the heavens now and again eclipsed the bright
face of Goro, the moon, and forewarned the ape-man of impending storm. In the
depth of the jungle the cloud shadows produced a thick blackness that might
almost be felt--a blackness that to you and me might have proven terrifying with
its accompaniment of rustling leaves and cracking twigs, and its even more
suggestive intervals of utter silence in which the crudest of imaginations might
have conjured crouching beasts of prey tensed for the fatal charge; but through it
Tarzan passed unconcerned, yet always alert. Now he swung lightly to the lower
terraces of the overarching trees when some subtle sense warned him that Numa
lay upon a kill directly in his path, or again he sprang lightly to one side as Buto,
the rhinoceros, lumbered toward him along the narrow, deep-worn trail, for the
ape-man, ready to fight upon necessity's slightest pretext, avoided unnecessary
quarrels.
When he swung himself at last into the tree he sought, the moon was obscured
by a heavy cloud, and the tree tops were waving wildly in a steadily increasing
wind whose soughing drowned the lesser noises of the jungle. Upward went
Tarzan toward a sturdy crotch across which he long since had laid and secured a
little platform of branches. It was very dark now, darker even than it had been
before, for almost the entire sky was overcast by thick, black clouds.
Presently the man-beast paused, his sensitive nostrils dilating as he sniffed the
air about him. Then, with the swiftness and agility of a cat, he leaped far outward
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