Tarzan the Untamed


google search for Tarzan the Untamed

Return to Master Book Index.

Page
8 9 10 11 12

Quick Jump
1 61 121 182 242

www.freeclassicebooks.com  
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  
1
0


Page
8 9 10 11 12

Quick Jump
1 61 121 182 242