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Chapter X - In the Hands of Savages

Tarzan sought Bara, the deer, or Horta, the boar, for of all the jungle animals he

doubted if any would prove more palatable to the white woman, but though his

keen nostrils were ever on the alert, he traveled far without being rewarded with

even the faintest scent spoor of the game he sought. Keeping close to the river

where he hoped to find Bara or Horta approaching or leaving a drinking place he

came at last upon the strong odor of the Wamabo village and being ever ready to

pay his hereditary enemies, the Gomangani, an undesired visit, he swung into a

detour and came up in the rear of the village. From a tree which overhung the

palisade he looked down into the street where he saw the preparations going on

which his experience told him indicated the approach of one of those frightful

feasts the piece de resistance of which is human flesh.

One of Tarzan's chief divertissements was the baiting of the blacks. He realized

more keen enjoyment through annoying and terrifying them than from any other

source of amusement the grim jungle offered. To rob them of their feast in some

way that would strike terror to their hearts would give him the keenest of

pleasure, and so he searched the village with his eyes for some indication of the

whereabouts of the prisoner. His view was circumscribed by the dense foliage of

the tree in which he sat, and, so that he might obtain a better view, he climbed

further aloft and moved cautiously out upon a slender branch.

Tarzan of the Apes possessed a woodcraft scarcely short of the marvelous but

even Tarzan's wondrous senses were not infallible. The branch upon which he

made his way outward from the bole was no smaller than many that had borne

his weight upon countless other occasions. Outwardly it appeared strong and

healthy and was in full foliage, nor could Tarzan know that close to the stem a

burrowing insect had eaten away half the heart of the solid wood beneath the

bark.

And so when he reached a point far out upon the limb, it snapped close to the

bole of the tree without warning. Below him were no larger branches that he

might clutch and as he lunged downward his foot caught in a looped creeper so

that he turned completely over and alighted on the flat of his back in the center of

the village street.

At the sound of the breaking limb and the crashing body falling through the

branches the startled blacks scurried to their huts for weapons, and when the

braver of them emerged, they saw the still form of an almost naked white man

lying where he had fallen. Emboldened by the fact that he did not move they

approached more closely, and when their eyes discovered no signs of others of his

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Tarzan the Untamed