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Chapter XVII - The Walled City

Dropping to the ground once more he picked up the trail of the girl and her

captors, which he followed easily along what appeared to be a well-beaten trail. It

was not long before he came to a small stream, where he quenched his thirst, and

thereafter he saw that the trail followed in the general direction of the stream,

which ran southwesterly. Here and there were cross trails and others which

joined the main avenue, and always upon each of them were the tracks and scent

of the great cats, of Numa, the lion, and Sheeta, the panther.

With the exception of a few small rodents there appeared to be no other wild life

on the surface of the valley. There was no indication of Bara, the deer, or Horta,

the boar, or of Gorgo, the buffalo, Buto, Tantor, or Duro. Histah, the snake, was

there. He saw him in the trees in greater numbers than he ever had seen Histah

before; and once beside a reedy pool he caught a scent that could have belonged

to none other than Gimla the crocodile, but upon none of these did the

Tarmangani care to feed.

And so, as he craved meat, he turned his attention to the birds above him. His

assailants of the night before had not disarmed him. Either in the darkness and

the rush of the charging lions the human foe had overlooked him or else they had

considered him dead; but whatever the reason he still retained his weapons--his

spear and his long knife, his bow and arrows, and his grass rope.

Fitting a shaft to his bow Tarzan awaited an opportunity to bring down one of the

larger birds, and when the opportunity finally presented itself he drove the arrow

straight to its mark. As the gaily plumaged creature fluttered to earth its

companions and the little monkeys set up a most terrific chorus of wails and

screaming protests. The whole forest became suddenly a babel of hoarse screams

and shrill shrieks.

Tarzan would not have been surprised had one or two birds in the immediate

vicinity given voice to terror as they fled, but that the whole life of the jungle

should set up so weird a protest filled him with disgust. It was an angry face that

he turned up toward the monkeys and the birds as there suddenly stirred within

him a savage inclination to voice his displeasure and his answer to what he

considered their challenge. And so it was that there broke upon this jungle for the

first time Tarzan's hideous scream of victory and challenge.

The effect upon the creatures above him was instantaneous. Where before the air

had trembled to the din of their voices, now utter silence reigned and a moment

later the ape-man was alone with his puny kill.

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Tarzan the Untamed