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continuation of the jungle trail leading from the forest. Buildings on either hand

adjoined the wall and fronted the narrow, winding street, which was only visible

for a short distance ahead. The houses were practically all two-storied structures,

the upper stories flush with the street while the walls of the first story were set

back some ten feet, a series of simple columns and arches supporting the front of

the second story and forming an arcade on either side of the narrow

thoroughfare.

The pathway in the center of the street was unpaved, but the floors of the arcades

were cut stone of various shapes and sizes but all carefully fitted and laid without

mortar. These floors gave evidence of great antiquity, there being a distinct

depression down the center as though the stone had been worn away by the

passage of countless sandaled feet during the ages that it had lain there.

There were few people astir at this early hour, and these were of the same type as

their captors. At first those whom they saw were only men, but as they went

deeper into the city they came upon a few naked children playing in the soft dust

of the roadway. Many they passed showed the greatest surprise and curiosity in

the prisoners, and often made inquiries of the guards, which the two assumed

must have been in relation to themselves, while others appeared not to notice

them at all.

"I wish we could understand their bally language," exclaimed Smith-Oldwick.

"Yes," said the girl, "I would like to ask them what they are going to do with us."

"That would be interesting," said the man. "I have been doing considerable

wondering along that line myself."

"I don't like the way their canine teeth are filed," said the girl. "It's too suggestive

of some of the cannibals I have seen."

"You don't really believe they are cannibals, do you?" asked the man. "You don't

think white people are ever cannibals, do you?"

"Are these people white?" asked the girl.

They're not Negroes, that's certain," rejoined the man. "Their skin is yellow, but

yet it doesn't resemble the Chinese exactly, nor are any of their features Chinese."

It was at this juncture that they caught their first glimpse of a native woman. She

was similar in most respects to the men though her stature was smaller and her

figure more symmetrical. Her face was more repulsive than that of the men,

possibly because of the fact that she was a woman, which rather accentuated the

idiosyncrasies of eyes, pendulous lip, pointed tusks and stiff, low-growing hair.

178

Tarzan the Untamed