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that the brown fingers cut off almost instantly. The fellow struggled to escape the

clutch of the naked creature upon his breast but equally as well might he have

fought to escape the talons of Numa, the lion.

Gradually his struggles lessened, his pin-point eyes popped from their sockets,

rolling horribly upward, while from his foam-flecked lips his swollen tongue

protruded. As his struggles ceased Tarzan arose, and placing a foot upon the

carcass of his kill, was upon the point of screaming forth his victory cry when the

thought that the work before him required the utmost caution sealed his lips.

Walking to the edge of the roof he looked down into the narrow, winding street

below. At intervals, apparently at each street intersection, an oil flare sputtered

dimly from brackets set in the walls a trifle higher than a man's head. For the

most part the winding alleys were in dense shadow and even in the immediate

vicinity of the flares the illumination was far from brilliant. In the restricted area

of his vision he could see that there were still a few of the strange inhabitants

moving about the narrow thoroughfares.

To prosecute his search for the young officer and the girl he must be able to move

about the city as freely as possible, but to pass beneath one of the corner flares,

naked as he was except for a loin cloth, and in every other respect markedly

different from the inhabitants of the city, would be but to court almost immediate

discovery. As these thoughts flashed through his mind and he cast about for

some feasible plan of action, his eyes fell upon the corpse upon the roof near him,

and immediately there occurred to him the possibility of disguising himself in the

raiment of his conquered adversary.

It required but a few moments for the ape-man to clothe himself in the tights,

sandals, and parrot emblazoned yellow tunic of the dead soldier. Around his

waist he buckled the saber belt but beneath the tunic he retained the hunting

knife of his dead father. His other weapons he could not lightly discard, and so,

in the hope that he might eventually recover them, he carried them to the edge of

the wall and dropped them among the foliage at its base. At the last moment he

found it difficult to part with his rope, which, with his knife, was his most

accustomed weapon, and one which he had used for the greatest length of time.

He found that by removing the saber belt he could wind the rope about his waist

beneath his tunic, and then replacing the belt still retain it entirely concealed

from chance observation.

At last, satisfactorily disguised, and with even his shock of black hair adding to

the verisimilitude of his likeness to the natives of the city, he sought for some

means of reaching the street below. While he might have risked a drop from the

eaves of the roof he feared to do so lest he attract the attention of passers-by, and

202

Tarzan the Untamed