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the full light of the flare. His first inclination was to go steadily on, for personally
he had no objection to chancing a scrimmage with them; but a sudden
recollection of the girl, possibly a helpless prisoner in the hands of these people,
caused him to seek some other and less hazardous plan of action.
He had almost emerged from the shadow of the arcade into the full light of the
flare and the approaching men were but a few yards from him, when he suddenly
kneeled and pretended to adjust the wrappings of his sandals--wrappings, which,
by the way, he was not at all sure that he had adjusted as their makers had
intended them to be adjusted. He was still kneeling when the soldiers came
abreast of him. Like the others he had passed they paid no attention to him and
the moment they were behind him he continued upon his way, turning to the
right at the intersection of the two streets.
The street he now took was, at this point, so extremely winding that, for the most
part, it received no benefit from the flares at either corner, so that he was forced
practically to grope his way in the dense shadows of the arcade. The street
became a little straighter just before he reached the next flare, and as he came
within sight of it he saw silhouetted against a patch of light the figure of a lion.
The beast was coming slowly down the street in Tarzan's direction.
A woman crossed the way directly in front of it and the lion paid no attention to
her, nor she to the lion. An instant later a little child ran after the woman and so
close did he run before the lion that the beast was forced to turn out of its way a
step to avoid colliding with the little one. The ape-man grinned and crossed
quickly to the opposite side of the street, for his delicate senses indicated that at
this point the breeze stirring through the city streets and deflected by the
opposite wall would now blow from the lion toward him as the beast passed,
whereas if he remained upon the side of the street upon which he had been
walking when he discovered the carnivore, his scent would have been borne to
the nostrils of the animal, and Tarzan was sufficiently jungle-wise to realize that
while he might deceive the eyes of man and beast he could not so easily disguise
from the nostrils of one of the great cats that he was a creature of a different
species from the inhabitants of the city, the only human beings, possibly, that
Numa was familiar with. In him the cat would recognize a stranger, and,
therefore, an enemy, and Tarzan had no desire to be delayed by an encounter
with a savage lion. His ruse worked successfully, the lion passing him with not
more than a side glance in his direction.
He had proceeded for some little distance and had about reached a point where
he judged he would find the street which led up from the city gate when, at an
intersection of two streets, his nostrils caught the scent spoor of the girl. Out of a
maze of other scent spoors the ape-man picked the familiar odor of the girl and, a
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