www.freeclassicebooks.com

Little Manu, the monkey, was much impressed, for the way of the jungle is to

boast and to believe. It was then that he condescended to tell Tarzan more of the

Mangani.

They go there and there and there," he said, making a wide sweep with a brown

hand first toward the north, then west, and then south again. "For there," and he

pointed due west, "is much hunting; but between lies a great place where there is

no food and no water, so they must go that way," and again he swung his hand

through the half-circle that explained to Tarzan the great detour the apes made to

come to their hunting ground to the west.

That was all right for the Mangani, who are lazy and do not care to move rapidly;

but for Tarzan the straight road would be the best. He would cross the dry

country and come to the good hunting in a third of the time that it would take to

go far to the north and circle back again. And so it was that he continued on

toward the west, and crossing a range of low mountains came in sight of a broad

plateau, rock strewn and desolate. Far in the distance he saw another range of

mountains beyond which he felt must lie the hunting ground of the Mangani.

There he would join them and remain for a while before continuing on toward the

coast and the little cabin that his father had built beside the land-locked harbor

at the jungle's edge.

Tarzan was full of plans. He would rebuild and enlarge the cabin of his birth,

constructing storage houses where he would make the apes lay away food when it

was plenty against the times that were lean--a thing no ape ever had dreamed of

doing. And the tribe would remain always in the locality and he would be king

again as he had in the past. He would try to teach them some of the better things

that he had learned from man, yet knowing the ape-mind as only Tarzan could,

he feared that his labors would be for naught.

The ape-man found the country he was crossing rough in the extreme, the

roughest he ever had encountered. The plateau was cut by frequent canyons the

passage of which often entailed hours of wearing effort. The vegetation was sparse

and of a faded brown color that lent to the whole landscape a most depressing

aspect. Great rocks were strewn in every direction as far as the eye could see,

lying partially embedded in an impalpable dust that rose in clouds about him at

every step. The sun beat down mercilessly out of a cloudless sky.

For a day Tarzan toiled across this now hateful land and at the going down of the

sun the distant mountains to the west seemed no nearer than at morn. Never a

sign of living thing had the ape-man seen, other than Ska, that bird of ill omen,

that had followed him tirelessly since he had entered this parched waste.

Tarzan the Untamed