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plenty and rapidly filling his belly with the flesh he loved best? But Tarzan of the
Apes was haunted by the picture of a slight, young girl being shoved and struck
by brutal Negresses, and in imagination could see her now camped in this savage
country a prisoner among degraded blacks.
Why was it so difficult to remember that she was only a hated German and a spy?
Why would the fact that she was a woman and white always obtrude itself upon
his consciousness? He hated her as he hated all her kind, and the fate that was
sure to be hers was no more terrible than she in common with all her people
deserved. The matter was settled and Tarzan composed himself to think of other
things, yet the picture would not die--it rose in all its details and annoyed him.
He began to wonder what they were doing to her and where they were taking her.
He was very much ashamed of himself as he had been after the episode in
Wilhelmstal when his weakness had permitted him to spare this spy's life. Was he
to be thus weak again? No!
Night came and he settled himself in an ample tree to rest until morning; but
sleep would not come. Instead came the vision of a white girl being beaten by
black women, and again of the same girl at the mercy of the warriors somewhere
in that dark and forbidding jungle.
With a growl of anger and self-contempt Tarzan arose, shook himself, and swung
from his tree to that adjoining, and thus, through the lower terraces, he followed
the trail that Usanga's party had taken earlier in the afternoon. He had little
difficulty as the band had followed a well-beaten path and when toward midnight
the stench of a native village assailed his delicate nostrils he guessed that his
goal was near and that presently he should find her whom he sought.
Prowling stealthily as prowls Numa, the lion, stalking a wary prey, Tarzan moved
noiselessly about the palisade, listening and sniffing. At the rear of the village he
discovered a tree whose branches extended over the top of the palisade and a
moment later he had dropped quietly into the village.
From hut to hut he went searching with keen ears and nostrils some confirming
evidence of the presence of the girl, and at last, faint and almost obliterated by
the odor of the Gomangani, he found it hanging like a delicate vapor about a
small hut. The village was quiet now, for the last of the beer and the food had
been disposed of and the blacks lay in their huts overcome by stupor, yet Tarzan
made no noise that even a sober man keenly alert might have heard.
He passed around to the entrance of the hut and listened. From within came no
sound, not even the low breathing of one awake; yet he was sure that the girl had
been here and perhaps was even now, and so he entered, slipping in as silently as
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