Part 7 (1/2)
”And now,” said Tarzan, ”you must sleep, for tomorroe shall return to Kor-ul-JA and Ohts”
Pan-at-lee, lulled by a feeling of security, slept peacefully into thewhile Tarzan stretched himself upon the hard floor of the recess just outside her cave
The sun was high in the heavens when he awoke; for two hours it had looked down upon another heroic figurehis way through the hideousPal-ul-don from the creatures of the outer world Noaist deep in the sucking ooze, now menaced by loathsome reptiles, thelaboriously by inches along the devious way that he was forced to choose in selecting the least precarious footing Near the center of the reen-hued water He reached it at last after more than two hours of such effort as would have left an ordinaryin the sticky mud, yet he was less than halfway across the marsh Greasy with slireasy with slihtly in the first rays of the rising sun
He paused ahi, easy, powerful strokes calculated less for speed than for endurance, for his was, primarily, a test of the latter, since beyond the open water was another two hours or round He was, perhaps, halfway across and congratulating himself upon the ease of the achievement of this portion of his task when there arose from the depths directly in his path a hideous reptile, which, ide-distended jaws, bore down upon hi shrilly
Tarzan arose and stretched, expanded his great chest and drank in deep draughts of the freshair His clear eyes scanned the wondrous beauties of the landscape spread out before theently riht there spread a panorama of the lower reaches of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho, with its winding streaht were scattered groups of dwellings-the feudal strongholds of the lesser chiefs of the Ho-don A-lur, the City of Light, he could not see as it was hidden by the shoulder of the cliff in which the deserted village lay
For a ave himself over to that spiritual enjoyment of beauty that only the man-mind may attain and then Nature asserted herself and the belly of the beast called aloud that it was hungry Again Tarzan looked down at Kor-ul-GRYF There was the jungle! Grew there a jungle that would not feed Tarzan? The ape-e Was there danger there? Of course Who knew it better than Tarzan? In all jungles lies death, for life and death go hand in hand and where life teems death reaps his fullest harvest Never had Tarzan le hich he could not cope-soain by a co of the man-mind; but Tarzan had never e the night before after he had lain down to sleep and he hadwhat manner of beast so disturbed the slumbers of its betters He reached the foot of the cliff and strode into the jungle and here he halted, his keen eyes and ears watchful and alert, his sensitive nostrils searching each shi+fting air current for the scent spoor of gaiving forth no sound, his bow and arrows in readiness A light e and in this direction he bent his steps Many odors ians of scent Some of these he classified without effort, but others were strange-the odors of beasts and of birds, of trees and shrubs and flohich he was unfamiliar He sensed faintly the reptilian odor that he had learned to connect with the strange, nocturnal forms that had loomed dim and bulky on several occasions since his introduction to Pal-ul-don
And then, suddenly he caught plainly the strong, sweet odor of Bara, the deer Were the belly vocal, Tarzan's would have given a little cry of joy, for it loved the flesh of Bara The ape-man moved rapidly, but cautiously forward The prey was not far distant and as the hunter approached it, he took silently to the trees and still in his nostrils was the faint reptilian odor that spoke of a great creature which he had never yet seen except as a denser shadow aht; but the odor was of such a faintness as suggests to the jungle bred the distance of absolute safety
And now,at a pool where the streale The deer was too far froe, so the ape-man must depend upon the accuracy and force of his first arrohich must drop the deer in its tracks or forfeit both deer and shaft Far back caht not move, bent easily beneath theand Bara, leaping high in air, collapsed upon the ground, an arrow through his heart Tarzan dropped to earth and ran to his kill, lest the aniht even yet rise and escape; but Bara was safely dead As Tarzan stooped to lift it to his shoulder there fell upon his ears a thunderous bellow that seeht elbow, and as his eyes shot in the direction of the sound, there broke upon his vision such a creature as paleontologists have drea possibly existed in the diantic creature, vibrant with , upon him
When Pan-at-lee awoke she looked out upon the niche in search of Tarzan He was not there She sprang to her feet and rushed out, looking down into Kor-ul-GRYF guessing that he had gone down in search of food and there she caught a gli into the forest For an instant she was panic-stricken She knew that he was a stranger in Pal-ul-don and that, so, he e of terror Why did she not call to hiht have done so, but no Pal-ul-don, for they know the ways of the GRYF-they know the weak eyes and the keen ears, and that at the sound of a human voice they come To have called to Tarzan, then, would but have been to invite disaster and so she did not call Instead, afraid though she was, she descended into the gorge for the purpose of overhauling Tarzan and warning hier It was a brave act, since it was perfores of inherited fear of the creatures that she ht be called upon to face Men have been decorated for less
Pan-at-lee, descended fro line of hunters, assumed that Tarzan would ht his tracks, which she soon found well marked, since he had made no effort to conceal them She moved rapidly until she reached the point at which Tarzan had taken to the trees Of course she knehat had happened; since her own people were seh the trees, having no such well-developed sense of scent as he
She could but hope that he had continued on up wind and in this direction she ainst her ribs, her eyes glancing first in one direction and then another She had reached the edge of a clearing when two things happened-she caught sight of Tarzan bending over a dead deer and at the sa roar sounded almost beside her It terrified her beyond description, but it brought no paralysis of fear Instead it galvanized her into instant action with the result that Pan-at-lee swarmed up the nearest tree to the very loftiest branch that would sustain her weight Then she looked down
The thing that Tarzan saw charging hi bellow attracted his surprised eyes loomed terrifically ; but it did not terrify Tarzan, it only angered him, for he saw that it was beyond even his powers to coht cause hiry There was but a single alternative to reht-swift and immediate And Tarzan fled, but he carried the carcass of Bara, the deer, with him He had not more than a dozen paces start, but on the other hand the nearest tree was alreat, towering height of the creature pursuing hih he reached the tree he would have to clih in an incredibly short ti could reach up and pluck hiround, and possibly fros
But Tarzan was no sluggard and though the GRYF was incredibly fast despite its great bulk, it was no , the little aze with envy upon the feats of the ape- GRYF cah he reared up and sought to seize his prey aht, he failed in this also And then, well out of reach, Tarzan came to a stop and there, just above hi
”How came you here?” he asked
She told him ”You came to warn me!” he said ”It was very brave and unselfish of you I arined that I should have been thus surprised The creature was up wind froed I cannot understand it”
”It is not strange,” said Pan-at-lee ”That is one of the peculiarities of the GRYF-it is said that man never knows of its presence until it is upon hireat size”
”But I should have sustedly
”Smelled it!” ejaculated Pan-at-lee ”Smelled it?”
”Certainly How do you suppose I found this deer so quickly? And I sensed the GRYF, too, but faintly as at a great distance” Tarzan suddenly ceased speaking and looked down at the bellowing creature below the for a scent ”Ah!” he exclaimed ”I have it!”
”What?” asked Pan-at-lee
”I was deceived because the creature gives off practically no odor,” explained the ape-man ”What I smelled was the faint arole because of the long presence of many of the creatures-it is the sort of odor that would re time, faint as it is
”Pan-at-lee, did you ever hear of a triceratops? No? Well this thing that you call a GRYF is a triceratops and it has been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years I have seen its skeleton in the ht that the scientists who did such work depended principally upon an overwrought i is not an exact counterpart of the restoration that I saw; but it is so sinizable, and then, too, we es that have elapsed since the paleontologist's speciht by evolution in the living line that has quite evidently persisted in Pal-ul-don”
”Triceratops, London, paleo-I don't knohat you are talking about,” cried Pan-at-lee