Scarcely a
day or night of his jungle life--and practically all his life had
been spent in the jungle--had he not heard the roaring of hungry
lions, or angry lions, or love-sick lions. Such sounds affected
Tarzan as the tooting of an automobile horn may affect you--if you
are in front of the automobile it warns you out of the way, if you
are not in front of it you scarcely notice it. Figuratively Tarzan
was not in front of the automobile--Numa could not reach him and
Tarzan knew it, so he continued deliberately to choke the entrance
until there was no possibility of Numa's getting out again. When
he was quite through he made a grimace at the hidden lion beyond
the barrier and resumed his way toward the east. "A man-eater who
will eat no more men," he soliloquized.
That night Tarzan lay up under an overhanging shelf of rock. The
next morning he resumed his journey, stopping only long enough to
make a kill and satisfy his hunger. The other beasts of the wild
eat and lie up; but Tarzan never let his belly interfere with his
plans. In this lay one of the greatest differences between the ape-man
and his fellows of the jungles and forests. The firing ahead rose
and fell during the day. He had noticed that it was highest at
dawn and immediately after dusk and that during the night it almost
ceased. In the middle of the afternoon of the second day he came
upon troops moving up toward the front.
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