Above them Ska
still circled, and it seemed to the ape-man that the ill-omened
bird hovered ever lower and lower as though reading in that failing
gait the nearing of the end, and through cracked lips Tarzan growled
out his defiance.
Mile after mile Tarzan of the Apes put slowly behind him, borne up
by sheer force of will where a lesser man would have lain down to
die and rest forever tired muscles whose every move was an agony of
effort; but at last his progress became practically mechanical--he
staggered on with a dazed mind that reacted numbly to a single
urge--on, on, on! The hills were now but a dim, ill-defined blur
ahead. Sometimes he forgot that they were hills, and again he
wondered vaguely why he must go on forever through all this torture
endeavoring to overtake them--the fleeing, elusive hills. Presently
he began to hate them and there formed within his half-delirious
brain the hallucination that the hills were German hills, that they
had slain someone dear to him, whom he could never quite recall,
and that he was pursuing to slay them.
This idea, growing, appeared to give him strength--a new and
revivifying purpose--so that for a time he no longer staggered; but
went forward steadily with head erect. Once he stumbled and fell,
and when he tried to rise he found that he could not--that his
strength was so far gone that he could only crawl forward on his
hands and knees for a few yards and then sink down again to rest.
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