The tribe was still loitering about the clearing where stood the hut
that Tarzan and Bertha Kircher had built. Some were idly searching
for food just within the forest's edge, while others squatted
beneath the shade of trees within the clearing.
The girl had emerged from the hut, her tears dried and was gazing
anxiously toward the south into the jungle where Tarzan had disappeared.
Occasionally she cast suspicious glances in the direction of the
huge shaggy anthropoids about her. How easy it would be for one
of those great beasts to enter the boma and slay her. How helpless
she was, even with the spear that the white man had left her, she
realized as she noted for the thousandth time the massive shoulders,
the bull necks, and the great muscles gliding so easily beneath the
glossy coats. Never, she thought, had she seen such personifications
of brute power as were represented by these mighty bulls. Those
huge hands would snap her futile spear as she might snap a match in
two, while their lightest blow could crush her into insensibility
and death.
It was while she was occupied with these depressing thoughts that
there dropped suddenly into the clearing from the trees upon the
south the figure of a mighty young bull. At that time all of the
apes looked much alike to Bertha Kircher, nor was it until some
time later that she realized that each differed from the others
in individual characteristics of face and figure as do individuals
of the human races.
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