That morning Tarzan had brought
them fruit, nuts, and plantain, and now he was bringing them the
flesh of his kill, while the best that they might do was to fetch
water from the river. Even now, as they walked across the clearing
toward the boma, they were in utter ignorance of the presence
of Tarzan near them. They did not know that his sharp eyes were
watching them, nor that other eyes less friendly were glaring at
them from a clump of bushes close beside the boma entrance. They
did not know these things, but Tarzan did. No more than they could
he see the creature crouching in the concealment of the foliage, yet
he knew that it was there and what it was and what its intentions,
precisely as well as though it had been lying in the open.
A slight movement of the leaves at the top of a single stem had
apprised him of the presence of a creature there, for the movement
was not that imparted by the wind. It came from pressure at the
bottom of the stem which communicates a different movement to the
leaves than does the wind passing among them, as anyone who has
lived his lifetime in the jungle well knows, and the same wind that
passed through the foliage of the bush brought to the ape-man's
sensitive nostrils indisputable evidence of the fact that Sheeta,
the panther, waited there for the two returning from the river.
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