For two days Tarzan sought futilely for some clew to the whereabouts
of the machine or its occupants. He cached portions of his kills at
different points, building cairns of rock to mark their locations.
He crossed the first deep gorge and circled far beyond it. Occasionally
he stopped and called aloud, listening for some response but
only silence rewarded him-a sinister silence that his cries only
accentuated.
Late in the evening of the second day he came to the well-remembered
gorge in which lay the clean-picked bones of the ancient adventurer,
and here, for the first time, Ska, the vulture, picked up his trail.
"Not this time, Ska," cried the ape-man in a taunting voice, "for
now indeed is Tarzan Tarzan. Before, you stalked the grim skeleton
of a Tarmangani and even then you lost. Waste not your time upon
Tarzan of the Apes in the full of his strength." But still Ska, the
vulture, circled and soared above him, and the ape-man, notwithstanding
his boasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brain ran
a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two
words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska
knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up
a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger.
Lowering himself over the precipitous side of the gorge Tarzan half
clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath.
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