Presently he distinguished the outlines of other lions in the
surrounding brush and among the trees. Each of them halted as it
came within sight of the ape-man and there they stood regarding
him in silence. Tarzan wondered how long it would be before they
charged and while he waited he resumed his feeding, though with
every sense constantly alert.
One by one the lions lay down, but always their faces were toward
him and their eyes upon him. There had been no growling and no
roaring--just the quiet drawing of the silent circle about him.
It was all so entirely foreign to anything that Tarzan ever before
had seen lions do that it irritated him so that presently, having
finished his repast, he fell to making insulting remarks to first
one and then another of the lions, after the habit he had learned
from the apes of his childhood.
"Dango, eater of carrion," he called them, and he compared them most
unfavorably with Histah, the snake, the most loathed and repulsive
creature of the jungle. Finally he threw handfuls of earth at them
and bits of broken twigs, and then the lions growled and bared
their fangs, but none of them advanced.
"Cowards," Tarzan taunted them. "Numa with a heart of Bara, the
deer." He told them who he was, and after the manner of the jungle
folk he boasted as to the horrible things he would do to them, but
the lions only lay and watched him.
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