This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
34
TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN

ceremoniously to the ground. Here, in the cave­ mouth, she kindled a fire, twirling a fire-stick dex­terously amidst dry tinder in a bit of hollowed wood, and cutting generous strips from the car­case of the antelope ate ravenously. While she was thus occupied the man regained conscious­ness and sitting up looked about, dazed. Pres­ently his nostrils caught the aroma of the cook­ing meat and he pointed at it. The woman handed him the rude stone knife that she had tossed back to the floor of the cave and motioned toward the meat. The man seized the implement and was soon broiling a generous cut above the fire. Half burned and half raw as it was he ate it with seeming relish, and as he ate the woman sat and watched him. He was not much to look at, yet she may have thought him handsome. Unlike the women, who wore no ornaments, the man had bracelets and anklets as well as a neck­lace of teeth and pebbles, while in his hair, which was wound into a small knot above his forehead, were thrust several wooden skewers ten or twelve inches long, which protruded in various direc­tions in a horizontal plane.

When the man had eaten his fill the woman rose and seizing him by the hair dragged him into the cave. He scratched and bit at her, try­ing to escape, but he was no match for his captor.

Upon the floor of the amphitheater, before the