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TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN
55

place, and there the two settled down to await the coming of the dawn, while below them Numa the lion prowled for a while, coughing and grunt­ing, and occasionally voicing a deep roar that shook the jungle.

When daylight came at last the two, exhausted by a sleepless night, slipped to the ground. The girl would have delayed, hoping that the war­riors of Obebe might overtake them; but the man harbored a fear rather than a hope of the same contingency and was, therefore, for hastening on as rapidly as possible that he might put the great­est possible distance between himself and the black, cannibal chief.

He was completely lost, having not the re­motest idea of where he should search for a reasonably good trail to the coast, nor, at pres­ent, did he care; his one wish being to escape recapture by Obebe, and so he elected to move northward, keeping always an eye open for any indication of a well-marked trail toward the west. Eventually, he hoped, he might discover a village of friendly natives who would aid him upon his journey toward the coast, and so the two moved as rapidly as they could in a northerly direction, their way skirting The Great Thorn Forest along the eastern edge of which they traveled.


The sun beating down upon the hot corral of The First Woman found it deserted of life.