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TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN
57

down had seized the youth by the hair and dragged him to safety as the lion’s raking talons embraced thin air beneath the feet of the Alalus.

The following day the ape-man concerned him­self seriously in the hunt for food, weapons and apparel. Naked and unarmed as he was it might have gone hard with him had he been other than Tarzan of the Apes, and it had gone hard, too, with the Alalus had it not been for the ape-man. Fruits and nuts Tarzan found, and birds’ eggs, but he craved meat and for meat he hunted assid­uously, not alone because of the flesh of the kill, but for the skin and the gut and the tendons, that he could use in the fabrication of the things he required for the safety and comfort of his primi­tive existence.

As he searched for the spoor of his prey he searched also for the proper woods for a spear and for bow and arrows, nor were they difficult to find in this forest of familiar trees, but the day was almost done before the gentle wind, up which he had been hunting, carried to his sensitive nostrils the scent spoor of Bara the deer.

Swinging into a tree he motioned the Alalus to follow him, but so inept and awkward was the creature that Tarzan was compelled to drag him to a place among the branches, where, by signs, he attempted to impart to him the fact that he wished him to remain where he was, watching the materials that the ape-man had collected for his