THE HEIGHT OF CIVILIZATION
that all whites are cowards because one has met a cowardly white.
"There is as much individuality among the lower orders, gentlemen, as there is among ourselves.
"Today we may go out and stumble upon a lion which is over-timid—he runs away from us. Tomorrow we may meet his uncle or his twin-brother, and our friends wonder why we do not return from the jungle.
"For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard."
"There would be little pleasure in hunting," retorted the first speaker, "if one is afraid of the thing he hunts."
D'Arnot smiled. Tarzan afraid!
"I do not exactly understand what you mean by fear," said Tarzan. "Like lions, fear is a different thing in different men, but to me the only pleasure in the hunt is the knowledge that the hunted thing has power to harm me as much as I have to harm him.
"If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt."
"Then I am to take it that Monsieur Tarzan
[355]
