He was, perhaps, halfway across and congratulating
himself upon the ease of the achievement of this portion of his task
when there arose from the depths directly in his path a hideous
reptile, which, with wide-distended jaws, bore down upon him,
hissing shrilly.
Tarzan arose and stretched, expanded his great chest and drank in
deep draughts of the fresh morning air. His clear eyes scanned the
wondrous beauties of the landscape spread out before them. Directly
below lay Kor-ul-gryf, a dense, somber green of gently moving tree
tops. To Tarzan it was neither grim, nor forbidding--it was jungle,
beloved jungle. To his right there spread a panorama of the lower
reaches of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho, with its winding streams and
its blue lakes. Gleaming whitely in the sunlight were scattered
groups of dwellings--the feudal strongholds of the lesser chiefs
of the Ho-don. A-lur, the City of Light, he could not see as it was
hidden by the shoulder of the cliff in which the deserted village
lay.
For a moment Tarzan gave himself over to that spiritual enjoyment
of beauty that only the man-mind may attain and then Nature asserted
herself and the belly of the beast called aloud that it was hungry.
Again Tarzan looked down at Kor-ul-gryf. There was the jungle! Grew
there a jungle that would not feed Tarzan? The ape-man smiled and
commenced the descent to the gorge.
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