intervals of utter silence in which the crudest of imaginations
might have conjured crouching beasts of prey tensed for the fatal
charge; but through it Tarzan passed unconcerned, yet always alert.
Now he swung lightly to the lower terraces of the overarching
trees when some subtle sense warned him that Numa lay upon a kill
directly in his path, or again he sprang lightly to one side as
Buto, the rhinoceros, lumbered toward him along the narrow, deep-worn
trail, for the ape-man, ready to fight upon necessity's slightest
pretext, avoided unnecessary quarrels.

When he swung himself at last into the tree he sought, the moon was
obscured by a heavy cloud, and the tree tops were waving wildly in
a steadily increasing wind whose soughing drowned the lesser noises
of the jungle. Upward went Tarzan toward a sturdy crotch across which
he long since had laid and secured a little platform of branches.
It was very dark now, darker even than it had been before, for
almost the entire sky was overcast by thick, black clouds.

Presently the man-beast paused, his sensitive nostrils dilating as
he sniffed the air about him. Then, with the swiftness and agility of
a cat, he leaped far outward upon a swaying branch, sprang upward
through the darkness, caught another, swung himself upon it and
then to one still higher. What could have so suddenly transformed
his matter-of-fact ascent of the giant bole to the swift and wary
action of his detour among the branches? You or I could have seen
nothing-not even the little platform that an instant before had
been just above him and which now was immediately below--but as he
swung above it we should have heard an ominous growl; and then as
the moon was momentarily uncovered, we should have seen both the
platform, dimly, and a dark mass that lay stretched upon it--a dark