EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
Something was moving, stealthily and cautiously, upon the sand of the arena, Presently, framed in the window, silhouetted against the sky, appeared a familiar figure. Tarzan smiled and whispered a word so low that a human ear could scarce have heard it, and Nkima slipped between the bars and dropped to the floor of the dungeon. An instant later the little monkey snuggled close to Tarzan, its long, muscular arms clasped tightly about the neck of the ape-man.
“Come home with me,” pleaded Nkima. “Why do you stay in this cold, dark hole beneath the ground?”
“You have seen the cage in which we sometimes keep Jad-Bal-Ja, the Golden Lion?” demanded Tarzan?
“Yes,” said Nkima.
“Jad-Bal-Ja cannot get out unless we open the gate,” explained Tarzan. “I too am in a cage I cannot get out until they open the gate.”
“I will go and get Muviro and his Gomangani with the sharp sticks,” said Nkima. “They will come and let you out.”
“No, Nkima,” said Tarzan. “If I cannot get out by myself, Muviro could not get here in time to free me, and if he came many of my brave Waziri would be killed, for there are fighting men here in far greater numbers than Muviro could bring.” After awhile Tarzan slept, and curled up within his arms slept Nkima, the little monkey, but when Tarzan awoke in the morning Nkima was gone.
Toward the middle of the morning soldiers came and the door of the dungeon was unlocked and opened to admit several of them, including a young white officer, who was accompanied by a black slave. The officer addressed Tarzan in the language of the city, but the ape-man shook his head, indicating that he did not understand; then the other turned to the black slave with a few words and the latter spoke to Tarzan in the Bagego dialect, asking him if he understood it.
“Yes,” replied the ape-man, and through the interpreter the officer questioned Tarzan.
“Who are you and what were you, a white man, doing in the village of the Bagegos?” asked the officer.
“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” replied the prisoner. “I was looking for another white man who is lost somewhere in
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