EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
creased. He leaped from Tarzan’s shoulder to the ground, jumped up and down several times and then springing back to Tarzan’s side, seized his arm and attempted to drag him to his feet.
“Run, run!” he cried, in the language of the apes. “Strange Gomangani are coming. They will kill little Nkima.”
“Do not be afraid, Nkima,” said the ape-man. “Tarzan and Muviro will not let the strangers hurt you.”
“I smell a strange Tarmangani,” chattered Nkima. “There is a Tarmangani with them. The Tarmangani are worse than the Gomangani. They come with thundersticks and kill little Nkima and all his brothers and sisters. They kill the Mangani. They kill the Gomangani. They kill everything with their thundersticks. Nkima does not like the Tarmangani. Nkima is afraid.”
To Nkima, as to the other denizens of the jungle, Tarzan was no Tarmangani, no white man. He was of the jungle. He was one of them, and if they thought of him as being anything other than just Tarzan it was as a Mangani, a great ape, that they classified him.
The advance of the strangers was now plainly audible to everyone in the camp. The Waziri warriors glanced into the jungle in the direction from which the sounds were coming and then back to Tarzan and Muviro, but when they saw that their leaders were not concerned they went quietly on with their cooking.
A tall, black warrior was the first of the party to come within sight of the camp. When he saw the Waziri he halted and an instant later a bearded white man stopped beside him.
For an instant the white man surveyed the camp and then he came forward, making the sign of peace. Out of the jungle a dozen or more blacks followed him. Most of them were porters, there being but three or four rifles in evidence.
Tarzan and the Waziri realized at once that it was a small and harmless party, and even Nkima, who had retreated to the safety of a near-by tree, showed his contempt by scampering fearlessly back to climb to the shoulder of his master.
“Doctor von Harben!” exclaimed Tarzan, as the bearded
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