EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
my fellow prisoners and we have not forgotten the language of our mothers.”
“Good,” said Tarzan. “Through you this young woman may speak to me.”
“She wants to know who you are, and where you came from, and what you were doing in her garden, and how you got,here, and how you happened to protect her from Fastus, and—”
Tarzan held up his hand.
“One at a time,” he cried. Tell her I am Tarzan of the Apes, a stranger from a far country, and I came here in friendship seeking one of my own people who is lost.”
Now came an interruption in the form of loud pounding and hallooing beyond the outer doorway of the building.
“See what that may be, Axuch,” directed the girl, and as the one so addressed, and evidently a slave, humbly turned to do her bidding, she once more addressed Tarzan through the interpreter.
“You have won the gratitude of Dilecta,” she said “and you shall be rewarded by her father.”
At this moment Axuch returned followed by a young officer. As the eyes of the newcomer fell upon Tarzan they went wide and he started back, his hand going to the hilt of his sword, and simultaneously Tarzan recognized him as Maximus Praeclarus, the young patrician officer who had conducted him from the Colosseum to the palace.
“Lay off your sword, Maximus Praeclarus,” said the young girl, “for this man is no enemy.”
“And you are sure of that, Dilecta?” demanded Praeclarus “What do you know of him?”
“I know that he came in time to save me from this swine who would have harmed me,” said the girl haughtily, casting a withering glance at Fastus.
“I do not understand,” said Praeclarus. “This is a barbarian prisoner of war who calls himself Tarzan and whom I took this morning from the Colosseum to the palace at the command of the Emperor, that Sublatus might look upon the strange creature, whom some thought to be a spy from Castrum Mare.”
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