To
them the sudden scraping of one blade of grass across
another was as effectual a warning as her loudest cry, and
Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap without
a little noise.
Her wild scream was not a warning. It was voiced to
freeze her poor victims in a paralysis of terror for the tiny
fraction of an instant which would suffice for her mighty
claws to sink into their soft flesh and hold them beyond hope
of escape.
So far as the ape was concerned, Sabor reasoned correctly.
The little fellow crouched trembling just an instant, but that
instant was quite long enough to prove his undoing.
Not so, however, with Tarzan, the man-child. His life
amidst the dangers of the jungle had taught him to meet
emergencies with self-confidence, and his higher intelligence
resulted in a quickness of mental action far beyond the powers
of the apes.
So the scream of Sabor, the lioness, galvanized the brain
and muscles of little Tarzan into instant action.
Before him lay the deep waters of the little lake, behind
him certain death; a cruel death beneath tearing claws and
rending fangs.
Tarzan had always hated water except as a medium for
quenching his thirst. He hated it because he connected it with
the chill and discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared
it for the thunder and lightning and wind which accompanied them.
The deep waters of the lake he had been taught by his wild
mother to avoid, and further, had he not seen little Neeta
sink beneath its quiet surface only a few short weeks before
never to return to the tribe?
But of the two evils his quick mind chose the lesser ere the
first note of Sabor's scream had scarce broken the quiet of
the jungle, and before the great beast had covered half her
leap Tarzan felt the chill waters close above his head.
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