None was more stealthy in the mimic hunt, none more
ferocious than he in the wild ferocity of the attack, none
who leaped so high into the air in the Dance of Death.
As the noise and rapidity of the drumbeats increased the
dancers apparently became intoxicated with the wild rhythm
and the savage yells. Their leaps and bounds increased, their
bared fangs dripped saliva, and their lips and breasts were
flecked with foam.
For half an hour the weird dance went on, until, at a sign
from Kerchak, the noise of the drums ceased, the female
drummers scampering hurriedly through the line of dancers
toward the outer rim of squatting spectators. Then, as one,
the males rushed headlong upon the thing which their terrific
blows had reduced to a mass of hairy pulp.
Flesh seldom came to their jaws in satisfying quantities, so
a fit finale to their wild revel was a taste of fresh killed meat,
and it was to the purpose of devouring their late enemy that
they now turned their attention.
Great fangs sunk into the carcass tearing away huge hunks,
the mightiest of the apes obtaining the choicest morsels,
while the weaker circled the outer edge of the fighting,
snarling pack awaiting their chance to dodge in and snatch a
dropped tidbit or filch a remaining bone before all was gone.
Tarzan, more than the apes, craved and needed flesh.
Descended from a race of meat eaters, never in his life, he
thought, had he once satisfied his appetite for animal food;
and so now his agile little body wormed its way far into the
mass of struggling, rending apes in an endeavor to obtain a
share which his strength would have been unequal to the task
of winning for him.
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