Presently Tarzan came up with the white man, who, almost
fagged, was leaning against a tree wiping the perspiration
from his forehead. The ape-man, hiding safe behind a
screen of foliage, sat watching this new specimen of his own
race intently.
At intervals Clayton called aloud and finally it came to
Tarzan that he was searching for the old man.
Tarzan was on the point of going off to look for them himself,
when he caught the yellow glint of a sleek hide moving
cautiously through the jungle toward Clayton.
It was Sheeta, the leopard. Now, Tarzan heard the soft
bending of grasses and wondered why the young white man
was not warned. Could it be he had failed to note the loud
warning? Never before had Tarzan known Sheeta to be so clumsy.
No, the white man did not hear. Sheeta was crouching for
the spring, and then, shrill and horrible, there rose from the
stillness of the jungle the awful cry of the challenging ape,
and Sheeta turned, crashing into the underbrush.
Clayton came to his feet with a start. His blood ran cold.
Never in all his life had so fearful a sound smote upon his
ears. He was no coward; but if ever man felt the icy fingers
of fear upon his heart, William Cecil Clayton, eldest son of
Lord Greystoke of England, did that day in the fastness of
the African jungle.
The noise of some great body crashing through the underbrush
so close beside him, and the sound of that bloodcurdling
shriek from above, tested Clayton's courage to the limit;
but he could not know that it was to that very voice he owed
his life, nor that the creature who hurled it forth was his own
cousin--the real Lord Greystoke.
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