Then he continued digging until he had unearthed the chest.
This also he dragged to the side of the corpse. Then he
filled in the smaller hole below the grave, replaced the body
and the earth around and above it, covered it over with
underbrush, and returned to the chest.
Four sailors had sweated beneath the burden of its weight
--Tarzan of the Apes picked it up as though it had been an
empty packing case, and with the spade slung to his back by a
piece of rope, carried it off into the densest part of the jungle.
He could not well negotiate the trees with his awkward burden,
but he kept to the trails, and so made fairly good time.
For several hours he traveled a little north of east until he
came to an impenetrable wall of matted and tangled vegetation.
Then he took to the lower branches, and in another fifteen
minutes he emerged into the amphitheater of the apes, where
they met in council, or to celebrate the rites of the Dum-Dum.
Near the center of the clearing, and not far from the
drum, or altar, he commenced to dig. This was harder work
than turning up the freshly excavated earth at the grave, but
Tarzan of the Apes was persevering and so he kept at his
labor until he was rewarded by seeing a hole sufficiently deep
to receive the chest and effectually hide it from view.
Why had he gone to all this labor without knowing the
value of the contents of the chest?
Tarzan of the Apes had a man's figure and a man's brain,
but he was an ape by training and environment.
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