Page:Jungle Tales of Tarzan.djvu/316

304 fire! It is the fire that saves Goro from Numa. Do you see them, Taug? Some night Numa will be very hungry and very angrythen he will leap over the thorn bushes which encircle Goro and we will have no more light after Kudu seeks his lairthe night will be black with the blackness that comes when Goro is lazy and sleeps late into the night, or when he wanders through the skies by day, forgetting the jungle and its people."

Taug looked stupidly at the heavens and then at Tarzan. A meteor fell, blazing a flaming way through the sky. "Look!" cried Tarzan. "Goro has thrown a burning branch at Numa."

Taug grumbled. "Numa is down below," he said. "Numa does not hunt above the trees." But he looked curiously and a little fearfully at the bright stars above him, as though he saw them for the first time, and doubtless it was the first time that Taug ever had seen the stars, though they had been in the sky above him every night of his life. To Taug they were as the gorgeous jungle bloomshe could not eat them and so he ignored them.

Taug fidgeted and was nervous. For a long time he lay sleepless, watching the stars the flaming eyes of the beasts of prey surrounding Goro, the moonGoro, by whose light the apes danced to the beating of their earthen drums. If Goro should be eaten by Numa there could be no more