Page:Tarzan of the Apes.djvu/346

 "What would you think if you had to live all of your life in that jungle as our forest man has done?"

"I'm afraid I'd be a blooming bounder as a wild man," laughed Clayton, ruefully. "Those noises at night make the hair on my head bristle. I suppose that I should be ashamed to admit it but it's the truth."

"I don't know about that," said Lieutenant Charpentier. "I never thought much about fear and that sort of thing—never tried to determine whether I was a coward or a brave man; but the other night as we lay in the jungle there after poor D'Arnot was taken, and those jungle noises rose and fell around us I began to think that I was a coward indeed. It was not the roaring and growling of the big beasts that effected me so much as it was the stealthy noises—the ones that you heard suddenly close by and then listened vainly for a repetition of—the unaccountable sounds as of a great body moving almost noiselessly, and the knowledge that you didn't know how close it was, or whether it were creeping closer after you ceased to hear it? It was those noises—and the eyes.

"Mon Dieu!" I shall see them in the dark forever—the eyes that you see, and those that you don't see, but feel; ah, they are the worst."

All were silent for a moment, and then Jane Porter spoke. [330]