Edgar Rice Burroughs

Jungle Tales of Tarzan Edgar Rice Burroughs

TEEKA, STRETCHED AT luxurious ease in the shade of the tropical forest, presented, unquestionably, a most alluring picture of young, feminine loveliness. Or at least so thought Tarzanof the Apes, who squatted upon a low-swinging branch in a near-by tree and looked down upon her. Just to have seen him there, lolling upon the swaying bough of the jungle-forest giant, his brownskin mottled by the brilliant equatorial sunlight which percolated through the leafy canopy of greenabove him, his clean-limbed body relaxed in graceful ease, his shapely head partly turned incontemplative absorption and his intelligent, gray eyes dreamily devouring the object of theirdevotion, you would have thought him the reincarnation of some demigod of old. You would not have guessed that in infancy he had suckled at the breast of a hideous, hairy sheape, nor that in all his conscious past since his parents had passed away in the little cabin by thelandlocked harbor at the jungle's verge, he had known no other associates than the sullen bulls andthe snarling cows of the tribe of Kerchak, the great ape. Nor, could you have read the thoughts which passed through that active, healthy brain, thelongings and desires and aspirations which the sight of Teeka inspired, would you have been anymore inclined to give credence to the reality of the origin of the ape-man. For, from his thoughtsalone, you could never have gleaned the truth-that he had been born to a gentle English lady orthat his sire had been an English nobleman of time-honored lineage. Lost to Tarzan of the Apes was the truth of his origin. That he was John Clayton, LordGreystoke, with a seat in the House of Lords, he did not know, nor, knowing, would haveunderstood. Yes, Teeka was indeed beautiful!Of course Kala had been beautiful-one's mother is always that-but Teeka was beautiful in away all her own, an indescribable sort of way which Tarzan was just beginning to sense in a rathervague and hazy manner. For years had Tarzan and Teeka been play-fellows, and Teeka still continued to be playful whilethe young bulls of her own age were rapidly becoming surly and morose. Tarzan, if he gave thematter much thought at all, probably reasoned that his growing attachment for the young femalecould be easily accounted for by the fact that of the former playmates she and he alone retained anydesire to frolic as of old