As his eyes
fell upon the newcomer a slight flush mounted the boy's cheeks.
"Father!" he exclaimed.
The ape gave one look at the English lord, and then leaped toward
him, calling out in excited jabbering. The man, his eyes going
wide in astonishment, stopped as though turned to stone.
"Akut!" he cried.
The boy looked, bewildered, from the ape to his father, and from
his father to the ape. The trainer's jaw dropped as he listened
to what followed, for from the lips of the Englishman flowed the
gutturals of an ape that were answered in kind by the huge anthropoid
that now clung to him.
And from the wings a hideously bent and disfigured old man watched
the tableau in the box, his pock-marked features working spasmodically
in varying expressions that might have marked every sensation in
the gamut from pleasure to terror.
"Long have I looked for you, Tarzan," said Akut. "Now that I have
found you I shall come to your jungle and live there always."
The man stroked the beast's head. Through his mind there was
running rapidly a train of recollection that carried him far into
the depths of the primeval African forest where this huge, man-like
beast had fought shoulder to shoulder with him years before.
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