Page:Tarzan and the Lost Empire.pdf/44

heard men issuing orders. He heard children crying and the pounding of many naked feet upon the hard ground. Then the war-drums boomed and he heard clashing of weapons upon shields and loud shouting. He saw the guards before the doorway spring to their feet and run to join the other warriors and then Lukedi, at the doorway, shrank back with a cry of terror.

“They come! They come!” he cried, and ran to the far side of the hut where he crouched in terror.

Erich von Harben looked into the faces of the tall, almost naked, black warriors whose weapons menaced him across the gunwale of their low dugout, and the first thing to attract his attention was the nature of those weapons.

Their spears were unlike any that he had ever seen in the hands of modern savages. Corresponding with the ordinary spear of the African savage, they carried a heavy and formidable javelin that suggested to the mind of the young archaeologist nothing other than the ancient Roman pike, and this similarity was further confirmed by the appearance of the short, broad, two-edged swords that dangled in scabbards supported by straps passing over the left shoulders of the warriors. If this weapon was not the gladius Hispanus of the Imperial Legionary, von Harben felt that his studies and researches had been for naught.

“Ask them what they want, Gabula,” he directed. “Perhaps they will understand you.”

“Who are you and what do you want of us?” demanded Gabula in the Bantu dialect of his tribe.

“We wish to be friends,” added von Harben in the same dialect. “We have come to visit your country. Take us to your chief.”