He therefore advanced toward the east, and
reached the town of Zouricolo, in the Bornou country, which is the core of the great central empire of Africa.
He was, I should say, a hundred yards in advance of his closest companion, and so I called to Tars Tarkas to ascend a great tree that brushed the cliff's face while I dispatched the fellow, thus giving the less agile Thark an opportunity to
reach the higher branches before the entire horde should be upon us and every vestige of escape cut off.
It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless there upon the northern ice, while all that was dearest to me drifted farther from my
reach in the clutches of that black fiend, for when I opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang yet battled at the ladder's top, and the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to the south--but the end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feet above the ground.
"And, if your journey had not been interrupted by these Indians, you would have
reached New York on the morning of the 11th?"
By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way, after a number of days, I
reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about eighty-two miles from Hampton.
But we did not long stand to contemplate it, impatient as I was to
reach the waters of the torrent which flowed beneath us.
In a moment more it would rise swiftly out of
reach. At first Tarzan thought of fitting an arrow to his bow and slaying Usanga, but as quickly he abandoned the idea because he knew that the moment the pilot was slain the machine, running wild, would dash the girl to death among the trees.
Evidently his mission was to protect me only, I thought, but when we
reached the edge of the city he suddenly sprang before me, uttering strange sounds and baring his ugly and ferocious tusks.
There was a bare chance of saving Ghak and Perry, and as I
reached the branching of the canyon I took the chance.
But, inasmuch as it is equally necessary to take into account the deviation which the rotary motion of the earth will impart to the shot, and as the shot cannot
reach the moon until after a deviation equal to 16 radii of the earth, which, calculated upon the moon's orbit, are equal to about eleven degrees, it becomes necessary to add these eleven degrees to those which express the retardation of the moon just mentioned: that is to say, in round numbers, about sixty-four degrees.
"You shall see the original map and writing when we
reach Durban," I answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I came to consider the question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my good faith.
Not being able to
reach them, they agreed to drink up the river, but it happened that they burst themselves with drinking long before they
reached the hides.
