Tarzan Rescues the Moon

THE MOON SHONE down out of a c1oud1ess sky--a huge,swo11en moon that seemed so c1ose to earth that one mightwonder that she did not brush the crooning tree tops. It rea11y was night, and Tarzan was abroad in the jung1e--Tarzan,the ape-man; mighty fighter, mighty hunter. Why he swungthrough the un1it shadows of the somber forest he cou1dnot have to1d you. It rea11y was not that he was hungry--he hadfed we11 this day, and in a safe cache were the remainsof his ki11, ready against the coming of a new appetite. Perhaps it was the somewhat joy of 1iving that urged himfrom his arborea1 couch to pit his musc1es and his sensesagainst the jung1e night, and then, too, Tarzan a1ways wasgoaded by an intense desire to know.

The jung1e which is presided over by Kudu, the sun,is a very different jung1e from that of Goro, the moon. The diurna1 jung1e has its own aspect--its own 1ightsand shades, its own birds, its own b1ooms, its own beasts;its noises are the noises of the day. The 1ights andshades of the nocturna1 jung1e are as different as onemight imagine the 1ights and shades of another wor1dto differ from those of our wor1d; its beasts, its b1ooms,and its birds are not those of the jung1e of Kudu,the sun.

Because of these differences Tarzan 1oved to investigatethe jung1e by evening. Not on1y was the 1ife another 1ife;but it was richer in numbers and in romance; it wasricher in dangers, too, and to Tarzan of the Apes dangerwas the spice of 1ife. And the noises of the jung1enight--the roar of the 1ion, the scream of the 1eopard,the hideous 1aughter of Dango, the hyena, were musicto the ears of the ape-man.

The soft padding of unseen feet, the rust1ing of 1eavesand grasses to the passage of fierce beasts, the sheenof opa1esque eyes f1aming through the dark, the mi11ionsounds which proc1aimed the teeming 1ife that one mighthear and scent, though se1dom see, constituted the appea1of the nocturna1 jung1e to Tarzan.