Chapter 1

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_Title:_ Tarzan and the Ant Men
_Date of first publication:_ 1924
_Author:_ Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
_Date first posted:_ Sep. 2, 2020
_Date last updated:_ Sep. 2, 2020
Faded Page eBook #20200903

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[Cover Illustration]

Encircled by an impenetrable thorn forest . . .

live the Alali, a tribe of primitive, Stone-Age giants with
strange laws more savage than those of the jungle. Within the
vast thorn _boma_ also are the various tribes of the
Minunians—eighteen-inch people with a high order of
civilization, living in their complex, beehive like homes,
fighting their savage wars on a miniature scale.

Tarzan is captured by the Alali and makes his escape, but he is
taken prisoner in one of the numerous battles of the little
warlike people. Even his enormous strength and vitality quail
beneath the tasks the Minunians set him, and he has to use all
his jungle cunning to save his life and prove his eventual
friendship for the courageous pygmy tribes.

=Edgar Rice Burroughs=

=TARZAN BOOKS=

=TARZAN OF THE APES=
=THE RETURN OF TARZAN=
=THE BEASTS OF TARZAN=
=THE SON OF TARZAN=
=TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR=
=JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN=
=TARZAN THE UNTAMED=
=TARZAN THE TERRIBLE=
=TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION=
=TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN=
=TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE=
=TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE=

=TARZAN=
=AND THE=
=ANT MEN=

=Edgar Rice Burroughs=

=NEW YORK=

=Copyright © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., 1963=

=Fourth Printing: December, 1972=

=First Canadian Printing: January, 1964=

1

In the filth of a dark hut, in the village of Obebe the cannibal, upon
the banks of the Ugogo, Esteban Miranda squatted upon his haunches and
gnawed upon the remnants of a half-cooked fish. About his neck was an
iron slave collar from which a few feet of rusty chain ran to a stout
post set deep in the ground near the low entranceway that let upon the
village street not far from the hut of Obebe himself.

For a year Esteban Miranda had been chained thus, like a dog, and like a
dog he sometimes crawled through the low doorway of his kennel and
basked in the sun outside. Two diversions had he; and only two. One was
the persistent idea that he was Tarzan of the Apes, whom he had
impersonated for so long and with such growing success that, like the
good actor he was, he had come not only to act the part, but to live
it—to _be_ it. He _was_, as far as he was concerned, Tarzan of the
Apes—there was no other—and he was Tarzan of the Apes to Obebe, too;
but the village witch doctor still insisted that he was the river devil
and as such, one to propitiate rather than to anger.

It had been this difference of opinion between the chief and the witch
doctor that had kept Esteban Miranda from the fleshpots of the village,
for Obebe had wanted to eat him, thinking him his old enemy the ape-man;
but the witch doctor had aroused the superstitious fears of the
villagers by half convincing them that their prisoner was the river
devil masquerading as Tarzan, and, as such, dire disaster would descend
upon the village were he harmed. The result of this difference between
Obebe and the witch doctor had been to preserve the life of the Spaniard
until the truth of one claim or the other was proved—if Esteban died a
natural death he was Tarzan, the mortal, and Obebe the chief was
vindicated; if he lived on forever, or mysteriously disappeared, the
claim of the witch doctor would be accepted as gospel.

After he had learned their language and thus come to a realization of
the accident of fate that had guided his destiny by so narrow a margin
from the cooking pots of the cannibals he was less eager to proclaim
himself Tarzan of the Apes. Instead he let drop mysterious suggestions
that he was, indeed, none other than the river devil. The witch doctor
was delighted, and everyone was fooled except Obebe, who was old and
wise and did not believe in river devils, and the witch doctor who was
old and wise and did not believe in them either, but realized that they
were excellent things for his parishioners to believe in.

Esteban Miranda’s other diversion, aside from secretly believing himself
Tarzan, consisted in gloating over the bag of diamonds that Kraski the
Russian had stolen from the ape-man, and that had fallen into the
Spaniard’s hands after he had murdered Kraski—the same bag of diamonds
that the man had handed to Tarzan in the vaults beneath The Tower of
Diamonds, in the Valley of The Palace of Diamonds, when he had rescued
the Gomangani of the valley from the tyrannical oppression of the
Bolgani.

For hours at a time Esteban Miranda sat in the dim light of his dirty
kennel counting and fondling the brilliant stones. A thousand times had
he weighed each one in an appraising palm, computing its value and
translating it into such pleasures of the flesh as great wealth might
buy for him in the capitals of the world. Mired in his own filth,
feeding upon rotted scraps tossed to him by unclean hands, he yet
possessed the wealth of a Croesus, and it was as Croesus he lived in his
imaginings, his dismal hut changed into the pomp and circumstance of a
palace by the scintillant gleams of the precious stones. At the sound of
each approaching footstep he would hastily hide his fabulous fortune in
the wretched loincloth that was his only garment, and once again become
a prisoner in a cannibal hut.