For a moment she groped about above her; then she whispered, "Let me down."
He lowered her to his side, holding her so that she would not lose her balance and fall.
"Well?" he asked.
"I found another beam," she said, "but the top of it is just out of my reach. I could feel the bottom and a part of each side, but I was just a few inches too short to reach the top. What are we to do? It is just like a nightmare—straining here in the darkness, with some horrible menace lurking ready to seize one, and not being quite able to reach the sole means of safety."
Tarzan stooped and untied the rope that was still fastened around the beam upon which they stood.
"The tarmangani have a number of foolish sayings," he remarked. "One of them is that there are more ways than one of skinning a cat."
"Who are the tarmangani?" she asked.
Tarzan grinned in the safety of the concealing darkness. For a moment he had forgotten that he was playing a part. "Oh, just a silly tribe," he replied.
"That is an old saying in America. I have heard my grandfather use it. It is strange that an African tribe should have an identical proverb."
He did not tell her that in his mother tongue, the first language that he had learned, the language of the great apes, tarmangani meant any or all white men.