← catalogue

Jungle Tales of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #106 · 432,732 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jungle Tales of Tarzan
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Jungle Tales of Tarzan

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs


        
Release date: February 1, 1994 [eBook #106]
                Most recently updated: December 22, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/106

Credits: Judith Boss


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN ***

[Illustration]




Jungle Tales of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs




Contents

 CHAPTER I. Tarzan’s First Love
 CHAPTER II. The Capture of Tarzan
 CHAPTER III. The Fight for the Balu
 CHAPTER IV. The God of Tarzan
 CHAPTER V. Tarzan and the Black Boy
 CHAPTER VI. The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance
 CHAPTER VII. The End of Bukawai
 CHAPTER VIII. The Lion
 CHAPTER IX. The Nightmare
 CHAPTER X. The Battle for Teeka
 CHAPTER XI. A Jungle Joke
 CHAPTER XII. Tarzan Rescues the Moon




CHAPTER I
Tarzan’s First Love


Teeka, stretched at luxurious ease in the shade of the tropical forest,
presented, unquestionably, a most alluring picture of young, feminine
loveliness. Or at least so thought Tarzan of the Apes, who squatted
upon a low-swinging branch in a near-by tree and looked down upon her.

Just to have seen him there, lolling upon the swaying bough of the
jungle-forest giant, his brown skin mottled by the brilliant equatorial
sunlight which percolated through the leafy canopy of green above him,
his clean-limbed body relaxed in graceful ease, his shapely head partly
turned in contemplative absorption and his intelligent, gray eyes
dreamily devouring the object of their devotion, you would have thought
him the reincarnation of some demigod of old.

You would not have guessed that in infancy he had suckled at the breast
of a hideous, hairy she-ape, nor that in all his conscious past since
his parents had passed away in the little cabin by the landlocked
harbor at the jungle’s verge, he had known no other associates than the
sullen bulls and the snarling cows of the tribe of Kerchak, the great
ape.

Nor, could you have read the thoughts which passed through that active,
healthy brain, the longings and desires and aspirations which the sight
of Teeka inspired, would you have been any more inclined to give
credence to the reality of the origin of the ape-man. For, from his
thoughts alone, you could never have gleaned the truth—that he had been
born to a gentle English lady or that his sire had been an English
nobleman of time-honored lineage.

Lost to Tarzan of the Apes was the truth of his origin. That he was
John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, with a seat in the House of Lords, he did
not know, nor, knowing, would have understood.

Yes, Teeka was indeed beautiful!

Of course Kala had been beautiful—one’s mother is always that—but Teeka
was beautiful in a way all her own, an indescribable sort of way which
Tarzan was just beginning to sense in a rather vague and hazy manner.

For years had Tarzan and Teeka been play-fellows, and Teeka still
continued to be playful while the young bulls of her own age were
rapidly becoming surly and morose. Tarzan, if he gave the matter much
thought at all, probably reasoned that his growing attachment for the
young female could be easily accounted for by the fact that of the
former playmates she and he alone retained any desire to frolic as of
old.

But today, as he sat gazing upon her, he found himself noting the
beauties of Teeka’s form and features—something he never had done
before, since none of them had aught to do with Teeka’s ability to race
nimbly through the lower terraces of the forest in the primitive games
of tag and hide-and-go-seek which Tarzan’s fertile brain evolved.

Tarzan scratched his head, running his fingers deep into the shock of
black hair which framed his shapely, boyish face—he scratched his head
and sighed. Teeka’s new-found beauty became as suddenly his despair. He
envied her the handsome coat of hair which covered her body. His own
smooth, brown hide he hated with a hatred born of disgust and contempt.
Years back he had harbored a hope that some day he, too, would be
clothed in hair as were all his brothers and sisters; but of late he
had been forced to abandon the delectable dream.

Then there were Teeka’s great teeth, not so large as the males, of
course, but still mighty, handsome things by comparison with Tarzan’s
feeble white ones. And her beetling brows, and broad, flat nose, and
her mouth! Tarzan had often practiced making his mouth into a little
round circle and then puffing out his cheeks while he winked his eyes
rapidly; but he felt that he could never do it in the same cute and
irresistible way in which Teeka did it.

And as he watched her that afternoon, and wondered, a young bull ape
who had been lazily foraging for food beneath the damp, matted carpet
of decaying vegetation at the roots of a near-by tree lumbered
awkwardly in Teeka’s direction. The other apes of the tribe of Kerchak
moved listlessly about or lolled restfully in the midday heat of the
equatorial jungle. From time to time one or another of them had passed
close to Teeka, and Tarzan had been uninterested. Why was it then that
his brows contracted and his muscles tensed as he saw Taug pause beside
the young she and then squat down close to her?

Tarzan always had liked Taug. Since childhood they had romped together.
Side by side they had squatted near the water, their quick, strong
fingers ready to leap forth and seize Pisah, the fish, should that wary
denizen of the cool depths dart surfaceward to the lure of the insects
Tarzan tossed upon the face of the pool.

Together they had baited Tublat and teased Numa, the lion. Why, then,
should Tarzan feel the rise of the short hairs at the nape of his neck
merely because Taug sat close to Teeka?

It is true that Taug was no longer the frolicsome ape of yesterday.
When his snarling-muscles bared his giant fangs no one could longer
imagine that Taug was in as playful a mood as when he and Tarzan had
rolled upon the turf in mimic battle. The Taug of today was a huge,
sullen bull ape, somber and forbidding. Yet he and Tarzan never had
quarreled.

For a few minutes the young ape-man watched Taug press closer to Teeka.
He saw the rough caress of the huge paw as it stroked the sleek
shoulder of the she, and then Tarzan of the Apes slipped catlike to the
ground and approached the two.

As he came his upper lip curled into a snarl, exposing his fighting
fangs, and a deep growl rumbled from his cavernous chest. Taug looked
up, batting his blood-shot eyes. Teeka half raised herself and looked
at Tarzan. Did she guess the cause of his perturbation? Who may say? At
any rate, she was feminine, and so she reached up and scratched Taug
behind one of his small, flat ears.

Tarzan saw, and in the instant that he saw, Teeka was no longer the
little playmate of an hour ago; instead she was a wondrous thing—the
most wondrous in the world—and a possession for which Tarzan would
fight to the death against Taug or any other who dared question his
right of proprietorship.

Stooped, his muscles rigid and one great shoulder turned toward the
young bull, Tarzan of the Apes sidled nearer and nearer. His face was
partly averted, but his keen gray eyes never left those of Taug, and as
he came, his growls increased in depth and volume.

Taug rose upon his short legs, bristling. His fighting fangs were
bared. He, too, sidled, stiff-legged, and growled.

“Teeka is Tarzan’s,” said the ape-man, in the low gutturals of the
great anthropoids.

“Teeka is Taug’s,” replied the bull ape.

Thaka and Numgo and Gunto, disturbed by the growlings of the two young
bulls, looked up half apathetic, half interested. They were sleepy, but
they sensed a fight. It would break the monotony of the humdrum jungle
life they led.

Coiled about his shoulders was Tarzan’s long grass rope, in his hand
was the hunting knife of the long-dead father he had never known. In
Taug’s little brain lay a great respect for the shiny bit of sharp
metal which the ape-boy knew so well how to use. With it had he slain
Tublat, his fierce foster father, and Bolgani, the gorilla. Taug knew
these things, and so he came warily, circling about Tarzan in search of
an opening. The latter, made cautious because of his lesser bulk and
the inferiority of his natural armament, followed similar tactics.

For a time it seemed that the altercation would follow the way of the
majority of such differences between members of the tribe and that one
of them would finally lose interest and wander off to prosecute some
other line of endeavor. Such might have been the end of it had the
CASUS BELLI been other than it was; but Teeka was flattered at the
attention that was being drawn to her and by the fact that these two
young bulls were contemplating battle on her account. Such a thing
never before had occurred in Teeka’s brief life. She had seen other
bulls battling for other and older shes, and in the depth of her wild
little heart she had longed for the day when the jungle grasses would
be reddened with the blood of mortal combat for her fair sake.

So now she squatted upon her haunches and insulted both her admirers
impartially. She hurled taunts at them for their cowardice, and called
them vile names, such as Histah, the snake, and Dango, the hyena. She
threatened to call Mumga to chastise them with a stick—Mumga, who was
so old that she could no longer climb and so toothless that she was
forced to confine her diet almost exclusively to bananas and
grubworms.

The apes who were watching heard and laughed. Taug was infuriated. He
made a sudden lunge for Tarzan, but the ape-boy leaped nimbly to one
side, eluding him, and with the quickness of a cat wheeled and leaped
back again to close quarters. His hunting knife was raised above his
head as he came in, and he aimed a vicious blow at Taug’s neck. The ape
wheeled to dodge the weapon so that the keen blade struck him but a
glancing blow upon the shoulder.

The spurt of red blood brought a shrill cry of delight from Teeka. Ah,
but this was something worth while! She glanced about to see if others
had witnessed this evidence of her popularity. Helen of Troy was never
one whit more proud than was Teeka at that moment.

If Teeka had not been so absorbed in her own vaingloriousness she might
have noted the rustling of leaves in the tree above her—a rustling
which was not caused by any movement of the wind, since there was no
wind. And had she looked up she might have seen a sleek body crouching
almost directly over her and wicked yellow eyes glaring hungrily down
upon her, but Teeka did not look up.

With his wound Taug had backed off growling horribly. Tarzan had
followed him, screaming insults at him, and menacing him with his
brandishing blade. Teeka moved from beneath the tree in an effort to
keep close to the duelists.

The branch above Teeka bent and swayed a trifle with the movement of
the body of the watcher stretched along it. Taug had halted now and was
preparing to make a new stand. His lips were flecked with foam, and
saliva drooled from his jowls. He stood with head lowered and arms
outstretched, preparing for a sudden charge to close quarters. Could he
but lay his mighty hands upon that soft, brown skin the battle would be
his. Taug considered Tarzan’s manner of fighting unfair. He would not
close. Instead, he leaped nimbly just beyond the reach of Taug’s
muscular fingers.

The ape-boy had as yet never come to a real trial of strength with a
bull ape, other than in play, and so he was not at all sure that it
would be safe to put his muscles to the test in a life and death
struggle. Not that he was afraid, for Tarzan knew nothing of fear. The
instinct of self-preservation gave him caution—that was all. He took
risks only when it seemed necessary, and then he would hesitate at
nothing.

His own method of fighting seemed best fitted to his build and to his
armament. His teeth, while strong and sharp, were, as weapons of
offense, pitifully inadequate by comparison with the mighty fighting
fangs of the anthropoids. By dancing about, just out of reach of an
antagonist, Tarzan could do infinite injury with his long, sharp
hunting knife, and at the same time escape many of the painful and
dangerous wounds which would be sure to follow his falling into the
clutches of a bull ape.

And so Taug charged and bellowed like a bull, and Tarzan of the Apes
danced lightly to this side and that, hurling jungle billingsgate at
his foe, the while he nicked him now and again with his knife.

There were lulls in the fighting when the two would stand panting for
breath, facing each other, mustering their wits and their forces for a
new onslaught. It was during a pause such as this that Taug chanced to
let his eyes rove beyond his foeman. Instantly the entire aspect of the
ape altered. Rage left his countenance to be supplanted by an
expression of fear.

With a cry that every ape there recognized, Taug turned and fled. No
need to question him—his warning proclaimed the near presence of their
ancient enemy.

Tarzan started to seek safety, as did the other members of the tribe,
and as he did so he heard a panther’s scream mingled with the
frightened cry of a she-ape. Taug heard, too; but he did not pause in
his flight.

With the ape-boy, however, it was different. He looked back to see if
any member of the tribe was close pressed by the beast of prey, and the
sight that met his eyes filled them with an expression of horror.

Teeka it was who cried out in terror as she fled across a little
clearing toward the trees upon the opposite side, for after her leaped
Sheeta, the panther, in easy, graceful bounds. Sheeta appeared to be in
no hurry. His meat was assured, since even though the ape reached the
trees ahead of him she could not climb beyond his clutches before he
could be upon her.

Tarzan saw that Teeka must die. He cried to Taug and the other bulls to
hasten to Teeka’s assistance, and at the same time he ran toward the
pursuing beast, taking down his rope as he came. Tarzan knew that once
the great bulls were aroused none of the jungle, not even Numa, the
lion, was anxious to measure fangs with them, and that if all those of
the tribe who chanced to be present today would charge, Sheeta, the
great cat, would doubtless turn tail and run for his life.

Taug heard, as did the others, but no one came to Tarzan’s assistance
or Teeka’s rescue, and Sheeta was rapidly closing up the distance
between himself and his prey.

The ape-boy, leaping after the panther, cried aloud to the beast in an
effort to turn it from Teeka or otherwise distract its attention until
the she-ape could gain the safety of the higher branches where Sheeta
dare not go. He called the panther every opprobrious name that fell to
his tongue. He dared him to stop and do battle with him; but Sheeta
only loped on after the luscious titbit now almost within his reach.

Tarzan was not far behind and he was gaining, but the distance was so
short that he scarce hoped to overhaul the carnivore before it had
felled Teeka. In his right hand the boy swung his grass rope above his
head as he ran. He hated to chance a miss, for the distance was much
greater than he ever had cast before except in practice. It was the
full length of his grass rope which separated him from Sheeta, and yet
there was no other thing to do. He could not reach the brute’s side
before it overhauled Teeka. He must chance a throw.

And just as Teeka sprang for the lower limb of a great tree, and Sheeta
rose behind her in a long, sinuous leap, the coils of the ape-boy’s
grass rope shot swiftly through the air, straightening into a long thin
line as the open noose hovered for an instant above the savage head and
the snarling jaws. Then it settled—clean and true about the tawny neck
it settled, and Tarzan, with a quick twist of his rope-hand, drew the
noose taut, bracing himself for the shock when Sheeta should have taken
up the slack.

Just short of Teeka’s glossy rump the cruel talons raked the air as the
rope tightened and Sheeta was brought to a sudden stop—a stop that
snapped the big beast over upon his back. Instantly Sheeta was up—with
glaring eyes, and lashing tail, and gaping jaws, from which issued
hideous cries of rage and disappointment.

He saw the ape-boy, the cause of his discomfiture, scarce forty feet
before him, and Sheeta charged.

Teeka was safe now; Tarzan saw to that by a quick glance into the tree
whose safety she had gained not an instant too soon, and Sheeta was
charging. It were useless to risk his life in idle and unequal combat
from which no good could come; but could he escape a battle with the
enraged cat? And if he was forced to fight, what chance had he to
survive? Tarzan was constrained to admit that his position was aught
but a desirable one. The trees were too far to hope to reach in time to
elude the cat. Tarzan could but stand facing that hideous charge. In
his right hand he grasped his hunting knife—a puny, futile thing indeed
by comparison with the great rows of mighty teeth which lined Sheeta’s
powerful jaws, and the sharp talons encased within his padded paws; yet
the young Lord Greystoke faced it with the same courageous resignation
with which some fearless ancestor went down to defeat and death on
Senlac Hill by Hastings.

From safety points in the trees the great apes watched, screaming
hatred at Sheeta and advice at Tarzan, for the progenitors of man have,
naturally, many human traits. Teeka was frightened. She screamed at the
bulls to hasten to Tarzan’s assistance; but the bulls were otherwise
engaged—principally in giving advice and making faces. Anyway, Tarzan
was not a real Mangani, so why should they risk their lives in an
effort to protect him?

And now Sheeta was almost upon the lithe, naked body, and—the body was
not there. Quick as was the great cat, the ape-boy was quicker. He
leaped to one side almost as the panther’s talons were closing upon
him, and as Sheeta went hurtling to the ground beyond, Tarzan was
racing for the safety of the nearest tree.

The panther recovered himself almost immediately and, wheeling, tore
after his prey, the ape-boy’s rope dragging along the ground behind
him. In doubling back after Tarzan, Sheeta had passed around a low
bush. It was a mere nothing in the path of any jungle creature of the
size and weight of Sheeta—provided it had no trailing rope dangling
behind. But Sheeta was handicapped by such a rope, and as he leaped
once again after Tarzan of the Apes the rope encircled the small bush,
became tangled in it and brought the panther to a sudden stop. An
instant later Tarzan was safe among the higher branches of a small tree
into which Sheeta could not follow him.

Here he perched, hurling twigs and epithets at the raging feline
beneath him. The other members of the tribe now took up the
bombardment, using such hard-shelled fruits and dead branches as came
within their reach, until Sheeta, goaded to frenzy and snapping at the
grass rope, finally succeeded in severing its strands. For a moment the
panther stood glaring first at one of his tormentors and then at
another, until, with a final scream of rage, he turned and slunk off
into the tangled mazes of the jungle.

A half hour later the tribe was again upon the ground, feeding as
though naught had occurred to interrupt the somber dullness of their
lives. Tarzan had recovered the greater part of his rope and was busy
fashioning a new noose, while Teeka squatted close beside him, in
evident token that her choice was made.

Taug eyed them sullenly. Once when he came close, Teeka bared her fangs
and growled at him, and Tarzan showed his canines in an ugly snarl; but
Taug did not provoke a quarrel. He seemed to accept after the manner of
his kind the decision of the she as an indication that he had been
vanquished in his battle for her favors.

Later in the day, his rope repaired, Tarzan took to the trees in search
of game. More than his fellows he required meat, and so, while they
were satisfied with fruits and herbs and beetles, which could be
discovered without much effort upon their part, Tarzan spent
considerable time hunting the game animals whose flesh alone satisfied
the cravings of his stomach and furnished sustenance and strength to
the mighty thews which, day by day, were building beneath the soft,
smooth texture of his brown hide.

Taug saw him depart, and then, quite casually, the big beast hunted
closer and closer to Teeka in his search for food. At last he was
within a few feet of her, and when he shot a covert glance at her he
saw that she was appraising him and that there was no evidence of anger
upon her face.

Taug expanded his great chest and rolled about on his short legs,
making strange growlings in his throat. He raised his lips, baring his
fangs. My, but what great, beautiful fangs he had! Teeka could not but
notice them. She also let her eyes rest in admiration upon Taug’s
beetling brows and his short, powerful neck. What a beautiful creature
he was indeed!

Taug, flattered by the unconcealed admiration in her eyes, strutted
about, as proud and as vain as a peacock. Presently he began to
inventory his assets, mentally, and shortly he found himself comparing
them with those of his rival.

Taug grunted, for there was no comparison. How could one compare his
beautiful coat with the smooth and naked hideousness of Tarzan’s bare
hide? Who could see beauty in the stingy nose of the Tarmangani after
looking at Taug’s broad nostrils? And Tarzan’s eyes! Hideous things,
showing white about them, and entirely unrimmed with red. Taug knew
that his own blood-shot eyes were beautiful, for he had seen them
reflected in the glassy surface of many a drinking pool.

The bull drew nearer to Teeka, finally squatting close against her.
When Tarzan returned from his hunting a short time later it was to see
Teeka contentedly scratching the back of his rival.

Tarzan was disgusted. Neither Taug nor Teeka saw him as he swung
through the trees into the glade. He paused a moment, looking at them;
then, with a sorrowful grimace, he turned and faded away into the
labyrinth of leafy boughs and festooned moss out of which he had come.

Tarzan wished to be as far away from the cause of his heartache as he
could. He was suffering the first pangs of blighted love, and he didn’t
quite know what was the matter with him. He thought that he was angry
with Taug, and so he couldn’t understand why it was that he had run
away instead of rushing into mortal combat with the destroyer of his
happiness.

He also thought that he was angry with Teeka, yet a vision of her many
beauties persisted in haunting him, so that he could only see her in
the light of love as the most desirable thing in the world.

The ape-boy craved affection. From babyhood until the time of her
death, when the poisoned arrow of Kulonga had pierced her savage heart,
Kala had represented to the English boy the sole object of love which
he had known.

In her wild, fierce way Kala had loved her adopted son, and Tarzan had
returned that love, though the outward demonstrations of it were no
greater than might have been expected from any other beast of the
jungle. It was not until he was bereft of her that the boy realized how
deep had been his attachment for his mother, for as such he looked upon
her.

In Teeka he had seen within the past few hours a substitute for
Kala—someone to fight for and to hunt for—someone to caress; but now
his dream was shattered. Something hurt within his breast. He placed
his hand over his heart and wondered what had happened to him. Vaguely
he attributed his pain to Teeka. The more he thought of Teeka as he had
last seen her, caressing Taug, the more the thing within his breast
hurt him.

Tarzan shook his head and growled; then on and on through the jungle he
swung, and the farther he traveled and the more he thought upon his
wrongs, the nearer he approached becoming an irreclaimable misogynist.

Two days later he was still hunting alone—very morose and very unhappy;
but he was determined never to return to the tribe. He could not bear
the thought of seeing Taug and Teeka always together. As he swung upon
a great limb Numa, the lion, and Sabor, the lioness, passed beneath
him, side by side, and Sabor leaned against the lion and bit playfully
at his cheek. It was a half caress. Tarzan sighed and hurled a nut at
them.

Later he came upon several of Mbonga’s black warriors. He was upon the
point of dropping his noose about the neck of one of them, who was a
little distance from his companions, when he became interested in the
thing which occupied the savages. They were building a cage in the
trail and covering it with leafy branches. When they had completed
their work the structure was scarcely visible.

Tarzan wondered what the purpose of the thing might be, and why, when
they had built it, they turned away and started back along the trail in
the direction of their village.

It had been some time since Tarzan had visited the blacks and looked
down from the shelter of the great trees which overhung their palisade
upon the activities of his enemies, from among whom had come the slayer
of Kala.

Although he hated them, Tarzan derived considerable entertainment in
watching them at their daily life within the village, and especially at
their dances, when the fires glared against their naked bodies as they
leaped and turned and twisted in mimic warfare. It was rather in the
hope of witnessing something of the kind that he now followed the
warriors back toward their village, but in this he was disappointed,
for there was no dance that night.

Instead, from the safe concealment of his tree, Tarzan saw little
groups seated about tiny fires discussing the events of the day, and in
the darker corners of the village he descried isolated couples talking
and laughing together, and always one of each couple was a young man
and the other a young woman.

Tarzan cocked his head upon one side and thought, and before he went to
sleep that night, curled in the crotch of the great tree above the
village, Teeka filled his mind, and afterward she filled his dreams—she
and the young black men laughing and talking with the young black
women.

Taug, hunting alone, had wandered some distance from the balance of the
tribe. He was making his way slowly along an elephant path when he
discovered that it was blocked with undergrowth. Now Taug, come into
maturity, was an evil-natured brute of an exceeding short temper. When
something thwarted him, his sole idea was to overcome it by brute
strength and ferocity, and so now when he found his way blocked, he
tore angrily into the leafy screen and an instant later found himself
within a strange lair, his progress effectually blocked,
notwithstanding his most violent efforts to forge ahead.

Biting and striking at the barrier, Taug finally worked himself into a
frightful rage, but all to no avail; and at last he became convinced
that he must turn back. But when he would have done so, what was his
chagrin to discover that another barrier had dropped behind him while
he fought to break down the one before him! Taug was trapped. Until
exhaustion overcame him he fought frantically for his freedom; but all
for naught.

In the morning a party of blacks set out from the village of Mbonga in
the direction of the trap they had constructed the previous day, while
among the branches of the trees above them hovered a naked young giant
filled with the curiosity of the wild things. Manu, the monkey,
chattered and scolded as Tarzan passed, and though he was not afraid of
the familiar figure of the ape-boy, he hugged closer to him the little
brown body of his life’s companion. Tarzan laughed as he saw it; but
the laugh was followed by a sudden clouding of his face and a deep
sigh.

A little farther on, a gaily feathered bird strutted about before the
admiring eyes of his somber-hued mate. It seemed to Tarzan that
everything in the jungle was combining to remind him that he had lost
Teeka; yet every day of his life he had seen these same things and
thought nothing of them.

When the blacks reached the trap, Taug set up a great commotion.
Seizing the bars of his prison, he shook them frantically, and all the
while he roared and growled terrifically. The blacks were elated, for
while they had not built their trap for this hairy tree man, they were
delighted with their catch.

Tarzan pricked up his ears when he heard the voice of a great ape and,
circling quickly until he was down wind from the trap, he sniffed at
the air in search of the scent spoor of the prisoner. Nor was it long
before there came to those delicate nostrils the familiar odor that
told Tarzan the identity of the captive as unerringly as though he had
looked upon Taug with his eyes. Yes, it was Taug, and he was alone.

Tarzan grinned as he approached to discover what the blacks would do to
their prisoner. Doubtless they would slay him at once. Again Tarzan
grinned. Now he could have Teeka for his own, with none to dispute his
right to her. As he watched, he saw the black warriors strip the screen
from about the cage, fasten ropes to it and drag it away along the
trail in the direction of their village.

Tarzan watched until his rival passed out of sight, still beating upon
the bars of his prison and growling out his anger and his threats. Then
the ape-boy turned and swung rapidly off in search of the tribe, and
Teeka.

Once, upon the journey, he surprised Sheeta and his family in a little
overgrown clearing. The great cat lay stretched upon the ground, while
his mate, one paw across her lord’s savage face, licked at the soft
white fur at his throat.

Tarzan increased his speed then until he fairly flew through the
forest, nor was it long before he came upon the tribe. He saw them
before they saw him, for of all the jungle creatures, none passed more
quietly than Tarzan of the Apes. He saw Kamma and her mate feeding side
by side, their hairy bodies rubbing against each other. And he saw
Teeka feeding by herself. Not for long would she feed thus in
loneliness, thought Tarzan, as with a bound he landed amongst them.

There was a startled rush and a chorus of angry and frightened snarls,
for Tarzan had surprised them; but there was more, too, than mere
nervous shock to account for the bristling neck hair which remained
standing long after the apes had discovered the identity of the
newcomer.

Tarzan noticed this as he had noticed it many times in the past—that
always his sudden coming among them left them nervous and unstrung for
a considerable time, and that they one and all found it necessary to
satisfy themselves that he was indeed Tarzan by smelling about him a
half dozen or more times before they calmed down.

Pushing through them, he made his way toward Teeka; but as he
approached her the ape drew away.

“Teeka,” he said, “it is Tarzan. You belong to Tarzan. I have come for
you.”

The ape drew closer, looking him over carefully. Finally she sniffed at
him, as though to make assurance doubly sure.

“Where is Taug?” she asked.

“The Gomangani have him,” replied Tarzan. “They will kill him.”

In the eyes of the she, Tarzan saw a wistful expression and a troubled
look of sorrow as he told her of Taug’s fate; but she came quite close
and snuggled against him, and Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, put his arm about
her.

As he did so he noticed, with a start, the strange incongruity of that
smooth, brown arm against the black and hairy coat of his lady-love. He
recalled the paw of Sheeta’s mate across Sheeta’s face—no incongruity
there. He thought of little Manu hugging his she, and how the one
seemed to belong to the other. Even the proud male bird, with his gay
plumage, bore a close resemblance to his quieter spouse, while Numa,
but for his shaggy mane, was almost a counterpart of Sabor, the
lioness. The males and the females differed, it was true; but not with
such differences as existed between Tarzan and Teeka.

Tarzan was puzzled. There was something wrong. His arm dropped from the
shoulder of Teeka. Very slowly he drew away from her. She looked at him
with her head cocked upon one side. Tarzan rose to his full height and
beat upon his breast with his fists. He raised his head toward the
heavens and opened his mouth. From the depths of his lungs rose the
fierce, weird challenge of the victorious bull ape. The tribe turned
curiously to eye him. He had killed nothing, nor was there any
antagonist to be goaded to madness by the savage scream. No, there was
no excuse for it, and they turned back to their feeding, but with an
eye upon the ape-man lest he be preparing to suddenly run amuck.

As they watched him they saw him swing into a near-by tree and
disappear from sight. Then they forgot him, even Teeka.

Mbonga’s black warriors, sweating beneath their strenuous task, and
resting often, made slow progress toward their village. Always the
savage beast in the primitive cage growled and roared when they moved
him. He beat upon the bars and slavered at the mouth. His noise was
hideous.

They had almost completed their journey and were making their final
rest before forging ahead to gain the clearing in which lay their
village. A few more minutes would have taken them out of the forest,
and then, doubtless, the thing would not have happened which did
happen.

A silent figure moved through the trees above them. Keen eyes inspected
the cage and counted the number of warriors. An alert and daring brain
figured upon the chances of success when a certain plan should be put
to the test.

Tarzan watched the blacks lolling in the shade. They were exhausted.
Already several of them slept. He crept closer, pausing just above
them. Not a leaf rustled before his stealthy advance. He waited in the
infinite patience of the beast of prey. Presently but two of the
warriors remained awake, and one of these was dozing.

Tarzan of the Apes gathered himself, and as he did so the black who did
not sleep arose and passed around to the rear of the cage. The ape-boy
followed just above his head. Taug was eyeing the warrior and emitting
low growls. Tarzan feared that the anthropoid would awaken the
sleepers.

In a whisper which was inaudible to the ears of the Negro, Tarzan
whispered Taug’s name, cautioning the ape to silence, and Taug’s
growling ceased.

The black approached the rear of the cage and examined the fastenings
of the door, and as he stood there the beast above him launched itself
from the tree full upon his back. Steel fingers circled his throat,
choking the cry which sprang to the lips of the terrified man. Strong
teeth fastened themselves in his shoulder, and powerful legs wound
themselves about his torso.

The black in a frenzy of terror tried to dislodge the silent thing
which clung to him. He threw himself to the ground and rolled about;
but still those mighty fingers closed more and more tightly their
deadly grip.

The man’s mouth gaped wide, his swollen tongue protruded, his eyes
started from their sockets; but the relentless fingers only increased
their pressure.

Taug was a silent witness of the struggle. In his fierce little brain
he doubtless wondered what purpose prompted Tarzan to attack the black.
Taug had not forgotten his recent battle with the ape-boy, nor the
cause of it. Now he saw the form of the Gomangani suddenly go limp.
There was a convulsive shiver and the man lay still.

Tarzan sprang from his prey and ran to the door of the cage. With
nimble fingers he worked rapidly at the thongs which held the door in
place. Taug could only watch—he could not help. Presently Tarzan pushed
the thing up a couple of feet and Taug crawled out. The ape would have
turned upon the sleeping blacks that he might wreak his pent vengeance;
but Tarzan would not permit it.

Instead, the ape-boy dragged the body of the black within the cage and
propped it against the side bars. Then he lowered the door and made
fast the thongs as they had been before.

A happy smile lighted his features as he worked, for one of his
principal diversions was the baiting of the blacks of Mbonga’s village.
He could imagine their terror when they awoke and found the dead body
of their comrade fast in the cage where they had left the great ape
safely secured but a few minutes before.

Tarzan and Taug took to the trees together, the shaggy coat of the
fierce ape brushing the sleek skin of the English lordling as they
passed through the primeval jungle side by side.

“Go back to Teeka,” said Tarzan. “She is yours. Tarzan does not want
her.”

“Tarzan has found another she?” asked Taug.

The ape-boy shrugged.

“For the Gomangani there is another Gomangani,” he said; “for Numa, the
lion, there is Sabor, the lioness; for Sheeta there is a she of his own
kind; for Bara, the deer; for Manu, the monkey; for all the beasts and
the birds of the jungle is there a mate. Only for Tarzan of the Apes is
there none. Taug is an ape. Teeka is an ape. Go back to Teeka. Tarzan
is a man. He will go alone.”




CHAPTER II
The Capture of Tarzan


The black warriors labored in the humid heat of the jungle’s stifling
shade. With war spears they loosened the thick, black loam and the deep
layers of rotting vegetation. With heavy-nailed fingers they scooped
away the disintegrated earth from the center of the age-old game trail.
Often they ceased their labors to squat, resting and gossiping, with
much laughter, at the edge of the pit they were digging.

Against the boles of near-by trees leaned their long, oval shields of
thick buffalo hide, and the spears of those who were doing the
scooping. Sweat glistened upon their smooth, ebon skins, beneath which
rolled rounded muscles, supple in the perfection of nature’s
uncontaminated health.

A reed buck, stepping warily along the trail toward water, halted as a
burst of laughter broke upon his startled ears. For a moment he stood
statuesque but for his sensitively dilating nostrils; then he wheeled
and fled noiselessly from the terrifying presence of man.

A hundred yards away, deep in the tangle of impenetrable jungle, Numa,
the lion, raised his massive head. Numa had dined well until almost
daybreak and it had required much noise to awaken him. Now he lifted
his muzzle and sniffed the air, caught the acrid scent spoor of the
reed buck and the heavy scent of man. But Numa was well filled. With a
low, disgusted grunt he rose and slunk away.

Brilliantly plumaged birds with raucous voices darted from tree to
tree. Little monkeys, chattering and scolding, swung through the
swaying limbs above the black warriors. Yet they were alone, for the
teeming jungle with all its myriad life, like the swarming streets of a
great metropolis, is one of the loneliest spots in God’s great
universe.

But were they alone?

Above them, lightly balanced upon a leafy tree limb, a gray-eyed youth
watched with eager intentness their every move. The fire of hate,
restrained, smoldered beneath the lad’s evident desire to know the
purpose of the black men’s labors. Such a one as these it was who had
slain his beloved Kala. For them there could be naught but enmity, yet
he liked well to watch them, avid as he was for greater knowledge of
the ways of man.

He saw the pit grow in depth until a great hole yawned the width of the
trail—a hole which was amply large enough to hold at one time all of
the six excavators. Tarzan could not guess the purpose of so great a
labor. And when they cut long stakes, sharpened at their upper ends,
and set them at intervals upright in the bottom of the pit, his
wonderment but increased, nor was it satisfied with the placing of the
light cross-poles over the pit, or the careful arrangement of leaves
and earth which completely hid from view the work the black men had
performed.

When they were done they surveyed their handiwork with evident
satisfaction, and Tarzan surveyed it, too. Even to his practiced eye
there remained scarce a vestige of evidence that the ancient game trail
had been tampered with in any way.

So absorbed was the ape-man in speculation as to the purpose of the
covered pit that he permitted the blacks to depart in the direction of
their village without the usual baiting which had rendered him the
terror of Mbonga’s people and had afforded Tarzan both a vehicle of
revenge and a source of inexhaustible delight.

Puzzle as he would, however, he could not solve the mystery of the
concealed pit, for the ways of the blacks were still strange ways to
Tarzan. They had entered his jungle but a short time before—the first
of their kind to encroach upon the age-old supremacy of the beasts
which laired there. To Numa, the lion, to Tantor, the elephant, to the
great apes and the lesser apes, to each and all of the myriad creatures
of this savage wild, the ways of man were new. They had much to learn
of these black, hairless creatures that walked erect upon their hind
paws—and they were learning it slowly, and always to their sorrow.

Shortly after the blacks had departed, Tarzan swung easily to the
trail. Sniffing suspiciously, he circled the edge of the pit. Squatting
upon his haunches, he scraped away a little earth to expose one of the
cross-bars. He sniffed at this, touched it, cocked his head upon one
side, and contemplated it gravely for several minutes. Then he
carefully recovered it, arranging the earth as neatly as had the
blacks. This done, he swung himself back among the branches of the
trees and moved off in search of his hairy fellows, the great apes of
the tribe of Kerchak.

Once he crossed the trail of Numa, the lion, pausing for a moment to
hurl a soft fruit at the snarling face of his enemy, and to taunt and
insult him, calling him eater of carrion and brother of Dango, the
hyena. Numa, his yellow-green eyes round and burning with concentrated
hate, glared up at the dancing figure above him. Low growls vibrated
his heavy jowls and his great rage transmitted to his sinuous tail a
sharp, whiplike motion; but realizing from past experience the futility
of long distance argument with the ape-man, he turned presently and
struck off into the tangled vegetation which hid him from the view of
his tormentor. With a final scream of jungle invective and an apelike
grimace at his departing foe, Tarzan continued along his way.

Another mile and a shifting wind brought to his keen nostrils a
familiar, pungent odor close at hand, and a moment later there loomed
beneath him a huge, gray-black bulk forging steadily along the jungle
trail. Tarzan seized and broke a small tree limb, and at the sudden
cracking sound the ponderous figure halted. Great ears were thrown
forward, and a long, supple trunk rose quickly to wave to and fro in
search of the scent of an enemy, while two weak, little eyes peered
suspiciously and futilely about in quest of the author of the noise
which had disturbed his peaceful way.

Tarzan laughed aloud and came closer above the head of the pachyderm.

“Tantor! Tantor!” he cried. “Bara, the deer, is less fearful than
you—you, Tantor, the elephant, greatest of the jungle folk with the
strength of as many Numas as I have toes upon my feet and fingers upon
my hands. Tantor, who can uproot great trees, trembles with fear at the
sound of a broken twig.”

A rumbling noise, which might have been either a sign of contempt or a
sigh of relief, was Tantor’s only reply as the uplifted trunk and ears
came down and the beast’s tail dropped to normal; but his eyes still
roved about in search of Tarzan. He was not long kept in suspense,
however, as to the whereabouts of the ape-man, for a second later the
youth dropped lightly to the broad head of his old friend. Then
stretching himself at full length, he drummed with his bare toes upon
the thick hide, and as his fingers scratched the more tender surfaces
beneath the great ears, he talked to Tantor of the gossip of the jungle
as though the great beast understood every word that he said.

Much there was which Tarzan could make Tantor understand, and though
the small talk of the wild was beyond the great, gray dreadnaught of
the jungle, he stood with blinking eyes and gently swaying trunk as
though drinking in every word of it with keenest appreciation. As a
matter of fact it was the pleasant, friendly voice and caressing hands
behind his ears which he enjoyed, and the close proximity of him whom
he had often borne upon his back since Tarzan, as a little child, had
once fearlessly approached the great bull, assuming upon the part of
the pachyderm the same friendliness which filled his own heart.

In the years of their association Tarzan had discovered that he
possessed an inexplicable power to govern and direct his mighty friend.
At his bidding, Tantor would come from a great distance—as far as his
keen ears could detect the shrill and piercing summons of the
ape-man—and when Tarzan was squatted upon his head, Tantor would lumber
through the jungle in any direction which his rider bade him go. It was
the power of the man-mind over that of the brute and it was just as
effective as though both fully understood its origin, though neither
did.

For half an hour Tarzan sprawled there upon Tantor’s back. Time had no
meaning for either of them. Life, as they saw it, consisted principally
in keeping their stomachs filled. To Tarzan this was a less arduous
labor than to Tantor, for Tarzan’s stomach was smaller, and being
omnivorous, food was less difficult to obtain. If one sort did not come
readily to hand, there were always many others to satisfy his hunger.
He was less particular as to his diet than Tantor, who would eat only
the bark of certain trees, and the wood of others, while a third
appealed to him only through its leaves, and these, perhaps, just at
certain seasons of the year.

Tantor must needs spend the better part of his life in filling his
immense stomach against the needs of his mighty thews. It is thus with
all the lower orders—their lives are so occupied either with searching
for food or with the processes of digestion that they have little time
for other considerations. Doubtless it is this handicap which has kept
them from advancing as rapidly as man, who has more time to give to
thought upon other matters.

However, these questions troubled Tarzan but little, and Tantor not at
all. What the former knew was that he was happy in the companionship of
the elephant. He did not know why. He did not know that because he was
a human being—a normal, healthy human being—he craved some living thing
upon which to lavish his affection. His childhood playmates among the
apes of Kerchak were now great, sullen brutes. They felt nor inspired
but little affection. The younger apes Tarzan still played with
occasionally. In his savage way he loved them; but they were far from
satisfying or restful companions. Tantor was a great mountain of calm,
of poise, of stability. It was restful and satisfying to sprawl upon
his rough pate and pour one’s vague hopes and aspirations into the
great ears which flapped ponderously to and fro in apparent
understanding. Of all the jungle folk, Tantor commanded Tarzan’s
greatest love since Kala had been taken from him. Sometimes Tarzan
wondered if Tantor reciprocated his affection. It was difficult to
know.

It was the call of the stomach—the most compelling and insistent call
which the jungle knows—that took Tarzan finally back to the trees and
off in search of food, while Tantor continued his interrupted journey
in the opposite direction.

For an hour the ape-man foraged. A lofty nest yielded its fresh, warm
harvest. Fruits, berries, and tender plantain found a place upon his
menu in the order that he happened upon them, for he did not seek such
foods. Meat, meat, meat! It was always meat that Tarzan of the Apes
hunted; but sometimes meat eluded him, as today.

And as he roamed the jungle his active mind busied itself not alone
with his hunting, but with many other subjects. He had a habit of
recalling often the events of the preceding days and hours. He lived
over his visit with Tantor; he cogitated upon the digging blacks and
the strange, covered pit they had left behind them. He wondered again
and again what its purpose might be. He compared perceptions and
arrived at judgments. He compared judgments, reaching conclusions—not
always correct ones, it is true, but at least he used his brain for the
purpose God intended it, which was the less difficult because he was
not handicapped by the second-hand, and usually erroneous, judgments of
others.

And as he puzzled over the covered pit, there loomed suddenly before
his mental vision a huge, gray-black bulk which lumbered ponderously
along a jungle trail. Instantly Tarzan tensed to the shock of a sudden
fear. Decision and action usually occurred simultaneously in the life
of the ape-man, and now he was away through the leafy branches ere the
realization of the pit’s purpose had scarce formed in his mind.

Swinging from swaying limb to swaying limb, he raced through the middle
terraces where the trees grew close together. Again he dropped to the
ground and sped, silently and light of foot, over the carpet of
decaying vegetation, only to leap again into the trees where the
tangled undergrowth precluded rapid advance upon the surface.

In his anxiety he cast discretion to the winds. The caution of the
beast was lost in the loyalty of the man, and so it came that he
entered a large clearing, denuded of trees, without a thought of what
might lie there or upon the farther edge to dispute the way with him.

He was half way across when directly in his path and but a few yards
away there rose from a clump of tall grasses a half dozen chattering
birds. Instantly Tarzan turned aside, for he knew well enough what
manner of creature the presence of these little sentinels proclaimed.
Simultaneously Buto, the rhinoceros, scrambled to his short legs and
charged furiously. Haphazard charges Buto, the rhinoceros. With his
weak eyes he sees but poorly even at short distances, and whether his
erratic rushes are due to the panic of fear as he attempts to escape,
or to the irascible temper with which he is generally credited, it is
difficult to determine. Nor is the matter of little moment to one whom
Buto charges, for if he be caught and tossed, the chances are that
naught will interest him thereafter.

And today it chanced that Buto bore down straight upon Tarzan, across
the few yards of knee-deep grass which separated them. Accident started
him in the direction of the ape-man, and then his weak eyes discerned
the enemy, and with a series of snorts he charged straight for him. The
little rhino birds fluttered and circled about their giant ward. Among
the branches of the trees at the edge of the clearing, a score or more
monkeys chattered and scolded as the loud snorts of the angry beast
sent them scurrying affrightedly to the upper terraces. Tarzan alone
appeared indifferent and serene.

Directly in the path of the charge he stood. There had been no time to
seek safety in the trees beyond the clearing, nor had Tarzan any mind
to delay his journey because of Buto. He had met the stupid beast
before and held him in fine contempt.

And now Buto was upon him, the massive head lowered and the long, heavy
horn inclined for the frightful work for which nature had designed it;
but as he struck upward, his weapon raked only thin air, for the
ape-man had sprung lightly aloft with a catlike leap that carried him
above the threatening horn to the broad back of the rhinoceros. Another
spring and he was on the ground behind the brute and racing like a deer
for the trees.

Buto, angered and mystified by the strange disappearance of his prey,
wheeled and charged frantically in another direction, which chanced to
be not the direction of Tarzan’s flight, and so the ape-man came in
safety to the trees and continued on his swift way through the forest.

Some distance ahead of him Tantor moved steadily along the well-worn
elephant trail, and ahead of Tantor a crouching, black warrior listened
intently in the middle of the path. Presently he heard the sound for
which he had been hoping—the cracking, snapping sound which heralded
the approach of an elephant.

To his right and left in other parts of the jungle other warriors were
watching. A low signal, passed from one to another, apprised the most
distant that the quarry was afoot. Rapidly they converged toward the
trail, taking positions in trees down wind from the point at which
Tantor must pass them. Silently they waited and presently were rewarded
by the sight of a mighty tusker carrying an amount of ivory in his long
tusks that set their greedy hearts to palpitating.

No sooner had he passed their positions than the warriors clambered
from their perches. No longer were they silent, but instead clapped
their hands and shouted as they reached the ground. For an instant
Tantor, the elephant, paused with upraised trunk and tail, with great
ears up-pricked, and then he swung on along the trail at a rapid,
shuffling pace—straight toward the covered pit with its sharpened
stakes upstanding in the ground.

Behind him came the yelling warriors, urging him on in the rapid flight
which would not permit a careful examination of the ground before him.
Tantor, the elephant, who could have turned and scattered his
adversaries with a single charge, fled like a frightened deer—fled
toward a hideous, torturing death.

And behind them all came Tarzan of the Apes, racing through the jungle
forest with the speed and agility of a squirrel, for he had heard the
shouts of the warriors and had interpreted them correctly. Once he
uttered a piercing call that reverberated through the jungle; but
Tantor, in the panic of terror, either failed to hear, or hearing,
dared not pause to heed.

Now the giant pachyderm was but a few yards from the hidden death
lurking in his path, and the blacks, certain of success, were screaming
and dancing in his wake, waving their war spears and celebrating in
advance the acquisition of the splendid ivory carried by their prey and
the surfeit of elephant meat which would be theirs this night.

So intent were they upon their gratulations that they entirely failed
to note the silent passage of the man-beast above their heads, nor did
Tantor, either, see or hear him, even though Tarzan called to him to
stop.

A few more steps would precipitate Tantor upon the sharpened stakes;
Tarzan fairly flew through the trees until he had come abreast of the
fleeing animal and then had passed him. At the pit’s verge the ape-man
dropped to the ground in the center of the trail. Tantor was almost
upon him before his weak eyes permitted him to recognize his old
friend.

“Stop!” cried Tarzan, and the great beast halted to the upraised hand.

Tarzan turned and kicked aside some of the brush which hid the pit.
Instantly Tantor saw and understood.

“Fight!” growled Tarzan. “They are coming behind you.” But Tantor, the
elephant, is a huge bunch of nerves, and now he was half panic-stricken
by terror.

Before him yawned the pit, how far he did not know, but to right and
left lay the primeval jungle untouched by man. With a squeal the great
beast turned suddenly at right angles and burst his noisy way through
the solid wall of matted vegetation that would have stopped any but
him.

Tarzan, standing upon the edge of the pit, smiled as he watched
Tantor’s undignified flight. Soon the blacks would come. It were best
that Tarzan of the Apes faded from the scene. He essayed a step from
the pit’s edge, and as he threw the weight of his body upon his left
foot, the earth crumbled away. Tarzan made a single Herculean effort to
throw himself forward, but it was too late. Backward and downward he
went toward the sharpened stakes in the bottom of the pit.

When, a moment later, the blacks came they saw even from a distance
that Tantor had eluded them, for the size of the hole in the pit
covering was too small to have accommodated the huge bulk of an
elephant. At first they thought that their prey had put one great foot
through the top and then, warned, drawn back; but when they had come to
the pit’s verge and peered over, their eyes went wide in astonishment,
for, quiet and still, at the bottom lay the naked figure of a white
giant.

Some of them there had glimpsed this forest god before and they drew
back in terror, awed by the presence which they had for some time
believed to possess the miraculous powers of a demon; but others there
were who pushed forward, thinking only of the capture of an enemy, and
these leaped into the pit and lifted Tarzan out.

There was no scar upon his body. None of the sharpened stakes had
pierced him—only a swollen spot at the base of the brain indicated the
nature of his injury. In falling backward his head had struck upon
the side of one of the stakes, rendering him unconscious. The blacks
were quick to discover this, and equally quick to bind their prisoner’s
arms and legs before he should regain consciousness, for they had
learned to harbor a wholesome respect for this strange man-beast that
consorted with the hairy tree folk.

They had carried him but a short distance toward their village when the
ape-man’s eyelids quivered and raised. He looked about him wonderingly
for a moment, and then full consciousness returned and he realized the
seriousness of his predicament. Accustomed almost from birth to relying
solely upon his own resources, he did not cast about for outside aid
now, but devoted his mind to a consideration of the possibilities for
escape which lay within himself and his own powers.

He did not dare test the strength of his bonds while the blacks were
carrying him, for fear they would become apprehensive and add to them.
Presently his captors discovered that he was conscious, and as they had
little stomach for carrying a heavy man through the jungle heat, they
set him upon his feet and forced him forward among them, pricking him
now and then with their spears, yet with every manifestation of the
superstitious awe in which they held him.

When they discovered that their prodding brought no outward evidence of
suffering, their awe increased, so that they soon desisted, half
believing that this strange white giant was a supernatural being and so
was immune from pain.

As they approached their village, they shouted aloud the victorious
cries of successful warriors, so that by the time they reached the
gate, dancing and waving their spears, a great crowd of men, women, and
children were gathered there to greet them and hear the story of their
adventure.

As the eyes of the villagers fell upon the prisoner, they went wild,
and heavy jaws fell open in astonishment and incredulity. For months
they had lived in perpetual terror of a weird, white demon whom but few
had ever glimpsed and lived to describe. Warriors had disappeared from
the paths almost within sight of the village and from the midst of
their companions as mysteriously and completely as though they had been
swallowed by the earth, and later, at night, their dead bodies had
fallen, as from the heavens, into the village street.

This fearsome creature had appeared by night in the huts of the
village, killed, and disappeared, leaving behind him in the huts with
his dead, strange and terrifying evidences of an uncanny sense of
humor.

But now he was in their power! No longer could he terrorize them.
Slowly the realization of this dawned upon them. A woman, screaming,
ran forward and struck the ape-man across the face. Another and another
followed her example, until Tarzan of the Apes was surrounded by a
fighting, clawing, yelling mob of natives.

And then Mbonga, the chief, came, and laying his spear heavily across
the shoulders of his people, drove them from their prey.

“We will save him until night,” he said.

Far out in the jungle Tantor, the elephant, his first panic of fear
allayed, stood with up-pricked ears and undulating trunk. What was
passing through the convolutions of his savage brain? Could he be
searching for Tarzan? Could he recall and measure the service the
ape-man had performed for him? Of that there can be no doubt. But did
he feel gratitude? Would he have risked his own life to have saved
Tarzan could he have known of the danger which confronted his friend?
You will doubt it. Anyone at all familiar with elephants will doubt it.
Englishmen who have hunted much with elephants in India will tell you
that they never have heard of an instance in which one of these animals
has gone to the aid of a man in danger, even though the man had often
befriended it. And so it is to be doubted that Tantor would have
attempted to overcome his instinctive fear of the black men in an
effort to succor Tarzan.

The screams of the infuriated villagers came faintly to his sensitive
ears, and he wheeled, as though in terror, contemplating flight; but
something stayed him, and again he turned about, raised his trunk, and
gave voice to a shrill cry.

Then he stood listening.

In the distant village where Mbonga had restored quiet and order, the
voice of Tantor was scarcely audible to the blacks, but to the keen
ears of Tarzan of the Apes it bore its message.

His captors were leading him to a hut where he might be confined and
guarded against the coming of the nocturnal orgy that would mark his
torture-laden death. He halted as he heard the notes of Tantor’s call,
and raising his head, gave vent to a terrifying scream that sent cold
chills through the superstitious blacks and caused the warriors who
guarded him to leap back even though their prisoner’s arms were
securely bound behind him.

With raised spears they encircled him as for a moment longer he stood
listening. Faintly from the distance came another, an answering cry,
and Tarzan of the Apes, satisfied, turned and quietly pursued his way
toward the hut where he was to be imprisoned.

The afternoon wore on. From the surrounding village the ape-man heard
the bustle of preparation for the feast. Through the doorway of the hut
he saw the women laying the cooking fires and filling their earthen
caldrons with water; but above it all his ears were bent across the
jungle in eager listening for the coming of Tantor.

Even Tarzan but half believed that he would come. He knew Tantor even
better than Tantor knew himself. He knew the timid heart which lay in
the giant body. He knew the panic of terror which the scent of the
Gomangani inspired within that savage breast, and as night drew on,
hope died within his heart and in the stoic calm of the wild beast
which he was, he resigned himself to meet the fate which awaited him.

All afternoon he had been working, working, working with the bonds that
held his wrists. Very slowly they were giving. He might free his hands
before they came to lead him out to be butchered, and if he did—Tarzan
licked his lips in anticipation, and smiled a cold, grim smile. He
could imagine the feel of soft flesh beneath his fingers and the
sinking of his white teeth into the throats of his foemen. He would let
them taste his wrath before they overpowered him!

At last they came—painted, befeathered warriors—even more hideous than
nature had intended them. They came and pushed him into the open, where
his appearance was greeted by wild shouts from the assembled villagers.

To the stake they led him, and as they pushed him roughly against it
preparatory to binding him there securely for the dance of death that
would presently encircle him, Tarzan tensed his mighty thews and with a
single, powerful wrench parted the loosened thongs which had secured
his hands. Like thought, for quickness, he leaped forward among the
warriors nearest him. A blow sent one to earth, as, growling and
snarling, the beast-man leaped upon the breast of another. His fangs
were buried instantly in the jugular of his adversary and then a half
hundred black men had leaped upon him and borne him to earth.

Striking, clawing, and snapping, the ape-man fought—fought as his
foster people had taught him to fight—fought like a wild beast
cornered. His strength, his agility, his courage, and his intelligence
rendered him easily a match for half a dozen black men in a
hand-to-hand struggle, but not even Tarzan of the Apes could hope to
successfully cope with half a hundred.

Slowly they were overpowering him, though a score of them bled from
ugly wounds, and two lay very still beneath the trampling feet, and the
rolling bodies of the contestants.

Overpower him they might, but could they keep him overpowered while
they bound him? A half hour of desperate endeavor convinced them that
they could not, and so Mbonga, who, like all good rulers, had circled
in the safety of the background, called to one to work his way in and
spear the victim. Gradually, through the milling, battling men, the
warrior approached the object of his quest.

He stood with poised spear above his head waiting for the instant that
would expose a vulnerable part of the ape-man’s body and still not
endanger one of the blacks. Closer and closer he edged about, following
the movements of the twisting, scuffling combatants. The growls of the
ape-man sent cold chills up the warrior’s spine, causing him to go
carefully lest he miss at the first cast and lay himself open to an
attack from those merciless teeth and mighty hands.

At last he found an opening. Higher he raised his spear, tensing his
muscles, rolling beneath his glistening, ebon hide, and then from the
jungle just beyond the palisade came a thunderous crashing. The
spear-hand paused, the black cast a quick glance in the direction of
the disturbance, as did the others of the blacks who were not occupied
with the subjugation of the ape-man.

In the glare of the fires they saw a huge bulk topping the barrier.
They saw the palisade belly and sway inward. They saw it burst as
though built of straws, and an instant later Tantor, the elephant,
thundered down upon them.

To right and left the blacks fled, screaming in terror. Some who
hovered upon the verge of the strife with Tarzan heard and made good
their escape, but a half dozen there were so wrapt in the blood-madness
of battle that they failed to note the approach of the giant tusker.

Upon these Tantor charged, trumpeting furiously. Above them he stopped,
his sensitive trunk weaving among them, and there, at the bottom, he
found Tarzan, bloody, but still battling.

A warrior turned his eyes upward from the melee. Above him towered the
gigantic bulk of the pachyderm, the little eyes flashing with the
reflected light of the fires—wicked, frightful, terrifying. The warrior
screamed, and as he screamed, the sinuous trunk encircled him, lifted
him high above the ground, and hurled him far after the fleeing crowd.

Another and another Tantor wrenched from the body of the ape-man,
throwing them to right and to left, where they lay either moaning or
very quiet, as death came slowly or at once.

At a distance Mbonga rallied his warriors. His greedy eyes had noted
the great ivory tusks of the bull. The first panic of terror relieved,
he urged his men forward to attack with their heavy elephant spears;
but as they came, Tantor swung Tarzan to his broad head, and, wheeling,
lumbered off into the jungle through the great rent he had made in the
palisade.

Elephant hunters may be right when they aver that this animal would not
have rendered such service to a man, but to Tantor, Tarzan was not a
man—he was but a fellow jungle beast.

And so it was that Tantor, the elephant, discharged an obligation to
Tarzan of the Apes, cementing even more closely the friendship that had
existed between them since Tarzan as a little, brown boy rode upon
Tantor’s huge back through the moonlit jungle beneath the equatorial
stars.




CHAPTER III
The Fight for the Balu


Teeka had become a mother. Tarzan of the Apes was intensely interested,
much more so, in fact, than Taug, the father. Tarzan was very fond of
Teeka. Even the cares of prospective motherhood had not entirely
quenched the fires of carefree youth, and Teeka had remained a
good-natured playmate even at an age when other shes of the tribe of
Kerchak had assumed the sullen dignity of maturity. She yet retained
her childish delight in the primitive games of tag and hide-and-go-seek
which Tarzan’s fertile man-mind had evolved.

To play tag through the tree tops is an exciting and inspiring pastime.
Tarzan delighted in it, but the bulls of his childhood had long since
abandoned such childish practices. Teeka, though, had been keen for it
always until shortly before the baby came; but with the advent of her
first-born, even Teeka changed.

The evidence of the change surprised and hurt Tarzan immeasurably. One
morning he saw Teeka squatted upon a low branch hugging something very
close to her hairy breast—a wee something which squirmed and wriggled.
Tarzan approached filled with the curiosity which is common to all
creatures endowed with brains which have progressed beyond the
microscopic stage.

Teeka rolled her eyes in his direction and strained the squirming mite
still closer to her. Tarzan came nearer. Teeka drew away and bared her
fangs. Tarzan was nonplussed. In all his experiences with Teeka, never
before had she bared fangs at him other than in play; but today she did
not look playful. Tarzan ran his brown fingers through his thick, black
hair, cocked his head upon one side, and stared. Then he edged a bit
nearer, craning his neck to have a better look at the thing which Teeka
cuddled.

Again Teeka drew back her upper lip in a warning snarl. Tarzan reached
forth a hand, cautiously, to touch the thing which Teeka held, and
Teeka, with a hideous growl, turned suddenly upon him. Her teeth sank
into the flesh of his forearm before the ape-man could snatch it away,
and she pursued him for a short distance as he retreated incontinently
through the trees; but Teeka, carrying her baby, could not overtake
him. At a safe distance Tarzan stopped and turned to regard his
erstwhile play-fellow in unconcealed astonishment. What had happened to
so alter the gentle Teeka? She had so covered the thing in her arms
that Tarzan had not yet been able to recognize it for what it was; but
now, as she turned from the pursuit of him, he saw it. Through his pain
and chagrin he smiled, for Tarzan had seen young ape mothers before. In
a few days she would be less suspicious. Still Tarzan was hurt; it was
not right that Teeka, of all others, should fear him. Why, not for the
world would he harm her, or her balu, which is the ape word for baby.

And now, above the pain of his injured arm and the hurt to his pride,
rose a still stronger desire to come close and inspect the new-born son
of Taug. Possibly you will wonder that Tarzan of the Apes, mighty
fighter that he was, should have fled before the irritable attack of a
she, or that he should hesitate to return for the satisfaction of his
curiosity when with ease he might have vanquished the weakened mother
of the new-born cub; but you need not wonder. Were you an ape, you
would know that only a bull in the throes of madness will turn upon a
female other than to gently chastise her, with the occasional exception
of the individual whom we find exemplified among our own kind, and who
delights in beating up his better half because she happens to be
smaller and weaker than he.

Tarzan again came toward the young mother—warily and with his line of
retreat safely open. Again Teeka growled ferociously. Tarzan
expostulated.

“Tarzan of the Apes will not harm Teeka’s balu,” he said. “Let me see
it.”

“Go away!” commanded Teeka. “Go away, or I will kill you.”

“Let me see it,” urged Tarzan.

“Go away,” reiterated the she-ape. “Here comes Taug. He will make you
go away. Taug will kill you. This is Taug’s balu.”

A savage growl close behind him apprised Tarzan of the nearness of
Taug, and the fact that the bull had heard the warnings and threats of
his mate and was coming to her succor.

Now Taug, as well as Teeka, had been Tarzan’s play-fellow while the
bull was still young enough to wish to play. Once Tarzan had saved
Taug’s life; but the memory of an ape is not overlong, nor would
gratitude rise above the parental instinct. Tarzan and Taug had once
measured strength, and Tarzan had been victorious. That fact Taug could
be depended upon still to remember; but even so, he might readily face
another defeat for his first-born—if he chanced to be in the proper
mood.

From his hideous growls, which now rose in strength and volume, he
seemed to be in quite the mood. Now Tarzan felt no fear of Taug, nor
did the unwritten law of the jungle demand that he should flee from
battle with any male, unless he cared to from purely personal reasons.
But Tarzan liked Taug. He had no grudge against him, and his man-mind
told him what the mind of an ape would never have deduced—that Taug’s
attitude in no sense indicated hatred. It was but the instinctive urge
of the male to protect its offspring and its mate.

Tarzan had no desire to battle with Taug, nor did the blood of his
English ancestors relish the thought of flight, yet when the bull
charged, Tarzan leaped nimbly to one side, and thus encouraged, Taug
wheeled and rushed again madly to the attack. Perhaps the memory of a
past defeat at Tarzan’s hands goaded him. Perhaps the fact that Teeka
sat there watching him aroused a desire to vanquish the ape-man before
her eyes, for in the breast of every jungle male lurks a vast egotism
which finds expression in the performance of deeds of derring-do before
an audience of the opposite sex.

At the ape-man’s side swung his long grass rope—the plaything of
yesterday, the weapon of today—and as Taug charged the second time,
Tarzan slipped the coils over his head and deftly shook out the sliding
noose as he again nimbly eluded the ungainly beast. Before the ape
could turn again, Tarzan had fled far aloft among the branches of the
upper terrace.

Taug, now wrought to a frenzy of real rage, followed him. Teeka peered
upward at them. It was difficult to say whether she was interested.
Taug could not climb as rapidly as Tarzan, so the latter reached the
high levels to which the heavy ape dared not follow before the former
overtook him. There he halted and looked down upon his pursuer, making
faces at him and calling him such choice names as occurred to the
fertile man-brain. Then, when he had worked Taug to such a pitch of
foaming rage that the great bull fairly danced upon the bending limb
beneath him, Tarzan’s hand shot suddenly outward, a widening noose
dropped swiftly through the air, there was a quick jerk as it settled
about Taug, falling to his knees, a jerk that tightened it securely
about the hairy legs of the anthropoid.

Taug, slow of wit, realized too late the intention of his tormentor. He
scrambled to escape, but the ape-man gave the rope a tremendous jerk
that pulled Taug from his perch, and a moment later, growling
hideously, the ape hung head downward thirty feet above the ground.

Tarzan secured the rope to a stout limb and descended to a point close
to Taug.

“Taug,” he said, “you are as stupid as Buto, the rhinoceros. Now you
may hang here until you get a little sense in your thick head. You may
hang here and watch while I go and talk with Teeka.”

Taug blustered and threatened, but Tarzan only grinned at him as he
dropped lightly to the lower levels. Here he again approached Teeka
only to be again greeted with bared fangs and menacing growls. He
sought to placate her; he urged his friendly intentions, and craned his
neck to have a look at Teeka’s balu; but the she-ape was not to be
persuaded that he meant other than harm to her little one. Her
motherhood was still so new that reason was yet subservient to
instinct.

Realizing the futility of attempting to catch and chastise Tarzan,
Teeka sought to escape him. She dropped to the ground and lumbered
across the little clearing about which the apes of the tribe were
disposed in rest or in the search of food, and presently Tarzan
abandoned his attempts to persuade her to permit a close examination of
the balu. The ape-man would have liked to handle the tiny thing. The
very sight of it awakened in his breast a strange yearning. He wished
to cuddle and fondle the grotesque little ape-thing. It was Teeka’s
balu and Tarzan had once lavished his young affections upon Teeka.

But now his attention was diverted by the voice of Taug. The threats
that had filled the ape’s mouth had turned to pleas. The tightening
noose was stopping the circulation of the blood in his legs—he was
beginning to suffer. Several apes sat near him highly interested in his
predicament. They made uncomplimentary remarks about him, for each of
them had felt the weight of Taug’s mighty hands and the strength of his
great jaws. They were enjoying revenge.

Teeka, seeing that Tarzan had turned back toward the trees, had halted
in the center of the clearing, and there she sat hugging her balu and
casting suspicious glances here and there. With the coming of the balu,
Teeka’s care-free world had suddenly become peopled with innumerable
enemies. She saw an implacable foe in Tarzan, always heretofore her
best friend. Even poor old Mumga, half blind and almost entirely
toothless, searching patiently for grubworms beneath a fallen log,
represented to her a malignant spirit thirsting for the blood of little
balus.

And while Teeka guarded suspiciously against harm, where there was no
harm, she failed to note two baleful, yellow-green eyes staring fixedly
at her from behind a clump of bushes at the opposite side of the
clearing.

Hollow from hunger, Sheeta, the panther, glared greedily at the
tempting meat so close at hand, but the sight of the great bulls beyond
gave him pause.

Ah, if the she-ape with her balu would but come just a trifle nearer! A
quick spring and he would be upon them and away again with his meat
before the bulls could prevent.

The tip of his tawny tail moved in spasmodic little jerks; his lower
jaw hung low, exposing a red tongue and yellow fangs. But all this
Teeka did not see, nor did any other of the apes who were feeding or
resting about her. Nor did Tarzan or the apes in the trees.

Hearing the abuse which the bulls were pouring upon the helpless Taug,
Tarzan clambered quickly among them. One was edging closer and leaning
far out in an effort to reach the dangling ape. He had worked himself
into quite a fury through recollection of the last occasion upon which
Taug had mauled him, and now he was bent upon revenge. Once he had
grasped the swinging ape, he would quickly have drawn him within reach
of his jaws. Tarzan saw and was wroth. He loved a fair fight, but the
thing which this ape contemplated revolted him. Already a hairy hand
had clutched the helpless Taug when, with an angry growl of protest,
Tarzan leaped to the branch at the attacking ape’s side, and with a
single mighty cuff, swept him from his perch.

Surprised and enraged, the bull clutched madly for support as he
toppled sidewise, and then with an agile movement succeeded in
projecting himself toward another limb a few feet below. Here he found
a hand-hold, quickly righted himself, and as quickly clambered upward
to be revenged upon Tarzan, but the ape-man was otherwise engaged and
did not wish to be interrupted. He was explaining again to Taug the
depths of the latter’s abysmal ignorance, and pointing out how much
greater and mightier was Tarzan of the Apes than Taug or any other ape.

In the end he would release Taug, but not until Taug was fully
acquainted with his own inferiority. And then the maddened bull came
from beneath, and instantly Tarzan was transformed from a good-natured,
teasing youth into a snarling, savage beast. Along his scalp the hair
bristled; his upper lip drew back that his fighting fangs might be
uncovered and ready. He did not wait for the bull to reach him, for
something in the appearance or the voice of the attacker aroused within
the ape-man a feeling of belligerent antagonism that would not be
denied. With a scream that carried no human note, Tarzan leaped
straight at the throat of the attacker.

The impetuosity of this act and the weight and momentum of his body
carried the bull backward, clutching and clawing for support, down
through the leafy branches of the tree. For fifteen feet the two fell,
Tarzan’s teeth buried in the jugular of his opponent, when a stout
branch stopped their descent. The bull struck full upon the small of
his back across the limb, hung there for a moment with the ape-man
still upon his breast, and then toppled over toward the ground.

Tarzan had felt the instantaneous relaxation of the body beneath him
after the heavy impact with the tree limb, and as the other turned
completely over and started again upon its fall toward the ground, he
reached forth a hand and caught the branch in time to stay his own
descent, while the ape dropped like a plummet to the foot of the tree.

Tarzan looked downward for a moment upon the still form of his late
antagonist, then he rose to his full height, swelled his deep chest,
smote upon it with his clenched fist and roared out the uncanny
challenge of the victorious bull ape.

Even Sheeta, the panther, crouched for a spring at the edge of the
little clearing, moved uneasily as the mighty voice sent its weird cry
reverberating through the jungle. To right and left, nervously, glanced
Sheeta, as though assuring himself that the way of escape lay ready at
hand.

“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” boasted the ape-man; “mighty hunter, mighty
fighter! None in all the jungle so great as Tarzan.”

Then he made his way back in the direction of Taug. Teeka had watched
the happenings in the tree. She had even placed her precious balu upon
the soft grasses and come a little nearer that she might better witness
all that was passing in the branches above her. In her heart of hearts
did she still esteem the smooth-skinned Tarzan? Did her savage breast
swell with pride as she witnessed his victory over the ape? You will
have to ask Teeka.

And Sheeta, the panther, saw that the she-ape had left her cub alone
among the grasses. He moved his tail again, as though this closest
approximation of lashing in which he dared indulge might stimulate his
momentarily waned courage. The cry of the victorious ape-man still held
his nerves beneath its spell. It would be several minutes before he
again could bring himself to the point of charging into view of the
giant anthropoids.

And as he regathered his forces, Tarzan reached Taug’s side, and then
clambering higher up to the point where the end of the grass rope was
made fast, he unloosed it and lowered the ape slowly downward, swinging
him in until the clutching hands fastened upon a limb.

Quickly Taug drew himself to a position of safety and shook off the
noose. In his rage-maddened heart was no room for gratitude to the
ape-man. He recalled only the fact that Tarzan had laid this painful
indignity upon him. He would be revenged, but just at present his legs
were so numb and his head so dizzy that he must postpone the
gratification of his vengeance.

Tarzan was coiling his rope the while he lectured Taug on the futility
of pitting his poor powers, physical and intellectual, against those of
his betters. Teeka had come close beneath the tree and was peering
upward. Sheeta was worming his way stealthily forward, his belly close
to the ground. In another moment he would be clear of the underbrush
and ready for the rapid charge and the quick retreat that would end the
brief existence of Teeka’s balu.

Then Tarzan chanced to look up and across the clearing. Instantly his
attitude of good-natured bantering and pompous boastfulness dropped
from him. Silently and swiftly he shot downward toward the ground.
Teeka, seeing him coming, and thinking that he was after her or her
balu, bristled and prepared to fight. But Tarzan sped by her, and as he
went, her eyes followed him and she saw the cause of his sudden descent
and his rapid charge across the clearing. There in full sight now was
Sheeta, the panther, stalking slowly toward the tiny, wriggling balu
which lay among the grasses many yards away.

Teeka gave voice to a shrill scream of terror and of warning as she
dashed after the ape-man. Sheeta saw Tarzan coming. He saw the
she-ape’s cub before him, and he thought that this other was bent upon
robbing him of his prey. With an angry growl, he charged.

Taug, warned by Teeka’s cry, came lumbering down to her assistance.
Several other bulls, growling and barking, closed in toward the
clearing, but they were all much farther from the balu and the panther
than was Tarzan of the Apes, so it was that Sheeta and the ape-man
reached Teeka’s little one almost simultaneously; and there they stood,
one upon either side of it, baring their fangs and snarling at each
other over the little creature.

Sheeta was afraid to seize the balu, for thus he would give the ape-man
an opening for attack; and for the same reason Tarzan hesitated to
snatch the panther’s prey out of harm’s way, for had he stooped to
accomplish this, the great beast would have been upon him in an
instant. Thus they stood while Teeka came across the clearing, going
more slowly as she neared the panther, for even her mother love could
scarce overcome her instinctive terror of this natural enemy of her
kind.

Behind her came Taug, warily and with many pauses and much bluster, and
still behind him came other bulls, snarling ferociously and uttering
their uncanny challenges. Sheeta’s yellow-green eyes glared terribly at
Tarzan, and past Tarzan they shot brief glances at the apes of Kerchak
advancing upon him. Discretion prompted him to turn and flee, but
hunger and the close proximity of the tempting morsel in the grass
before him urged him to remain. He reached forth a paw toward Teeka’s
balu, and as he did so, with a savage guttural, Tarzan of the Apes was
upon him.

The panther reared to meet the ape-man’s attack. He swung a frightful
raking blow for Tarzan that would have wiped his face away had it
landed, but it did not land, for Tarzan ducked beneath it and closed,
his long knife ready in one strong hand—the knife of his dead father,
of the father he never had known.

Instantly the balu was forgotten by Sheeta, the panther. He now thought
only of tearing to ribbons with his powerful talons the flesh of his
antagonist, of burying his long, yellow fangs in the soft, smooth hide
of the ape-man, but Tarzan had fought before with clawed creatures of
the jungle. Before now he had battled with fanged monsters, nor always
had he come away unscathed. He knew the risk that he ran, but Tarzan of
the Apes, inured to the sight of suffering and death, shrank from
neither, for he feared neither.

The instant that he dodged beneath Sheeta’s blow, he leaped to the
beast’s rear and then full upon the tawny back, burying his teeth in
Sheeta’s neck and the fingers of one hand in the fur at the throat, and
with the other hand he drove his blade into Sheeta’s side.

Over and over upon the grass rolled Sheeta, growling and screaming,
clawing and biting, in a mad effort to dislodge his antagonist or get
some portion of his body within range of teeth or talons.

As Tarzan leaped to close quarters with the panther, Teeka had run
quickly in and snatched up her balu. Now she sat upon a high branch,
safe out of harm’s way, cuddling the little thing close to her hairy
breast, the while her savage little eyes bored down upon the
contestants in the clearing, and her ferocious voice urged Taug and the
other bulls to leap into the melee.

Thus goaded the bulls came closer, redoubling their hideous clamor; but
Sheeta was already sufficiently engaged—he did not even hear them. Once
he succeeded in partially dislodging the ape-man from his back, so that
Tarzan swung for an instant in front of those awful talons, and in the
brief instant before he could regain his former hold, a raking blow
from a hind paw laid open one leg from hip to knee.

It was the sight and smell of this blood, possibly, which wrought upon
the encircling apes; but it was Taug who really was responsible for the
thing they did.

Taug, but a moment before filled with rage toward Tarzan of the Apes,
stood close to the battling pair, his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes
glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat
over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to
see Sheeta’s great fangs sink into the soft throat of the ape-man? Or
did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had prompted Tarzan to
rush to the rescue and imperil his life for Teeka’s balu—for Taug’s
little balu? Is gratitude a possession of man only, or do the lower
orders know it also?

With the spilling of Tarzan’s blood, Taug answered these questions.
With all the weight of his great body he leaped, hideously growling,
upon Sheeta. His long fighting fangs buried themselves in the white
throat. His powerful arms beat and clawed at the soft fur until it flew
upward in the jungle breeze.

And with Taug’s example before them the other bulls charged, burying
Sheeta beneath rending fangs and filling all the forest with the wild
din of their battle cries.

Ah! but it was a wondrous and inspiring sight—this battle of the
primordial apes and the great, white ape-man with their ancestral foe,
Sheeta, the panther.

In frenzied excitement, Teeka fairly danced upon the limb which swayed
beneath her great weight as she urged on the males of her people, and
Thaka, and Mumga, and Kamma, with the other shes of the tribe of
Kerchak, added their shrill cries or fierce barkings to the pandemonium
which now reigned within the jungle.

Bitten and biting, tearing and torn, Sheeta battled for his life; but
the odds were against him. Even Numa, the lion, would have hesitated to
have attacked an equal number of the great bulls of the tribe of
Kerchak, and now, a half mile away, hearing the sounds of the terrific
battle, the king of beasts rose uneasily from his midday slumber and
slunk off farther into the jungle.

Presently Sheeta’s torn and bloody body ceased its Titanic struggles.
It stiffened spasmodically, twitched and was still, yet the bulls
continued to lacerate it until the beautiful coat was torn to shreds.
At last they desisted from sheer physical weariness, and then from the
tangle of bloody bodies rose a crimson giant, straight as an arrow.

He placed a foot upon the dead body of the panther, and lifting his
blood-stained face to the blue of the equatorial heavens, gave voice to
the horrid victory cry of the bull ape.

One by one his hairy fellows of the tribe of Kerchak followed his
example. The shes came down from their perches of safety and struck and
reviled the dead body of Sheeta. The young apes refought the battle in
mimicry of their mighty elders.

Teeka was quite close to Tarzan. He turned and saw her with the balu
hugged close to her hairy breast, and put out his hands to take the
little one, expecting that Teeka would bare her fangs and spring upon
him; but instead she placed the balu in his arms, and coming nearer,
licked his frightful wounds.

And presently Taug, who had escaped with only a few scratches, came and
squatted beside Tarzan and watched him as he played with the little
balu, and at last he too leaned over and helped Teeka with the
cleansing and the healing of the ape-man’s hurts.




CHAPTER IV
The God of Tarzan


Among the books of his dead father in the little cabin by the
land-locked harbor, Tarzan of the Apes found many things to puzzle his
young head. By much labor and through the medium of infinite patience
as well, he had, without assistance, discovered the purpose of the
little bugs which ran riot upon the printed pages. He had learned that
in the many combinations in which he found them they spoke in a silent
language, spoke in a strange tongue, spoke of wonderful things which a
little ape-boy could not by any chance fully understand, arousing his
curiosity, stimulating his imagination and filling his soul with a
mighty longing for further knowledge.

A dictionary had proven itself a wonderful storehouse of information,
when, after several years of tireless endeavor, he had solved the
mystery of its purpose and the manner of its use. He had learned to
make a species of game out of it, following up the spoor of a new
thought through the mazes of the many definitions which each new word
required him to consult. It was like following a quarry through the
jungle—it was hunting, and Tarzan of the Apes was an indefatigable
huntsman.

There were, of course, certain words which aroused his curiosity to a
greater extent than others, words which, for one reason or another,
excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning of
which was rather difficult to grasp. It was the word GOD. Tarzan first
had been attracted to it by the fact that it was very short and that it
commenced with a larger g-bug than those about it—a male g-bug it was
to Tarzan, the lower-case letters being females. Another fact which
attracted him to this word was the number of he-bugs which figured in
its definition—Supreme Deity, Creator or Upholder of the Universe. This
must be a very important word indeed, he would have to look into it,
and he did, though it still baffled him after many months of thought
and study.

However, Tarzan counted no time wasted which he devoted to these
strange hunting expeditions into the game preserves of knowledge, for
each word and each definition led on and on into strange places, into
new worlds where, with increasing frequency, he met old, familiar
faces. And always he added to his store of knowledge.

But of the meaning of GOD he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he had
grasped it—that God was a mighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani. He
was not quite sure, however, since that would mean that God was
mightier than Tarzan—a point which Tarzan of the Apes, who acknowledged
no equal in the jungle, was loath to concede.

But in all the books he had there was no picture of God, though he
found much to confirm his belief that God was a great, an all-powerful
individual. He saw pictures of places where God was worshiped; but
never any sign of God. Finally he began to wonder if God were not of a
different form than he, and at last he determined to set out in search
of Him.

He commenced by questioning Mumga, who was very old and had seen many
strange things in her long life; but Mumga, being an ape, had a faculty
for recalling the trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a sting-bug for
an edible beetle had made more impression upon Mumga than all the
innumerable manifestations of the greatness of God which she had
witnessed, and which, of course, she had not understood.

Numgo, overhearing Tarzan’s questions, managed to wrest his attention
long enough from the diversion of flea hunting to advance the theory
that the power which made the lightning and the rain and the thunder
came from Goro, the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dum
always was danced in the light of Goro. This reasoning, though entirely
satisfactory to Numgo and Mumga, failed fully to convince Tarzan.
However, it gave him a basis for further investigation along a new
line. He would investigate the moon.

That night he clambered to the loftiest pinnacle of the tallest jungle
giant. The moon was full, a great, glorious, equatorial moon. The
ape-man, upright upon a slender, swaying limb, raised his bronzed face
to the silver orb. Now that he had clambered to the highest point
within his reach, he discovered, to his surprise, that Goro was as far
away as when he viewed him from the ground. He thought that Goro was
attempting to elude him.

“Come, Goro!” he cried, “Tarzan of the Apes will not harm you!” But
still the moon held aloof.

“Tell me,” he continued, “if you be the great king who sends Ara, the
lightning; who makes the great noise and the mighty winds, and sends
the waters down upon the jungle people when the days are dark and it is
cold. Tell me, Goro, are you God!”

Of course he did not pronounce God as you or I would pronounce His
name, for Tarzan knew naught of the spoken language of his English
forbears; but he had a name of his own invention for each of the little
bugs which constituted the alphabet. Unlike the apes he was not
satisfied merely to have a mental picture of the things he knew, he
must have a word descriptive of each. In reading he grasped a word in
its entirety; but when he spoke the words he had learned from the books
of his father, he pronounced each according to the names he had given
the various little bugs which occurred in it, usually giving the gender
prefix for each.

Thus it was an imposing word which Tarzan made of GOD. The masculine
prefix of the apes is BU, the feminine MU; g Tarzan had named LA, o he
pronounced TU, and d was MO. So the word God evolved itself into
BULAMUTUMUMO, or, in English, he-g-she-o-she-d.

Similarly he had arrived at a strange and wonderful spelling of his own
name. Tarzan is derived from the two ape words TAR and ZAN, meaning
white skin. It was given him by his foster mother, Kala, the great
she-ape. When Tarzan first put it into the written language of his own
people he had not yet chanced upon either WHITE or SKIN in the
dictionary; but in a primer he had seen the picture of a little white
boy and so he wrote his name BUMUDE-MUTOMURO, or he-boy.

To follow Tarzan’s strange system of spelling would be laborious as
well as futile, and so we shall in the future, as we have in the past,
adhere to the more familiar forms of our grammar school copybooks. It
would tire you to remember that DO meant b, TU o, and RO y, and that to
say he-boy you must prefix the ape masculine gender sound BU before the
entire word and the feminine gender sound MU before each of the
lower-case letters which go to make up boy—it would tire you and it
would bring me to the nineteenth hole several strokes under par.

And so Tarzan harangued the moon, and when Goro did not reply, Tarzan
of the Apes waxed wroth. He swelled his giant chest and bared his
fighting fangs, and hurled into the teeth of the dead satellite the
challenge of the bull ape.

“You are not Bulamutumumo,” he cried. “You are not king of the jungle
folk. You are not so great as Tarzan, mighty fighter, mighty hunter.
None there is so great as Tarzan. If there be a Bulamutumumo, Tarzan
can kill him. Come down, Goro, great coward, and fight with Tarzan.
Tarzan will kill you. I am Tarzan, the killer.”

But the moon made no answer to the boasting of the ape-man, and when a
cloud came and obscured her face, Tarzan thought that Goro was indeed
afraid, and was hiding from him, so he came down out of the trees and
awoke Numgo and told him how great was Tarzan—how he had frightened
Goro out of the sky and made him tremble. Tarzan spoke of the moon as
HE, for all things large or awe inspiring are male to the ape folk.

Numgo was not much impressed; but he was very sleepy, so he told Tarzan
to go away and leave his betters alone.

“But where shall I find God?” insisted Tarzan. “You are very old; if
there is a God you must have seen Him. What does He look like? Where
does He live?”

“I am God,” replied Numgo. “Now sleep and disturb me no more.”

Tarzan looked at Numgo steadily for several minutes, his shapely head
sank just a trifle between his great shoulders, his square chin shot
forward and his short upper lip drew back, exposing his white teeth.
Then, with a low growl he leaped upon the ape and buried his fangs in
the other’s hairy shoulder, clutching the great neck in his mighty
fingers. Twice he shook the old ape, then he released his tooth-hold.

“Are you God?” he demanded.

“No,” wailed Numgo. “I am only a poor, old ape. Leave me alone. Go ask
the Gomangani where God is. They are hairless like yourself and very
wise, too. They should know.”

Tarzan released Numgo and turned away. The suggestion that he consult
the blacks appealed to him, and though his relations with the people of
Mbonga, the chief, were the antithesis of friendly, he could at least
spy upon his hated enemies and discover if they had intercourse with
God.

So it was that Tarzan set forth through the trees toward the village of
the blacks, all excitement at the prospect of discovering the Supreme
Being, the Creator of all things. As he traveled he reviewed, mentally,
his armament—the condition of his hunting knife, the number of his
arrows, the newness of the gut which strung his bow—he hefted the war
spear which had once been the pride of some black warrior of Mbonga’s
tribe.

If he met God, Tarzan would be prepared. One could never tell whether a
grass rope, a war spear, or a poisoned arrow would be most efficacious
against an unfamiliar foe. Tarzan of the Apes was quite content—if God
wished to fight, the ape-man had no doubt as to the outcome of the
struggle. There were many questions Tarzan wished to put to the Creator
of the Universe and so he hoped that God would not prove a belligerent
God; but his experience of life and the ways of living things had
taught him that any creature with the means for offense and defense was
quite likely to provoke attack if in the proper mood.

It was dark when Tarzan came to the village of Mbonga. As silently as
the silent shadows of the night he sought his accustomed place among
the branches of the great tree which overhung the palisade. Below him,
in the village street, he saw men and women. The men were hideously
painted—more hideously than usual. Among them moved a weird and
grotesque figure, a tall figure that went upon the two legs of a man
and yet had the head of a buffalo. A tail dangled to his ankles behind
him, and in one hand he carried a zebra’s tail while the other clutched
a bunch of small arrows.

Tarzan was electrified. Could it be that chance had given him thus
early an opportunity to look upon God? Surely this thing was neither
man nor beast, so what could it be then other than the Creator of the
Universe! The ape-man watched the every move of the strange creature.
He saw the black men and women fall back at its approach as though they
stood in terror of its mysterious powers.

Presently he discovered that the deity was speaking and that all
listened in silence to his words. Tarzan was sure that none other than
God could inspire such awe in the hearts of the Gomangani, or stop
their mouths so effectually without recourse to arrows or spears.
Tarzan had come to look with contempt upon the blacks, principally
because of their garrulity. The small apes talked a great deal and ran
away from an enemy. The big, old bulls of Kerchak talked but little and
fought upon the slightest provocation. Numa, the lion, was not given to
loquacity, yet of all the jungle folk there were few who fought more
often than he.

Tarzan witnessed strange things that night, none of which he
understood, and, perhaps because they were strange, he thought that
they must have to do with the God he could not understand. He saw three
youths receive their first war spears in a weird ceremony which the
grotesque witch-doctor strove successfully to render uncanny and
awesome.

Hugely interested, he watched the slashing of the three brown arms and
the exchange of blood with Mbonga, the chief, in the rites of the
ceremony of blood brotherhood. He saw the zebra’s tail dipped into a
caldron of water above which the witch-doctor had made magical passes
the while he danced and leaped about it, and he saw the breasts and
foreheads of each of the three novitiates sprinkled with the charmed
liquid. Could the ape-man have known the purpose of this act, that it
was intended to render the recipient invulnerable to the attacks of his
enemies and fearless in the face of any danger, he would doubtless have
leaped into the village street and appropriated the zebra’s tail and a
portion of the contents of the caldron.

But he did not know, and so he only wondered, not alone at what he saw
but at the strange sensations which played up and down his naked spine,
sensations induced, doubtless, by the same hypnotic influence which
held the black spectators in tense awe upon the verge of a hysteric
upheaval.

The longer Tarzan watched, the more convinced he became that his eyes
were upon God, and with the conviction came determination to have word
with the deity. With Tarzan of the Apes, to think was to act.

The people of Mbonga were keyed to the highest pitch of hysterical
excitement. They needed little to release the accumulated pressure of
static nerve force which the terrorizing mummery of the witch-doctor
had induced.

A lion roared, suddenly and loud, close without the palisade. The
blacks started nervously, dropping into utter silence as they listened
for a repetition of that all-too-familiar and always terrorizing voice.
Even the witch-doctor paused in the midst of an intricate step,
remaining momentarily rigid and statuesque as he plumbed his cunning
mind for a suggestion as how best he might take advantage of the
condition of his audience and the timely interruption.

Already the evening had been vastly profitable to him. There would be
three goats for the initiation of the three youths into full-fledged
warriorship, and besides these he had received several gifts of grain
and beads, together with a piece of copper wire from admiring and
terrified members of his audience.

Numa’s roar still reverberated along taut nerves when a woman’s laugh,
shrill and piercing, shattered the silence of the village. It was this
moment that Tarzan chose to drop lightly from his tree into the village
street. Fearless among his blood enemies he stood, taller by a full
head than many of Mbonga’s warriors, straight as their straightest
arrow, muscled like Numa, the lion.

For a moment Tarzan stood looking straight at the witch-doctor. Every
eye was upon him, yet no one had moved—a paralysis of terror held them,
to be broken a moment later as the ape-man, with a toss of head,
stepped straight toward the hideous figure beneath the buffalo head.

Then the nerves of the blacks could stand no more. For months the
terror of the strange, white, jungle god had been upon them. Their
arrows had been stolen from the very center of the village; their
warriors had been silently slain upon the jungle trails and their dead
bodies dropped mysteriously and by night into the village street as
from the heavens above.

One or two there were who had glimpsed the strange figure of the new
demon and it was from their oft-repeated descriptions that the entire
village now recognized Tarzan as the author of many of their ills. Upon
another occasion and by daylight, the warriors would doubtless have
leaped to attack him, but at night, and this night of all others, when
they were wrought to such a pitch of nervous dread by the uncanny
artistry of their witch-doctor, they were helpless with terror. As one
man they turned and fled, scattering for their huts, as Tarzan
advanced. For a moment one and one only held his ground. It was the
witch-doctor. More than half self-hypnotized into a belief in his own
charlatanry he faced this new demon who threatened to undermine his
ancient and lucrative profession.

“Are you God?” asked Tarzan.

The witch-doctor, having no idea of the meaning of the other’s words,
danced a few strange steps, leaped high in the air, turning completely
around and alighting in a stooping posture with feet far outspread and
head thrust out toward the ape-man. Thus he remained for an instant
before he uttered a loud “Boo!” which was evidently intended to
frighten Tarzan away; but in reality had no such effect.

Tarzan did not pause. He had set out to approach and examine God and
nothing upon earth might now stay his feet. Seeing that his antics had
no potency with the visitor, the witch-doctor tried some new medicine.
Spitting upon the zebra’s tail, which he still clutched in one hand, he
made circles above it with the arrows in the other hand, meanwhile
backing cautiously away from Tarzan and speaking confidentially to the
bushy end of the tail.

This medicine must be short medicine, however, for the creature, god or
demon, was steadily closing up the distance which had separated them.
The circles therefore were few and rapid, and when they were completed,
the witch-doctor struck an attitude which was intended to be awe
inspiring and waving the zebra’s tail before him, drew an imaginary
line between himself and Tarzan.

“Beyond this line you cannot pass, for my medicine is strong medicine,”
he cried. “Stop, or you will fall dead as your foot touches this spot.
My mother was a voodoo, my father was a snake; I live upon lions’
hearts and the entrails of the panther; I eat young babies for
breakfast and the demons of the jungle are my slaves. I am the most
powerful witch-doctor in the world; I fear nothing, for I cannot die.
I—” But he got no further; instead he turned and fled as Tarzan of the
Apes crossed the magical dead line and still lived.

As the witch-doctor ran, Tarzan almost lost his temper. This was no way
for God to act, at least not in accordance with the conception Tarzan
had come to have of God.

“Come back!” he cried. “Come back, God, I will not harm you.” But the
witch-doctor was in full retreat by this time, stepping high as he
leaped over cooking pots and the smoldering embers of small fires that
had burned before the huts of villagers. Straight for his own hut ran
the witch-doctor, terror-spurred to unwonted speed; but futile was his
effort—the ape-man bore down upon him with the speed of Bara, the deer.

Just at the entrance to his hut the witch-doctor was overhauled. A
heavy hand fell upon his shoulder to drag him back. It seized upon a
portion of the buffalo hide, dragging the disguise from him. It was a
naked black man that Tarzan saw dodge into the darkness of the hut’s
interior.

So this was what he had thought was God! Tarzan’s lip curled in an
angry snarl as he leaped into the hut after the terror-stricken
witch-doctor. In the blackness within he found the man huddled at the
far side and dragged him forth into the comparative lightness of the
moonlit night.

The witch-doctor bit and scratched in an attempt to escape; but a few
cuffs across the head brought him to a better realization of the
futility of resistance. Beneath the moon Tarzan held the cringing
figure upon its shaking feet.

“So you are God!” he cried. “If you be God, then Tarzan is greater than
God,” and so the ape-man thought. “I am Tarzan,” he shouted into the
ear of the black. “In all the jungle, or above it, or upon the running
waters, or the sleeping waters, or upon the big water, or the little
water, there is none so great as Tarzan. Tarzan is greater than the
Mangani; he is greater than the Gomangani. With his own hands he has
slain Numa, the lion, and Sheeta, the panther; there is none so great
as Tarzan. Tarzan is greater than God. See!” and with a sudden wrench
he twisted the black’s neck until the fellow shrieked in pain and then
slumped to the earth in a swoon.

Placing his foot upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor, the ape-man
raised his face to the moon and uttered the long, shrill scream of the
victorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra’s tail from
the nerveless fingers of the unconscious man and without a backward
glance retraced his footsteps across the village.

From several hut doorways frightened eyes watched him. Mbonga, the
chief, was one of those who had seen what passed before the hut of the
witch-doctor. Mbonga was greatly concerned. Wise old patriarch that he
was, he never had more than half believed in witch-doctors, at least
not since greater wisdom had come with age; but as a chief he was well
convinced of the power of the witch-doctor as an arm of government, and
often it was that Mbonga used the superstitious fears of his people to
his own ends through the medium of the medicine-man.

Mbonga and the witch-doctor had worked together and divided the spoils,
and now the “face” of the witch-doctor would be lost forever if any saw
what Mbonga had seen; nor would this generation again have as much
faith in any future witch-doctor.

Mbonga must do something to counteract the evil influence of the forest
demon’s victory over the witch-doctor. He raised his heavy spear and
crept silently from his hut in the wake of the retreating ape-man. Down
the village street walked Tarzan, as unconcerned and as deliberate as
though only the friendly apes of Kerchak surrounded him instead of a
village full of armed enemies.

Seeming only was the indifference of Tarzan, for alert and watchful was
every well-trained sense. Mbonga, wily stalker of keen-eared jungle
creatures, moved now in utter silence. Not even Bara, the deer, with
his great ears could have guessed from any sound that Mbonga was near;
but the black was not stalking Bara; he was stalking man, and so he
sought only to avoid noise.

Closer and closer to the slowly moving ape-man he came. Now he raised
his war spear, throwing his spear-hand far back above his right
shoulder. Once and for all would Mbonga, the chief, rid himself and his
people of the menace of this terrifying enemy. He would make no poor
cast; he would take pains, and he would hurl his weapon with such great
force as would finish the demon forever.

But Mbonga, sure as he thought himself, erred in his calculations. He
might believe that he was stalking a man—he did not know, however, that
it was a man with the delicate sense perception of the lower orders.
Tarzan, when he had turned his back upon his enemies, had noted what
Mbonga never would have thought of considering in the hunting of
man—the wind. It was blowing in the same direction that Tarzan was
proceeding, carrying to his delicate nostrils the odors which arose
behind him. Thus it was that Tarzan knew that he was being followed,
for even among the many stenches of an African village, the ape-man’s
uncanny faculty was equal to the task of differentiating one stench
from another and locating with remarkable precision the source from
whence it came.

He knew that a man was following him and coming closer, and his
judgment warned him of the purpose of the stalker. When Mbonga,
therefore, came within spear range of the ape-man, the latter suddenly
wheeled upon him, so suddenly that the poised spear was shot a fraction
of a second before Mbonga had intended. It went a trifle high and
Tarzan stooped to let it pass over his head; then he sprang toward the
chief. But Mbonga did not wait to receive him. Instead, he turned and
fled for the dark doorway of the nearest hut, calling as he went for
his warriors to fall upon the stranger and slay him.

Well indeed might Mbonga scream for help, for Tarzan, young and
fleet-footed, covered the distance between them in great leaps, at the
speed of a charging lion. He was growling, too, not at all unlike Numa
himself. Mbonga heard and his blood ran cold. He could feel the wool
stiffen upon his pate and a prickly chill run up his spine, as though
Death had come and run his cold finger along Mbonga’s back.

Others heard, too, and saw, from the darkness of their huts—bold
warriors, hideously painted, grasping heavy war spears in nerveless
fingers. Against Numa, the lion, they would have charged fearlessly.
Against many times their own number of black warriors would they have
raced to the protection of their chief; but this weird jungle demon
filled them with terror. There was nothing human in the bestial growls
that rumbled up from his deep chest; there was nothing human in the
bared fangs, or the catlike leaps. Mbonga’s warriors were terrified—too
terrified to leave the seeming security of their huts while they
watched the beast-man spring full upon the back of their old chieftain.

Mbonga went down with a scream of terror. He was too frightened even to
attempt to defend himself. He just lay beneath his antagonist in a
paralysis of fear, screaming at the top of his lungs. Tarzan half rose
and kneeled above the black. He turned Mbonga over and looked him in
the face, exposing the man’s throat, then he drew his long, keen knife,
the knife that John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, had brought from England
many years before. He raised it close above Mbonga’s neck. The old
black whimpered with terror. He pleaded for his life in a tongue which
Tarzan could not understand.

For the first time the ape-man had a close view of the chief. He saw an
old man, a very old man with scrawny neck and wrinkled face—a dried,
parchment-like face which resembled some of the little monkeys Tarzan
knew so well. He saw the terror in the man’s eyes—never before had
Tarzan seen such terror in the eyes of any animal, or such a piteous
appeal for mercy upon the face of any creature.

Something stayed the ape-man’s hand for an instant. He wondered why it
was that he hesitated to make the kill; never before had he thus
delayed. The old man seemed to wither and shrink to a bag of puny bones
beneath his eyes. So weak and helpless and terror-stricken he appeared
that the ape-man was filled with a great contempt; but another
sensation also claimed him—something new to Tarzan of the Apes in
relation to an enemy. It was pity—pity for a poor, frightened, old man.

Tarzan rose and turned away, leaving Mbonga, the chief, unharmed.
With head held high the ape-man walked through the village, swung
himself into the branches of the tree which overhung the palisade and
disappeared from the sight of the villagers.

All the way back to the stamping ground of the apes, Tarzan sought for
an explanation of the strange power which had stayed his hand and
prevented him from slaying Mbonga. It was as though someone greater
than he had commanded him to spare the life of the old man. Tarzan
could not understand, for he could conceive of nothing, or no one, with
the authority to dictate to him what he should do, or what he should
refrain from doing.

It was late when Tarzan sought a swaying couch among the trees beneath
which slept the apes of Kerchak, and he was still absorbed in the
solution of his strange problem when he fell asleep.

The sun was well up in the heavens when he awoke. The apes were astir
in search of food. Tarzan watched them lazily from above as they
scratched in the rotting loam for bugs and beetles and grubworms, or
sought among the branches of the trees for eggs and young birds, or
luscious caterpillars.

An orchid, dangling close beside his head, opened slowly, unfolding its
delicate petals to the warmth and light of the sun which but recently
had penetrated to its shady retreat. A thousand times had Tarzan of the
Apes witnessed the beauteous miracle; but now it aroused a keener
interest, for the ape-man was just commencing to ask himself questions
about all the myriad wonders which heretofore he had but taken for
granted.

What made the flower open? What made it grow from a tiny bud to a
full-blown bloom? Why was it at all? Why was he? Where did Numa, the
lion, come from? Who planted the first tree? How did Goro get way up
into the darkness of the night sky to cast his welcome light upon the
fearsome nocturnal jungle? And the sun! Did the sun merely happen
there?

Why were all the peoples of the jungle not trees? Why were the trees
not something else? Why was Tarzan different from Taug, and Taug
different from Bara, the deer, and Bara different from Sheeta, the
panther, and why was not Sheeta like Buto, the rhinoceros? Where and
how, anyway, did they all come from—the trees, the flowers, the
insects, the countless creatures of the jungle?

Quite unexpectedly an idea popped into Tarzan’s head. In following out
the many ramifications of the dictionary definition of GOD he had come
upon the word CREATE—“to cause to come into existence; to form out of
nothing.”

Tarzan almost had arrived at something tangible when a distant wail
startled him from his preoccupation into sensibility of the present and
the real. The wail came from the jungle at some little distance from
Tarzan’s swaying couch. It was the wail of a tiny balu. Tarzan
recognized it at once as the voice of Gazan, Teeka’s baby. They had
called it Gazan because its soft, baby hair had been unusually red, and
GAZAN in the language of the great apes, means red skin.

The wail was immediately followed by a real scream of terror from the
small lungs. Tarzan was electrified into instant action. Like an arrow
from a bow he shot through the trees in the direction of the sound.
Ahead of him he heard the savage snarling of an adult she-ape. It was
Teeka to the rescue. The danger must be very real. Tarzan could tell
that by the note of rage mingled with fear in the voice of the she.

Running along bending limbs, swinging from one tree to another, the
ape-man raced through the middle terraces toward the sounds which now
had risen in volume to deafening proportions. From all directions the
apes of Kerchak were hurrying in response to the appeal in the tones of
the balu and its mother, and as they came, their roars reverberated
through the forest.

But Tarzan, swifter than his heavy fellows, distanced them all. It was
he who was first upon the scene. What he saw sent a cold chill through
his giant frame, for the enemy was the most hated and loathed of all
the jungle creatures.

Twined in a great tree was Histah, the snake—huge, ponderous, slimy—and
in the folds of its deadly embrace was Teeka’s little balu, Gazan.
Nothing in the jungle inspired within the breast of Tarzan so near a
semblance to fear as did the hideous Histah. The apes, too, loathed the
terrifying reptile and feared him even more than they did Sheeta, the
panther, or Numa, the lion. Of all their enemies there was none they
gave a wider berth than they gave Histah, the snake.

Tarzan knew that Teeka was peculiarly fearful of this silent, repulsive
foe, and as the scene broke upon his vision, it was the action of Teeka
which filled him with the greatest wonder, for at the moment that he
saw her, the she-ape leaped upon the glistening body of the snake, and
as the mighty folds encircled her as well as her offspring, she made no
effort to escape, but instead grasped the writhing body in a futile
effort to tear it from her screaming balu.

Tarzan knew all too well how deep-rooted was Teeka’s terror of Histah.
He scarce could believe the testimony of his own eyes then, when they
told him that she had voluntarily rushed into that deadly embrace. Nor
was Teeka’s innate dread of the monster much greater than Tarzan’s own.
Never, willingly, had he touched a snake. Why, he could not say, for he
would admit fear of nothing; nor was it fear, but rather an inherent
repulsion bequeathed to him by many generations of civilized ancestors,
and back of them, perhaps, by countless myriads of such as Teeka, in
the breasts of each of which had lurked the same nameless terror of the
slimy reptile.

Yet Tarzan did not hesitate more than had Teeka, but leaped upon Histah
with all the speed and impetuosity that he would have shown had he been
springing upon Bara, the deer, to make a kill for food. Thus beset the
snake writhed and twisted horribly; but not for an instant did it loose
its hold upon any of its intended victims, for it had included the
ape-man in its cold embrace the minute that he had fallen upon it.

Still clinging to the tree, the mighty reptile held the three as though
they had been without weight, the while it sought to crush the life
from them. Tarzan had drawn his knife and this he now plunged rapidly
into the body of the enemy; but the encircling folds promised to sap
his life before he had inflicted a death wound upon the snake. Yet on
he fought, nor once did he seek to escape the horrid death that
confronted him—his sole aim was to slay Histah and thus free Teeka and
her balu.

The great, wide-gaping jaws of the snake turned and hovered above him.
The elastic maw, which could accommodate a rabbit or a horned buck with
equal facility, yawned for him; but Histah, in turning his attention
upon the ape-man, brought his head within reach of Tarzan’s blade.
Instantly a brown hand leaped forth and seized the mottled neck, and
another drove the heavy hunting knife to the hilt into the little
brain.

Convulsively Histah shuddered and relaxed, tensed and relaxed again,
whipping and striking with his great body; but no longer sentient or
sensible. Histah was dead, but in his death throes he might easily
dispatch a dozen apes or men.

Quickly Tarzan seized Teeka and dragged her from the loosened embrace,
dropping her to the ground beneath, then he extricated the balu and
tossed it to its mother. Still Histah whipped about, clinging to the
ape-man; but after a dozen efforts Tarzan succeeded in wriggling free
and leaping to the ground out of range of the mighty battering of the
dying snake.

A circle of apes surrounded the scene of the battle; but the moment
that Tarzan broke safely from the enemy they turned silently away to
resume their interrupted feeding, and Teeka turned with them,
apparently forgetful of all but her balu and the fact that when the
interruption had occurred she just had discovered an ingeniously hidden
nest containing three perfectly good eggs.

Tarzan, equally indifferent to a battle that was over, merely cast a
parting glance at the still writhing body of Histah and wandered off
toward the little pool which served to water the tribe at this point.
Strangely, he did not give the victory cry over the vanquished Histah.
Why, he could not have told you, other than that to him Histah was not
an animal. He differed in some peculiar way from the other denizens of
the jungle. Tarzan only knew that he hated him.

At the pool Tarzan drank his fill and lay stretched upon the soft grass
beneath the shade of a tree. His mind reverted to the battle with
Histah, the snake. It seemed strange to him that Teeka should have
placed herself within the folds of the horrid monster. Why had she done
it? Why, indeed, had he? Teeka did not belong to him, nor did Teeka’s
balu. They were both Taug’s. Why then had he done this thing? Histah
was not food for him when he was dead. There seemed to Tarzan, now that
he gave the matter thought, no reason in the world why he should have
done the thing he did, and presently it occurred to him that he had
acted almost involuntarily, just as he had acted when he had released
the old Gomangani the previous evening.

What made him do such things? Somebody more powerful than he must force
him to act at times. “All-powerful,” thought Tarzan. “The little bugs
say that God is all-powerful. It must be that God made me do these
things, for I never did them by myself. It was God made Teeka rush
upon Histah. Teeka would never go near Histah of her own volition. It
was God who held my knife from the throat of the old Gomangani. God
accomplishes strange things for he is ‘all-powerful.’ I cannot see Him;
but I know that it must be God who does these things. No Mangani, no
Gomangani, no Tarmangani could do them.”

And the flowers—who made them grow? Ah, now it was all explained—the
flowers, the trees, the moon, the sun, himself, every living creature
in the jungle—they were all made by God out of nothing.

And what was God? What did God look like? Of that he had no conception;
but he was sure that everything that was good came from God. His good
act in refraining from slaying the poor, defenseless old Gomangani;
Teeka’s love that had hurled her into the embrace of death; his own
loyalty to Teeka which had jeopardized his life that she might live.
The flowers and the trees were good and beautiful. God had made them.
He made the other creatures, too, that each might have food upon which
to live. He had made Sheeta, the panther, with his beautiful coat; and
Numa, the lion, with his noble head and his shaggy mane. He had made
Bara, the deer, lovely and graceful.

Yes, Tarzan had found God, and he spent the whole day in attributing to
Him all of the good and beautiful things of nature; but there was one
thing which troubled him. He could not quite reconcile it to his
conception of his new-found God.

Who made Histah, the snake?




CHAPTER V
Tarzan and the Black Boy


Tarzan of the Apes sat at the foot of a great tree braiding a new grass
rope. Beside him lay the frayed remnants of the old one, torn and
severed by the fangs and talons of Sheeta, the panther. Only half the
original rope was there, the balance having been carried off by the
angry cat as he bounded away through the jungle with the noose still
about his savage neck and the loose end dragging among the underbrush.

Tarzan smiled as he recalled Sheeta’s great rage, his frantic efforts
to free himself from the entangling strands, his uncanny screams that
were part hate, part anger, part terror. He smiled in retrospection at
the discomfiture of his enemy, and in anticipation of another day as he
added an extra strand to his new rope.

This would be the strongest, the heaviest rope that Tarzan of the Apes
ever had fashioned. Visions of Numa, the lion, straining futilely in
its embrace thrilled the ape-man. He was quite content, for his hands
and his brain were busy. Content, too, were his fellows of the tribe of
Kerchak, searching for food in the clearing and the surrounding trees
about him. No perplexing thoughts of the future burdened their minds,
and only occasionally, dimly arose recollections of the near past. They
were stimulated to a species of brutal content by the delectable
business of filling their bellies. Afterward they would sleep—it was
their life, and they enjoyed it as we enjoy ours, you and I—as Tarzan
enjoyed his. Possibly they enjoyed theirs more than we enjoy ours, for
who shall say that the beasts of the jungle do not better fulfill the
purposes for which they are created than does man with his many
excursions into strange fields and his contraventions of the laws of
nature? And what gives greater content and greater happiness than the
fulfilling of a destiny?

As Tarzan worked, Gazan, Teeka’s little balu, played about him while
Teeka sought food upon the opposite side of the clearing. No more did
Teeka, the mother, or Taug, the sullen sire, harbor suspicions of
Tarzan’s intentions toward their first-born. Had he not courted death
to save their Gazan from the fangs and talons of Sheeta? Did he not
fondle and cuddle the little one with even as great a show of affection
as Teeka herself displayed? Their fears were allayed and Tarzan now
found himself often in the role of nursemaid to a tiny anthropoid—an
avocation which he found by no means irksome, since Gazan was a
never-failing fount of surprises and entertainment.

Just now the apeling was developing those arboreal tendencies which
were to stand him in such good stead during the years of his youth,
when rapid flight into the upper terraces was of far more importance
and value than his undeveloped muscles and untried fighting fangs.
Backing off fifteen or twenty feet from the bole of the tree beneath
the branches of which Tarzan worked upon his rope, Gazan scampered
quickly forward, scrambling nimbly upward to the lower limbs. Here he
would squat for a moment or two, quite proud of his achievement, then
clamber to the ground again and repeat. Sometimes, quite often in fact,
for he was an ape, his attention was distracted by other things, a
beetle, a caterpillar, a tiny field mouse, and off he would go in
pursuit; the caterpillars he always caught, and sometimes the beetles;
but the field mice, never.

Now he discovered the tail of the rope upon which Tarzan was working.
Grasping it in one small hand he bounced away, for all the world like
an animated rubber ball, snatching it from the ape-man’s hand and
running off across the clearing. Tarzan leaped to his feet and was in
pursuit in an instant, no trace of anger on his face or in his voice as
he called to the roguish little balu to drop his rope.

Straight toward his mother raced Gazan, and after him came Tarzan.
Teeka looked up from her feeding, and in the first instant that she
realized that Gazan was fleeing and that another was in pursuit, she
bared her fangs and bristled; but when she saw that the pursuer was
Tarzan she turned back to the business that had been occupying her
attention. At her very feet the ape-man overhauled the balu and, though
the youngster squealed and fought when Tarzan seized him, Teeka only
glanced casually in their direction. No longer did she fear harm to her
first-born at the hands of the ape-man. Had he not saved Gazan on two
occasions?

Rescuing his rope, Tarzan returned to his tree and resumed his labor;
but thereafter it was necessary to watch carefully the playful balu,
who was now possessed to steal it whenever he thought his great,
smooth-skinned cousin was momentarily off his guard.

But even under this handicap Tarzan finally completed the rope, a long,
pliant weapon, stronger than any he ever had made before. The discarded
piece of his former one he gave to Gazan for a plaything, for Tarzan
had it in his mind to instruct Teeka’s balu after ideas of his own when
the youngster should be old and strong enough to profit by his
precepts. At present the little ape’s innate aptitude for mimicry would
be sufficient to familiarize him with Tarzan’s ways and weapons, and so
the ape-man swung off into the jungle, his new rope coiled over one
shoulder, while little Gazan hopped about the clearing dragging the old
one after him in childish glee.

As Tarzan traveled, dividing his quest for food with one for a
sufficiently noble quarry whereupon to test his new weapon, his mind
often was upon Gazan. The ape-man had realized a deep affection for
Teeka’s balu almost from the first, partly because the child belonged
to Teeka, his first love, and partly for the little ape’s own sake, and
Tarzan’s human longing for some sentient creature upon which to expend
those natural affections of the soul which are inherent to all normal
members of the GENUS HOMO. Tarzan envied Teeka. It was true that Gazan
evidenced a considerable reciprocation of Tarzan’s fondness for him,
even preferring him to his own surly sire; but to Teeka the little one
turned when in pain or terror, when tired or hungry. Then it was that
Tarzan felt quite alone in the world and longed desperately for one who
should turn first to him for succor and protection.

Taug had Teeka; Teeka had Gazan; and nearly every other bull and cow of
the tribe of Kerchak had one or more to love and by whom to be loved.
Of course Tarzan could scarcely formulate the thought in precisely this
way—he only knew that he craved something which was denied him;
something which seemed to be represented by those relations which
existed between Teeka and her balu, and so he envied Teeka and longed
for a balu of his own.

He saw Sheeta and his mate with their little family of three; and
deeper inland toward the rocky hills, where one might lie up during the
heat of the day, in the dense shade of a tangled thicket close under
the cool face of an overhanging rock, Tarzan had found the lair of
Numa, the lion, and of Sabor, the lioness. Here he had watched them
with their little balus—playful creatures, spotted leopard-like. And he
had seen the young fawn with Bara, the deer, and with Buto, the
rhinoceros, its ungainly little one. Each of the creatures of the
jungle had its own—except Tarzan. It made the ape-man sad to think upon
this thing, sad and lonely; but presently the scent of game cleared his
young mind of all other considerations, as catlike he crawled far out
upon a bending limb above the game trail which led down to the ancient
watering place of the wild things of this wild world.

How many thousands of times had this great, old limb bent to the savage
form of some blood-thirsty hunter in the long years that it had spread
its leafy branches above the deep-worn jungle path! Tarzan, the
ape-man, Sheeta, the panther, and Histah, the snake, it knew well. They
had worn smooth the bark upon its upper surface.

Today it was Horta, the boar, which came down toward the watcher in the
old tree—Horta, the boar, whose formidable tusks and diabolical temper
preserved him from all but the most ferocious or most famished of the
largest carnivora.

But to Tarzan, meat was meat; naught that was edible or tasty might
pass a hungry Tarzan unchallenged and unattacked. In hunger, as in
battle, the ape-man out-savaged the dreadest denizens of the jungle.
He knew neither fear nor mercy, except upon rare occasions when some
strange, inexplicable force stayed his hand—a force inexplicable to
him, perhaps, because of his ignorance of his own origin and of all the
forces of humanitarianism and civilization that were his rightful
heritage because of that origin.

So today, instead of staying his hand until a less formidable feast
found its way toward him, Tarzan dropped his new noose about the neck
of Horta, the boar. It was an excellent test for the untried strands.
The angered boar bolted this way and that; but each time the new rope
held him where Tarzan had made it fast about the stem of the tree above
the branch from which he had cast it.

As Horta grunted and charged, slashing the sturdy jungle patriarch with
his mighty tusks until the bark flew in every direction, Tarzan dropped
to the ground behind him. In the ape-man’s hand was the long, keen
blade that had been his constant companion since that distant day upon
which chance had directed its point into the body of Bolgani, the
gorilla, and saved the torn and bleeding man-child from what else had
been certain death.

Tarzan walked in toward Horta, who swung now to face his enemy. Mighty
and muscled as was the young giant, it yet would have appeared but the
maddest folly for him to face so formidable a creature as Horta, the
boar, armed only with a slender hunting knife. So it would have seemed
to one who knew Horta even slightly and Tarzan not at all.

For a moment Horta stood motionless facing the ape-man. His wicked,
deep-set eyes flashed angrily. He shook his lowered head.

“Mud-eater!” jeered the ape-man. “Wallower in filth. Even your meat
stinks, but it is juicy and makes Tarzan strong. Today I shall eat your
heart, O Lord of the Great Tusks, that it shall keep savage that which
pounds against my own ribs.”

Horta, understanding nothing of what Tarzan said, was none the less
enraged because of that. He saw only a naked man-thing, hairless and
futile, pitting his puny fangs and soft muscles against his own
indomitable savagery, and he charged.

Tarzan of the Apes waited until the upcut of a wicked tusk would have
laid open his thigh, then he moved—just the least bit to one side; but
so quickly that lightning was a sluggard by comparison, and as he
moved, he stooped low and with all the great power of his right arm
drove the long blade of his father’s hunting knife straight into the
heart of Horta, the boar. A quick leap carried him from the zone of the
creature’s death throes, and a moment later the hot and dripping heart
of Horta was in his grasp.

His hunger satisfied, Tarzan did not seek a lying-up place for sleep,
as was sometimes his way, but continued on through the jungle more in
search of adventure than of food, for today he was restless. And so it
came that he turned his footsteps toward the village of Mbonga, the
black chief, whose people Tarzan had baited remorselessly since that
day upon which Kulonga, the chief’s son, had slain Kala.

A river winds close beside the village of the black men. Tarzan reached
its side a little below the clearing where squat the thatched huts of
the Negroes. The river life was ever fascinating to the ape-man. He
found pleasure in watching the ungainly antics of Duro, the
hippopotamus, and keen sport in tormenting the sluggish crocodile,
Gimla, as he basked in the sun. Then, too, there were the shes and the
balus of the black men of the Gomangani to frighten as they squatted by
the river, the shes with their meager washing, the balus with their
primitive toys.

This day he came upon a woman and her child farther down stream than
usual. The former was searching for a species of shellfish which were to
be found in the mud close to the river bank. She was a young black
woman of about thirty. Her teeth were filed to sharp points, for her
people ate the flesh of man. Her under lip was slit that it might
support a rude pendant of copper which she had worn for so many years
that the lip had been dragged downward to prodigious lengths, exposing
the teeth and gums of her lower jaw. Her nose, too, was slit, and
through the slit was a wooden skewer. Metal ornaments dangled from her
ears, and upon her forehead and cheeks; upon her chin and the bridge of
her nose were tattooings in colors that were mellowed now by age. She
was naked except for a girdle of grasses about her waist. Altogether
she was very beautiful in her own estimation and even in the estimation
of the men of Mbonga’s tribe, though she was of another people—a trophy
of war seized in her maidenhood by one of Mbonga’s fighting men.

Her child was a boy of ten, lithe, straight and, for a black, handsome.
Tarzan looked upon the two from the concealing foliage of a near-by
bush. He was about to leap forth before them with a terrifying scream,
that he might enjoy the spectacle of their terror and their incontinent
flight; but of a sudden a new whim seized him. Here was a balu
fashioned as he himself was fashioned. Of course this one’s skin was
black; but what of it? Tarzan had never seen a white man. In so far as
he knew, he was the sole representative of that strange form of life
upon the earth. The black boy should make an excellent balu for Tarzan,
since he had none of his own. He would tend him carefully, feed him
well, protect him as only Tarzan of the Apes could protect his own, and
teach him out of his half human, half bestial lore the secrets of the
jungle from its rotting surface vegetation to the high tossed pinnacles
of the forest’s upper terraces.

Tarzan uncoiled his rope, and shook out the noose. The two before him,
all ignorant of the near presence of that terrifying form, continued
preoccupied in the search for shellfish, poking about in the mud with
short sticks.

Tarzan stepped from the jungle behind them; his noose lay open upon the
ground beside him. There was a quick movement of the right arm and the
noose rose gracefully into the air, hovered an instant above the head
of the unsuspecting youth, then settled. As it encompassed his body
below the shoulders, Tarzan gave a quick jerk that tightened it about
the boy’s arms, pinioning them to his sides. A scream of terror broke
from the lad’s lips, and as his mother turned, affrighted at his cry,
she saw him being dragged quickly toward a great white giant who stood
just beneath the shade of a near-by tree, scarcely a dozen long paces
from her.

With a savage cry of terror and rage, the woman leaped fearlessly
toward the ape-man. In her mien Tarzan saw determination and courage
which would shrink not even from death itself. She was very hideous and
frightful even when her face was in repose; but convulsed by passion,
her expression became terrifyingly fiendish. Even the ape-man drew
back, but more in revulsion than fear—fear he knew not.

Biting and kicking was the black she’s balu as Tarzan tucked him
beneath his arm and vanished into the branches hanging low above him,
just as the infuriated mother dashed forward to seize and do battle
with him. And as he melted away into the depth of the jungle with his
still struggling prize, he meditated upon the possibilities which might
lie in the prowess of the Gomangani were the hes as formidable as the
shes.

Once at a safe distance from the despoiled mother and out of earshot of
her screams and menaces, Tarzan paused to inspect his prize, now so
thoroughly terrorized that he had ceased his struggles and his
outcries.

The frightened child rolled his eyes fearfully toward his captor, until
the whites showed gleaming all about the irises.

“I am Tarzan,” said the ape-man, in the vernacular of the anthropoids.
“I will not harm you. You are to be Tarzan’s balu. Tarzan will protect
you. He will feed you. The best in the jungle shall be for Tarzan’s
balu, for Tarzan is a mighty hunter. None need you fear, not even Numa,
the lion, for Tarzan is a mighty fighter. None so great as Tarzan, son
of Kala. Do not fear.”

But the child only whimpered and trembled, for he did not understand
the tongue of the great apes, and the voice of Tarzan sounded to him
like the barking and growling of a beast. Then, too, he had heard
stories of this bad, white forest god. It was he who had slain Kulonga
and others of the warriors of Mbonga, the chief. It was he who entered
the village stealthily, by magic, in the darkness of the night, to
steal arrows and poison, and frighten the women and the children and
even the great warriors. Doubtless this wicked god fed upon little
boys. Had his mother not said as much when he was naughty and she
threatened to give him to the white god of the jungle if he were not
good? Little black Tibo shook as with ague.

“Are you cold, Go-bu-balu?” asked Tarzan, using the simian equivalent
of black he-baby in lieu of a better name. “The sun is hot; why do you
shiver?”

Tibo could not understand; but he cried for his mamma and begged the
great, white god to let him go, promising always to be a good boy
thereafter if his plea were granted. Tarzan shook his head. Not a word
could he understand. This would never do! He must teach Go-bu-balu a
language which sounded like talk. It was quite certain to Tarzan that
Go-bu-balu’s speech was not talk at all. It sounded quite as senseless
as the chattering of the silly birds. It would be best, thought the
ape-man, quickly to get him among the tribe of Kerchak where he would
hear the Mangani talking among themselves. Thus he would soon learn an
intelligible form of speech.

Tarzan rose to his feet upon the swaying branch where he had halted far
above the ground, and motioned to the child to follow him; but Tibo
only clung tightly to the bole of the tree and wept. Being a boy, and a
native African, he had, of course, climbed into trees many times before
this; but the idea of racing off through the forest, leaping from one
branch to another, as his captor, to his horror, had done when he had
carried Tibo away from his mother, filled his childish heart with
terror.

Tarzan sighed. His newly acquired balu had much indeed to learn. It was
pitiful that a balu of his size and strength should be so backward. He
tried to coax Tibo to follow him; but the child dared not, so Tarzan
picked him up and carried him upon his back. Tibo no longer scratched
or bit. Escape seemed impossible. Even now, were he set upon the
ground, the chance was remote, he knew, that he could find his way back
to the village of Mbonga, the chief. Even if he could, there were the
lions and the leopards and the hyenas, any one of which, as Tibo was
well aware, was particularly fond of the meat of little black boys.

So far the terrible white god of the jungle had offered him no harm. He
could not expect even this much consideration from the frightful,
green-eyed man-eaters. It would be the lesser of two evils, then, to
let the white god carry him away without scratching and biting, as he
had done at first.

As Tarzan swung rapidly through the trees, little Tibo closed his eyes
in terror rather than look longer down into the frightful abysses
beneath. Never before in all his life had Tibo been so frightened, yet
as the white giant sped on with him through the forest there stole over
the child an inexplicable sensation of security as he saw how true were
the leaps of the ape-man, how unerring his grasp upon the swaying limbs
which gave him hand-hold, and then, too, there was safety in the middle
terraces of the forest, far above the reach of the dreaded lions.

And so Tarzan came to the clearing where the tribe fed, dropping among
them with his new balu clinging tightly to his shoulders. He was fairly
in the midst of them before Tibo spied a single one of the great hairy
forms, or before the apes realized that Tarzan was not alone. When they
saw the little Gomangani perched upon his back some of them came
forward in curiosity with upcurled lips and snarling mien.

An hour before little Tibo would have said that he knew the uttermost
depths of fear; but now, as he saw these fearsome beasts surrounding
him, he realized that all that had gone before was as nothing by
comparison. Why did the great white giant stand there so unconcernedly?
Why did he not flee before these horrid, hairy, tree men fell upon them
both and tore them to pieces? And then there came to Tibo a numbing
recollection. It was none other than the story he had heard passed from
mouth to mouth, fearfully, by the people of Mbonga, the chief, that
this great white demon of the jungle was naught other than a hairless
ape, for had not he been seen in company with these?

Tibo could only stare in wide-eyed horror at the approaching apes. He
saw their beetling brows, their great fangs, their wicked eyes. He
noted their mighty muscles rolling beneath their shaggy hides. Their
every attitude and expression was a menace. Tarzan saw this, too. He
drew Tibo around in front of him.

“This is Tarzan’s Go-bu-balu,” he said. “Do not harm him, or Tarzan
will kill you,” and he bared his own fangs in the teeth of the nearest
ape.

“It is a Gomangani,” replied the ape. “Let me kill it. It is a
Gomangani. The Gomangani are our enemies. Let me kill it.”

“Go away,” snarled Tarzan. “I tell you, Gunto, it is Tarzan’s balu. Go
away or Tarzan will kill you,” and the ape-man took a step toward the
advancing ape.

The latter sidled off, quite stiff and haughty, after the manner of a
dog which meets another and is too proud to fight and too fearful to
turn his back and run.

Next came Teeka, prompted by curiosity. At her side skipped little
Gazan. They were filled with wonder like the others; but Teeka did not
bare her fangs. Tarzan saw this and motioned that she approach.

“Tarzan has a balu now,” he said. “He and Teeka’s balu can play
together.”

“It is a Gomangani,” replied Teeka. “It will kill my balu. Take it
away, Tarzan.”

Tarzan laughed. “It could not harm Pamba, the rat,” he said. “It is but
a little balu and very frightened. Let Gazan play with it.”

Teeka still was fearful, for with all their mighty ferocity the great
anthropoids are timid; but at last, assured by her great confidence in
Tarzan, she pushed Gazan forward toward the little black boy. The small
ape, guided by instinct, drew back toward its mother, baring its small
fangs and screaming in mingled fear and rage.

Tibo, too, showed no signs of desiring a closer acquaintance with
Gazan, so Tarzan gave up his efforts for the time.

During the week which followed, Tarzan found his time much occupied.
His balu was a greater responsibility than he had counted upon. Not for
a moment did he dare leave it, since of all the tribe, Teeka alone
could have been depended upon to refrain from slaying the hapless black
had it not been for Tarzan’s constant watchfulness. When the ape-man
hunted, he must carry Go-bu-balu about with him. It was irksome, and
then the little black seemed so stupid and fearful to Tarzan. It was
quite helpless against even the lesser of the jungle creatures. Tarzan
wondered how it had survived at all. He tried to teach it, and found a
ray of hope in the fact that Go-bu-balu had mastered a few words of the
language of the anthropoids, and that he could now cling to a
high-tossed branch without screaming in fear; but there was something
about the child which worried Tarzan. He often had watched the blacks
within their village. He had seen the children playing, and always
there had been much laughter; but little Go-bu-balu never laughed. It
was true that Tarzan himself never laughed. Upon occasion he smiled,
grimly, but to laughter he was a stranger. The black, however, should
have laughed, reasoned the ape-man. It was the way of the Gomangani.

Also, he saw that the little fellow often refused food and was growing
thinner day by day. At times he surprised the boy sobbing softly to
himself. Tarzan tried to comfort him, even as fierce Kala had comforted
Tarzan when the ape-man was a balu, but all to no avail. Go-bu-balu
merely no longer feared Tarzan—that was all. He feared every other
living thing within the jungle. He feared the jungle days with their
long excursions through the dizzy tree tops. He feared the jungle
nights with their swaying, perilous couches far above the ground, and
the grunting and coughing of the great carnivora prowling beneath him.

Tarzan did not know what to do. His heritage of English blood rendered
it a difficult thing even to consider a surrender of his project,
though he was forced to admit to himself that his balu was not all that
he had hoped. Though he was faithful to his self-imposed task, and even
found that he had grown to like Go-bu-balu, he could not deceive
himself into believing that he felt for it that fierce heat of
passionate affection which Teeka revealed for Gazan, and which the
black mother had shown for Go-bu-balu.

The little black boy from cringing terror at the sight of Tarzan passed
by degrees into trustfulness and admiration. Only kindness had he ever
received at the hands of the great white devil-god, yet he had seen
with what ferocity his kindly captor could deal with others. He had
seen him leap upon a certain he-ape which persisted in attempting to
seize and slay Go-bu-balu. He had seen the strong, white teeth of the
ape-man fastened in the neck of his adversary, and the mighty muscles
tensed in battle. He had heard the savage, bestial snarls and roars of
combat, and he had realized with a shudder that he could not
differentiate between those of his guardian and those of the hairy ape.

He had seen Tarzan bring down a buck, just as Numa, the lion, might
have done, leaping upon its back and fastening his fangs in the
creature’s neck. Tibo had shuddered at the sight, but he had thrilled,
too, and for the first time there entered his dull, Negroid mind a
vague desire to emulate his savage foster parent. But Tibo, the little
black boy, lacked the divine spark which had permitted Tarzan, the
white boy, to benefit by his training in the ways of the fierce jungle.
In imagination he was wanting, and imagination is but another name for
super-intelligence.

Imagination it is which builds bridges, and cities, and empires. The
beasts know it not, the blacks only a little, while to one in a hundred
thousand of earth’s dominant race it is given as a gift from heaven
that man may not perish from the earth.

While Tarzan pondered his problem concerning the future of his balu,
Fate was arranging to take the matter out of his hands. Momaya, Tibo’s
mother, grief-stricken at the loss of her boy, had consulted the tribal
witch-doctor, but to no avail. The medicine he made was not good
medicine, for though Momaya paid him two goats for it, it did not bring
back Tibo, nor even indicate where she might search for him with
reasonable assurance of finding him. Momaya, being of a short temper
and of another people, had little respect for the witch-doctor of her
husband’s tribe, and so, when he suggested that a further payment of
two more fat goats would doubtless enable him to make stronger
medicine, she promptly loosed her shrewish tongue upon him, and with
such good effect that he was glad to take himself off with his zebra’s
tail and his pot of magic.

When he had gone and Momaya had succeeded in partially subduing her
anger, she gave herself over to thought, as she so often had done since
the abduction of her Tibo, in the hope that she finally might discover
some feasible means of locating him, or at least assuring herself as to
whether he were alive or dead.

It was known to the blacks that Tarzan did not eat the flesh of man,
for he had slain more than one of their number, yet never tasted the
flesh of any. Too, the bodies always had been found, sometimes dropping
as though from the clouds to alight in the center of the village. As
Tibo’s body had not been found, Momaya argued that he still lived, but
where?

Then it was that there came to her mind a recollection of Bukawai, the
unclean, who dwelt in a cave in the hillside to the north, and who it
was well known entertained devils in his evil lair. Few, if any, had
the temerity to visit old Bukawai, firstly because of fear of his black
magic and the two hyenas who dwelt with him and were commonly known to
be devils masquerading, and secondly because of the loathsome disease
which had caused Bukawai to be an outcast—a disease which was slowly
eating away his face.

Now it was that Momaya reasoned shrewdly that if any might know the
whereabouts of her Tibo, it would be Bukawai, who was in friendly
intercourse with gods and demons, since a demon or a god it was who had
stolen her baby; but even her great mother love was sorely taxed to
find the courage to send her forth into the black jungle toward the
distant hills and the uncanny abode of Bukawai, the unclean, and his
devils.

Mother love, however, is one of the human passions which closely
approximates to the dignity of an irresistible force. It drives the
frail flesh of weak woman to deeds of heroic measure. Momaya was
neither frail nor weak, physically, but she was a woman, an ignorant,
superstitious, African savage. She believed in devils, in black magic,
and in witchcraft. To Momaya, the jungle was inhabited by far more
terrifying things than lions and leopards—horrifying, nameless things
which possessed the power of wreaking frightful harm under various
innocent guises.

From one of the warriors of the village, whom she knew to have once
stumbled upon the lair of Bukawai, the mother of Tibo learned how she
might find it—near a spring of water which rose in a small rocky cañon
between two hills, the easternmost of which was easily recognizable
because of a huge granite boulder which rested upon its summit. The
westerly hill was lower than its companion, and was quite bare of
vegetation except for a single mimosa tree which grew just a little
below its summit.

These two hills, the man assured her, could be seen for some distance
before she reached them, and together formed an excellent guide to her
destination. He warned her, however, to abandon so foolish and
dangerous an adventure, emphasizing what she already quite well knew,
that if she escaped harm at the hands of Bukawai and his demons, the
chances were that she would not be so fortunate with the great
carnivora of the jungle through which she must pass going and
returning.

The warrior even went to Momaya’s husband, who, in turn, having little
authority over the vixenish lady of his choice, went to Mbonga, the
chief. The latter summoned Momaya, threatening her with the direst
punishment should she venture forth upon so unholy an excursion. The
old chief’s interest in the matter was due solely to that age-old
alliance which exists between church and state. The local witch-doctor,
knowing his own medicine better than any other knew it, was jealous of
all other pretenders to accomplishments in the black art. He long had
heard of the power of Bukawai, and feared lest, should he succeed in
recovering Momaya’s lost child, much of the tribal patronage and
consequent fees would be diverted to the unclean one. As Mbonga
received, as chief, a certain proportion of the witch-doctor’s fees and
could expect nothing from Bukawai, his heart and soul were, quite
naturally, wrapped up in the orthodox church.

But if Momaya could view with intrepid heart an excursion into the
jungle and a visit to the fear-haunted abode of Bukawai, she was not
likely to be deterred by threats of future punishment at the hands of
old Mbonga, whom she secretly despised. Yet she appeared to accede to
his injunctions, returning to her hut in silence.

She would have preferred starting upon her quest by daylight, but this
was now out of the question, since she must carry food and a weapon of
some sort—things which she never could pass out of the village with by
day without being subjected to curious questioning that surely would
come immediately to the ears of Mbonga.

So Momaya bided her time until night, and just before the gates of the
village were closed, she slipped through into the darkness and the
jungle. She was much frightened, but she set her face resolutely toward
the north, and though she paused often to listen, breathlessly, for the
huge cats which, here, were her greatest terror, she nevertheless
continued her way stanchly for several hours, until a low moan a
little to her right and behind her brought her to a sudden stop.

With palpitating heart the woman stood, scarce daring to breathe, and
then, very faintly but unmistakable to her keen ears, came the stealthy
crunching of twigs and grasses beneath padded feet.

All about Momaya grew the giant trees of the tropical jungle, festooned
with hanging vines and mosses. She seized upon the nearest and started
to clamber, apelike, to the branches above. As she did so, there was a
sudden rush of a great body behind her, a menacing roar that caused the
earth to tremble, and something crashed into the very creepers to which
she was clinging—but below her.

Momaya drew herself to safety among the leafy branches and thanked the
foresight which had prompted her to bring along the dried human ear
which hung from a cord about her neck. She always had known that that
ear was good medicine. It had been given her, when a girl, by the
witch-doctor of her own tribe, and was nothing like the poor, weak
medicine of Mbonga’s witch-doctor.

All night Momaya clung to her perch, for although the lion sought other
prey after a short time, she dared not descend into the darkness again,
for fear she might encounter him or another of his kind; but at
daylight she clambered down and resumed her way.

Tarzan of the Apes, finding that his balu never ceased to give evidence
of terror in the presence of the apes of the tribe, and also that most
of the adult apes were a constant menace to Go-bu-balu’s life, so that
Tarzan dared not leave him alone with them, took to hunting with the
little black boy farther and farther from the stamping grounds of the
anthropoids.

Little by little his absences from the tribe grew in length as he
wandered farther away from them, until finally he found himself a
greater distance to the north than he ever before had hunted, and with
water and ample game and fruit, he felt not at all inclined to return
to the tribe.

Little Go-bu-balu gave evidences of a greater interest in life, an
interest which varied in direct proportion to the distance he was from
the apes of Kerchak. He now trotted along behind Tarzan when the
ape-man went upon the ground, and in the trees he even did his best to
follow his mighty foster parent. The boy was still sad and lonely. His
thin, little body had grown steadily thinner since he had come among
the apes, for while, as a young cannibal, he was not overnice in the
matter of diet, he found it not always to his taste to stomach the
weird things which tickled the palates of epicures among the apes.

His large eyes were very large indeed now, his cheeks sunken, and every
rib of his emaciated body plainly discernible to whomsoever should care
to count them. Constant terror, perhaps, had had as much to do with his
physical condition as had improper food. Tarzan noticed the change and
was worried. He had hoped to see his balu wax sturdy and strong. His
disappointment was great. In only one respect did Go-bu-balu seem to
progress—he readily was mastering the language of the apes. Even now he
and Tarzan could converse in a fairly satisfactory manner by
supplementing the meager ape speech with signs; but for the most part,
Go-bu-balu was silent other than to answer questions put to him. His
great sorrow was yet too new and too poignant to be laid aside even
momentarily. Always he pined for Momaya—shrewish, hideous, repulsive,
perhaps, she would have been to you or me, but to Tibo she was mamma,
the personification of that one great love which knows no selfishness
and which does not consume itself in its own fires.

As the two hunted, or rather as Tarzan hunted and Go-bu-balu tagged
along in his wake, the ape-man noticed many things and thought much.
Once they came upon Sabor moaning in the tall grasses. About her romped
and played two little balls of fur, but her eyes were for one which lay
between her great forepaws and did not romp, one who never would romp
again.

Tarzan read aright the anguish and the suffering of the huge mother
cat. He had been minded to bait her. It was to do this that he had
sneaked silently through the trees until he had come almost above her,
but something held the ape-man as he saw the lioness grieving over her
dead cub. With the acquisition of Go-bu-balu, Tarzan had come to
realize the responsibilities and sorrows of parentage, without its
joys. His heart went out to Sabor as it might not have done a few weeks
before. As he watched her, there rose quite unbidden before him a
vision of Momaya, the skewer through the septum of her nose, her
pendulous under lip sagging beneath the weight which dragged it down.
Tarzan saw not her unloveliness; he saw only the same anguish that was
Sabor’s, and he winced. That strange functioning of the mind which
sometimes is called association of ideas snapped Teeka and Gazan before
the ape-man’s mental vision. What if one should come and take Gazan
from Teeka. Tarzan uttered a low and ominous growl as though Gazan were
his own. Go-bu-balu glanced here and there apprehensively, thinking
that Tarzan had espied an enemy. Sabor sprang suddenly to her feet, her
yellow-green eyes blazing, her tail lashing as she cocked her ears, and
raising her muzzle, sniffed the air for possible danger. The two little
cubs, which had been playing, scampered quickly to her, and standing
beneath her, peered out from between her forelegs, their big ears
upstanding, their little heads cocked first upon one side and then upon
the other.

With a shake of his black shock, Tarzan turned away and resumed his
hunting in another direction; but all day there rose one after another,
above the threshold of his objective mind, memory portraits of Sabor,
of Momaya, and of Teeka—a lioness, a cannibal, and a she-ape, yet to
the ape-man they were identical through motherhood.

It was noon of the third day when Momaya came within sight of the cave
of Bukawai, the unclean. The old witch-doctor had rigged a framework of
interlaced boughs to close the mouth of the cave from predatory beasts.
This was now set to one side, and the black cavern beyond yawned
mysterious and repellant. Momaya shivered as from a cold wind of the
rainy season. No sign of life appeared about the cave, yet Momaya
experienced that uncanny sensation as of unseen eyes regarding her
malevolently. Again she shuddered. She tried to force her unwilling
feet onward toward the cave, when from its depths issued an uncanny
sound that was neither brute nor human, a weird sound that was akin to
mirthless laughter.

With a stifled scream, Momaya turned and fled into the jungle. For a
hundred yards she ran before she could control her terror, and then she
paused, listening. Was all her labor, were all the terrors and dangers
through which she had passed to go for naught? She tried to steel
herself to return to the cave, but again fright overcame her.

Saddened, disheartened, she turned slowly upon the back trail toward
the village of Mbonga. Her young shoulders now were drooped like those
of an old woman who bears a great burden of many years with their
accumulated pains and sorrows, and she walked with tired feet and a
halting step. The spring of youth was gone from Momaya.

For another hundred yards she dragged her weary way, her brain half
paralyzed from dumb terror and suffering, and then there came to her
the memory of a little babe that suckled at her breast, and of a slim
boy who romped, laughing, about her, and they were both Tibo—her Tibo!

Her shoulders straightened. She shook her savage head, and she turned
about and walked boldly back to the mouth of the cave of Bukawai, the
unclean—of Bukawai, the witch-doctor.

Again, from the interior of the cave came the hideous laughter that was
not laughter. This time Momaya recognized it for what it was, the
strange cry of a hyena. No more did she shudder, but she held her spear
ready and called aloud to Bukawai to come out.

Instead of Bukawai came the repulsive head of a hyena. Momaya poked at
it with her spear, and the ugly, sullen brute drew back with an angry
growl. Again Momaya called Bukawai by name, and this time there came an
answer in mumbling tones that were scarce more human than those of the
beast.

“Who comes to Bukawai?” queried the voice.

“It is Momaya,” replied the woman; “Momaya from the village of Mbonga,
the chief.”

“What do you want?”

“I want good medicine, better medicine than Mbonga’s witch-doctor can
make,” replied Momaya. “The great, white, jungle god has stolen my
Tibo, and I want medicine to bring him back, or to find where he is
hidden that I may go and get him.”

“Who is Tibo?” asked Bukawai.

Momaya told him.

“Bukawai’s medicine is very strong,” said the voice. “Five goats and a
new sleeping mat are scarce enough in exchange for Bukawai’s medicine.”

“Two goats are enough,” said Momaya, for the spirit of barter is strong
in the breasts of the blacks.

The pleasure of haggling over the price was a sufficiently potent lure
to draw Bukawai to the mouth of the cave. Momaya was sorry when she saw
him that he had not remained within. There are some things too
horrible, too hideous, too repulsive for description—Bukawai’s face was
of these. When Momaya saw him she understood why it was that he was
almost inarticulate.

Beside him were the two hyenas, which rumor had said were his only and
constant companions. They made an excellent trio—the most repulsive of
beasts with the most repulsive of humans.

“Five goats and a new sleeping mat,” mumbled Bukawai.

“Two fat goats and a sleeping mat.” Momaya raised her bid; but Bukawai
was obdurate. He stuck for the five goats and the sleeping mat for a
matter of half an hour, while the hyenas sniffed and growled and
laughed hideously. Momaya was determined to give all that Bukawai asked
if she could do no better, but haggling is second nature to black
barterers, and in the end it partly repaid her, for a compromise
finally was reached which included three fat goats, a new sleeping mat,
and a piece of copper wire.

“Come back tonight,” said Bukawai, “when the moon is two hours in the
sky. Then will I make the strong medicine which shall bring Tibo back
to you. Bring with you the three fat goats, the new sleeping mat, and
the piece of copper wire the length of a large man’s forearm.”

“I cannot bring them,” said Momaya. “You will have to come after them.
When you have restored Tibo to me, you shall have them all at the
village of Mbonga.”

Bukawai shook his head.

“I will make no medicine,” he said, “until I have the goats and the mat
and the copper wire.”

Momaya plead and threatened, but all to no avail. Finally, she turned
away and started off through the jungle toward the village of Mbonga.
How she could get three goats and a sleeping mat out of the village and
through the jungle to the cave of Bukawai, she did not know, but that
she would do it somehow she was quite positive—she would do it or die.
Tibo must be restored to her.

Tarzan coming lazily through the jungle with little Go-bu-balu, caught
the scent of Bara, the deer. Tarzan hungered for the flesh of Bara.
Naught tickled his palate so greatly; but to stalk Bara with Go-bu-balu
at his heels, was out of the question, so he hid the child in the
crotch of a tree where the thick foliage screened him from view, and
set off swiftly and silently upon the spoor of Bara.

Tibo alone was more terrified than Tibo even among the apes. Real and
apparent dangers are less disconcerting than those which we imagine,
and only the gods of his people knew how much Tibo imagined.

He had been but a short time in his hiding place when he heard
something approaching through the jungle. He crouched closer to the
limb upon which he lay and prayed that Tarzan would return quickly. His
wide eyes searched the jungle in the direction of the moving creature.

What if it was a leopard that had caught his scent! It would be upon
him in a minute. Hot tears flowed from the large eyes of little Tibo.
The curtain of jungle foliage rustled close at hand. The thing was but
a few paces from his tree! His eyes fairly popped from his black face
as he watched for the appearance of the dread creature which presently
would thrust a snarling countenance from between the vines and
creepers.

And then the curtain parted and a woman stepped into full view. With a
gasping cry, Tibo tumbled from his perch and raced toward her. Momaya
suddenly started back and raised her spear, but a second later she cast
it aside and caught the thin body in her strong arms.

Crushing it to her, she cried and laughed all at one and the same time,
and hot tears of joy, mingled with the tears of Tibo, trickled down the
crease between her naked breasts.

Disturbed by the noise so close at hand, there arose from his sleep in
a near-by thicket Numa, the lion. He looked through the tangled
underbrush and saw the black woman and her young. He licked his chops
and measured the distance between them and himself. A short charge and
a long leap would carry him upon them. He flicked the end of his tail
and sighed.

A vagrant breeze, swirling suddenly in the wrong direction, carried the
scent of Tarzan to the sensitive nostrils of Bara, the deer. There was
a startled tensing of muscles and cocking of ears, a sudden dash, and
Tarzan’s meat was gone. The ape-man angrily shook his head and turned
back toward the spot where he had left Go-bu-balu. He came softly, as
was his way. Before he reached the spot he heard strange sounds—the
sound of a woman laughing and of a woman weeping, and the two which
seemed to come from one throat were mingled with the convulsive sobbing
of a child. Tarzan hastened, and when Tarzan hastened, only the birds
and the wind went faster.

And as Tarzan approached the sounds, he heard another, a deep sigh.
Momaya did not hear it, nor did Tibo; but the ears of Tarzan were as
the ears of Bara, the deer. He heard the sigh, and he knew, so he
unloosed the heavy spear which dangled at his back. Even as he sped
through the branches of the trees, with the same ease that you or I
might take out a pocket handkerchief as we strolled nonchalantly down a
lazy country lane, Tarzan of the Apes took the spear from its thong
that it might be ready against any emergency.

Numa, the lion, did not rush madly to attack. He reasoned again, and
reason told him that already the prey was his, so he pushed his great
bulk through the foliage and stood eyeing his meat with baleful,
glaring eyes.

Momaya saw him and shrieked, drawing Tibo closer to her breast. To have
found her child and to lose him, all in a moment! She raised her spear,
throwing her hand far back of her shoulder. Numa roared and stepped
slowly forward. Momaya cast her weapon. It grazed the tawny shoulder,
inflicting a flesh wound which aroused all the terrific bestiality of
the carnivore, and the lion charged.

Momaya tried to close her eyes, but could not. She saw the flashing
swiftness of the huge, oncoming death, and then she saw something else.
She saw a mighty, naked white man drop as from the heavens into the
path of the charging lion. She saw the muscles of a great arm flash in
the light of the equatorial sun as it filtered, dappling, through the
foliage above. She saw a heavy hunting spear hurtle through the air to
meet the lion in midleap.

Numa brought up upon his haunches, roaring terribly and striking at the
spear which protruded from his breast. His great blows bent and twisted
the weapon. Tarzan, crouching and with hunting knife in hand, circled
warily about the frenzied cat. Momaya, wide-eyed, stood rooted to the
spot, watching, fascinated.

In sudden fury Numa hurled himself toward the ape-man, but the wiry
creature eluded the blundering charge, side-stepping quickly only to
rush in upon his foe. Twice the hunting blade flashed in the air. Twice
it fell upon the back of Numa, already weakening from the spear point
so near his heart. The second stroke of the blade pierced fair into the
beast’s spine, and with a last convulsive sweep of the forepaws, in a
vain attempt to reach his tormentor, Numa sprawled upon the ground,
paralyzed and dying.

Bukawai, fearful lest he should lose any recompense, followed Momaya
with the intention of persuading her to part with her ornaments of
copper and iron against her return with the price of the medicine—to
pay, as it were, for an option on his services as one pays a retaining
fee to an attorney, for, like an attorney, Bukawai knew the value of
his medicine and that it was well to collect as much as possible in
advance.

The witch-doctor came upon the scene as Tarzan leaped to meet the
lion’s charge. He saw it all and marveled, guessing immediately that
this must be the strange white demon concerning whom he had heard vague
rumors before Momaya came to him.

Momaya, now that the lion was past harming her or hers, gazed with new
terror upon Tarzan. It was he who had stolen her Tibo. Doubtless he
would attempt to steal him again. Momaya hugged the boy close to her.
She was determined to die this time rather than suffer Tibo to be taken
from her again.

Tarzan eyed them in silence. The sight of the boy clinging, sobbing, to
his mother aroused within his savage breast a melancholy loneliness.
There was none thus to cling to Tarzan, who yearned so for the love of
someone, of something.

At last Tibo looked up, because of the quiet that had fallen upon the
jungle, and saw Tarzan. He did not shrink.

“Tarzan,” he said, in the speech of the great apes of the tribe of
Kerchak, “do not take me from Momaya, my mother. Do not take me again
to the lair of the hairy, tree men, for I fear Taug and Gunto and the
others. Let me stay with Momaya, O Tarzan, God of the Jungle! Let me
stay with Momaya, my mother, and to the end of our days we will bless
you and put food before the gates of the village of Mbonga that you may
never hunger.”

Tarzan sighed.

“Go,” he said, “back to the village of Mbonga, and Tarzan will follow
to see that no harm befalls you.”

Tibo translated the words to his mother, and the two turned their backs
upon the ape-man and started off toward home. In the heart of Momaya
was a great fear and a great exultation, for never before had she
walked with God, and never had she been so happy. She strained little
Tibo to her, stroking his thin cheek. Tarzan saw and sighed again.

“For Teeka there is Teeka’s balu,” he soliloquized; “for Sabor there
are balus, and for the she-Gomangani, and for Bara, and for Manu, and
even for Pamba, the rat; but for Tarzan there can be none—neither a she
nor a balu. Tarzan of the Apes is a man, and it must be that man walks
alone.”

Bukawai saw them go, and he mumbled through his rotting face, swearing
a great oath that he would yet have the three fat goats, the new
sleeping mat, and the bit of copper wire.




CHAPTER VI
The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance


Lord Greystoke was hunting, or, to be more accurate, he was shooting
pheasants at Chamston-Hedding. Lord Greystoke was immaculately and
appropriately garbed—to the minutest detail he was vogue. To be sure,
he was among the forward guns, not being considered a sporting shot,
but what he lacked in skill he more than made up in appearance. At the
end of the day he would, doubtless, have many birds to his credit,
since he had two guns and a smart loader—many more birds than he could
eat in a year, even had he been hungry, which he was not, having but
just arisen from the breakfast table.

The beaters—there were twenty-three of them, in white smocks—had but
just driven the birds into a patch of gorse, and were now circling to
the opposite side that they might drive down toward the guns. Lord
Greystoke was quite as excited as he ever permitted himself to become.
There was an exhilaration in the sport that would not be denied. He
felt his blood tingling through his veins as the beaters approached
closer and closer to the birds. In a vague and stupid sort of way Lord
Greystoke felt, as he always felt upon such occasions, that he was
experiencing a sensation somewhat akin to a reversion to a prehistoric
type—that the blood of an ancient forbear was coursing hot through him,
a hairy, half-naked forbear who had lived by the hunt.

And far away in a matted equatorial jungle another Lord Greystoke, the
real Lord Greystoke, hunted. By the standards which he knew, he, too,
was vogue—utterly vogue, as was the primal ancestor before the first
eviction. The day being sultry, the leopard skin had been left behind.
The real Lord Greystoke had not two guns, to be sure, nor even one,
neither did he have a smart loader; but he possessed something
infinitely more efficacious than guns, or loaders, or even twenty-three
beaters in white smocks—he possessed an appetite, an uncanny woodcraft,
and muscles that were as steel springs.

Later that day, in England, a Lord Greystoke ate bountifully of things
he had not killed, and he drank other things which were uncorked to the
accompaniment of much noise. He patted his lips with snowy linen to
remove the faint traces of his repast, quite ignorant of the fact that
he was an impostor and that the rightful owner of his noble title was
even then finishing his own dinner in far-off Africa. He was not using
snowy linen, though. Instead he drew the back of a brown forearm and
hand across his mouth and wiped his bloody fingers upon his thighs.
Then he moved slowly through the jungle to the drinking place, where,
upon all fours, he drank as drank his fellows, the other beasts of the
jungle.

As he quenched his thirst, another denizen of the gloomy forest
approached the stream along the path behind him. It was Numa, the lion,
tawny of body and black of mane, scowling and sinister, rumbling out
low, coughing roars. Tarzan of the Apes heard him long before he came
within sight, but the ape-man went on with his drinking until he had
had his fill; then he arose, slowly, with the easy grace of a creature
of the wilds and all the quiet dignity that was his birthright.

Numa halted as he saw the man standing at the very spot where the king
would drink. His jaws were parted, and his cruel eyes gleamed. He
growled and advanced slowly. The man growled, too, backing slowly to
one side, and watching, not the lion’s face, but its tail. Should that
commence to move from side to side in quick, nervous jerks, it would be
well to be upon the alert, and should it rise suddenly erect, straight
and stiff, then one might prepare to fight or flee; but it did neither,
so Tarzan merely backed away and the lion came down and drank scarce
fifty feet from where the man stood.

Tomorrow they might be at one another’s throats, but today there
existed one of those strange and inexplicable truces which so often are
seen among the savage ones of the jungle. Before Numa had finished
drinking, Tarzan had returned into the forest, and was swinging away in
the direction of the village of Mbonga, the black chief.

It had been at least a moon since the ape-man had called upon the
Gomangani. Not since he had restored little Tibo to his grief-stricken
mother had the whim seized him to do so. The incident of the adopted
balu was a closed one to Tarzan. He had sought to find something upon
which to lavish such an affection as Teeka lavished upon her balu, but
a short experience of the little black boy had made it quite plain to
the ape-man that no such sentiment could exist between them.

The fact that he had for a time treated the little black as he might
have treated a real balu of his own had in no way altered the vengeful
sentiments with which he considered the murderers of Kala. The
Gomangani were his deadly enemies, nor could they ever be aught else.
Today he looked forward to some slight relief from the monotony of his
existence in such excitement as he might derive from baiting the
blacks.

It was not yet dark when he reached the village and took his place in
the great tree overhanging the palisade. From beneath came a great
wailing out of the depths of a near-by hut. The noise fell disagreeably
upon Tarzan’s ears—it jarred and grated. He did not like it, so he
decided to go away for a while in the hopes that it might cease; but
though he was gone for a couple of hours the wailing still continued
when he returned.

With the intention of putting a violent termination to the annoying
sound, Tarzan slipped silently from the tree into the shadows beneath.
Creeping stealthily and keeping well in the cover of other huts, he
approached that from which rose the sounds of lamentation. A fire
burned brightly before the doorway as it did before other doorways in
the village. A few females squatted about, occasionally adding their
own mournful howlings to those of the master artist within.

The ape-man smiled a slow smile as he thought of the consternation
which would follow the quick leap that would carry him among the
females and into the full light of the fire. Then he would dart into
the hut during the excitement, throttle the chief screamer, and be gone
into the jungle before the blacks could gather their scattered nerves
for an assault.

Many times had Tarzan behaved similarly in the village of Mbonga, the
chief. His mysterious and unexpected appearances always filled the
breasts of the poor, superstitious blacks with the panic of terror;
never, it seemed, could they accustom themselves to the sight of him.
It was this terror which lent to the adventures the spice of interest
and amusement which the human mind of the ape-man craved. Merely to
kill was not in itself sufficient. Accustomed to the sight of death,
Tarzan found no great pleasure in it. Long since had he avenged the
death of Kala, but in the accomplishment of it, he had learned the
excitement and the pleasure to be derived from the baiting of the
blacks. Of this he never tired.

It was just as he was about to spring forward with a savage roar that a
figure appeared in the doorway of the hut. It was the figure of the
wailer whom he had come to still, the figure of a young woman with a
wooden skewer through the split septum of her nose, with a heavy metal
ornament depending from her lower lip, which it had dragged down to
hideous and repulsive deformity, with strange tattooing upon forehead,
cheeks, and breasts, and a wonderful coiffure built up with mud and
wire.

A sudden flare of the fire threw the grotesque figure into high relief,
and Tarzan recognized her as Momaya, the mother of Tibo. The fire also
threw out a fitful flame which carried to the shadows where Tarzan
lurked, picking out his light brown body from the surrounding darkness.
Momaya saw him and knew him. With a cry, she leaped forward and Tarzan
came to meet her. The other women, turning, saw him, too; but they did
not come toward him. Instead they rose as one, shrieked as one, fled as
one.

Momaya threw herself at Tarzan’s feet, raising supplicating hands
toward him and pouring forth from her mutilated lips a perfect cataract
of words, not one of which the ape-man comprehended. For a moment he
looked down upon the upturned, frightful face of the woman. He had come
to slay, but that overwhelming torrent of speech filled him with
consternation and with awe. He glanced about him apprehensively, then
back at the woman. A revulsion of feeling seized him. He could not kill
little Tibo’s mother, nor could he stand and face this verbal geyser.
With a quick gesture of impatience at the spoiling of his evening’s
entertainment, he wheeled and leaped away into the darkness. A moment
later he was swinging through the black jungle night, the cries and
lamentations of Momaya growing fainter in the distance.

It was with a sigh of relief that he finally reached a point from which
he could no longer hear them, and finding a comfortable crotch high
among the trees, composed himself for a night of dreamless slumber,
while a prowling lion moaned and coughed beneath him, and in far-off
England the other Lord Greystoke, with the assistance of a valet,
disrobed and crawled between spotless sheets, swearing irritably as a
cat meowed beneath his window.

As Tarzan followed the fresh spoor of Horta, the boar, the following
morning, he came upon the tracks of two Gomangani, a large one and a
small one. The ape-man, accustomed as he was to questioning closely all
that fell to his perceptions, paused to read the story written in the
soft mud of the game trail. You or I would have seen little of interest
there, even if, by chance, we could have seen aught. Perhaps had one
been there to point them out to us, we might have noted indentations in
the mud, but there were countless indentations, one overlapping another
into a confusion that would have been entirely meaningless to us. To
Tarzan each told its own story. Tantor, the elephant, had passed that
way as recently as three suns since. Numa had hunted here the night
just gone, and Horta, the boar, had walked slowly along the trail
within an hour; but what held Tarzan’s attention was the spoor tale of
the Gomangani. It told him that the day before an old man had gone
toward the north in company with a little boy, and that with them had
been two hyenas.

Tarzan scratched his head in puzzled incredulity. He could see by the
overlapping of the footprints that the beasts had not been following
the two, for sometimes one was ahead of them and one behind, and again
both were in advance, or both were in the rear. It was very strange and
quite inexplicable, especially where the spoor showed where the hyenas
in the wider portions of the path had walked one on either side of the
human pair, quite close to them. Then Tarzan read in the spoor of the
smaller Gomangani a shrinking terror of the beast that brushed his
side, but in that of the old man was no sign of fear.

At first Tarzan had been solely occupied by the remarkable
juxtaposition of the spoor of Dango and Gomangani, but now his keen
eyes caught something in the spoor of the little Gomangani which
brought him to a sudden stop. It was as though, finding a letter in the
road, you suddenly had discovered in it the familiar handwriting of a
friend.

“Go-bu-balu!” exclaimed the ape-man, and at once memory flashed upon
the screen of recollection the supplicating attitude of Momaya as she
had hurled herself before him in the village of Mbonga the night
before. Instantly all was explained—the wailing and lamentation, the
pleading of the black mother, the sympathetic howling of the shes about
the fire. Little Go-bu-balu had been stolen again, and this time by
another than Tarzan. Doubtless the mother had thought that he was again
in the power of Tarzan of the Apes, and she had been beseeching him to
return her balu to her.

Yes, it was all quite plain now; but who could have stolen Go-bu-balu
this time? Tarzan wondered, and he wondered, too, about the presence of
Dango. He would investigate. The spoor was a day old and it ran toward
the north. Tarzan set out to follow it. In places it was totally
obliterated by the passage of many beasts, and where the way was rocky,
even Tarzan of the Apes was almost baffled; but there was still the
faint effluvium which clung to the human spoor, appreciable only to
such highly trained perceptive powers as were Tarzan’s.

It had all happened to little Tibo very suddenly and unexpectedly
within the brief span of two suns. First had come Bukawai, the
witch-doctor—Bukawai, the unclean—with the ragged bit of flesh which
still clung to his rotting face. He had come alone and by day to the
place at the river where Momaya went daily to wash her body and that of
Tibo, her little boy. He had stepped out from behind a great bush quite
close to Momaya, frightening little Tibo so that he ran screaming to
his mother’s protecting arms.

But Momaya, though startled, had wheeled to face the fearsome thing
with all the savage ferocity of a she-tiger at bay. When she saw who it
was, she breathed a sigh of partial relief, though she still clung
tightly to Tibo.

“I have come,” said Bukawai without preliminary, “for the three fat
goats, the new sleeping mat, and the bit of copper wire as long as a
tall man’s arm.”

“I have no goats for you,” snapped Momaya, “nor a sleeping mat, nor any
wire. Your medicine was never made. The white jungle god gave me back
my Tibo. You had nothing to do with it.”

“But I did,” mumbled Bukawai through his fleshless jaws. “It was I who
commanded the white jungle god to give back your Tibo.”

Momaya laughed in his face. “Speaker of lies,” she cried, “go back to
your foul den and your hyenas. Go back and hide your stinking face in
the belly of the mountain, lest the sun, seeing it, cover his face with
a black cloud.”

“I have come,” reiterated Bukawai, “for the three fat goats, the new
sleeping mat, and the bit of copper wire the length of a tall man’s
arm, which you were to pay me for the return of your Tibo.”

“It was to be the length of a man’s forearm,” corrected Momaya, “but
you shall have nothing, old thief. You would not make medicine until I
had brought the payment in advance, and when I was returning to my
village the great, white jungle god gave me back my Tibo—gave him to me
out of the jaws of Numa. His medicine is true medicine—yours is the
weak medicine of an old man with a hole in his face.”

“I have come,” repeated Bukawai patiently, “for the three fat—” But
Momaya had not waited to hear more of what she already knew by heart.
Clasping Tibo close to her side, she was hurrying away toward the
palisaded village of Mbonga, the chief.

And the next day, when Momaya was working in the plantain field with
others of the women of the tribe, and little Tibo had been playing at
the edge of the jungle, casting a small spear in anticipation of the
distant day when he should be a full-fledged warrior, Bukawai had come
again.

Tibo had seen a squirrel scampering up the bole of a great tree. His
childish mind had transformed it into the menacing figure of a hostile
warrior. Little Tibo had raised his tiny spear, his heart filled with
the savage blood lust of his race, as he pictured the night’s orgy when
he should dance about the corpse of his human kill as the women of his
tribe prepared the meat for the feast to follow.

But when he cast the spear, he missed both squirrel and tree, losing
his missile far among the tangled undergrowth of the jungle. However,
it could be but a few steps within the forbidden labyrinth. The women
were all about in the field. There were warriors on guard within easy
hail, and so little Tibo boldly ventured into the dark place.

Just behind the screen of creepers and matted foliage lurked three
horrid figures—an old, old man, black as the pit, with a face half
eaten away by leprosy, his sharp-filed teeth, the teeth of a cannibal,
showing yellow and repulsive through the great gaping hole where his
mouth and nose had been. And beside him, equally hideous, stood two
powerful hyenas—carrion-eaters consorting with carrion.

Tibo did not see them until, head down, he had forced his way through
the thickly growing vines in search of his little spear, and then it
was too late. As he looked up into the face of Bukawai, the old
witch-doctor seized him, muffling his screams with a palm across his
mouth. Tibo struggled futilely.

A moment later he was being hustled away through the dark and terrible
jungle, the frightful old man still muffling his screams, and the two
hideous hyenas pacing now on either side, now before, now behind,
always prowling, always growling, snapping, snarling, or, worst of all,
laughing hideously.

To little Tibo, who within his brief existence had passed through such
experiences as are given to few to pass through in a lifetime, the
northward journey was a nightmare of terror. He thought now of the time
that he had been with the great, white jungle god, and he prayed with
all his little soul that he might be back again with the white-skinned
giant who consorted with the hairy tree men. Terror-stricken he had
been then, but his surroundings had been nothing by comparison with
those which he now endured.

The old man seldom addressed Tibo, though he kept up an almost
continuous mumbling throughout the long day. Tibo caught repeated
references to fat goats, sleeping mats, and pieces of copper wire. “Ten
fat goats, ten fat goats,” the old Negro would croon over and over
again. By this little Tibo guessed that the price of his ransom had
risen. Ten fat goats? Where would his mother get ten fat goats, or thin
ones, either, for that matter, to buy back just a poor little boy?
Mbonga would never let her have them, and Tibo knew that his father
never had owned more than three goats at the same time in all his life.
Ten fat goats! Tibo sniffled. The putrid old man would kill him and eat
him, for the goats would never be forthcoming. Bukawai would throw his
bones to the hyenas. The little black boy shuddered and became so weak
that he almost fell in his tracks. Bukawai cuffed him on an ear and
jerked him along.

After what seemed an eternity to Tibo, they arrived at the mouth of a
cave between two rocky hills. The opening was low and narrow. A few
saplings bound together with strips of rawhide closed it against stray
beasts. Bukawai removed the primitive door and pushed Tibo within. The
hyenas, snarling, rushed past him and were lost to view in the
blackness of the interior. Bukawai replaced the saplings and seizing
Tibo roughly by the arm, dragged him along a narrow, rocky passage. The
floor was comparatively smooth, for the dirt which lay thick upon it
had been trodden and tramped by many feet until few inequalities
remained.

The passage was tortuous, and as it was very dark and the walls rough
and rocky, Tibo was scratched and bruised from the many bumps he
received. Bukawai walked as rapidly through the winding gallery as one
would traverse a familiar lane by daylight. He knew every twist and
turn as a mother knows the face of her child, and he seemed to be in a
hurry. He jerked poor little Tibo possibly a trifle more ruthlessly
than necessary even at the pace Bukawai set; but the old witch-doctor,
an outcast from the society of man, diseased, shunned, hated, feared,
was far from possessing an angelic temper. Nature had given him few of
the kindlier characteristics of man, and these few Fate had eradicated
entirely. Shrewd, cunning, cruel, vindictive, was Bukawai, the
witch-doctor.

Frightful tales were whispered of the cruel tortures he inflicted upon
his victims. Children were frightened into obedience by the threat of
his name. Often had Tibo been thus frightened, and now he was reaping a
grisly harvest of terror from the seeds his mother had innocently sown.
The darkness, the presence of the dreaded witch-doct

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/106