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Tarzan of the Apes

by Edgar Rice Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #78 · 499,762 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tarzan of the Apes

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs


        
Release date: August 1, 1993 [eBook #78]
                Most recently updated: July 30, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78

Credits: Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TARZAN OF THE APES ***

[Illustration]




Tarzan of the Apes

by Edgar Rice Burroughs


Contents

 CHAPTER I. Out to Sea
 CHAPTER II. The Savage Home
 CHAPTER III. Life and Death
 CHAPTER IV. The Apes
 CHAPTER V. The White Ape
 CHAPTER VI. Jungle Battles
 CHAPTER VII. The Light of Knowledge
 CHAPTER VIII. The Tree-top Hunter
 CHAPTER IX. Man and Man
 CHAPTER X. The Fear-Phantom
 CHAPTER XI. “King of the Apes”
 CHAPTER XII. Man’s Reason
 CHAPTER XIII. His Own Kind
 CHAPTER XIV. At the Mercy of the Jungle
 CHAPTER XV. The Forest God
 CHAPTER XVI. “Most Remarkable”
 CHAPTER XVII. Burials
 CHAPTER XVIII. The Jungle Toll
 CHAPTER XIX. The Call of the Primitive
 CHAPTER XX. Heredity
 CHAPTER XXI. The Village of Torture
 CHAPTER XXII. The Search Party
 CHAPTER XXIII. Brother Men
 CHAPTER XXIV. Lost Treasure
 CHAPTER XXV. The Outpost of the World
 CHAPTER XXVI. The Height of Civilization
 CHAPTER XXVII. The Giant Again
 CHAPTER XXVIII. Conclusion
 



CHAPTER I.
Out to Sea


I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to
any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon
the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity
during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.

When my convivial host discovered that he had told me so much, and that
I was prone to doubtfulness, his foolish pride assumed the task the old
vintage had commenced, and so he unearthed written evidence in the form
of musty manuscript, and dry official records of the British Colonial
Office to support many of the salient features of his remarkable
narrative.

I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings
which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have
taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently
evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it _may_ be true.

The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the
records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of
my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly
pieced it out from these several various agencies.

If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in
acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.

From the records of the Colonial Office and from the dead man’s diary
we learn that a certain young English nobleman, whom we shall call John
Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate
investigation of conditions in a British West Coast African Colony from
whose simple native inhabitants another European power was known to be
recruiting soldiers for its native army, which it used solely for the
forcible collection of rubber and ivory from the savage tribes along
the Congo and the Aruwimi. The natives of the British Colony complained
that many of their young men were enticed away through the medium of
fair and glowing promises, but that few if any ever returned to their
families.

The Englishmen in Africa went even further, saying that these poor
blacks were held in virtual slavery, since after their terms of
enlistment expired their ignorance was imposed upon by their white
officers, and they were told that they had yet several years to serve.

And so the Colonial Office appointed John Clayton to a new post in
British West Africa, but his confidential instructions centered on a
thorough investigation of the unfair treatment of black British
subjects by the officers of a friendly European power. Why he was sent,
is, however, of little moment to this story, for he never made an
investigation, nor, in fact, did he ever reach his destination.

Clayton was the type of Englishman that one likes best to associate
with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand
victorious battlefields—a strong, virile man—mentally, morally, and
physically.

In stature he was above the average height; his eyes were gray, his
features regular and strong; his carriage that of perfect, robust
health influenced by his years of army training.

Political ambition had caused him to seek transference from the army to
the Colonial Office and so we find him, still young, entrusted with a
delicate and important commission in the service of the Queen.

When he received this appointment he was both elated and appalled. The
preferment seemed to him in the nature of a well-merited reward for
painstaking and intelligent service, and as a stepping stone to posts
of greater importance and responsibility; but, on the other hand, he
had been married to the Hon. Alice Rutherford for scarce a three
months, and it was the thought of taking this fair young girl into the
dangers and isolation of tropical Africa that appalled him.

For her sake he would have refused the appointment, but she would not
have it so. Instead she insisted that he accept, and, indeed, take her
with him.

There were mothers and brothers and sisters, and aunts and cousins to
express various opinions on the subject, but as to what they severally
advised history is silent.

We know only that on a bright May morning in 1888, John, Lord
Greystoke, and Lady Alice sailed from Dover on their way to Africa.

A month later they arrived at Freetown where they chartered a small
sailing vessel, the _Fuwalda_, which was to bear them to their final
destination.

And here John, Lord Greystoke, and Lady Alice, his wife, vanished from
the eyes and from the knowledge of men.

Two months after they weighed anchor and cleared from the port of
Freetown a half dozen British war vessels were scouring the south
Atlantic for trace of them or their little vessel, and it was almost
immediately that the wreckage was found upon the shores of St. Helena
which convinced the world that the _Fuwalda_ had gone down with all on
board, and hence the search was stopped ere it had scarce begun; though
hope lingered in longing hearts for many years.

The _Fuwalda_, a barkentine of about one hundred tons, was a vessel of
the type often seen in coastwise trade in the far southern Atlantic,
their crews composed of the offscourings of the sea—unhanged murderers
and cutthroats of every race and every nation.

The _Fuwalda_ was no exception to the rule. Her officers were swarthy
bullies, hating and hated by their crew. The captain, while a competent
seaman, was a brute in his treatment of his men. He knew, or at least
he used, but two arguments in his dealings with them—a belaying pin and
a revolver—nor is it likely that the motley aggregation he signed would
have understood aught else.

So it was that from the second day out from Freetown John Clayton and
his young wife witnessed scenes upon the deck of the _Fuwalda_ such as
they had believed were never enacted outside the covers of printed
stories of the sea.

It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged
in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life
for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of
man.

Two sailors were washing down the decks of the _Fuwalda_, the first
mate was on duty, and the captain had stopped to speak with John
Clayton and Lady Alice.

The men were working backwards toward the little party who were facing
away from the sailors. Closer and closer they came, until one of them
was directly behind the captain. In another moment he would have passed
by and this strange narrative would never have been recorded.

But just that instant the officer turned to leave Lord and Lady
Greystoke, and, as he did so, tripped against the sailor and sprawled
headlong upon the deck, overturning the water-pail so that he was
drenched in its dirty contents.

For an instant the scene was ludicrous; but only for an instant. With a
volley of awful oaths, his face suffused with the scarlet of
mortification and rage, the captain regained his feet, and with a
terrific blow felled the sailor to the deck.

The man was small and rather old, so that the brutality of the act was
thus accentuated. The other seaman, however, was neither old nor
small—a huge bear of a man, with fierce black mustachios, and a great
bull neck set between massive shoulders.

As he saw his mate go down he crouched, and, with a low snarl, sprang
upon the captain crushing him to his knees with a single mighty blow.

From scarlet the officer’s face went white, for this was mutiny; and
mutiny he had met and subdued before in his brutal career. Without
waiting to rise he whipped a revolver from his pocket, firing point
blank at the great mountain of muscle towering before him; but, quick
as he was, John Clayton was almost as quick, so that the bullet which
was intended for the sailor’s heart lodged in the sailor’s leg instead,
for Lord Greystoke had struck down the captain’s arm as he had seen the
weapon flash in the sun.

Words passed between Clayton and the captain, the former making it
plain that he was disgusted with the brutality displayed toward the
crew, nor would he countenance anything further of the kind while he
and Lady Greystoke remained passengers.

The captain was on the point of making an angry reply, but, thinking
better of it, turned on his heel and black and scowling, strode aft.

He did not care to antagonize an English official, for the Queen’s
mighty arm wielded a punitive instrument which he could appreciate, and
which he feared—England’s far-reaching navy.

The two sailors picked themselves up, the older man assisting his
wounded comrade to rise. The big fellow, who was known among his mates
as Black Michael, tried his leg gingerly, and, finding that it bore his
weight, turned to Clayton with a word of gruff thanks.

Though the fellow’s tone was surly, his words were evidently well
meant. Ere he had scarce finished his little speech he had turned and
was limping off toward the forecastle with the very apparent intention
of forestalling any further conversation.

They did not see him again for several days, nor did the captain accord
them more than the surliest of grunts when he was forced to speak to
them.

They took their meals in his cabin, as they had before the unfortunate
occurrence; but the captain was careful to see that his duties never
permitted him to eat at the same time.

The other officers were coarse, illiterate fellows, but little above
the villainous crew they bullied, and were only too glad to avoid
social intercourse with the polished English noble and his lady, so
that the Claytons were left very much to themselves.

This in itself accorded perfectly with their desires, but it also
rather isolated them from the life of the little ship so that they were
unable to keep in touch with the daily happenings which were to
culminate so soon in bloody tragedy.

There was in the whole atmosphere of the craft that undefinable
something which presages disaster. Outwardly, to the knowledge of the
Claytons, all went on as before upon the little vessel; but that there
was an undertow leading them toward some unknown danger both felt,
though they did not speak of it to each other.

On the second day after the wounding of Black Michael, Clayton came on
deck just in time to see the limp body of one of the crew being carried
below by four of his fellows while the first mate, a heavy belaying pin
in his hand, stood glowering at the little party of sullen sailors.

Clayton asked no questions—he did not need to—and the following day, as
the great lines of a British battleship grew out of the distant
horizon, he half determined to demand that he and Lady Alice be put
aboard her, for his fears were steadily increasing that nothing but
harm could result from remaining on the lowering, sullen _Fuwalda_.

Toward noon they were within speaking distance of the British vessel,
but when Clayton had nearly decided to ask the captain to put them
aboard her, the obvious ridiculousness of such a request became
suddenly apparent. What reason could he give the officer commanding her
majesty’s ship for desiring to go back in the direction from which he
had just come!

What if he told them that two insubordinate seamen had been roughly
handled by their officers? They would but laugh in their sleeves and
attribute his reason for wishing to leave the ship to but one
thing—cowardice.

John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, did not ask to be transferred to the
British man-of-war. Late in the afternoon he saw her upper works fade
below the far horizon, but not before he learned that which confirmed
his greatest fears, and caused him to curse the false pride which had
restrained him from seeking safety for his young wife a few short hours
before, when safety was within reach—a safety which was now gone
forever.

It was mid-afternoon that brought the little old sailor, who had been
felled by the captain a few days before, to where Clayton and his wife
stood by the ship’s side watching the ever diminishing outlines of the
great battleship. The old fellow was polishing brasses, and as he came
edging along until close to Clayton he said, in an undertone:

“’Ell’s to pay, sir, on this ’ere craft, an’ mark my word for it, sir.
’Ell’s to pay.”

“What do you mean, my good fellow?” asked Clayton.

“Wy, hasn’t ye seen wats goin’ on? Hasn’t ye ’eard that devil’s spawn
of a capting an’ ’is mates knockin’ the bloomin’ lights outen ’arf the
crew?

“Two busted ’eads yeste’day, an’ three to-day. Black Michael’s as good
as new agin an’ ’e’s not the bully to stand fer it, not ’e; an’ mark my
word for it, sir.”

“You mean, my man, that the crew contemplates mutiny?” asked Clayton.

“Mutiny!” exclaimed the old fellow. “Mutiny! They means murder, sir,
an’ mark my word for it, sir.”

“When?”

“Hit’s comin’, sir; hit’s comin’ but I’m not a-sayin’ wen, an’ I’ve
said too damned much now, but ye was a good sort t’other day an’ I
thought it no more’n right to warn ye. But keep a still tongue in yer
’ead an’ when ye ’ear shootin’ git below an’ stay there.

“That’s all, only keep a still tongue in yer ’ead, or they’ll put a
pill between yer ribs, an’ mark my word for it, sir,” and the old
fellow went on with his polishing, which carried him away from where
the Claytons were standing.

“Deuced cheerful outlook, Alice,” said Clayton.

“You should warn the captain at once, John. Possibly the trouble may
yet be averted,” she said.

“I suppose I should, but yet from purely selfish motives I am almost
prompted to ‘keep a still tongue in my ’ead.’ Whatever they do now they
will spare us in recognition of my stand for this fellow Black Michael,
but should they find that I had betrayed them there would be no mercy
shown us, Alice.”

“You have but one duty, John, and that lies in the interest of vested
authority. If you do not warn the captain you are as much a party to
whatever follows as though you had helped to plot and carry it out with
your own head and hands.”

“You do not understand, dear,” replied Clayton. “It is of you I am
thinking—there lies my first duty. The captain has brought this
condition upon himself, so why then should I risk subjecting my wife to
unthinkable horrors in a probably futile attempt to save him from his
own brutal folly? You have no conception, dear, of what would follow
were this pack of cutthroats to gain control of the _Fuwalda_.”

“Duty is duty, John, and no amount of sophistries may change it. I
would be a poor wife for an English lord were I to be responsible for
his shirking a plain duty. I realize the danger which must follow, but
I can face it with you.”

“Have it as you will then, Alice,” he answered, smiling. “Maybe we are
borrowing trouble. While I do not like the looks of things on board
this ship, they may not be so bad after all, for it is possible that
the ‘Ancient Mariner’ was but voicing the desires of his wicked old
heart rather than speaking of real facts.

“Mutiny on the high sea may have been common a hundred years ago, but
in this good year 1888 it is the least likely of happenings.

“But there goes the captain to his cabin now. If I am going to warn him
I might as well get the beastly job over for I have little stomach to
talk with the brute at all.”

So saying he strolled carelessly in the direction of the companionway
through which the captain had passed, and a moment later was knocking
at his door.

“Come in,” growled the deep tones of that surly officer.

And when Clayton had entered, and closed the door behind him:

“Well?”

“I have come to report the gist of a conversation I heard to-day,
because I feel that, while there may be nothing to it, it is as well
that you be forearmed. In short, the men contemplate mutiny and
murder.”

“It’s a lie!” roared the captain. “And if you have been interfering
again with the discipline of this ship, or meddling in affairs that
don’t concern you you can take the consequences, and be damned. I don’t
care whether you are an English lord or not. I’m captain of this here
ship, and from now on you keep your meddling nose out of my business.”

The captain had worked himself up to such a frenzy of rage that he was
fairly purple of face, and he shrieked the last words at the top of his
voice, emphasizing his remarks by a loud thumping of the table with one
huge fist, and shaking the other in Clayton’s face.

Greystoke never turned a hair, but stood eyeing the excited man with
level gaze.

“Captain Billings,” he drawled finally, “if you will pardon my candor,
I might remark that you are something of an ass.”

Whereupon he turned and left the captain with the same indifferent ease
that was habitual with him, and which was more surely calculated to
raise the ire of a man of Billings’ class than a torrent of invective.

So, whereas the captain might easily have been brought to regret his
hasty speech had Clayton attempted to conciliate him, his temper was
now irrevocably set in the mold in which Clayton had left it, and the
last chance of their working together for their common good was gone.

“Well, Alice,” said Clayton, as he rejoined his wife, “I might have
saved my breath. The fellow proved most ungrateful. Fairly jumped at me
like a mad dog.

“He and his blasted old ship may hang, for aught I care; and until we
are safely off the thing I shall spend my energies in looking after our
own welfare. And I rather fancy the first step to that end should be to
go to our cabin and look over my revolvers. I am sorry now that we
packed the larger guns and the ammunition with the stuff below.”

They found their quarters in a bad state of disorder. Clothing from
their open boxes and bags strewed the little apartment, and even their
beds had been torn to pieces.

“Evidently someone was more anxious about our belongings than we,” said
Clayton. “Let’s have a look around, Alice, and see what’s missing.”

A thorough search revealed the fact that nothing had been taken but
Clayton’s two revolvers and the small supply of ammunition he had saved
out for them.

“Those are the very things I most wish they had left us,” said Clayton,
“and the fact that they wished for them and them alone is most
sinister.”

“What are we to do, John?” asked his wife. “Perhaps you were right in
that our best chance lies in maintaining a neutral position.

“If the officers are able to prevent a mutiny, we have nothing to fear,
while if the mutineers are victorious our one slim hope lies in not
having attempted to thwart or antagonize them.”

“Right you are, Alice. We’ll keep in the middle of the road.”

As they started to straighten up their cabin, Clayton and his wife
simultaneously noticed the corner of a piece of paper protruding from
beneath the door of their quarters. As Clayton stooped to reach for it
he was amazed to see it move further into the room, and then he
realized that it was being pushed inward by someone from without.

Quickly and silently he stepped toward the door, but, as he reached for
the knob to throw it open, his wife’s hand fell upon his wrist.

“No, John,” she whispered. “They do not wish to be seen, and so we
cannot afford to see them. Do not forget that we are keeping to the
middle of the road.”

Clayton smiled and dropped his hand to his side. Thus they stood
watching the little bit of white paper until it finally remained at
rest upon the floor just inside the door.

Then Clayton stooped and picked it up. It was a bit of grimy, white
paper roughly folded into a ragged square. Opening it they found a
crude message printed almost illegibly, and with many evidences of an
unaccustomed task.

Translated, it was a warning to the Claytons to refrain from reporting
the loss of the revolvers, or from repeating what the old sailor had
told them—to refrain on pain of death.

“I rather imagine we’ll be good,” said Clayton with a rueful smile.
“About all we can do is to sit tight and wait for whatever may come.”




CHAPTER II.
The Savage Home


Nor did they have long to wait, for the next morning as Clayton was
emerging on deck for his accustomed walk before breakfast, a shot rang
out, and then another, and another.

The sight which met his eyes confirmed his worst fears. Facing the
little knot of officers was the entire motley crew of the _Fuwalda_,
and at their head stood Black Michael.

At the first volley from the officers the men ran for shelter, and from
points of vantage behind masts, wheel-house and cabin they returned the
fire of the five men who represented the hated authority of the ship.

Two of their number had gone down before the captain’s revolver. They
lay where they had fallen between the combatants. But then the first
mate lunged forward upon his face, and at a cry of command from Black
Michael the mutineers charged the remaining four. The crew had been
able to muster but six firearms, so most of them were armed with boat
hooks, axes, hatchets and crowbars.

The captain had emptied his revolver and was reloading as the charge
was made. The second mate’s gun had jammed, and so there were but two
weapons opposed to the mutineers as they bore down upon the officers,
who now started to give back before the infuriated rush of their men.

Both sides were cursing and swearing in a frightful manner, which,
together with the reports of the firearms and the screams and groans of
the wounded, turned the deck of the _Fuwalda_ to the likeness of a
madhouse.

Before the officers had taken a dozen backward steps the men were upon
them. An ax in the hands of a burly Negro cleft the captain from
forehead to chin, and an instant later the others were down: dead or
wounded from dozens of blows and bullet wounds.

Short and grisly had been the work of the mutineers of the _Fuwalda_,
and through it all John Clayton had stood leaning carelessly beside the
companionway puffing meditatively upon his pipe as though he had been
but watching an indifferent cricket match.

As the last officer went down he thought it was time that he returned
to his wife lest some members of the crew find her alone below.

Though outwardly calm and indifferent, Clayton was inwardly
apprehensive and wrought up, for he feared for his wife’s safety at the
hands of these ignorant, half-brutes into whose hands fate had so
remorselessly thrown them.

As he turned to descend the ladder he was surprised to see his wife
standing on the steps almost at his side.

“How long have you been here, Alice?”

“Since the beginning,” she replied. “How awful, John. Oh, how awful!
What can we hope for at the hands of such as those?”

“Breakfast, I hope,” he answered, smiling bravely in an attempt to
allay her fears.

“At least,” he added, “I’m going to ask them. Come with me, Alice. We
must not let them think we expect any but courteous treatment.”

The men had by this time surrounded the dead and wounded officers, and
without either partiality or compassion proceeded to throw both living
and dead over the sides of the vessel. With equal heartlessness they
disposed of their own dead and dying.

Presently one of the crew spied the approaching Claytons, and with a
cry of: “Here’s two more for the fishes,” rushed toward them with
uplifted ax.

But Black Michael was even quicker, so that the fellow went down with a
bullet in his back before he had taken a half dozen steps.

With a loud roar, Black Michael attracted the attention of the others,
and, pointing to Lord and Lady Greystoke, cried:

“These here are my friends, and they are to be left alone. D’ye
understand?

“I’m captain of this ship now, an’ what I says goes,” he added, turning
to Clayton. “Just keep to yourselves, and nobody’ll harm ye,” and he
looked threateningly on his fellows.

The Claytons heeded Black Michael’s instructions so well that they saw
but little of the crew and knew nothing of the plans the men were
making.

Occasionally they heard faint echoes of brawls and quarreling among the
mutineers, and on two occasions the vicious bark of firearms rang out
on the still air. But Black Michael was a fit leader for this band of
cutthroats, and, withal held them in fair subjection to his rule.

On the fifth day following the murder of the ship’s officers, land was
sighted by the lookout. Whether island or mainland, Black Michael did
not know, but he announced to Clayton that if investigation showed that
the place was habitable he and Lady Greystoke were to be put ashore
with their belongings.

“You’ll be all right there for a few months,” he explained, “and by
that time we’ll have been able to make an inhabited coast somewhere and
scatter a bit. Then I’ll see that yer gover’ment’s notified where you
be an’ they’ll soon send a man-o’war to fetch ye off.

“It would be a hard matter to land you in civilization without a lot o’
questions being asked, an’ none o’ us here has any very convincin’
answers up our sleeves.”

Clayton remonstrated against the inhumanity of landing them upon an
unknown shore to be left to the mercies of savage beasts, and,
possibly, still more savage men.

But his words were of no avail, and only tended to anger Black Michael,
so he was forced to desist and make the best he could of a bad
situation.

About three o’clock in the afternoon they came about off a beautiful
wooded shore opposite the mouth of what appeared to be a land-locked
harbor.

Black Michael sent a small boat filled with men to sound the entrance
in an effort to determine if the _Fuwalda_ could be safely worked
through the entrance.

In about an hour they returned and reported deep water through the
passage as well as far into the little basin.

Before dark the barkentine lay peacefully at anchor upon the bosom of
the still, mirror-like surface of the harbor.

The surrounding shores were beautiful with semitropical verdure, while
in the distance the country rose from the ocean in hill and tableland,
almost uniformly clothed by primeval forest.

No signs of habitation were visible, but that the land might easily
support human life was evidenced by the abundant bird and animal life
of which the watchers on the _Fuwalda’s_ deck caught occasional
glimpses, as well as by the shimmer of a little river which emptied
into the harbor, insuring fresh water in plenitude.

As darkness settled upon the earth, Clayton and Lady Alice still stood
by the ship’s rail in silent contemplation of their future abode. From
the dark shadows of the mighty forest came the wild calls of savage
beasts—the deep roar of the lion, and, occasionally, the shrill scream
of a panther.

The woman shrank closer to the man in terror-stricken anticipation of
the horrors lying in wait for them in the awful blackness of the nights
to come, when they should be alone upon that wild and lonely shore.

Later in the evening Black Michael joined them long enough to instruct
them to make their preparations for landing on the morrow. They tried
to persuade him to take them to some more hospitable coast near enough
to civilization so that they might hope to fall into friendly hands.
But no pleas, or threats, or promises of reward could move him.

“I am the only man aboard who would not rather see ye both safely dead,
and, while I know that’s the sensible way to make sure of our own
necks, yet Black Michael’s not the man to forget a favor. Ye saved my
life once, and in return I’m goin’ to spare yours, but that’s all I can
do.

“The men won’t stand for any more, and if we don’t get ye landed pretty
quick they may even change their minds about giving ye that much show.
I’ll put all yer stuff ashore with ye as well as cookin’ utensils an’
some old sails for tents, an’ enough grub to last ye until ye can find
fruit and game.

“With yer guns for protection, ye ought to be able to live here easy
enough until help comes. When I get safely hid away I’ll see to it that
the British gover’ment learns about where ye be; for the life of me I
couldn’t tell ’em exactly where, for I don’t know myself. But they’ll
find ye all right.”

After he had left them they went silently below, each wrapped in gloomy
forebodings.

Clayton did not believe that Black Michael had the slightest intention
of notifying the British government of their whereabouts, nor was he
any too sure but that some treachery was contemplated for the following
day when they should be on shore with the sailors who would have to
accompany them with their belongings.

Once out of Black Michael’s sight any of the men might strike them
down, and still leave Black Michael’s conscience clear.

And even should they escape that fate was it not but to be faced with
far graver dangers? Alone, he might hope to survive for years; for he
was a strong, athletic man.

But what of Alice, and that other little life so soon to be launched
amidst the hardships and grave dangers of a primeval world?

The man shuddered as he meditated upon the awful gravity, the fearful
helplessness, of their situation. But it was a merciful Providence
which prevented him from foreseeing the hideous reality which awaited
them in the grim depths of that gloomy wood.

Early next morning their numerous chests and boxes were hoisted on deck
and lowered to waiting small boats for transportation to shore.

There was a great quantity and variety of stuff, as the Claytons had
expected a possible five to eight years’ residence in their new home.
Thus, in addition to the many necessities they had brought, there were
also many luxuries.

Black Michael was determined that nothing belonging to the Claytons
should be left on board. Whether out of compassion for them, or in
furtherance of his own self-interests, it would be difficult to say.

There was no question but that the presence of property of a missing
British official upon a suspicious vessel would have been a difficult
thing to explain in any civilized port in the world.

So zealous was he in his efforts to carry out his intentions that he
insisted upon the return of Clayton’s revolvers to him by the sailors
in whose possession they were.

Into the small boats were also loaded salt meats and biscuit, with a
small supply of potatoes and beans, matches, and cooking vessels, a
chest of tools, and the old sails which Black Michael had promised
them.

As though himself fearing the very thing which Clayton had suspected,
Black Michael accompanied them to shore, and was the last to leave them
when the small boats, having filled the ship’s casks with fresh water,
were pushed out toward the waiting _Fuwalda_.

As the boats moved slowly over the smooth waters of the bay, Clayton
and his wife stood silently watching their departure—in the breasts of
both a feeling of impending disaster and utter hopelessness.

And behind them, over the edge of a low ridge, other eyes watched—close
set, wicked eyes, gleaming beneath shaggy brows.

As the _Fuwalda_ passed through the narrow entrance to the harbor and
out of sight behind a projecting point, Lady Alice threw her arms about
Clayton’s neck and burst into uncontrolled sobs.

Bravely had she faced the dangers of the mutiny; with heroic fortitude
she had looked into the terrible future; but now that the horror of
absolute solitude was upon them, her overwrought nerves gave way, and
the reaction came.

He did not attempt to check her tears. It were better that nature have
her way in relieving these long-pent emotions, and it was many minutes
before the girl—little more than a child she was—could again gain
mastery of herself.

“Oh, John,” she cried at last, “the horror of it. What are we to do?
What are we to do?”

“There is but one thing to do, Alice,” and he spoke as quietly as
though they were sitting in their snug living room at home, “and that
is work. Work must be our salvation. We must not give ourselves time to
think, for in that direction lies madness.

“We must work and wait. I am sure that relief will come, and come
quickly, when once it is apparent that the _Fuwalda_ has been lost,
even though Black Michael does not keep his word to us.”

“But John, if it were only you and I,” she sobbed, “we could endure it
I know; but—”

“Yes, dear,” he answered, gently, “I have been thinking of that, also;
but we must face it, as we must face whatever comes, bravely and with
the utmost confidence in our ability to cope with circumstances
whatever they may be.

“Hundreds of thousands of years ago our ancestors of the dim and
distant past faced the same problems which we must face, possibly in
these same primeval forests. That we are here today evidences their
victory.

“What they did may we not do? And even better, for are we not armed
with ages of superior knowledge, and have we not the means of
protection, defense, and sustenance which science has given us, but of
which they were totally ignorant? What they accomplished, Alice, with
instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we
accomplish also.”

“Ah, John, I wish that I might be a man with a man’s philosophy, but I
am but a woman, seeing with my heart rather than my head, and all that
I can see is too horrible, too unthinkable to put into words.

“I only hope you are right, John. I will do my best to be a brave
primeval woman, a fit mate for the primeval man.”

Clayton’s first thought was to arrange a sleeping shelter for the
night; something which might serve to protect them from prowling beasts
of prey.

He opened the box containing his rifles and ammunition, that they might
both be armed against possible attack while at work, and then together
they sought a location for their first night’s sleeping place.

A hundred yards from the beach was a little level spot, fairly free of
trees; here they decided eventually to build a permanent house, but for
the time being they both thought it best to construct a little platform
in the trees out of reach of the larger of the savage beasts in whose
realm they were.

To this end Clayton selected four trees which formed a rectangle about
eight feet square, and cutting long branches from other trees he
constructed a framework around them, about ten feet from the ground,
fastening the ends of the branches securely to the trees by means of
rope, a quantity of which Black Michael had furnished him from the hold
of the _Fuwalda_.

Across this framework Clayton placed other smaller branches quite close
together. This platform he paved with the huge fronds of elephant’s ear
which grew in profusion about them, and over the fronds he laid a great
sail folded into several thicknesses.

Seven feet higher he constructed a similar, though lighter platform to
serve as roof, and from the sides of this he suspended the balance of
his sailcloth for walls.

When completed he had a rather snug little nest, to which he carried
their blankets and some of the lighter luggage.

It was now late in the afternoon, and the balance of the daylight hours
were devoted to the building of a rude ladder by means of which Lady
Alice could mount to her new home.

All during the day the forest about them had been filled with excited
birds of brilliant plumage, and dancing, chattering monkeys, who
watched these new arrivals and their wonderful nest building operations
with every mark of keenest interest and fascination.

Notwithstanding that both Clayton and his wife kept a sharp lookout
they saw nothing of larger animals, though on two occasions they had
seen their little simian neighbors come screaming and chattering from
the near-by ridge, casting frightened glances back over their little
shoulders, and evincing as plainly as though by speech that they were
fleeing some terrible thing which lay concealed there.

Just before dusk Clayton finished his ladder, and, filling a great
basin with water from the near-by stream, the two mounted to the
comparative safety of their aerial chamber.

As it was quite warm, Clayton had left the side curtains thrown back
over the roof, and as they sat, like Turks, upon their blankets, Lady
Alice, straining her eyes into the darkening shadows of the wood,
suddenly reached out and grasped Clayton’s arms.

“John,” she whispered, “look! What is it, a man?”

As Clayton turned his eyes in the direction she indicated, he saw
silhouetted dimly against the shadows beyond, a great figure standing
upright upon the ridge.

For a moment it stood as though listening and then turned slowly, and
melted into the shadows of the jungle.

“What is it, John?”

“I do not know, Alice,” he answered gravely, “it is too dark to see so
far, and it may have been but a shadow cast by the rising moon.”

“No, John, if it was not a man it was some huge and grotesque mockery
of man. Oh, I am afraid.”

He gathered her in his arms, whispering words of courage and love into
her ears.

Soon after, he lowered the curtain walls, tying them securely to the
trees so that, except for a little opening toward the beach, they were
entirely enclosed.

As it was now pitch dark within their tiny aerie they lay down upon
their blankets to try to gain, through sleep, a brief respite of
forgetfulness.

Clayton lay facing the opening at the front, a rifle and a brace of
revolvers at his hand.

Scarcely had they closed their eyes than the terrifying cry of a
panther rang out from the jungle behind them. Closer and closer it came
until they could hear the great beast directly beneath them. For an
hour or more they heard it sniffing and clawing at the trees which
supported their platform, but at last it roamed away across the beach,
where Clayton could see it clearly in the brilliant moonlight—a great,
handsome beast, the largest he had ever seen.

During the long hours of darkness they caught but fitful snatches of
sleep, for the night noises of a great jungle teeming with myriad
animal life kept their overwrought nerves on edge, so that a hundred
times they were startled to wakefulness by piercing screams, or the
stealthy moving of great bodies beneath them.




CHAPTER III.
Life and Death


Morning found them but little, if at all refreshed, though it was with
a feeling of intense relief that they saw the day dawn.

As soon as they had made their meager breakfast of salt pork, coffee
and biscuit, Clayton commenced work upon their house, for he realized
that they could hope for no safety and no peace of mind at night until
four strong walls effectually barred the jungle life from them.

The task was an arduous one and required the better part of a month,
though he built but one small room. He constructed his cabin of small
logs about six inches in diameter, stopping the chinks with clay which
he found at the depth of a few feet beneath the surface soil.

At one end he built a fireplace of small stones from the beach. These
also he set in clay and when the house had been entirely completed he
applied a coating of the clay to the entire outside surface to the
thickness of four inches.

In the window opening he set small branches about an inch in diameter
both vertically and horizontally, and so woven that they formed a
substantial grating that could withstand the strength of a powerful
animal. Thus they obtained air and proper ventilation without fear of
lessening the safety of their cabin.

The A-shaped roof was thatched with small branches laid close together
and over these long jungle grass and palm fronds, with a final coating
of clay.

The door he built of pieces of the packing-boxes which had held their
belongings, nailing one piece upon another, the grain of contiguous
layers running transversely, until he had a solid body some three
inches thick and of such great strength that they were both moved to
laughter as they gazed upon it.

Here the greatest difficulty confronted Clayton, for he had no means
whereby to hang his massive door now that he had built it. After two
days’ work, however, he succeeded in fashioning two massive hardwood
hinges, and with these he hung the door so that it opened and closed
easily.

The stuccoing and other final touches were added after they moved into
the house, which they had done as soon as the roof was on, piling their
boxes before the door at night and thus having a comparatively safe and
comfortable habitation.

The building of a bed, chairs, table, and shelves was a relatively easy
matter, so that by the end of the second month they were well settled,
and, but for the constant dread of attack by wild beasts and the ever
growing loneliness, they were not uncomfortable or unhappy.

At night great beasts snarled and roared about their tiny cabin, but,
so accustomed may one become to oft repeated noises, that soon they
paid little attention to them, sleeping soundly the whole night
through.

Thrice had they caught fleeting glimpses of great man-like figures like
that of the first night, but never at sufficiently close range to know
positively whether the half-seen forms were those of man or brute.

The brilliant birds and the little monkeys had become accustomed to
their new acquaintances, and as they had evidently never seen human
beings before they presently, after their first fright had worn off,
approached closer and closer, impelled by that strange curiosity which
dominates the wild creatures of the forest and the jungle and the
plain, so that within the first month several of the birds had gone so
far as even to accept morsels of food from the friendly hands of the
Claytons.

One afternoon, while Clayton was working upon an addition to their
cabin, for he contemplated building several more rooms, a number of
their grotesque little friends came shrieking and scolding through the
trees from the direction of the ridge. Ever as they fled they cast
fearful glances back of them, and finally they stopped near Clayton
jabbering excitedly to him as though to warn him of approaching danger.

At last he saw it, the thing the little monkeys so feared—the man-brute
of which the Claytons had caught occasional fleeting glimpses.

It was approaching through the jungle in a semi-erect position, now and
then placing the backs of its closed fists upon the ground—a great
anthropoid ape, and, as it advanced, it emitted deep guttural growls
and an occasional low barking sound.

Clayton was at some distance from the cabin, having come to fell a
particularly perfect tree for his building operations. Grown careless
from months of continued safety, during which time he had seen no
dangerous animals during the daylight hours, he had left his rifles and
revolvers all within the little cabin, and now that he saw the great
ape crashing through the underbrush directly toward him, and from a
direction which practically cut him off from escape, he felt a vague
little shiver play up and down his spine.

He knew that, armed only with an ax, his chances with this ferocious
monster were small indeed—and Alice; O God, he thought, what will
become of Alice?

There was yet a slight chance of reaching the cabin. He turned and ran
toward it, shouting an alarm to his wife to run in and close the great
door in case the ape cut off his retreat.

Lady Greystoke had been sitting a little way from the cabin, and when
she heard his cry she looked up to see the ape springing with almost
incredible swiftness, for so large and awkward an animal, in an effort
to head off Clayton.

With a low cry she sprang toward the cabin, and, as she entered, gave a
backward glance which filled her soul with terror, for the brute had
intercepted her husband, who now stood at bay grasping his ax with both
hands ready to swing it upon the infuriated animal when he should make
his final charge.

“Close and bolt the door, Alice,” cried Clayton. “I can finish this
fellow with my ax.”

But he knew he was facing a horrible death, and so did she.

The ape was a great bull, weighing probably three hundred pounds. His
nasty, close-set eyes gleamed hatred from beneath his shaggy brows,
while his great canine fangs were bared in a horrid snarl as he paused
a moment before his prey.

Over the brute’s shoulder Clayton could see the doorway of his cabin,
not twenty paces distant, and a great wave of horror and fear swept
over him as he saw his young wife emerge, armed with one of his rifles.

She had always been afraid of firearms, and would never touch them, but
now she rushed toward the ape with the fearlessness of a lioness
protecting its young.

“Back, Alice,” shouted Clayton, “for God’s sake, go back.”

But she would not heed, and just then the ape charged, so that Clayton
could say no more.

The man swung his ax with all his mighty strength, but the powerful
brute seized it in those terrible hands, and tearing it from Clayton’s
grasp hurled it far to one side.

With an ugly snarl he closed upon his defenseless victim, but ere his
fangs had reached the throat they thirsted for, there was a sharp
report and a bullet entered the ape’s back between his shoulders.

Throwing Clayton to the ground the beast turned upon his new enemy.
There before him stood the terrified girl vainly trying to fire another
bullet into the animal’s body; but she did not understand the mechanism
of the firearm, and the hammer fell futilely upon an empty cartridge.

Almost simultaneously Clayton regained his feet, and without thought of
the utter hopelessness of it, he rushed forward to drag the ape from
his wife’s prostrate form.

With little or no effort he succeeded, and the great bulk rolled
inertly upon the turf before him—the ape was dead. The bullet had done
its work.

A hasty examination of his wife revealed no marks upon her, and Clayton
decided that the huge brute had died the instant he had sprung toward
Alice.

Gently he lifted his wife’s still unconscious form, and bore her to the
little cabin, but it was fully two hours before she regained
consciousness.

Her first words filled Clayton with vague apprehension. For some time
after regaining her senses, Alice gazed wonderingly about the interior
of the little cabin, and then, with a satisfied sigh, said:

“O, John, it is so good to be really home! I have had an awful dream,
dear. I thought we were no longer in London, but in some horrible place
where great beasts attacked us.”

“There, there, Alice,” he said, stroking her forehead, “try to sleep
again, and do not worry your head about bad dreams.”

That night a little son was born in the tiny cabin beside the primeval
forest, while a leopard screamed before the door, and the deep notes of
a lion’s roar sounded from beyond the ridge.

Lady Greystoke never recovered from the shock of the great ape’s
attack, and, though she lived for a year after her baby was born, she
was never again outside the cabin, nor did she ever fully realize that
she was not in England.

Sometimes she would question Clayton as to the strange noises of the
nights; the absence of servants and friends, and the strange rudeness
of the furnishings within her room, but, though he made no effort to
deceive her, never could she grasp the meaning of it all.

In other ways she was quite rational, and the joy and happiness she
took in the possession of her little son and the constant attentions of
her husband made that year a very happy one for her, the happiest of
her young life.

That it would have been beset by worries and apprehension had she been
in full command of her mental faculties Clayton well knew; so that
while he suffered terribly to see her so, there were times when he was
almost glad, for her sake, that she could not understand.

Long since had he given up any hope of rescue, except through accident.
With unremitting zeal he had worked to beautify the interior of the
cabin.

Skins of lion and panther covered the floor. Cupboards and bookcases
lined the walls. Odd vases made by his own hand from the clay of the
region held beautiful tropical flowers. Curtains of grass and bamboo
covered the windows, and, most arduous task of all, with his meager
assortment of tools he had fashioned lumber to neatly seal the walls
and ceiling and lay a smooth floor within the cabin.

That he had been able to turn his hands at all to such unaccustomed
labor was a source of mild wonder to him. But he loved the work because
it was for her and the tiny life that had come to cheer them, though
adding a hundredfold to his responsibilities and to the terribleness of
their situation.

During the year that followed, Clayton was several times attacked by
the great apes which now seemed to continually infest the vicinity of
the cabin; but as he never again ventured outside without both rifle
and revolvers he had little fear of the huge beasts.

He had strengthened the window protections and fitted a unique wooden
lock to the cabin door, so that when he hunted for game and fruits, as
it was constantly necessary for him to do to insure sustenance, he had
no fear that any animal could break into the little home.

At first he shot much of the game from the cabin windows, but toward
the end the animals learned to fear the strange lair from whence issued
the terrifying thunder of his rifle.

In his leisure Clayton read, often aloud to his wife, from the store of
books he had brought for their new home. Among these were many for
little children—picture books, primers, readers—for they had known that
their little child would be old enough for such before they might hope
to return to England.

At other times Clayton wrote in his diary, which he had always been
accustomed to keep in French, and in which he recorded the details of
their strange life. This book he kept locked in a little metal box.

A year from the day her little son was born Lady Alice passed quietly
away in the night. So peaceful was her end that it was hours before
Clayton could awake to a realization that his wife was dead.

The horror of the situation came to him very slowly, and it is doubtful
that he ever fully realized the enormity of his sorrow and the fearful
responsibility that had devolved upon him with the care of that wee
thing, his son, still a nursing babe.

The last entry in his diary was made the morning following her death,
and there he recites the sad details in a matter-of-fact way that adds
to the pathos of it; for it breathes a tired apathy born of long sorrow
and hopelessness, which even this cruel blow could scarcely awake to
further suffering:

My little son is crying for nourishment—O Alice, Alice, what shall I
do?


And as John Clayton wrote the last words his hand was destined ever to
pen, he dropped his head wearily upon his outstretched arms where they
rested upon the table he had built for her who lay still and cold in
the bed beside him.

For a long time no sound broke the deathlike stillness of the jungle
midday save the piteous wailing of the tiny man-child.




CHAPTER IV.
The Apes


In the forest of the table-land a mile back from the ocean old Kerchak
the Ape was on a rampage of rage among his people.

The younger and lighter members of his tribe scampered to the higher
branches of the great trees to escape his wrath; risking their lives
upon branches that scarce supported their weight rather than face old
Kerchak in one of his fits of uncontrolled anger.

The other males scattered in all directions, but not before the
infuriated brute had felt the vertebra of one snap between his great,
foaming jaws.

A luckless young female slipped from an insecure hold upon a high
branch and came crashing to the ground almost at Kerchak’s feet.

With a wild scream he was upon her, tearing a great piece from her side
with his mighty teeth, and striking her viciously upon her head and
shoulders with a broken tree limb until her skull was crushed to a
jelly.

And then he spied Kala, who, returning from a search for food with her
young babe, was ignorant of the state of the mighty male’s temper until
suddenly the shrill warnings of her fellows caused her to scamper madly
for safety.

But Kerchak was close upon her, so close that he had almost grasped her
ankle had she not made a furious leap far into space from one tree to
another—a perilous chance which apes seldom if ever take, unless so
closely pursued by danger that there is no alternative.

She made the leap successfully, but as she grasped the limb of the
further tree the sudden jar loosened the hold of the tiny babe where it
clung frantically to her neck, and she saw the little thing hurled,
turning and twisting, to the ground thirty feet below.

With a low cry of dismay Kala rushed headlong to its side, thoughtless
now of the danger from Kerchak; but when she gathered the wee, mangled
form to her bosom life had left it.

With low moans, she sat cuddling the body to her; nor did Kerchak
attempt to molest her. With the death of the babe his fit of demoniacal
rage passed as suddenly as it had seized him.

Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundred and fifty
pounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding, his eyes
bloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flat nose; his ears large
and thin, but smaller than most of his kind.

His awful temper and his mighty strength made him supreme among the
little tribe into which he had been born some twenty years before.

Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the mighty
forest through which he roved that dared contest his right to rule, nor
did the other and larger animals molest him.

Old Tantor, the elephant, alone of all the wild savage life, feared him
not—and he alone did Kerchak fear. When Tantor trumpeted, the great ape
scurried with his fellows high among the trees of the second terrace.

The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an iron hand and
bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families, each family
consisting of an adult male with his females and their young, numbering
in all some sixty or seventy apes.

Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat, meaning broken
nose, and the child she had seen dashed to death was her first; for she
was but nine or ten years old.

Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful—a splendid,
clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead, which denoted more
intelligence than most of her kind possessed. So, also, she had a great
capacity for mother love and mother sorrow.

But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of a species
closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent; which, with the
strength of their cousin, made her kind the most fearsome of those
awe-inspiring progenitors of man.

When the tribe saw that Kerchak’s rage had ceased they came slowly down
from their arboreal retreats and pursued again the various occupations
which he had interrupted.

The young played and frolicked about among the trees and bushes. Some
of the adults lay prone upon the soft mat of dead and decaying
vegetation which covered the ground, while others turned over pieces of
fallen branches and clods of earth in search of the small bugs and
reptiles which formed a part of their food.

Others, again, searched the surrounding trees for fruit, nuts, small
birds, and eggs.

They had passed an hour or so thus when Kerchak called them together,
and, with a word of command to them to follow him, set off toward the
sea.

They traveled for the most part upon the ground, where it was open,
following the path of the great elephants whose comings and goings
break the only roads through those tangled mazes of bush, vine,
creeper, and tree. When they walked it was with a rolling, awkward
motion, placing the knuckles of their closed hands upon the ground and
swinging their ungainly bodies forward.

But when the way was through the lower trees they moved more swiftly,
swinging from branch to branch with the agility of their smaller
cousins, the monkeys. And all the way Kala carried her little dead baby
hugged closely to her breast.

It was shortly after noon when they reached a ridge overlooking the
beach where below them lay the tiny cottage which was Kerchak’s goal.

He had seen many of his kind go to their deaths before the loud noise
made by the little black stick in the hands of the strange white ape
who lived in that wonderful lair, and Kerchak had made up his brute
mind to own that death-dealing contrivance, and to explore the interior
of the mysterious den.

He wanted, very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into the neck of the
queer animal that he had learned to hate and fear, and because of this,
he came often with his tribe to reconnoiter, waiting for a time when
the white ape should be off his guard.

Of late they had quit attacking, or even showing themselves; for every
time they had done so in the past the little stick had roared out its
terrible message of death to some member of the tribe.

Today there was no sign of the man about, and from where they watched
they could see that the cabin door was open. Slowly, cautiously, and
noiselessly they crept through the jungle toward the little cabin.

There were no growls, no fierce screams of rage—the little black stick
had taught them to come quietly lest they awaken it.

On, on they came until Kerchak himself slunk stealthily to the very
door and peered within. Behind him were two males, and then Kala,
closely straining the little dead form to her breast.

Inside the den they saw the strange white ape lying half across a
table, his head buried in his arms; and on the bed lay a figure covered
by a sailcloth, while from a tiny rustic cradle came the plaintive
wailing of a babe.

Noiselessly Kerchak entered, crouching for the charge; and then John
Clayton rose with a sudden start and faced them.

The sight that met his eyes must have frozen him with horror, for
there, within the door, stood three great bull apes, while behind them
crowded many more; how many he never knew, for his revolvers were
hanging on the far wall beside his rifle, and Kerchak was charging.

When the king ape released the limp form which had been John Clayton,
Lord Greystoke, he turned his attention toward the little cradle; but
Kala was there before him, and when he would have grasped the child she
snatched it herself, and before he could intercept her she had bolted
through the door and taken refuge in a high tree.

As she took up the little live baby of Alice Clayton she dropped the
dead body of her own into the empty cradle; for the wail of the living
had answered the call of universal motherhood within her wild breast
which the dead could not still.

High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shrieking
infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in this
fierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautiful
mother—the instinct of mother love—reached out to the tiny man-child’s
half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.

Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lord
and an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.

In the meantime the beasts within the cabin were warily examining the
contents of this strange lair.

Once satisfied that Clayton was dead, Kerchak turned his attention to
the thing which lay upon the bed, covered by a piece of sailcloth.

Gingerly he lifted one corner of the shroud, but when he saw the body
of the woman beneath he tore the cloth roughly from her form and seized
the still, white throat in his huge, hairy hands.

A moment he let his fingers sink deep into the cold flesh, and then,
realizing that she was already dead, he turned from her, to examine the
contents of the room; nor did he again molest the body of either Lady
Alice or Sir John.

The rifle hanging upon the wall caught his first attention; it was for
this strange, death-dealing thunder-stick that he had yearned for
months; but now that it was within his grasp he scarcely had the
temerity to seize it.

Cautiously he approached the thing, ready to flee precipitately should
it speak in its deep roaring tones, as he had heard it speak before,
the last words to those of his kind who, through ignorance or rashness,
had attacked the wonderful white ape that had borne it.

Deep in the beast’s intelligence was something which assured him that
the thunder-stick was only dangerous when in the hands of one who could
manipulate it, but yet it was several minutes ere he could bring
himself to touch it.

Instead, he walked back and forth along the floor before it, turning
his head so that never once did his eyes leave the object of his
desire.

Using his long arms as a man uses crutches, and rolling his huge
carcass from side to side with each stride, the great king ape paced to
and fro, uttering deep growls, occasionally punctuated with the
ear-piercing scream, than which there is no more terrifying noise in
all the jungle.

Presently he halted before the rifle. Slowly he raised a huge hand
until it almost touched the shining barrel, only to withdraw it once
more and continue his hurried pacing.

It was as though the great brute by this show of fearlessness, and
through the medium of his wild voice, was endeavoring to bolster up his
courage to the point which would permit him to take the rifle in his
hand.

Again he stopped, and this time succeeded in forcing his reluctant hand
to the cold steel, only to snatch it away almost immediately and resume
his restless beat.

Time after time this strange ceremony was repeated, but on each
occasion with increased confidence, until, finally, the rifle was torn
from its hook and lay in the grasp of the great brute.

Finding that it harmed him not, Kerchak began to examine it closely. He
felt of it from end to end, peered down the black depths of the muzzle,
fingered the sights, the breech, the stock, and finally the trigger.

During all these operations the apes who had entered sat huddled near
the door watching their chief, while those outside strained and crowded
to catch a glimpse of what transpired within.

Suddenly Kerchak’s finger closed upon the trigger. There was a
deafening roar in the little room and the apes at and beyond the door
fell over one another in their wild anxiety to escape.

Kerchak was equally frightened, so frightened, in fact, that he quite
forgot to throw aside the author of that fearful noise, but bolted for
the door with it tightly clutched in one hand.

As he passed through the opening, the front sight of the rifle caught
upon the edge of the inswung door with sufficient force to close it
tightly after the fleeing ape.

When Kerchak came to a halt a short distance from the cabin and
discovered that he still held the rifle, he dropped it as he might have
dropped a red hot iron, nor did he again attempt to recover it—the
noise was too much for his brute nerves; but he was now quite convinced
that the terrible stick was quite harmless by itself if left alone.

It was an hour before the apes could again bring themselves to approach
the cabin to continue their investigations, and when they finally did
so, they found to their chagrin that the door was closed and so
securely fastened that they could not force it.

The cleverly constructed latch which Clayton had made for the door had
sprung as Kerchak passed out; nor could the apes find means of ingress
through the heavily barred windows.

After roaming about the vicinity for a short time, they started back
for the deeper forests and the higher land from whence they had come.

Kala had not once come to earth with her little adopted babe, but now
Kerchak called to her to descend with the rest, and as there was no
note of anger in his voice she dropped lightly from branch to branch
and joined the others on their homeward march.

Those of the apes who attempted to examine Kala’s strange baby were
repulsed with bared fangs and low menacing growls, accompanied by words
of warning from Kala.

When they assured her that they meant the child no harm she permitted
them to come close, but would not allow them to touch her charge.

It was as though she knew that her baby was frail and delicate and
feared lest the rough hands of her fellows might injure the little
thing.

Another thing she did, and which made traveling an onerous trial for
her. Remembering the death of her own little one, she clung desperately
to the new babe, with one hand, whenever they were upon the march.

The other young rode upon their mothers’ backs; their little arms
tightly clasping the hairy necks before them, while their legs were
locked beneath their mothers’ armpits.

Not so with Kala; she held the small form of the little Lord Greystoke
tightly to her breast, where the dainty hands clutched the long black
hair which covered that portion of her body. She had seen one child
fall from her back to a terrible death, and she would take no further
chances with this.




CHAPTER V.
The White Ape


Tenderly Kala nursed her little waif, wondering silently why it did not
gain strength and agility as did the little apes of other mothers. It
was nearly a year from the time the little fellow came into her
possession before he would walk alone, and as for climbing—my, but how
stupid he was!

Kala sometimes talked with the older females about her young hopeful,
but none of them could understand how a child could be so slow and
backward in learning to care for itself. Why, it could not even find
food alone, and more than twelve moons had passed since Kala had come
upon it.

Had they known that the child had seen thirteen moons before it had
come into Kala’s possession they would have considered its case as
absolutely hopeless, for the little apes of their own tribe were as far
advanced in two or three moons as was this little stranger after
twenty-five.

Tublat, Kala’s husband, was sorely vexed, and but for the female’s
careful watching would have put the child out of the way.

“He will never be a great ape,” he argued. “Always will you have to
carry him and protect him. What good will he be to the tribe? None;
only a burden.

“Let us leave him quietly sleeping among the tall grasses, that you may
bear other and stronger apes to guard us in our old age.”

“Never, Broken Nose,” replied Kala. “If I must carry him forever, so be
it.”

And then Tublat went to Kerchak to urge him to use his authority with
Kala, and force her to give up little Tarzan, which was the name they
had given to the tiny Lord Greystoke, and which meant “White-Skin.”

But when Kerchak spoke to her about it Kala threatened to run away from
the tribe if they did not leave her in peace with the child; and as
this is one of the inalienable rights of the jungle folk, if they be
dissatisfied among their own people, they bothered her no more, for
Kala was a fine clean-limbed young female, and they did not wish to
lose her.

As Tarzan grew he made more rapid strides, so that by the time he was
ten years old he was an excellent climber, and on the ground could do
many wonderful things which were beyond the powers of his little
brothers and sisters.

In many ways did he differ from them, and they often marveled at his
superior cunning, but in strength and size he was deficient; for at ten
the great anthropoids were fully grown, some of them towering over six
feet in height, while little Tarzan was still but a half-grown boy.

Yet such a boy!

From early childhood he had used his hands to swing from branch to
branch after the manner of his giant mother, and as he grew older he
spent hour upon hour daily speeding through the tree tops with his
brothers and sisters.

He could spring twenty feet across space at the dizzy heights of the
forest top, and grasp with unerring precision, and without apparent
jar, a limb waving wildly in the path of an approaching tornado.

He could drop twenty feet at a stretch from limb to limb in rapid
descent to the ground, or he could gain the utmost pinnacle of the
loftiest tropical giant with the ease and swiftness of a squirrel.

Though but ten years old he was fully as strong as the average man of
thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever
becomes. And day by day his strength was increasing.

His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection
held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the
universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals
with which he was familiar.

He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great
difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body,
burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense
shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low
snake, or other reptile.

He attempted to obviate this by plastering himself from head to foot
with mud, but this dried and fell off. Besides it felt so uncomfortable
that he quickly decided that he preferred the shame to the discomfort.

In the higher land which his tribe frequented was a little lake, and it
was here that Tarzan first saw his face in the clear, still waters of
its bosom.

It was on a sultry day of the dry season that he and one of his cousins
had gone down to the bank to drink. As they leaned over, both little
faces were mirrored on the placid pool; the fierce and terrible
features of the ape beside those of the aristocratic scion of an old
English house.

Tarzan was appalled. It had been bad enough to be hairless, but to own
such a countenance! He wondered that the other apes could look at him
at all.

That tiny slit of a mouth and those puny white teeth! How they looked
beside the mighty lips and powerful fangs of his more fortunate
brothers!

And the little pinched nose of his; so thin was it that it looked half
starved. He turned red as he compared it with the beautiful broad
nostrils of his companion. Such a generous nose! Why it spread half
across his face! It certainly must be fine to be so handsome, thought
poor little Tarzan.

But when he saw his own eyes; ah, that was the final blow—a brown spot,
a gray circle and then blank whiteness! Frightful! not even the snakes
had such hideous eyes as he.

So intent was he upon this personal appraisement of his features that
he did not hear the parting of the tall grass behind him as a great
body pushed itself stealthily through the jungle; nor did his
companion, the ape, hear either, for he was drinking and the noise of
his sucking lips and gurgles of satisfaction drowned the quiet approach
of the intruder.

Not thirty paces behind the two she crouched—Sabor, the huge
lioness—lashing her tail. Cautiously she moved a great padded paw
forward, noiselessly placing it before she lifted the next. Thus she
advanced; her belly low, almost touching the surface of the ground—a
great cat preparing to spring upon its prey.

Now she was within ten feet of the two unsuspecting little
playfellows—carefully she drew her hind feet well up beneath her body,
the great muscles rolling under the beautiful skin.

So low she was crouching now that she seemed flattened to the earth
except for the upward bend of the glossy back as it gathered for the
spring.

No longer the tail lashed—quiet and straight behind her it lay.

An instant she paused thus, as though turned to stone, and then, with
an awful scream, she sprang.

Sabor, the lioness, was a wise hunter. To one less wise the wild alarm
of her fierce cry as she sprang would have seemed a foolish thing, for
could she not more surely have fallen upon her victims had she but
quietly leaped without that loud shriek?

But Sabor knew well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their
almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of
one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her
loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap
without a little noise.

Her wild scream was not a warning. It was voiced to freeze her poor
victims in a paralysis of terror for the tiny fraction of an instant
which would suffice for her mighty claws to sink into their soft flesh
and hold them beyond hope of escape.

So far as the ape was concerned, Sabor reasoned correctly. The little
fellow crouched trembling just an instant, but that instant was quite
long enough to prove his undoing.

Not so, however, with Tarzan, the man-child. His life amidst the
dangers of the jungle had taught him to meet emergencies with
self-confidence, and his higher intelligence resulted in a quickness of
mental action far beyond the powers of the apes.

So the scream of Sabor, the lioness, galvanized the brain and muscles
of little Tarzan into instant action.

Before him lay the deep waters of the little lake, behind him certain
death; a cruel death beneath tearing claws and rending fangs.

Tarzan had always hated water except as a medium for quenching his
thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and
discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder
and lightning and wind which accompanied them.

The deep waters of the lake he had been taught by his wild mother to
avoid, and further, had he not seen little Neeta sink beneath its quiet
surface only a few short weeks before never to return to the tribe?

But of the two evils his quick mind chose the lesser ere the first note
of Sabor’s scream had scarce broken the quiet of the jungle, and before
the great beast had covered half her leap Tarzan felt the chill waters
close above his head.

He could not swim, and the water was very deep; but still he lost no
particle of that self-confidence and resourcefulness which were the
badges of his superior being.

Rapidly he moved his hands and feet in an attempt to scramble upward,
and, possibly more by chance than design, he fell into the stroke that
a dog uses when swimming, so that within a few seconds his nose was
above water and he found that he could keep it there by continuing his
strokes, and also make progress through the water.

He was much surprised and pleased with this new acquirement which had
been so suddenly thrust upon him, but he had no time for thinking much
upon it.

He was now swimming parallel to the bank and there he saw the cruel
beast that would have seized him crouching upon the still form of his
little playmate.

The lioness was intently watching Tarzan, evidently expecting him to
return to shore, but this the boy had no intention of doing.

Instead he raised his voice in the call of distress common to his
tribe, adding to it the warning which would prevent would-be rescuers
from running into the clutches of Sabor.

Almost immediately there came an answer from the distance, and
presently forty or fifty great apes swung rapidly and majestically
through the trees toward the scene of tragedy.

In the lead was Kala, for she had recognized the tones of her best
beloved, and with her was the mother of the little ape who lay dead
beneath cruel Sabor.

Though more powerful and better equipped for fighting than the apes,
the lioness had no desire to meet these enraged adults, and with a
snarl of hatred she sprang quickly into the brush and disappeared.

Tarzan now swam to shore and clambered quickly upon dry land. The
feeling of freshness and exhilaration which the cool waters had
imparted to him, filled his little being with grateful surprise, and
ever after he lost no opportunity to take a daily plunge in lake or
stream or ocean when it was possible to do so.

For a long time Kala could not accustom herself to the sight; for
though her people could swim when forced to it, they did not like to
enter water, and never did so voluntarily.

The adventure with the lioness gave Tarzan food for pleasurable
memories, for it was such affairs which broke the monotony of his daily
life—otherwise but a dull round of searching for food, eating, and
sleeping.

The tribe to which he belonged roamed a tract extending, roughly,
twenty-five miles along the seacoast and some fifty miles inland. This
they traversed almost continually, occasionally remaining for months in
one locality; but as they moved through the trees with great speed they
often covered the territory in a very few days.

Much depended upon food supply, climatic conditions, and the prevalence
of animals of the more dangerous species; though Kerchak often led them
on long marches for no other reason than that he had tired of remaining
in the same place.

At night they slept where darkness overtook them, lying upon the
ground, and sometimes covering their heads, and more seldom their
bodies, with the great leaves of the elephant’s ear. Two or three might
lie cuddled in each other’s arms for additional warmth if the night
were chill, and thus Tarzan had slept in Kala’s arms nightly for all
these years.

That the huge, fierce brute loved this child of another race is beyond
question, and he, too, gave to the great, hairy beast all the affection
that would have belonged to his fair young mother had she lived.

When he was disobedient she cuffed him, it is true, but she was never
cruel to him, and was more often caressing him than chastising him.

Tublat, her mate, always hated Tarzan, and on several occasions had
come near ending his youthful career.

Tarzan on his part never lost an opportunity to show that he fully
reciprocated his foster father’s sentiments, and whenever he could
safely annoy him or make faces at him or hurl insults upon him from the
safety of his mother’s arms, or the slender branches of the higher
trees, he did so.

His superior intelligence and cunning permitted him to invent a
thousand diabolical tricks to add to the burdens of Tublat’s life.

Early in his boyhood he had learned to form ropes by twisting and tying
long grasses together, and with these he was forever tripping Tublat or
attempting to hang him from some overhanging branch.

By constant playing and experimenting with these he learned to tie rude
knots, and make sliding nooses; and with these he and the younger apes
amused themselves. What Tarzan did they tried to do also, but he alone
originated and became proficient.

One day while playing thus Tarzan had thrown his rope at one of his
fleeing companions, retaining the other end in his grasp. By accident
the noose fell squarely about the running ape’s neck, bringing him to a
sudden and surprising halt.

Ah, here was a new game, a fine game, thought Tarzan, and immediately
he attempted to repeat the trick. And thus, by painstaking and
continued practice, he learned the art of roping.

Now, indeed, was the life of Tublat a living nightmare. In sleep, upon
the march, night or day, he never knew when that quiet noose would slip
about his neck and nearly choke the life out of him.

Kala punished, Tublat swore dire vengeance, and old Kerchak took notice
and warned and threatened; but all to no avail.

Tarzan defied them all, and the thin, strong noose continued to settle
about Tublat’s neck whenever he least expected it.

The other apes derived unlimited amusement from Tublat’s discomfiture,
for Broken Nose was a disagreeable old fellow, whom no one liked,
anyway.

In Tarzan’s clever little mind many thoughts revolved, and back of
these was his divine power of reason.

If he could catch his fellow apes with his long arm of many grasses,
why not Sabor, the lioness?

It was the germ of a thought, which, however, was destined to mull
around in his conscious and subconscious mind until it resulted in
magnificent achievement.

But that came in later years.




CHAPTER VI.
Jungle Battles


The wanderings of the tribe brought them often near the closed and
silent cabin by the little land-locked harbor. To Tarzan this was
always a source of never-ending mystery and pleasure.

He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbing upon the roof,
peer down the black depths of the chimney in vain endeavor to solve the
unknown wonders that lay within those strong walls.

His child-like imagination pictured wonderful creatures within, and the
very impossibility of forcing entrance added a thousandfold to his
desire to do so.

He could clamber about the roof and windows for hours attempting to
discover means of ingress, but to the door he paid little attention,
for this was apparently as solid as the walls.

It was in the next visit to the vicinity, following the adventure with
old Sabor, that, as he approached the cabin, Tarzan noticed that from a
distance the door appeared to be an independent part of the wall in
which it was set, and for the first time it occurred to him that this
might prove the means of entrance which had so long eluded him.

He was alone, as was often the case when he visited the cabin, for the
apes had no love for it; the story of the thunder-stick having lost
nothing in the telling during these ten years had quite surrounded the
white man’s deserted abode with an atmosphere of weirdness and terror
for the simians.

The story of his own connection with the cabin had never been told him.
The language of the apes had so few words that they could talk but
little of what they had seen in the cabin, having no words to
accurately describe either the strange people or their belongings, and
so, long before Tarzan was old enough to understand, the subject had
been forgotten by the tribe.

Only in a dim, vague way had Kala explained to him that his father had
been a strange white ape, but he did not know that Kala was not his own
mother.

On this day, then, he went directly to the door and spent hours
examining it and fussing with the hinges, the knob and the latch.
Finally he stumbled upon the right combination, and the door swung
creakingly open before his astonished eyes.

For some minutes he did not dare venture within, but finally, as his
eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the interior he slowly and
cautiously entered.

In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone
from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and moldered remnants
of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome
thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee
mite of a skeleton.

To none of these evidences of a fearful tragedy of a long dead day did
little Tarzan give but passing heed. His wild jungle life had inured
him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he
was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have
been no more greatly moved.

The furnishings and other contents of the room it was which riveted his
attention. He examined many things minutely—strange tools and weapons,
books, paper, clothing—what little had withstood the ravages of time in
the humid atmosphere of the jungle coast.

He opened chests and cupboards, such as did not baffle his small
experience, and in these he found the contents much better preserved.

Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of
which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he
continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters
of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.

For a long time this amused him, but finally tiring he continued his
explorations. In a cupboard filled with books he came across one with
brightly colored pictures—it was a child’s illustrated alphabet—

A is for Archer
    Who shoots with a bow.
B is for Boy,
    His first name is Joe.


The pictures interested him greatly.

There were many apes with faces similar to his own, and further over in
the book he found, under “M,” some little monkeys such as he saw daily
flitting through the trees of his primeval forest. But nowhere was
pictured any of his own people; in all the book was none that resembled
Kerchak, or Tublat, or Kala.

At first he tried to pick the little figures from the leaves, but he
soon saw that they were not real, though he knew not what they might
be, nor had he any words to describe them.

The boats, and trains, and cows and horses were quite meaningless to
him, but not quite so baffling as the odd little figures which appeared
beneath and between the colored pictures—some strange kind of bug he
thought they might be, for many of them had legs though nowhere could
he find one with eyes and a mouth. It was his first introduction to the
letters of the alphabet, and he was over ten years old.

Of course he had never before seen print, or ever had spoken with any
living thing which had the remotest idea that such a thing as a written
language existed, nor ever had he seen anyone reading.

So what wonder that the little boy was quite at a loss to guess the
meaning of these strange figures.

Near the middle of the book he found his old enemy, Sabor, the lioness,
and further on, coiled Histah, the snake.

Oh, it was most engrossing! Never before in all his ten years had he
enjoyed anything so much. So absorbed was he that he did not note the
approaching dusk, until it was quite upon him and the figures were
blurred.

He put the book back in the cupboard and closed the door, for he did
not wish anyone else to find and destroy his treasure, and as he went
out into the gathering darkness he closed the great door of the cabin
behind him as it had been before he discovered the secret of its lock,
but before he left he had noticed the hunting knife lying where he had
thrown it upon the floor, and this he picked up and took with him to
show to his fellows.

He had taken scarce a dozen steps toward the jungle when a great form
rose up before him from the shadows of a low bush. At first he thought
it was one of his own people but in another instant he realized that it
was Bolgani, the huge gorilla.

So close was he that there was no chance for flight and little Tarzan
knew that he must stand and fight for his life; for these great beasts
were the deadly enemies of his tribe, and neither one nor the other
ever asked or gave quarter.

Had Tarzan been a full-grown bull ape of the species of his tribe he
would have been more than a match for the gorilla, but being only a
little English boy, though enormously muscular for such, he stood no
chance against his cruel antagonist. In his veins, though, flowed the
blood of the best of a race of mighty fighters, and back of this was
the training of his short lifetime among the fierce brutes of the
jungle.

He knew no fear, as we know it; his little heart beat the faster but
from the excitement and exhilaration of adventure. Had the opportunity
presented itself he would have escaped, but solely because his judgment
told him he was no match for the great thing which confronted him. And
since reason showed him that successful flight was impossible he met
the gorilla squarely and bravely without a tremor of a single muscle,
or any sign of panic.

In fact he met the brute midway in its charge, striking its huge body
with his closed fists and as futilely as he had been a fly attacking an
elephant. But in one hand he still clutched the knife he had found in
the cabin of his father, and as the brute, striking and biting, closed
upon him the boy accidentally turned the point toward the hairy breast.
As the knife sank deep into its body the gorilla shrieked in pain and
rage.

But the boy had learned in that brief second a use for his sharp and
shining toy, so that, as the tearing, striking beast dragged him to
earth he plunged the blade repeatedly and to the hilt into its breast.

The gorilla, fighting after the manner of its kind, struck terrific
blows with its open hand, and tore the flesh at the boy’s throat and
chest with its mighty tusks.

For a moment they rolled upon the ground in the fierce frenzy of
combat. More and more weakly the torn and bleeding arm struck home with
the long sharp blade, then the little figure stiffened with a spasmodic
jerk, and Tarzan, the young Lord Greystoke, rolled unconscious upon the
dead and decaying vegetation which carpeted his jungle home.

A mile back in the forest the tribe had heard the fierce challenge of
the gorilla, and, as was his custom when any danger threatened, Kerchak
called his people together, partly for mutual protection against a
common enemy, since this gorilla might be but one of a party of
several, and also to see that all members of the tribe were accounted
for.

It was soon discovered that Tarzan was missing, and Tublat was strongly
opposed to sending assistance. Kerchak himself had no liking for the
strange little waif, so he listened to Tublat, and, finally, with a
shrug of his shoulders, turned back to the pile of leaves on which he
had made his bed.

But Kala was of a different mind; in fact, she had not waited but to
learn that Tarzan was absent ere she was fairly flying through the
matted branches toward the point from which the cries of the gorilla
were still plainly audible.

Darkness had now fallen, and an early moon was sending its faint light
to cast strange, grotesque shadows among the dense foliage of the
forest.

Here and there the brilliant rays penetrated to earth, but for the most
part they only served to accentuate the Stygian blackness of the
jungle’s depths.

Like some huge phantom, Kala swung noiselessly from tree to tree; now
running nimbly along a great branch, now swinging through space at the
end of another, only to grasp that of a farther tree in her rapid
progress toward the scene of the tragedy her knowledge of jungle life
told her was being enacted a short distance before her.

The cries of the gorilla proclaimed that it was in mortal combat with
some other denizen of the fierce wood. Suddenly these cries ceased, and
the silence of death reigned throughout the jungle.

Kala could not understand, for the voice of Bolgani had at last been
raised in the agony of suffering and death, but no sound had come to
her by which she possibly could determine the nature of his antagonist.

That her little Tarzan could destroy a great bull gorilla she knew to
be improbable, and so, as she neared the spot from which the sounds of
the struggle had come, she moved more warily and at last slowly and
with extreme caution she traversed the lowest branches, peering eagerly
into the moon-splashed blackness for a sign of the combatants.

Presently she came upon them, lying in a little open space full under
the brilliant light of the moon—little Tarzan’s torn and bloody form,
and beside it a great bull gorilla, stone dead.

With a low cry Kala rushed to Tarzan’s side, and gathering the poor,
blood-covered body to her breast, listened for a sign of life. Faintly
she heard it—the weak beating of the little heart.

Tenderly she bore him back through the inky jungle to where the tribe
lay, and for many days and nights she sat guard beside him, bringing
him food and water, and brushing the flies and other insects from his
cruel wounds.

Of medicine or surgery the poor thing knew nothing. She could but lick
the wounds, and thus she kept them cleansed, that healing nature might
the more quickly do her work.

At first Tarzan would eat nothing, but rolled and tossed in a wild
delirium of fever. All he craved was water, and this she brought him in
the only way she could, bearing it in her own mouth.

No human mother could have shown more unselfish and sacrificing
devotion than did this poor, wild brute for the little orphaned waif
whom fate had thrown into her keeping.

At last the fever abated and the boy commenced to mend. No word of
complaint passed his tight set lips, though the pain of his wounds was
excruciating.

A portion of his chest was laid bare to the ribs, three of which had
been broken by the mighty blows of the gorilla. One arm was nearly
severed by the giant fangs, and a great piece had been torn from his
neck, exposing his jugular vein, which the cruel jaws had missed but by
a miracle.

With the stoicism of the brutes who had raised him he endured his
suffering quietly, preferring to crawl away from the others and lie
huddled in some clump of tall grasses rather than to show his misery
before their eyes.

Kala, alone, he was glad to have with him, but now that he was better
she was gone longer at a time, in search of food; for the devoted
animal had scarcely eaten enough to support her own life while Tarzan
had been so low, and was in consequence, reduced to a mere shadow of
her former self.




CHAPTER VII.
The Light of Knowledge


After what seemed an eternity to the little sufferer he was able to
walk once more, and from then on his recovery was so rapid that in
another month he was as strong and active as ever.

During his convalescence he had gone over in his mind many times the
battle with the gorilla, and his first thought was to recover the
wonderful little weapon which had transformed him from a hopelessly
outclassed weakling to the superior of the mighty terror of the jungle.

Also, he was anxious to return to the cabin and continue his
investigations of its wondrous contents.

So, early one morning, he set forth alone upon his quest. After a
little search he located the clean-picked bones of his late adversary,
and close by, partly buried beneath the fallen leaves, he found the
knife, now red with rust from its exposure to the dampness of the
ground and from the dried blood of the gorilla.

He did not like the change in its former bright and gleaming surface;
but it was still a formidable weapon, and one which he meant to use to
advantage whenever the opportunity presented itself. He had in mind
that no more would he run from the wanton attacks of old Tublat.

In another moment he was at the cabin, and after a short time had again
thrown the latch and entered. His first concern was to learn the
mechanism of the lock, and this he did by examining it closely while
the door was open, so that he could learn precisely what caused it to
hold the door, and by what means it released at his touch.

He found that he could close and lock the door from within, and this he
did so that there would be no chance of his being molested while at his
investigation.

He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was
soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful
influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for
the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.

Among the other books were a primer, some child’s readers, numerous
picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but
the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs
which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder
and deepest thought.

Squatting upon his haunches on the table top in the cabin his father
had built—his smooth, brown, naked little body bent over the book which
rested in his strong slender hands, and his great shock of long, black
hair falling about his well-shaped head and bright, intelligent
eyes—Tarzan of the apes, little primitive man, presented a picture
filled, at once, with pathos and with promise—an allegorical figure of
the primordial groping through the black night of ignorance toward the
light of learning.

His little face was tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a
hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to
prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem of the strange
little bugs.

In his hands was a primer opened at a picture of a little ape similar
to himself, but covered, except for hands and face, with strange,
colored fur, for such he thought the jacket and trousers to be. Beneath
the picture were three little bugs—

BOY.


And now he had discovered in the text upon the page that these three
were repeated many times in the same sequence.

Another fact he learned—that there were comparatively few individual
bugs; but these were repeated many times, occasionally alone, but more
often in company with others.

Slowly he turned the pages, scanning the pictures and the text for a
repetition of the combination _b-o-y_. Presently he found it beneath a
picture of another little ape and a strange animal which went upon four
legs like the jackal and resembled him not a little. Beneath this
picture the bugs appeared as:

A BOY AND A DOG


There they were, the three little bugs which always accompanied the
little ape.

And so he progressed very, very slowly, for it was a hard and laborious
task which he had set himself without knowing it—a task which might
seem to you or me impossible—learning to read without having the
slightest knowledge of letters or written language, or the faintest
idea that such things existed.

He did not accomplish it in a day, or in a week, or in a month, or in a
year; but slowly, very slowly, he learned after he had grasped the
possibilities which lay in those little bugs, so that by the time he
was fifteen he knew the various combinations of letters which stood for
every pictured figure in the little primer and in one or two of the
picture books.

Of the meaning and use of the articles and conjunctions, verbs and
adverbs and pronouns he had but the faintest conception.

One day when he was about twelve he found a number of lead pencils in a
hitherto undiscovered drawer beneath the table, and in scratching upon
the table top with one of them he was delighted to discover the black
line it left behind it.

He worked so assiduously with this new toy that the table top was soon
a mass of scrawly loops and irregular lines and his pencil-point worn
down to the wood. Then he took another pencil, but this time he had a
definite object in view.

He would attempt to reproduce some of the little bugs that scrambled
over the pages of his books.

It was a difficult task, for he held the pencil as one would grasp the
hilt of a dagger, which does not add greatly to ease in writing or to
the legibility of the results.

But he persevered for months, at such times as he was able to come to
the cabin, until at last by repeated experimenting he found a position
in which to hold the pencil that best permitted him to guide and
control it, so that at last he could roughly reproduce any of the
little bugs.

Thus he made a beginning of writing.

Copying the bugs taught him another thing—their number; and though he
could not count as we understand it, yet he had an idea of quantity,
the base of his calculations being the number of fingers upon one of
his hands.

His search through the various books convinced him that he had
discovered all the different kinds of bugs most often repeated in
combination, and these he arranged in proper order with great ease
because of the frequency with which he had perused the fascinating
alphabet picture book.

His education progressed; but his greatest finds were in the
inexhaustible storehouse of the huge illustrated dictionary, for he
learned more through the medium of pictures than text, even after he
had grasped the significance of the bugs.

When he discovered the arrangement of words in alphabetical order he
delighted in searching for and finding the combinations with which he
was familiar, and the words which followed them, their definitions, led
him still further into the mazes of erudition.

By the time he was seventeen he had learned to read the simple, child’s
primer and had fully realized the true and wonderful purpose of the
little bugs.

No longer did he feel shame for his hairless body or his human
features, for now his reason told him that he was of a different race
from his wild and hairy companions. He was a M-A-N, they were A-P-E-S,
and the little apes which scurried through the forest top were
M-O-N-K-E-Y-S. He knew, too, that old Sabor was a L-I-O-N-E-S-S, and
Histah a S-N-A-K-E, and Tantor an E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T. And so he learned to
read. From then on his progress was rapid. With the help of the great
dictionary and the active intelligence of a healthy mind endowed by
inheritance with more than ordinary reasoning powers he shrewdly
guessed at much which he could not really understand, and more often
than not his guesses were close to the mark of truth.

There were many breaks in his education, caused by the migratory habits
of his tribe, but even when removed from his books his active brain
continued to search out the mysteries of his fascinating avocation.

Pieces of bark and flat leaves and even smooth stretches of bare earth
provided him with copy books whereon to scratch with the point of his
hunting knife the lessons he was learning.

Nor did he neglect the sterner duties of life while following the bent
of his inclination toward the solving of the mystery of his library.

He practiced with his rope and played with his sharp knife, which he
had learned to keep keen by whetting upon flat stones.

The tribe had grown larger since Tarzan had come among them, for under
the leadership of Kerchak they had been able to frighten the other
tribes from their part of the jungle so that they had plenty to eat and
little or no loss from predatory incursions of neighbors.

Hence the younger males as they became adult found it more comfortable
to take mates from their own tribe, or if they captured one of another
tribe to bring her back to Kerchak’s band and live in amity with him
rather than attempt to set up new establishments of their own, or fight
with the redoubtable Kerchak for supremacy at home.

Occasionally one more ferocious than his fellows would attempt this
latter alternative, but none had come yet who could wrest the palm of
victory from the fierce and brutal ape.

Tarzan held a peculiar position in the tribe. They seemed to consider
him one of them and yet in some way different. The older males either
ignored him entirely or else hated him so vindictively that but for his
wondrous agility and speed and the fierce protection of the huge Kala
he would have been dispatched at an early age.

Tublat was his most consistent enemy, but it was through Tublat that,
when he was about thirteen, the persecution of his enemies suddenly
ceased and he was left severely alone, except on the occasions when one
of them ran amuck in the throes of one of those strange, wild fits of
insane rage which attacks the males of many of the fiercer animals of
the jungle. Then none was safe.

On the day that Tarzan established his right to respect, the tribe was
gathered about a small natural amphitheater which the jungle had left
free from its entangling vines and creepers in a hollow among some low
hills.

The open space was almost circular in shape. Upon every hand rose the
mighty giants of the untouched forest, with the matted undergrowth
banked so closely between the huge trunks that the only opening into
the little, level arena was through the upper branches of the trees.

Here, safe from interruption, the tribe often gathered. In the center
of the amphitheater was one of those strange earthen drums which the
anthropoids build for the queer rites the sounds of which men have
heard in the fastnesses of the jungle, but which none has ever
witnessed.

Many travelers have seen the drums of the great apes, and some have
heard the sounds of their beating and the noise of the wild, weird
revelry of these first lords of the jungle, but Tarzan, Lord Greystoke,
is, doubtless, the only human being who ever joined in the fierce, mad,
intoxicating revel of the Dum-Dum.

From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms
and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through all the
countless ages, back beyond the uttermost ramparts of a dawning
humanity our fierce, hairy forebears danced out the rites of the
Dum-Dum to the sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light
of a tropical moon in the depth of a mighty jungle which stands
unchanged today as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim,
unthinkable vistas of the long dead past when our first shaggy ancestor
swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon the soft turf of
the first meeting place.

On the day that Tarzan won his emancipation from the persecution that
had followed him remorselessly for twelve of his thirteen years of
life, the tribe, now a full hundred strong, trooped silently through
the lower terrace of the jungle trees and dropped noiselessly upon the
floor of the amphitheater.

The rites of the Dum-Dum marked important events in the life of the
tribe—a victory, the capture of a prisoner, the killing of some large
fierce denizen of the jungle, the death or accession of a king, and
were conducted with set ceremonialism.

Today it was the killing of a giant ape, a member of another tribe, and
as the people of Kerchak entered the arena two mighty bulls were seen
bearing the body of the vanquished between them.

They laid their burden before the earthen drum and then squatted there
beside it as guards, while the other members of the community curled
themselves in grassy nooks to sleep until the rising moon should give
the signal for the commencement of their savage orgy.

For hours absolute quiet reigned in the little clearing, except as it
was broken by the discordant notes of brilliantly feathered parrots, or
the screeching and twittering of the thousand jungle birds flitting
ceaselessly amongst the vivid orchids and flamboyant blossoms which
festooned the myriad, moss-covered branches of the forest kings.

At length as darkness settled upon the jungle the apes commenced to
bestir themselves, and soon they formed a great circle about the
earthen drum. The females and young squatted in a thin line at the
outer periphery of the circle, while just in front of them ranged the
adult males. Before the drum sat three old females, each armed with a
knotted branch fifteen or eighteen inches in length.

Slowly and softly they began tapping upon the resounding surface of the
drum as the first faint rays of the ascending moon silvered the
encircling tree tops.

As the light in the amphitheater increased the females augmented the
frequency and force of their blows until presently a wild, rhythmic din
pervaded the great jungle for miles in every direction. Huge, fierce
brutes stopped in their hunting, with up-pricked ears and raised heads,
to listen to the dull booming that betokened the Dum-Dum of the apes.

Occasionally one would raise his shrill scream or thunderous roar in
answering challenge to the savage din of the anthropoids, but none came
near to investigate or attack, for the great apes, assembled in all the
power of their numbers, filled the breasts of their jungle neighbors
with deep respect.

As the din of the drum rose to almost deafening volume Kerchak sprang
into the open space between the squatting males and the drummers.

Standing erect he threw his head far back and looking full into the eye
of the rising moon he beat upon his breast with his great hairy paws
and emitted his fearful roaring shriek.

Once—twice—thrice that terrifying cry rang out across the teeming
solitude of that unspeakably quick, yet unthinkably dead, world.

Then, crouching, Kerchak slunk noiselessly around the open circle,
veering far away from the dead body lying before the altar-drum, but,
as he passed, keeping his little, fierce, wicked, red eyes upon the
corpse.

Another male then sprang into the arena, and, repeating the horrid
cries of his king, followed stealthily in his wake. Another and another
followed in quick succession until the jungle reverberated with the now
almost ceaseless notes of their bloodthirsty screams.

It was the challenge and the hunt.

When all the adult males had joined in the thin line of circling
dancers the attack commenced.

Kerchak, seizing a huge club from the pile which lay at hand for the
purpose, rushed furiously upon the dead ape, dealing the corpse a
terrific blow, at the same time emitting the growls and snarls of
combat. The din of the drum was now increased, as well as the frequency
of the blows, and the warriors, as each approached the victim of the
hunt and delivered his bludgeon blow, joined in the mad whirl of the
Death Dance.

Tarzan was one of the wild, leaping horde. His brown, sweat-streaked,
muscular body, glistening in the moonlight, shone supple and graceful
among the uncouth, awkward, hairy brutes about him.

None was more stealthy in the mimic hunt, none more ferocious than he
in the wild ferocity of the attack, none who leaped so high into the
air in the Dance of Death.

As the noise and rapidity of the drumbeats increased the dancers
apparently became intoxicated with the wild rhythm and the savage
yells. Their leaps and bounds increased, their bared fangs dripped
saliva, and their lips and breasts were flecked with foam.

For half an hour the weird dance went on, until, at a sign from
Kerchak, the noise of the drums ceased, the female drummers scampering
hurriedly through the line of dancers toward the outer rim of squatting
spectators. Then, as one, the males rushed headlong upon the thing
which their terrific blows had reduced to a mass of hairy pulp.

Flesh seldom came to their jaws in satisfying quantities, so a fit
finale to their wild revel was a taste of fresh killed meat, and it was
to the purpose of devouring their late enemy that they now turned their
attention.

Great fangs sunk into the carcass tearing away huge hunks, the
mightiest of the apes obtaining the choicest morsels, while the weaker
circled the outer edge of the fighting, snarling pack awaiting their
chance to dodge in and snatch a dropped tidbit or filch a remaining
bone before all was gone.

Tarzan, more than the apes, craved and needed flesh. Descended from a
race of meat eaters, never in his life, he thought, had he once
satisfied his appetite for animal food; and so now his agile little
body wormed its way far into the mass of struggling, rending apes in an
endeavor to obtain a share which his strength would have been unequal
to the task of winning for him.

At his side hung the hunting knife of his unknown father in a sheath
self-fashioned in copy of one he had seen among the pictures of his
treasure-books.

At last he reached the fast disappearing feast and with his sharp knife
slashed off a more generous portion than he had hoped for, an entire
hairy forearm, where it protruded from beneath the feet of the mighty
Kerchak, who was so busily engaged in perpetuating the royal
prerogative of gluttony that he failed to note the act of
_lèse-majesté_.

So little Tarzan wriggled out from beneath the struggling mass,
clutching his grisly prize close to his breast.

Among those circling futilely the outskirts of the banqueters was old
Tublat. He had been among the first at the feast, but had retreated
with a goodly share to eat in quiet, and was now forcing his way back
for more.

So it was that he spied Tarzan as the boy emerged from the clawing,
pushing throng with that hairy forearm hugged firmly to his body.

Tublat’s little, close-set, bloodshot, pig-eyes shot wicked gleams of
hate as they fell upon the object of his loathing. In them, too, was
greed for the toothsome dainty the boy carried.

But Tarzan saw his arch enemy as quickly, and divining what the great
beast would do he leaped nimbly away toward the females and the young,
hoping to hide himself among them. Tublat, however, was close upon his
heels, so that he had no opportunity to seek a place of concealment,
but saw that he would be put to it to escape at all.

Swiftly he sped toward the surrounding trees and with an agile bound
gained a lower limb with one hand, and then, transferring his burden to
his teeth, he climbed rapidly upward, closely followed by Tublat.

Up, up he went to the waving pinnacle of a lofty monarch of the forest
where his heavy pursuer dared not follow him. There he perched, hurling
taunts and insults at the raging, foaming beast fifty feet below him.

And then Tublat went mad.

With horrifying screams and roars he rushed to the ground, among the
females and young, sinking his great fangs into a dozen tiny necks and
tearing great pieces from the backs and breasts of the females who fell
into his clutches.

In the brilliant moonlight Tarzan witnessed the whole mad carnival of
rage. He saw the females and the young scamper to the safety of the
trees. Then the great bulls in the center of the arena felt the mighty
fangs of their demented fellow, and with one accord they melted into
the black shadows of the overhanging forest.

There was but one in the amphitheater beside Tublat, a belated female
running swiftly toward the tree where Tarzan perched, and close behind
her came the awful Tublat.

It was Kala, and as quickly as Tarzan saw that Tublat was gaining on
her he dropped with the rapidity of a falling stone, from branch to
branch, toward his foster mother.

Now she was beneath the overhanging limbs and close above her crouched
Tarzan, waiting the outcome of the race.

She leaped into the air grasping a low-hanging branch, but almost over
the head of Tublat, so nearly had he distanced her. She should have
been safe now but there was a rending, tearing sound, the branch broke
and precipitated her full upon the head of Tublat, knocking him to the
ground.

Both were up in an instant, but as quick as they had been Tarzan had
been quicker, so that the infuriated bull found himself facing the
man-child who stood between him and Kala.

Nothing could have suited the fierce beast better, and with a roar of
triumph he leaped upon the little Lord Greystoke. But his fangs never
closed in that nut brown flesh.

A muscular hand shot out and grasped the hairy throat, and another
plunged a keen hunting knife a dozen times into the broad breast. Like
lightning the blows fell, and only ceased when Tarzan felt the limp
form crumple beneath him.

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot
upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full
moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible
cry of his people.

One by one the tribe swung down from their arboreal retreats and formed
a circle about Tarzan and his vanquished foe. When they had all come
Tarzan turned toward them.

“I am Tarzan,” he cried. “I am a great killer. Let all respect Tarzan
of the Apes and Kala, his mother. There be none among you as mighty as
Tarzan. Let his enemies beware.”

Looking full into the wicked, red eyes of Kerchak, the young Lord
Greystoke beat upon his mighty breast and screamed out once more his
shrill cry of defiance.




CHAPTER VIII.
The Tree-top Hunter


The morning after the Dum-Dum the tribe started slowly back through the
forest toward the coast.

The body of Tublat lay where it had fallen, for the people of Kerchak
do not eat their own dead.

The march was but a leisurely search for food. Cabbage palm and gray
plum, pisang and scitamine they found in abundance, with wild
pineapple, and occasionally small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles, and
insects. The nuts they cracked between their powerful jaws, or, if too
hard, broke by pounding between stones.

Once old Sabor, crossing their path, sent them scurrying to the safety
of the higher branches, for if she respected their number and their
sharp fangs, they on their part held her cruel and mighty ferocity in
equal esteem.

Upon a low-hanging branch sat Tarzan directly above the majestic,
supple body as it forged silently through the thick jungle. He hurled a
pineapple at the ancient enemy of his people. The great beast stopped
and, turning, eyed the taunting figure above her.

With an angry lash of her tail she bared her yellow fangs, curling her
great lips in a hideous snarl that wrinkled her bristling snout in
serried ridges and closed her wicked eyes to two narrow slits of rage
and hatred.

With back-laid ears she looked straight into the eyes of Tarzan of the
Apes and sounded her fierce, shrill challenge. And from the safety of
his overhanging limb the ape-child sent back the fearsome answer of his
kind.

For a moment the two eyed each other in silence, and then the great cat
turned into the jungle, which swallowed her as the ocean engulfs a
tossed pebble.

But into the mind of Tarzan a great plan sprang. He had killed the
fierce Tublat, so was he not therefore a mighty fighter? Now would he
track down the crafty Sabor and slay her likewise. He would be a mighty
hunter, also.

At the bottom of his little English heart beat the great desire to
cover his nakedness with _clothes_ for he had learned from his picture
books that all _men_ were so covered, while _monkeys_ and _apes_ and
every other living thing went naked.

_Clothes_ therefore, must be truly a badge of greatness; the insignia
of the superiority of _man_ over all other animals, for surely there
could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things.

Many moons ago, when he had been much smaller, he had desired the skin
of Sabor, the lioness, or Numa, the lion, or Sheeta, the leopard to
cover his hairless body that he might no longer resemble hideous
Histah, the snake; but now he was proud of his sleek skin for it
betokened his descent from a mighty race, and the conflicting desires
to go naked in prideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to the
customs of his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparel
found first one and then the other in the ascendency.

As the tribe continued their slow way through the forest after the
passing of Sabor, Tarzan’s head was filled with his great scheme for
slaying his enemy, and for many days thereafter he thought of little
else.

On this day, however, he presently had other and more immediate
interests to attract his attention.

Suddenly it became as midnight; the noises of the jungle ceased; the
trees stood motionless as though in paralyzed expectancy of some great
and imminent disaster. All nature waited—but not for long.

Faintly, from a distance, came a low, sad moaning. Nearer and nearer it
approached, mounting louder and louder in volume.

The great trees bent in unison as though pressed earthward by a mighty
hand. Farther and farther toward the ground they inclined, and still
there was no sound save the deep and awesome moaning of the wind.

Then, suddenly, the jungle giants whipped back, lashing their mighty
tops in angry and deafening protest. A vivid and blinding light flashed
from the whirling, inky clouds above. The deep cannonade of roaring
thunder belched forth its fearsome challenge. The deluge came—all hell
broke loose upon the jungle.

The tribe shivering from the cold rain, huddled at the bases of great
trees. The lightning, darting and flashing through the blackness,
showed wildly waving branches, whipping streamers and bending trunks.

Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rent by a flashing
bolt, would crash in a thousand pieces among the surrounding trees,
carrying down numberless branches and many smaller neighbors to add to
the tangled confusion of the tropical jungle.

Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of the tornado,
hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carrying death and
destruction to countless unhappy denizens of the thickly peopled world
below.

For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease, and still
the tribe huddled close in shivering fear. In constant danger from
falling trunks and branches and paralyzed by the vivid flashing of
lightning and the bellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful misery
until the storm passed.

The end was as sudden as the beginning. The wind ceased, the sun shone
forth—nature smiled once more.

The dripping leaves and branches, and the moist petals of gorgeous
flowers glistened in the splendor of the returning day. And, so—as
Nature forgot, her children forgot also. Busy life went on as it had
been before the darkness and the fright.

But to Tarzan a dawning light had come to explain the mystery of
_clothes_. How snug he would have been beneath the heavy coat of Sabor!
And so was added a further incentive to the adventure.

For several months the tribe hovered near the beach where stood
Tarzan’s cabin, and his studies took up the greater portion of his
time, but always when journeying through the forest he kept his rope in
readiness, and many were the smaller animals that fell into the snare
of the quick thrown noose.

Once it fell about the short neck of Horta, the boar, and his mad lunge
for freedom toppled Tarzan from the overhanging limb where he had lain
in wait and from whence he had launched his sinuous coil.

The mighty tusker turned at the sound of his falling body, and, seeing
only the easy prey of a young ape, he lowered his head and charged
madly at the surprised youth.

Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the fall, alighting catlike upon all
fours far outspread to take up the shock. He was on his feet in an
instant and, leaping with the agility of the monkey he was, he gained
the safety of a low limb as Horta, the boar, rushed futilely beneath.

Thus it was that Tarzan learned by experience the limitations as well
as the possibilities of his strange weapon.

He lost a long rope on this occasion, but he knew that had it been
Sabor who had thus dragged him from his perch the outcome might have
been very different, for he would have lost his life, doubtless, into
the bargain.

It took him many days to braid a new rope, but when, finally, it was
done he went forth purposely to hunt, and lie in wait among the dense
foliage of a great branch right above the well-beaten trail that led to
water.

Several small animals passed unharmed beneath him. He did not want such
insignificant game. It would take a strong animal to test the efficacy
of his new scheme.

At last came she whom Tarzan sought, with lithe sinews rolling beneath
shimmering hide; fat and glossy came Sabor, the lioness.

Her great padded feet fell soft and noiseless on the narrow trail. Her
head was high in ever alert attention; her long tail moved slowly in
sinuous and graceful undulations.

Nearer and nearer she came to where Tarzan of the Apes crouched upon
his limb, the coils of his long rope poised ready in his hand.

Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death, sat Tarzan. Sabor passed
beneath. One stride beyond she took—a second, a third, and then the
silent coil shot out above her.

For an instant the spreading noose hung above her head like a great
snake, and then, as she looked upward to detect the origin of the
swishing sound of the rope, it settled about her neck. With a quick
jerk Tarzan snapped the noose tight about the glossy throat, and then
he dropped the rope and clung to his support with both hands.

Sabor was trapped.

With a bound the startled beast turned into the jungle, but Tarzan was
not to lose another rope through the same cause as the first. He had
learned from experience. The lioness had taken but half her second
bound when she felt the rope tighten about her neck; her body turned
completely over in the air and she fell with a heavy crash upon her
back. Tarzan had fastened the end of the rope securely to the trunk of
the great tree on which he sat.

Thus far his plan had worked to perfection, but when he grasped the
rope, bracing himself behind a crotch of two mighty branches, he found
that dragging the mighty, struggling, clawing, biting, screaming mass
of iron-muscled fury up to the tree and hanging her was a very
different proposition.

The weight of old Sabor was immense, and when she braced her huge paws
nothing less than Tantor, the elephant, himself, could have budged her.

The lioness was now back in the path where she could see the author of
the indignity which had been placed upon her. Screaming with rage she
suddenly charged, leaping high into the air toward Tarzan, but when her
huge body struck the limb on which Tarzan had been, Tarzan was no
longer there.

Instead he perched lightly upon a smaller branch twenty feet above the
raging captive. For a moment Sabor hung half across the branch, while
Tarzan mocked, and hurled twigs and branches at her unprotected face.

Presently the beast dropped to the earth again and Tarzan came quickly
to seize the rope, but Sabor had now found that it was only a slender
cord that held her, and grasping it in her huge jaws severed it before
Tarzan could tighten the strangling noose a second time.

Tarzan was much hurt. His well-laid plan had come to naught, so he sat
there screaming at the roaring creature beneath him and making mocking
grimaces at it.

Sabor paced back and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times she
crouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as well
have clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through the tree tops.

At last Tarzan tired of the sport, and with a parting roar of challenge
and a well-aimed ripe fruit that spread soft and sticky over the
snarling face of his enemy, he swung rapidly through the trees, a
hundred feet above the ground, and in a short time was among the
members of his tribe.

Here he recounted the details of his adventure, with swelling chest and
so considerable swagger that he quite impressed even his bitterest
enemies, while Kala fairly danced for joy and pride.




CHAPTER IX.
Man and Man


Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little
change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and
learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay
somewhere outside his primeval forest.

To him life was never monotonous or stale. There was always Pisah, the
fish, to be caught in the many streams and the little lakes, and Sabor,
with her ferocious cousins to keep one ever on the alert and give zest
to every instant that one spent upon the ground.

Often they hunted him, and more often he hunted them, but though they
never quite reached him with those cruel, sharp claws of theirs, yet
there were times when one could scarce have passed a thick leaf between
their talons and his smooth hide.

Quick was Sabor, the lioness, and quick were Numa and Sheeta, but
Tarzan of the Apes was lightning.

With Tantor, the elephant, he made friends. How? Ask not. But this is
known to the denizens of the jungle, that on many moonlight nights
Tarzan of the Apes and Tantor, the elephant, walked together, and where
the way was clear Tarzan rode, perched high upon Tantor’s mighty back.

Many days during these years he spent in the cabin of his father, where
still lay, untouched, the bones of his parents and the skeleton of
Kala’s baby. At eighteen he read fluently and understood nearly all he
read in the many and varied volumes on the shelves.

Also could he write, with printed letters, rapidly and plainly, but
script he had not mastered, for though there were several copy books
among his treasure, there was so little written English in the cabin
that he saw no use for bothering with this other form of writing,
though he could read it, laboriously.

Thus, at eighteen, we find him, an English lordling, who could speak no
English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never
had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area
traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down
the savage natives of the interior.

High hills shut it off on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was
alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes
of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human
beasts beyond its frontier.

But as Tarzan of the Apes sat one day in the cabin of his father
delving into the mysteries of a new book, the ancient security of his
jungle was broken forever.

At the far eastern confine a strange cavalcade strung, in single file,
over the brow of a low hill.

In advance were fifty black warriors armed with slender wooden spears
with ends hard baked over slow fires, and long bows and poisoned
arrows. On their backs were oval shields, in their noses huge rings,
while from the kinky wool of their heads protruded tufts of gay
feathers.

Across their foreheads were tattooed three parallel lines of color, and
on each breast three concentric circles. Their yellow teeth were filed
to sharp points, and their great protruding lips added still further to
the low and bestial brutishness of their appearance.

Following them were several hundred women and children, the former
bearing upon their heads great burdens of cooking pots, household
utensils and ivory. In the rear were a hundred warriors, similar in all
respects to the advance guard.

That they more greatly feared an attack from the rear than whatever
unknown enemies lurked in their advance was evidenced by the formation
of the column; and such was the fact, for they were fleeing from the
white man’s soldiers who had so harassed them for rubber and ivory that
they had turned upon their conquerors one day and massacred a white
officer and a small detachment of his black troops.

For many days they had gorged themselves on meat, but eventually a
stronger body of troops had come and fallen upon their village by night
to revenge the death of their comrades.

That night the black soldiers of the white man had had meat a-plenty,
and this little remnant of a once powerful tribe had slunk off into the
gloomy jungle toward the unknown, and freedom.

But that which meant freedom and the pursuit of happiness to these
savage blacks meant consternation and death to many of the wild
denizens of their new home.

For three days the little cavalcade marched slowly through the heart of
this unknown and untracked forest, until finally, early in the fourth
day, they came upon a little spot near the banks of a small river,
which seemed less thickly overgrown than any ground they had yet
encountered.

Here they set to work to build a new village, and in a month a great
clearing had been made, huts and palisades erected, plantains, yams and
maize planted, and they had taken up their old life in their new home.
Here there were no white men, no soldiers, nor any rubber or ivory to
be gathered for cruel and thankless taskmasters.

Several moons passed by ere the blacks ventured far into the territory
surrounding their new village. Several had already fallen prey to old
Sabor, and because the jungle was so infested with these fierce and
bloodthirsty cats, and with lions and leopards, the ebony warriors
hesitated to trust themselves far from the safety of their palisades.

But one day, Kulonga, a son of the old king, Mbonga, wandered far into
the dense mazes to the west. Warily he stepped, his slender lance ever
ready, his long oval shield firmly grasped in his left hand close to
his sleek ebony body.

At his back his bow, and in the quiver upon his shield many slim,
straight arrows, well smeared with the thick, dark, tarry substance
that rendered deadly their tiniest needle prick.

Night found Kulonga far from the palisades of his father’s village, but
still headed westward, and climbing into the fork of a great tree he
fashioned a rude platform and curled himself for sleep.

Three miles to the west slept the tribe of Kerchak.

Early the next morning the apes were astir, moving through the jungle
in search of food. Tarzan, as was his custom, prosecuted his search in
the direction of the cabin so that by leisurely hunting on the way his
stomach was filled by the time he reached the beach.

The apes scattered by ones, and twos, and threes in all directions, but
ever within sound of a signal of alarm.

Kala had moved slowly along an elephant track toward the east, and was
busily engaged in turning over rotted limbs and logs in search of
succulent bugs and fungi, when the faintest shadow of a strange noise
brought her to startled attention.

For fifty yards before her the trail was straight, and down this leafy
tunnel she saw the stealthy advancing figure of a strange and fearful
creature.

It was Kulonga.

Kala did not wait to see more, but, turning, moved rapidly back along
the trail. She did not run; but, after the manner of her kind when not
aroused, sought rather to avoid than to escape.

Close after her came Kulonga. Here was meat. He could make a killing
and feast well this day. On he hurried, his spear poised for the throw.

At a turning of the trail he came in sight of her again upon another
straight stretch. His spear hand went far back, the muscles rolled,
lightning-like, beneath the sleek hide. Out shot the arm, and the spear
sped toward Kala.

A poor cast. It but grazed her side.

With a cry of rage and pain the she-ape turned upon her tormentor. In
an instant the trees were crashing beneath the weight of her hurrying
fellows, swinging rapidly toward the scene of trouble in answer to
Kala’s scream.

As she charged, Kulonga unslung his bow and fitted an arrow with almost
unthinkable quickness. Drawing the shaft far back he drove the poisoned
missile straight into the heart of the great anthropoid.

With a horrid scream Kala plunged forward upon her face before the
astonished members of her tribe.

Roaring and shrieking the apes dashed toward Kulonga, but that wary
savage was fleeing down the trail like a frightened antelope.

He knew something of the ferocity of these wild, hairy men, and his one
desire was to put as many miles between himself and them as he possibly
could.

They followed him, racing through the trees, for a long distance, but
finally one by one they abandoned the chase and returned to the scene
of the tragedy.

None of them had ever seen a man before, other than Tarzan, and so they
wondered vaguely what strange manner of creature it might be that had
invaded their jungle.

On the far beach by the little cabin Tarzan heard the faint echoes of
the conflict and knowing that something was seriously amiss among the
tribe he hastened rapidly toward the direction of the sound.

When he arrived he found the entire tribe gathered jabbering about the
dead body of his slain mother.

Tarzan’s grief and anger were unbounded. He roared out his hideous
challenge time and again. He beat upon his great chest with his
clenched fists, and then he fell upon the body of Kala and sobbed out
the pitiful sorrowing of his lonely heart.

To lose the only creature in all his world who ever had manifested love
and affection for him was the greatest tragedy he had ever known.

What though Kala was a fierce and hideous ape! To Tarzan she had been
kind, she had been beautiful.

Upon her he had lavished, unknown to himself, all the reverence and
respect and love that a normal English boy feels for his own mother. He
had never known another, and so to Kala was given, though mutely, all
that would have belonged to the fair and lovely Lady Alice had she
lived.

After the first outburst of grief Tarzan controlled himself, and
questioning the members of the tribe who had witnessed the killing of
Kala he learned all that their meager vocabulary could convey.

It was enough, however, for his needs. It told him of a strange,
hairless, black ape with feathers growing upon its head, who launched
death from a slender branch, and then ran, with the fleetness of Bara,
the deer, toward the rising sun.

Tarzan waited no longer, but leaping into the branches of the trees
sped rapidly through the forest. He knew the windings of the elephant
trail along which Kala’s murderer had flown, and so he cut straight
through the jungle to intercept the black warrior who was evidently
following the tortuous detours of the trail.

At his side was the hunting knife of his unknown sire, and across his
shoulders the coils of his own long rope. In an hour he struck the
trail again, and coming to earth examined the soil minutely.

In the soft mud on the bank of a tiny rivulet he found footprints such
as he alone in all the jungle had ever made, but much larger than his.
His heart beat fast. Could it be that he was trailing a MAN—one of his
own race?

There were two sets of imprints pointing in opposite directions. So his
quarry had already passed on his return along the trail. As he examined
the newer spoor a tiny particle of earth toppled from the outer edge of
one of the footprints to the bottom of its shallow depression—ah, the
trail was very fresh, his prey must have but scarcely passed.

Tarzan swung himself to the trees once more, and with swift
noiselessness sped along high above the trail.

He had covered barely a mile when he came upon the black warrior
standing in a little open space. In his hand was his slender bow to
which he had fitted one of his death dealing arrows.

Opposite him across the little clearing stood Horta, the boar, with
lowered head and foam flecked tusks, ready to charge.

Tarzan looked with wonder upon the strange creature beneath him—so like
him in form and yet so different in face and color. His books had
portrayed the _negro_, but how different had been the dull, dead print
to this sleek thing of ebony, pulsing with life.

As the man stood there with taut drawn bow Tarzan recognized him not so
much the _negro_ as the _Archer_ of his picture book—

A stands for Archer


How wonderful! Tarzan almost betrayed his presence in the deep
excitement of his discovery.

But things were commencing to happen below him. The sinewy black arm
had drawn the shaft far back; Horta, the boar, was charging, and then
the black released the little poisoned arrow, and Tarzan saw it fly
with the quickness of thought and lodge in the bristling neck of the
boar.

Scarcely had the shaft left his bow ere Kulonga had fitted another to
it, but Horta, the boar, was upon him so quickly that he had no time to
discharge it. With a bound the black leaped entirely over the rushing
beast and turning with incredible swiftness planted a second arrow in
Horta’s back.

Then Kulonga sprang into a near-by tree.

Horta wheeled to charge his enemy once more; a dozen steps he took,
then he staggered and fell upon his side. For a moment his muscles
stiffened and relaxed convulsively, then he lay still.

Kulonga came down from his tree.

With a knife that hung at his side he cut several large pieces from the
boar’s body, and in the center of the trail he built a fire, cooking
and eating as much as he wanted. The rest he left where it had fallen.

Tarzan was an interested spectator. His desire to kill burned fiercely
in his wild breast, but his desire to learn was even greater. He would
follow this savage creature for a while and know from whence he came.
He could kill him at his leisure later, when the bow and deadly arrows
were laid aside.

When Kulonga had finished his repast and disappeared beyond a near
turning of the path, Tarzan dropped quietly to the ground. With his
knife he severed many strips of meat from Horta’s carcass, but he did
not cook them.

He had seen fire, but only when Ara, the lightning, had destroyed some
great tree. That any creature of the jungle could produce the
red-and-yellow fangs which devoured wood and left nothing but fine dust
surprised Tarzan greatly, and why the black warrior had ruined his
delicious repast by plunging it into the blighting heat was quite
beyond him. Possibly Ara was a friend with whom the Archer was sharing
his food.

But, be that as it may, Tarzan would not ruin good meat in any such
foolish manner, so he gobbled down a great quantity of the raw flesh,
burying the balance of the carcass beside the trail where he could find
it upon his return.

And then Lord Greystoke wiped his greasy fingers upon his naked thighs
and took up the trail of Kulonga, the son of Mbonga, the king; while in
far-off London another Lord Greystoke, the younger brother of the real
Lord Greystoke’s father, sent back his chops to the club’s _chef_
because they were underdone, and when he had finished his repast he
dipped his finger-ends into a silver bowl of scented water and dried
them upon a piece of snowy damask.

All day Tarzan followed Kulonga, hovering above him in the trees like
some malign spirit. Twice more he saw him hurl his arrows of
destruction—once at Dango, the hyena, and again at Manu, the monkey. In
each instance the animal died almost instantly, for Kulonga’s poison
was very fresh and very deadly.

Tarzan thought much on this wondrous method of slaying as he swung
slowly along at a safe distance behind his quarry. He knew that alone
the tiny prick of the arrow could not so quickly dispatch these wild
things of the jungle, who were often torn and scratched and gored in a
frightful manner as they fought with their jungle neighbors, yet as
often recovered as not.

No, there was something mysterious connected with these tiny slivers of
wood which could bring death by a mere scratch. He must look into the
matter.

That night Kulonga slept in the crotch of a mighty tree and far above
him crouched Tarzan of the Apes.

When Kulonga awoke he found that his bow and arrows had disappeared.
The black warrior was furious and frightened, but more frightened than
furious. He searched the ground below the tree, and he searched the
tree above the ground; but there was no sign of either bow or arrows or
of the nocturnal marauder.

Kulonga was panic-stricken. His spear he had hurled at Kala and had not
recovered; and, now that his bow and arrows were gone, he was
defenseless except for a single knife. His only hope lay in reaching
the village of Mbonga as quickly as his legs would carry him.

That he was not far from home he was certain, so he took the trail at a
rapid trot.

From a great mass of impenetrable foliage a few yards away emerged
Tarzan of the Apes to swing quietly in his wake.

Kulonga’s bow and arrows were securely tied high in the top of a giant
tree from which a patch of bark had been removed by a sharp knife near
to the ground, and a branch half cut through and left hanging about
fifty feet higher up. Thus Tarzan blazed the forest trails and marked
his caches.

As Kulonga continued his journey Tarzan closed on him until he traveled
almost over the black’s head. His rope he now held coiled in his right
hand; he was almost ready for the kill.

The moment was delayed only because Tarzan was anxious to ascertain the
black warrior’s destination, and presently he was rewarded, for they
came suddenly in view of a great clearing, at one end of which lay many
strange lairs.

Tarzan was directly over Kulonga, as he made the discovery. The forest
ended abruptly and beyond lay two hundred yards of planted fields
between the jungle and the village.

Tarzan must act quickly or his prey would be gone; but Tarzan’s life
training left so little space between decision and action when an
emergency confronted him that there was not even room for the shadow of
a thought between.

So it was that as Kulonga emerged from the shadow of the jungle a
slender coil of rope sped sinuously above him from the lowest branch of
a mighty tree directly upon the edge of the fields of Mbonga, and ere
the king’s son had taken a half dozen steps into the clearing a quick
noose tightened about his neck.

So quickly did Tarzan of the Apes drag back his prey that Kulonga’s cry
of alarm was throttled in his windpipe. Hand over hand Tarzan drew the
struggling black until he had him hanging by his neck in mid-air; then
Tarzan climbed to a larger branch drawing the still threshing victim
well up into the sheltering verdure of the tree.

Here he fastened the rope securely to a stout branch, and then,
descending, plunged his hunting knife into Kulonga’s heart. Kala was
avenged.

Tarzan examined the black minutely, for he had never seen any other
human being. The knife with its sheath and belt caught his eye; he
appropriated them. A copper anklet also took his fancy, and this he
transferred to his own leg.

He examined and admired the tattooing on the forehead and breast. He
marveled at the sharp filed teeth. He investigated and appropriated the
feathered headdress, and then he prepared to get down to business, for
Tarzan of the Apes was hungry, and here was meat; meat of the kill,
which jungle ethics permitted him to eat.

How may we judge him, by what standards, this ape-man with the heart
and head and body of an English gentleman, and the training of a wild
beast?

Tublat, whom he had hated and who had hated him, he had killed in a
fair fight, and yet never had the thought of eating Tublat’s flesh
entered his head. It would have been as revolting to him as is
cannibalism to us.

But who was Kulonga that he might not be eaten as fairly as Horta, the
boar, or Bara, the deer? Was he not simply another of the countless
wild things of the jungle who preyed upon one another to satisfy the
cravings of hunger?

Suddenly, a strange doubt stayed his hand. Had not his books taught him
that he was a man? And was not The Archer a man, also?

Did men eat men? Alas, he did not know. Why, then, this hesitancy! Once
more he essayed the effort, but a qualm of nausea overwhelmed him. He
did not understand.

All he knew was that he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and
thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his
untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose
very existence he was ignorant.

Quickly he lowered Kulonga’s body to the ground, removed the noose, and
took to the trees again.




CHAPTER X.
The Fear-Phantom


From a lofty perch Tarzan viewed the village of thatched huts across
the intervening plantation.

He saw that at one point the forest touched the village, and to this
spot he made his way, lured by a fever of curiosity to behold animals
of his own kind, and to learn more of their ways and view the strange
lairs in which they lived.

His savage life among the fierce wild brutes of the jungle left no
opening for any thought that these could be aught else than enemies.
Similarity of form led him into no erroneous conception of the welcome
that would be accorded him should he be discovered by these, the first
of his own kind he had ever seen.

Tarzan of the Apes was no sentimentalist. He knew nothing of the
brotherhood of man. All things outside his own tribe were his deadly
enemies, with the few exceptions of which Tantor, the elephant, was a
marked example.

And he realized all this without malice or hatred. To kill was the law
of the wild world he knew. Few were his primitive pleasures, but the
greatest of these was to hunt and kill, and so he accorded to others
the right to cherish the same desires as he, even though he himself
might be the object of their hunt.

His strange life had left him neither morose nor bloodthirsty. That he
joyed in killing, and that he killed with a joyous laugh upon his
handsome lips betokened no innate cruelty. He killed for food most
often, but, being a man, he sometimes killed for pleasure, a thing
which no other animal does; for it has remained for man alone among all
creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of
inflicting suffering and death.

And when he killed for revenge, or in self-defense, he did that also
without hysteria, for it was a very businesslike proceeding which
admitted of no levity.

So it was that now, as he cautiously approached the village of Mbonga,
he was quite prepared either to kill or be killed should he be
discovered. He proceeded with unwonted stealth, for Kulonga had taught
him great respect for the little sharp splinters of wood which dealt
death so swiftly and unerringly.

At length he came to a great tree, heavy laden with thick foliage and
loaded with pendant loops of giant creepers. From this almost
impenetrable bower above the village he crouched, looking down upon the
scene below him, wondering over every feature of this new, strange
life.

There were naked children running and playing in the village street.
There were women grinding dried plantain in crude stone mortars, while
others were fashioning cakes from the powdered flour. Out in the fields
he could see still other women hoeing, weeding, or gathering.

All wore strange protruding girdles of dried grass about their hips and
many were loaded with brass and copper anklets, armlets and bracelets.
Around many a dusky neck hung curiously coiled strands of wire, while
several were further ornamented by huge nose rings.

Tarzan of the Apes looked with growing wonder at these strange
creatures. Dozing in the shade he saw several men, while at the extreme
outskirts of the clearing he occasionally caught glimpses of armed
warriors apparently guarding the village against surprise from an
attacking enemy.

He noticed that the women alone worked. Nowhere was there evidence of a
man tilling the fields or performing any of the homely duties of the
village.

Finally his eyes rested upon a woman directly beneath him.

Before her was a small cauldron standing over a low fire and in it
bubbled a thick, reddish, tarry mass. On one side of her lay a quantity
of wooden arrows the points of which she dipped into the seething
substance, then laying them upon a narrow rack of boughs which stood
upon her other side.

Tarzan of the Apes was fascinated. Here was the secret of the terrible
destructiveness of The Archer’s tiny missiles. He noted the extreme
care which the woman took that none of the matter should touch her
hands, and once when a particle spattered upon one of her fingers he
saw her plunge the member into a vessel of water and quickly rub the
tiny stain away with a handful of leaves.

Tarzan knew nothing of poison, but his shrewd reasoning told him that
it was this deadly stuff that killed, and not the little arrow, which
was merely the messenger that carried it into the body of its victim.

How he should like to have more of those little death-dealing slivers.
If the woman would only leave her work for an instant he could drop
down, gather up a handful, and be back in the tree again before she
drew three breaths.

As he was trying to think out some plan to distract her attention he
heard a wild cry from across the clearing. He looked and saw a black
warrior standing beneath the very tree in which he had killed the
murderer of Kala an hour before.

The fellow was shouting and waving his spear above his head. Now and
again he would point to something on the ground before him.

The village was in an uproar instantly. Armed men rushed from the
interior of many a hut and raced madly across the clearing toward the
excited sentry. After them trooped the old men, and the women and
children until, in a moment, the village was deserted.

Tarzan of the Apes knew that they had found the body of his victim, but
that interested him far less than the fact that no one remained in the
village to prevent his taking a supply of the arrows which lay below
him.

Quickly and noiselessly he dropped to the ground beside the cauldron of
poison. For a moment he stood motionless, his quick, bright eyes
scanning the interior of the palisade.

No one was in sight. His eyes rested upon the open doorway of a nearby
hut. He would take a look within, thought Tarzan, and so, cautiously,
he approached the low thatched building.

For a moment he stood without, listening intently. There was no sound,
and he glided into the semi-darkness of the interior.

Weapons hung against the walls—long spears, strangely shaped knives, a
couple of narrow shields. In the center of the room was a cooking pot,
and at the far end a litter of dry grasses covered by woven mats which
evidently served the owners as beds and bedding. Several human skulls
lay upon the floor.

Tarzan of the Apes felt of each article, hefted the spears, smelled of
them, for he “saw” largely through his sensitive and highly trained
nostrils. He determined to own one of these long, pointed sticks, but
he could not take one on this trip because of the arrows he meant to
carry.

As he took each article from the walls, he placed it in a pile in the
center of the room. On top of all he placed the cooking pot, inverted,
and on top of this he laid one of the grinning skulls, upon which he
fastened the headdress of the dead Kulonga.

Then he stood back, surveyed his work, and grinned. Tarzan of the Apes
enjoyed a joke.

But now he heard, outside, the sounds of many voices, and long mournful
howls, and mighty wailing. He was startled. Had he remained too long?
Quickly he reached the doorway and peered down the village street
toward the village gate.

The natives were not yet in sight, though he could plainly hear them
approaching across the plantation. They must be very near.

Like a flash he sprang across the opening to the pile of arrows.
Gathering up all he could carry under one arm, he overturned the
seething cauldron with a kick, and disappeared into the foliage above
just as the first of the returning natives entered the gate at the far
end of the village street. Then he turned to watch the proceeding
below, poised like some wild bird ready to take swift wing at the first
sign of danger.

The natives filed up the street, four of them bearing the dead body of
Kulonga. Behind trailed the women, uttering strange cries and weird
lamentation. On they came to the portals of Kulonga’s hut, the very one
in which Tarzan had wrought his depredations.

Scarcely had half a dozen entered the building ere they came rushing
out in wild, jabbering confusion. The others hastened to gather about.
There was much excited gesticulating, pointing, and chattering; then
several of the warriors approached and peered within.

Finally an old fellow with many ornaments of metal about his arms and
legs, and a necklace of dried human hands depending upon his chest,
entered the hut.

It was Mbonga, the king, father of Kulonga.

For a few moments all was silent. Then Mbonga emerged, a look of
mingled wrath and superstitious fear writ upon his hideous countenance.
He spoke a few words to the assembled warriors, and in an instant the
men were flying through the little village searching minutely every hut
and corner within the palisades.

Scarcely had the search commenced than the overturned cauldron was
discovered, and with it the theft of the poisoned arrows. Nothing more
they found, and it was a thoroughly awed and frightened group of
savages which huddled around their king a few moments later.

Mbonga could explain nothing of the strange events that had taken
place. The finding of the still warm body of Kulonga—on the very verge
of their fields and within easy earshot of the village—knifed and
stripped at the door of his father’s home, was in itself sufficiently
mysterious, but these last awesome discoveries within the village,
within the dead Kulonga’s own hut, filled their hearts with dismay, and
conjured in their poor brains only the most frightful of superstitious
explanations.

They stood in little groups, talking in low tones, and ever casting
affrighted glances behind them from their great rolling eyes.

Tarzan of the Apes watched them for a while from his lofty perch in the
great tree. There was much in their demeanor which he could not
understand, for of superstition he was ignorant, and of fear of any
kind he had but a vague conception.

The sun was high in the heavens. Tarzan had not broken fast this day,
and it was many miles to where lay the toothsome remains of Horta the
boar.

So he turned his back upon the village of Mbonga and melted away into
the leafy fastness of the forest.




CHAPTER XI.
“King of the Apes”


It was not yet dark when he reached the tribe, though he stopped to
exhume and devour the remains of the wild boar he had cached the
preceding day, and again to take Kulonga’s bow and arrows from the tree
top in which he had hidden them.

It was a well-laden Tarzan who dropped from the branches into the midst
of the tribe of Kerchak.

With swelling chest he narrated the glories of his adventure and
exhibited the spoils of conquest.

Kerchak grunted and turned away, for he was jealous of this strange
member of his band. In his little evil brain he sought for some excuse
to wreak his hatred upon Tarzan.

The next day Tarzan was practicing with his bow and arrows at the first
gleam of dawn. At first he lost nearly every bolt he shot, but finally
he learned to guide the little shafts with fair accuracy, and ere a
month had passed he was no mean shot; but his proficiency had cost him
nearly his entire supply of arrows.

The tribe continued to find the hunting good in the vicinity of the
beach, and so Tarzan of the Apes varied his archery practice with
further investigation of his father’s choice though little store of
books.

It was during this period that the young English lord found hidden in
the back of one of the cupboards in the cabin a small metal box. The
key was in the lock, and a few moments of investigation and
experimentation were rewarded with the successful opening of the
receptacle.

In it he found a faded photograph of a smooth faced young man, a golden
locket studded with diamonds, linked to a small gold chain, a few
letters and a small book.

Tarzan examined these all minutely.

The photograph he liked most of all, for the eyes were smiling, and the
face was open and frank. It was his father.

The locket, too, took his fancy, and he placed the chain about his neck
in imitation of the ornamentation he had seen to be so common among the
black men he had visited. The brilliant stones gleamed strangely
against his smooth, brown hide.

The letters he could scarcely decipher for he had learned little or
nothing of script, so he put them back in the box with the photograph
and turned his attention to the book.

This was almost entirely filled with fine script, but while the little
bugs were all familiar to him, their arrangement and the combinations
in which they occurred were strange, and entirely incomprehensible.

Tarzan had long since learned the use of the dictionary, but much to
his sorrow and perplexity it proved of no avail to him in this
emergency. Not a word of all that was writ in the book could he find,
and so he put it back in the metal box, but with a determination to
work out the mysteries of it later on.

Little did he know that this book held between its covers the key to
his origin—the answer to the strange riddle of his strange life. It was
the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke—kept in French, as had always
been his custom.

Tarzan replaced the box in the cupboard, but always thereafter he
carried the features of the strong, smiling face of his father in his
heart, and in his head a fixed determination to solve the mystery of
the strange words in the little black book.

At present he had more important business in hand, for his supply of
arrows was exhausted, and he must needs journey to the black men’s
village and renew it.

Early the following morning he set out, and, traveling rapidly, he came
before midday to the clearing. Once more he took up his position in the
great tree, and, as before, he saw the women in the fields and the
village street, and the cauldron of bubbling poison directly beneath
him.

For hours he lay awaiting his opportunity to drop down unseen and
gather up the arrows for which he had come; but nothing now occurred to
call the villagers away from their homes. The day wore on, and still
Tarzan of the Apes crouched above the unsuspecting woman at the
cauldron.

Presently the workers in the fields returned. The hunting warriors
emerged from the forest, and when all were within the palisade the
gates were closed and barred.

Many cooking pots were now in evidence about the village. Before each
hut a woman presided over a boiling stew, while little cakes of
plantain, and cassava puddings were to be seen on every hand.

Suddenly there came a hail from the edge of the clearing.

Tarzan looked.

It was a party of belated hunters returning from the north, and among
them they half led, half carried a struggling animal.

As they approached the village the gates were thrown open to admit
them, and then, as the people saw the victim of the chase, a savage cry
rose to the heavens, for the quarry was a man.

As he was dragged, still resisting, into the village street, the women
and children set upon him with sticks and stones, and Tarzan of the
Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel
brutality of his own kind.

Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey.
The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their
victims.

Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways
of human beings.

When he had followed Kulonga through the forest he had expected to come
to a city of strange houses on wheels, puffing clouds of black smoke
from a huge tree stuck in the roof of one of them—or to a sea covered
with mighty floating buildings which he had learned were called,
variously, ships and boats and steamers and craft.

He had been sorely disappointed with the poor little village of the
blacks, hidden away in his own jungle, and with not a single house as
large as his own cabin upon the distant beach.

He saw that these people were more wicked than his own apes, and as
savage and cruel as Sabor, herself. Tarzan began to hold his own kind
in low esteem.

Now they had tied their poor victim to a great post near the center of
the village, directly before Mbonga’s hut, and here they formed a
dancing, yelling circle of warriors about him, alive with flashing
knives and menacing spears.

In a larger circle squatted the women, yelling and beating upon drums.
It reminded Tarzan of the Dum-Dum, and so he knew what to expect. He
wondered if they would spring upon their meat while it was still alive.
The Apes did not do such things as that.

The circle of warriors about the cringing captive drew closer and
closer to their prey as they danced in wild and savage abandon to the
maddening music of the drums. Presently a spear reached out and pricked
the victim. It was the signal for fifty others.

Eyes, ears, arms and legs were pierced; every inch of the poor writhing
body that did not cover a vital organ became the target of the cruel
lancers.

The women and children shrieked their delight.

The warriors licked their hideous lips in anticipation of the feast to
come, and vied with one another in the savagery and loathsomeness of
the cruel indignities with which they tortured the still conscious
prisoner.

Then it was that Tarzan of the Apes saw his chance. All eyes were fixed
upon the thrilling spectacle at the stake. The light of day had given
place to the darkness of a moonless night, and only the fires in the
immediate vicinity of the orgy had been kept alight to cast a restless
glow upon the restless scene.

Gently the lithe boy dropped to the soft earth at the end of the
village street. Quickly he gathered up the arrows—all of them this
time, for he had brought a number of long fibers to bind them into a
bundle.

Without haste he wrapped them securely, and then, ere he turned to
leave, the devil of capriciousness entered his heart. He looked about
for some hint of a wild prank to play upon these strange, grotesque
creatures that they might be again aware of his presence among them.

Dropping his bundle of arrows at the foot of the tree, Tarzan crept
among the shadows at the side of the street until he came to the same
hut he had entered on the occasion of his first visit.

Inside all was darkness, but his groping hands soon found the object
for which he sought, and without further delay he turned again toward
the door.

He had taken but a step, however, ere his quick ear caught the sound of
approaching footsteps immediately without. In another instant the
figure of a woman darkened the entrance of the hut.

Tarzan drew back silently to the far wall, and his hand sought the
long, keen hunting knife of his father. The woman came quickly to the
center of the hut. There she paused for an instant feeling about with
her hands for the thing she sought. Evidently it was not in its
accustomed place, for she explored ever nearer and nearer the wall
where Tarzan stood.

So close was she now that the ape-man felt the animal warmth of her
naked body. Up went the hunting knife, and then the woman turned to one
side and soon a guttural “ah” proclaimed that her search had at last
been successful.

Immediately she turned and left the hut, and as she passed through the
doorway Tarzan saw that she carried a cooking pot in her hand.

He followed closely after her, and as he reconnoitered from the shadows
of the doorway he saw that all the women of the village were hastening
to and from the various huts with pots and kettles. These they were
filling with water and placing over a number of fires near the stake
where the dying victim now hung, an inert and bloody mass of suffering.

Choosing a moment when none seemed near, Tarzan hastened to his bundle
of arrows beneath the great tree at the end of the village street. As
on the former occasion he overthrew the cauldron before leaping,
sinuous and catlike, into the lower branches of the forest giant.

Silently he climbed to a great height until he found a point where he
could look through a leafy opening upon the scene beneath him.

The women were now preparing the prisoner for their cooking pots, while
the men stood about resting after the fatigue of their mad revel.
Comparative quiet reigned in the village.

Tarzan raised aloft the thing he had pilfered from the hut, and, with
aim made true by years of fruit and coconut throwing, launched it
toward the group of savages.

Squarely among them it fell, striking one of the warriors full upon the
head and felling him to the ground. Then it rolled among the women and
stopped beside the half-butchered thing they were preparing to feast
upon.

All gazed in consternation at it for an instant, and then, with one
accord, broke and ran for their huts.

It was a grinning human skull which looked up at them from the ground.
The dropping of the thing out of the open sky was a miracle well aimed
to work upon their superstitious fears.

Thus Tarzan of the Apes left them filled with terror at this new
manifestation of the presence of some unseen and unearthly evil power
which lurked in the forest about their village.

Later, when they discovered the overturned cauldron, and that once more
their arrows had been pilfered, it commenced to dawn upon them that
they had offended some great god by placing their village in this part
of the jungle without propitiating him. From then on an offering of
food was daily placed below the great tree from whence the arrows had
disappeared in an effort to conciliate the mighty one.

But the seed of fear was deep sown, and had he but known it, Tarzan of
the Apes had laid the foundation for much future misery for himself and
his tribe.

That night he slept in the forest not far from the village, and early
the next morning set out slowly on his homeward march, hunting as he
traveled. Only a few berries and an occasional grub worm rewarded his
search, and he was half famished when, looking up from a log he had
been rooting beneath, he saw Sabor, the lioness, standing in the center
of the trail not twenty paces from him.

The great yellow eyes were fixed upon him with a wicked and baleful
gleam, and the red tongue licked the longing lips as Sabor crouched,
worming her stealthy way with belly flattened against the earth.

Tarzan did not attempt to escape. He welcomed the opportunity for
which, in fact, he had been searching for days past, now that he was
armed with something more than a rope of grass.

Quickly he unslung his bow and fitted a well-daubed arrow, and as Sabor
sprang, the tiny missile leaped to meet her in mid-air. At the same
instant Tarzan of the Apes jumped to one side, and as the great cat
struck the ground beyond him another death-tipped arrow sunk deep into
Sabor’s loin.

With a mighty roar the beast turned and charged once more, only to be
met with a third arrow full in one eye; but this time she was too close
to the ape-man for the latter to sidestep the onrushing body.

Tarzan of the Apes went down beneath the great body of his enemy, but
with gleaming knife drawn and striking home. For a moment they lay
there, and then Tarzan realized that the inert mass lying upon him was
beyond power ever again to injure man or ape.

With difficulty he wriggled from beneath the great weight, and as he
stood erect and gazed down upon the trophy of his skill, a mighty wave
of exultation swept over him.

With swelling breast, he placed a foot upon the body of his powerful
enemy, and throwing back his fine young head, roared out the awful
challenge of the victorious bull ape.

The forest echoed to the savage and triumphant paean. Birds fell still,
and the larger animals and beasts of prey slunk stealthily away, for
few there were of all the jungle who sought for trouble with the great
anthropoids.

And in London another Lord Greystoke was speaking to _his_ kind in the
House of Lords, but none trembled at the sound of his soft voice.

Sabor proved unsavory eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger
served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and
ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep
again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for
this as for any other purpose that he had desired to destroy Sabor.

Deftly he removed the great pelt, for he had practiced often on smaller
animals. When the task was finished he carried his trophy to the fork
of a high tree, and there, curling himself securely in a crotch, he
fell into deep and dreamless slumber.

What with loss of sleep, arduous exercise, and a full belly, Tarzan of
the Apes slept the sun around, awakening about noon of the following
day. He straightway repaired to the carcass of Sabor, but was angered
to find the bones picked clean by other hungry denizens of the jungle.

Half an hour’s leisurely progress through the forest brought to sight a
young deer, and before the little creature knew that an enemy was near
a tiny arrow had lodged in its neck.

So quickly the virus worked that at the end of a dozen leaps the deer
plunged headlong into the undergrowth, dead. Again did Tarzan feast
well, but this time he did not sleep.

Instead, he hastened on toward the point where he had left the tribe,
and when he had found them proudly exhibited the skin of Sabor, the
lioness.

“Look!” he cried, “Apes of Kerchak. See what Tarzan, the mighty killer,
has done. Who else among you has ever killed one of Numa’s people?
Tarzan is mightiest amongst you for Tarzan is no ape. Tarzan is—” But
here he stopped, for in the language of the anthropoids there was no
word for man, and Tarzan could only write the word in English; he could
not pronounce it.

The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of his wondrous
prowess, and to listen to his words.

Only Kerchak hung back, nursing his hatred and his rage.

Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of the
anthropoid. With a frightful roar the great beast sprang among the
assemblage.

Biting, and striking with his huge hands, he killed and maimed a dozen
ere the balance could escape to the upper terraces of the forest.

Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of his fury, Kerchak looked
about for the object of his greatest hatred, and there, upon a near-by
limb, he saw him sitting.

“Come down, Tarzan, great killer,” cried Kerchak. “Come down and feel
the fangs of a greater! Do mighty fighters fly to the trees at the
first approach of danger?” And then Kerchak emitted the volleying
challenge of his kind.

Quietly Tarzan dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watched
from their lofty perches as Kerchak, still roaring, charged the
relatively puny figure.

Nearly seven feet stood Kerchak on his short legs. His enormous
shoulders were bunched and rounded with huge muscles. The back of his
short neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond the
base of his skull, so that his head seemed like a small ball protruding
from a huge mountain of flesh.

His back-drawn, snarling lips exposed his great fighting fangs, and his
little, wicked, blood-shot eyes gleamed in horrid reflection of his
madness.

Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal, but his six
feet of height and his great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequate
to the ordeal which awaited them.

His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had dropped them
while showing Sabor’s hide to his fellow apes, so that he confronted
Kerchak now with only his hunting knife and his superior intellect to
offset the ferocious strength of his enemy.

As his antagonist came roaring toward him, Lord Greystoke tore his long
knife from its sheath, and with an answering challenge as horrid and
bloodcurdling as that of the beast he faced, rushed swiftly to meet the
attack. He was too shrewd to allow those long hairy arms to encircle
him, and just as their bodies were about to crash together, Tarzan of
the Apes grasped one of the huge wrists of his assailant, and,
springing lightly to one side, drove his knife to the hilt into
Kerchak’s body, below the heart.

Before he could wrench the blade free again, the bull’s quick lunge to
seize him in those awful arms had torn the weapon from Tarzan’s grasp.

Kerchak aimed a terrific blow at the ape-man’s head with the flat of
his hand, a blow which, had it landed, might easily have crushed in the
side of Tarzan’s skull.

The man was too quick, and, ducking beneath it, himself delivered a
mighty one, with clenched fist, in the pit of Kerchak’s stomach.

The ape was staggered, and what with the mortal wound in his side had
almost collapsed, when, with one mighty effort he rallied for an
instant—just long enough to enable him to wrest his arm free from
Tarzan’s grasp and close in a terrific clinch with his wiry opponent.

Straining the ape-man close to him, his great jaws sought Tarzan’s
throat, but the young lord’s sinewy fingers were at Kerchak’s own
before the cruel fangs could close on the sleek brown skin.

Thus they struggled, the one to crush out his opponent’s life with
those awful teeth, the other to close forever the windpipe beneath his
strong grasp while he held the snarling mouth from him.

The greater strength of the ape was slowly prevailing, and the teeth of
the straining beast were scarce an inch from Tarzan’s throat when, with
a shuddering tremor, the great body stiffened for an instant and then
sank limply to the ground.

Kerchak was dead.

Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered him master of far
mightier muscles than his own, Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon
the neck of his vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through the
forest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.

And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.




CHAPTER XII.
Man’s Reason


There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and
that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and
the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation of
his objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzan
knew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingship
from him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on his
guard against surprise.

For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before,
except that Tarzan’s greater intelligence and his ability as a hunter
were the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before.
Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change in
rulers.

Tarzan led them by night to the fields of the black men, and there,
warned by their chief’s superior wisdom, they ate only what they
required, nor ever did they destroy what they could not eat, as is the
way of Manu, the monkey, and of most apes.

So, while the blacks were wroth at the continued pilfering of their
fields, they were not discouraged in their efforts to cultivate the
land, as would have been the case had Tarzan permitted his people to
lay waste the plantation wantonly.

During this period Tarzan paid many nocturnal visits to the village,
where he often renewed his supply of arrows. He soon noticed the food
always standing at the foot of the tree which was his avenue into the
palisade, and after a little, he commenced to eat whatever the blacks
put there.

When the awe-struck savages saw that the food disappeared overnight
they were filled with consternation and dread, for it was one thing to
put food out to propitiate a god or a devil, but quite another thing to
have the spirit really come into the village and eat it. Such a thing
was unheard of, and it clouded their superstitious minds with all
manner of vague fears.

Nor was this all. The periodic disappearance of their arrows, and the
strange pranks perpetrated by unseen hands, had wrought them to such a
state that life had become a veritable burden in their new home, and
now it was that Mbonga and his head men began to talk of abandoning the
village and seeking a site farther on in the jungle.

Presently the black warriors began to strike farther and farther south
into the heart of the forest when they went to hunt, looking for a site
for a new village.

More often was the tribe of Tarzan disturbed by these wandering
huntsmen. Now was the quiet, fierce solitude of the primeval forest
broken by new, strange cries. No longer was there safety for bird or
beast. Man had come.

Other animals passed up and down the jungle by day and by night—fierce,
cruel beasts—but their weaker neighbors only fled from their immediate
vicinity to return again when the danger was past.

With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animals
instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return;
and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee man
as man flees a pestilence.

For a short time the tribe of Tarzan lingered in the vicinity of the
beach because their new chief hated the thought of leaving the
treasured contents of the little cabin forever. But when one day a
member of the tribe discovered the blacks in great numbers on the banks
of a little stream that had been their watering place for generations,
and in the act of clearing a space in the jungle and erecting many
huts, the apes would remain no longer; and so Tarzan led them inland
for many marches to a spot as yet undefiled by the foot of a human
being.

Once every moon Tarzan would go swinging rapidly back through the
swaying branches to have a day with his books, and to replenish his
supply of arrows. This latter task was becoming more and more
difficult, for the blacks had taken to hiding their supply away at
night in granaries and living huts.

This necessitated watching by day on Tarzan’s part to discover where
the arrows were being concealed.

Twice had he entered huts at night while the inmates lay sleeping upon
their mats, and stolen the arrows from the very sides of the warriors.
But this method he realized to be too fraught with danger, and so he
commenced picking up solitary hunters with his long, deadly noose,
stripping them of weapons and ornaments and dropping their bodies from
a high tree into the village street during the still watches of the
night.

These various escapades again so terrorized the blacks that, had it not
been for the monthly respite between Tarzan’s visits, in which they had
opportunity to renew hope that each fresh incursion would prove the
last, they soon would have abandoned their new village.

The blacks had not as yet come upon Tarzan’s cabin on the distant
beach, but the ape-man lived in constant dread that, while he was away
with the tribe, they would discover and despoil his treasure. So it
came that he spent more and more time in the vicinity of his father’s
last home, and less and less with the tribe. Presently the members of
his little community began to suffer on account of his neglect, for
disputes and quarrels constantly arose which only the king might settle
peaceably.

At last some of the older apes spoke to Tarzan on the subject, and for
a month thereafter he remained constantly with the tribe.

The duties of kingship among the anthropoids are not many or arduous.

In the afternoon comes Thaka, possibly, to complain that old Mungo has
stolen his new wife. Then must Tarzan summon all before him, and if he
finds that the wife prefers her new lord he commands that matters
remain as they are, or possibly that Mungo give Thaka one of his
daughters in exchange.

Whatever his decision, the apes accept it as final, and return to their
occupations satisfied.

Then comes Tana, shrieking and holding tight her side from which blood
is streaming. Gunto, her husband, has cruelly bitten her! And Gunto,
summoned, says that Tana is lazy and will not bring him nuts and
beetles, or scratch his back for him.

So Tarzan scolds them both and threatens Gunto with a taste of the
death-bearing slivers if he abuses Tana further, and Tana, for her
part, is compelled to promise better attention to her wifely duties.

And so it goes, little family differences for the most part, which, if
left unsettled would result finally in greater factional strife, and
the eventual dismemberment of the tribe.

But Tarzan tired of it, as he found that kingship meant the curtailment
of his liberty. He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed
sea—for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the
never-ending wonders of the many books.

As he had grown older, he found that he had grown away from his people.
Their interests and his were far removed. They had not kept pace with
him, nor could they understand aught of the many strange and wonderful
dreams that passed through the active brain of their human king. So
limited was their vocabulary that Tarzan could not even talk with them
of the many new truths, and the great fields of thought that his
reading had opened up before his longing eyes, or make known ambitions
which stirred his soul.

Among the tribe he no longer had friends as of old. A little child may
find companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grown
man there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basis
for agreeable association.

Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain near
her, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of his
childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he much
preferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties of
leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.

The hatred and jealousy of Terkoz, son of Tublat, did much to
counteract the effect of Tarzan’s desire to renounce his kingship among
the apes, for, stubborn young Englishman that he was, he could not
bring himself to retreat in the face of so malignant an enemy.

That Terkoz would be chosen leader in his stead he knew full well, for
time and again the ferocious brute had established his claim to
physical supremacy over the few bull apes who had dared resent his
savage bullying.

Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to
knife or arrows. So much had his great strength and agility increased
in the period following his maturity that he had come to believe that
he might master the redoubtable Terkoz in a hand to hand fight were it
not for the terrible advantage the anthropoid’s huge fighting fangs
gave him over the poorly armed Tarzan.

The entire matter was taken out of Tarzan’s hands one day by force of
circumstances, and his future left open to him, so that he might go or
stay without any stain upon his savage escutcheon.

It happened thus:

The tribe was feeding quietly, spread over a considerable area, when a
great screaming arose some distance east of where Tarzan lay upon his
belly beside a limpid brook, attempting to catch an elusive fish in his
quick, brown hands.

With one accord the tribe swung rapidly toward the frightened cries,
and there found Terkoz holding an old female by the hair and beating
her unmercifully with his great hands.

As Tarzan approached he raised his hand aloft for Terkoz to desist, for
the female was not his, but belonged to a poor old ape whose fighting
days were long over, and who, therefore, could not protect his family.

Terkoz knew that it was against the laws of his kind to strike this
woman of another, but being a bully, he had taken advantage of the
weakness of the female’s husband to chastise her because she had
refused to give up to him a tender young rodent she had captured.

When Terkoz saw Tarzan approaching without his arrows, he continued to
belabor the poor woman in a studied effort to affront his hated
chieftain.

Tarzan did not repeat his warning signal, but instead rushed bodily
upon the waiting Terkoz.

Never had the ape-man fought so terrible a battle since that long-gone
day when Bolgani, the great king gorilla had so horribly manhandled him
ere the new-found knife had, by accident, pricked the savage heart.

Tarzan’s knife on the present occasion but barely offset the gleaming
fangs of Terkoz, and what little advantage the ape had over the man in
brute strength was almost balanced by the latter’s wonderful quickness
and agility.

In the sum total of their points, however, the anthropoid had a shade
the better of the battle, and had there been no other personal
attribute to influence the final outcome, Tarzan of the Apes, the young
Lord Greystoke, would have died as he had lived—an unknown savage beast
in equatorial Africa.

But there was that which had raised him far above his fellows of the
jungle—that little spark which spells the whole vast difference between
man and brute—Reason. This it was which saved him from death beneath
the iron muscles and tearing fangs of Terkoz.

Scarcely had they fought a dozen seconds ere they were rolling upon the
ground, striking, tearing and rending—two great savage beasts battling
to the death.

Terkoz had a dozen knife wounds on head and breast, and Tarzan was torn
and bleeding—his scalp in one place half torn from his head so that a
great piece hung down over one eye, obstructing his vision.

But so far the young Englishman had been able to keep those horrible
fangs from his jugular and now, as they fought less fiercely for a
moment, to regain their breath, Tarzan formed a cunning plan. He would
work his way to the other’s back and, clinging there with tooth and
nail, drive his knife home until Terkoz was no more.

The maneuver was accomplished more easily than he had hoped, for the
stupid beast, not knowing what Tarzan was attempting, made no
particular effort to prevent the accomplishment of the design.

But when, finally, he realized that his antagonist was fastened to him
where his teeth and fists alike were useless against him, Terkoz hurled
himself about upon the ground so violently that Tarzan could but cling
desperately to the leaping, turning, twisting body, and ere he had
struck a blow the knife was hurled from his hand by a heavy impact
against the earth, and Tarzan found himself defenseless.

During the rollings and squirmings of the next few minutes, Tarzan’s
hold was loosened a dozen times until finally an accidental
circumstance of those swift and everchanging evolutions gave him a new
hold with his right hand, which he realized was absolutely
unassailable.

His arm was passed beneath Terkoz’s arm from behind and his hand and
forearm encircled the back of Terkoz’s neck. It was the half-Nelson of
modern wrestling which the untaught ape-man had stumbled upon, but
superior reason showed him in an instant the value of the thing he had
discovered. It was the difference to him between life and death.

And so he struggled to encompass a similar hold with the left hand, and
in a few moments Terkoz’s bull neck was creaking beneath a full-Nelson.

There was no more lunging about now. The two lay perfectly still upon
the ground, Tarzan upon Terkoz’s back. Slowly the bullet head of the
ape was being forced lower and lower upon his chest.

Tarzan knew what the result would be. In an instant the neck would
break. Then there came to Terkoz’s rescue the same thing that had put
him in these sore straits—a man’s reasoning power.

“If I kill him,” thought Tarzan, “what advantage will it be to me? Will
it not rob the tribe of a great fighter? And if Terkoz be dead, he will
know nothing of my supremacy, while alive he will ever be an example to
the other apes.”

“_Ka-goda?_” hissed Tarzan in Terkoz’s ear, which, in ape tongue,
means, freely translated: “Do you surrender?”

For a moment there was no reply, and Tarzan added a few more ounces of
pressure, which elicited a horrified shriek of pain from the great
beast.

“_Ka-goda?_” repeated Tarzan.

“_Ka-goda!_” cried Terkoz.

“Listen,” said Tarzan, easing up a trifle, but not releasing his hold.
“I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all
the jungle there is none so great.

“You have said: ‘_Ka-goda_’ to me. All the tribe have heard. Quarrel no
more with your king or your people, for next time I shall kill you. Do
you understand?”

“_Huh_,” assented Terkoz.

“And you are satisfied?”

“_Huh_,” said the ape.

Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at their
vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of
their primeval forest haunts.

But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan
was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had
it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to
live—unharmed.

That afternoon as the tribe came together, as was their wont before
darkness settled on the jungle, Tarzan, his wounds washed in the waters
of the stream, called the old males about him.

“You have seen again to-day that Tarzan of the Apes is the greatest
among you,” he said.

“_Huh_,” they replied with one voice, “Tarzan is great.”

“Tarzan,” he continued, “is not an ape. He is not like his people. His
ways are not their ways, and so Tarzan is going back to the lair of his
own kind by the waters of the great lake which has no farther shore.
You must choose another to rule you, for Tarzan will not return.”

And thus young Lord Greystoke took the first step toward the goal which
he had set—the finding of other white men like himself.




CHAPTER XIII.
His Own Kind


The following morning, Tarzan, lame and sore from the wounds of his
battle with Terkoz, set out toward the west and the seacoast.

He traveled very slowly, sleeping in the jungle at night, and reaching
his cabin late the following morning.

For several days he moved about but little, only enough to gather what
fruits and nuts he required to satisfy the demands of hunger.

In ten days he was quite sound again, except for a terrible,
half-healed scar, which, starting above his left eye ran across the top
of his head, ending at the right ear. It was the mark left by Terkoz
when he had torn the scalp away.

During his convalescence Tarzan tried to fashion a mantle from the skin
of Sabor, which had lain all this time in the cabin. But he found the
hide had dried as stiff as a board, and as he knew naught of tanning,
he was forced to abandon his cherished plan.

Then he determined to filch what few garments he could from one of the
black men of Mbonga’s village, for Tarzan of the Apes had decided to
mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and
nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than
ornaments and clothing.

To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments
he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and
silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.

About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond
encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a
quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of
loot from some vanquished black.

About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by
himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his
father’s hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga’s hung over
his left shoulder.

The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his
mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his
hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall
before his eyes.

His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient
Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and
sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous
combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.

A personification, was Tarzan of the Apes, of the primitive man, the
hunter, the warrior.

With the noble poise of his handsome head upon those broad shoulders,
and the fire of life and intelligence in those fine, clear eyes, he
might readily have typified some demigod of a wild and warlike bygone
people of his ancient forest.

But of these things Tarzan did not think. He was worried because he had
not clothing to indicate to all the jungle folks that he was a man and
not an ape, and grave doubt often entered his mind as to whether he
might not yet become an ape.

Was not hair commencing to grow upon his face? All the apes had hair
upon theirs but the black men were entirely hairless, with very few
exceptions.

True, he had seen pictures in his books of men with great masses of
hair upon lip and cheek and chin, but, nevertheless, Tarzan was afraid.
Almost daily he whetted his keen knife and scraped and whittled at his
young beard to eradicate this degrading emblem of apehood.

And so he learned to shave—rudely and painfully, it is true—but,
nevertheless, effectively.

When he felt quite strong again, after his bloody battle with Terkoz,
Tarzan set off one morning towards Mbonga’s village. He was moving
carelessly along a winding jungle trail, instead of making his progress
through the trees, when suddenly he came face to face with a black
warrior.

The look of surprise on the savage face was almost comical, and before
Tarzan could unsling his bow the fellow had turned and fled down the
path crying out in alarm as though to others before him.

Tarzan took to the trees in pursuit, and in a few moments came in view
of the men desperately striving to escape.

There were three of them, and they were racing madly in single file
through the dense undergrowth.

Tarzan easily distanced them, nor did they see his silent passage above
their heads, nor note the crouching figure squatted upon a low branch
ahead of them beneath which the trail led them.

Tarzan let the first two pass beneath him, but as the third came
swiftly on, the quiet noose dropped about the black throat. A quick
jerk drew it taut.

There was an agonized scream from the victim, and his fellows turned to
see his struggling body rise as by magic slowly into the dense foliage
of the trees above.

With frightened shrieks they wheeled once more and plunged on in their
efforts to escape.

Tarzan dispatched his prisoner quickly and silently; removed the
weapons and ornaments, and—oh, the greatest joy of all—a handsome
deerskin breechcloth, which he quickly transferred to his own person.

Now indeed was he dressed as a man should be. None there was who could
now doubt his high origin. How he should have liked to have returned to
the tribe to parade before their envious gaze this wondrous finery.

Taking the body across his shoulder, he moved more slowly through the
trees toward the little palisaded village, for he again needed arrows.

As he approached quite close to the enclosure he saw an excited group
surrounding the two fugitives, who, trembling with fright and
exhaustion, were scarce able to recount the uncanny details of their
adventure.

Mirando, they said, who had been ahead of them a short distance, had
suddenly come screaming toward them, crying that a terrible white and
naked warrior was pursuing him. The three of them had hurried toward
the village as rapidly as their legs would carry them.

Again Mirando’s shrill cry of mortal terror had caused them to look
back, and there they had seen the most horrible sight—their companion’s
body flying upwards into the trees, his arms and legs beating the air
and his tongue protruding from his open mouth. No other sound did he
utter nor was there any creature in sight about him.

The villagers were worked up into a state of fear bordering on panic,
but wise old Mbonga affected to feel considerable skepticism regarding
the tale, and attributed the whole fabrication to their fright in the
face of some real danger.

“You tell us this great story,” he said, “because you do not dare to
speak the truth. You do not dare admit that when the lion sprang upon
Mirando you ran away and left him. You are cowards.”

Scarcely had Mbonga ceased speaking when a great crashing of branches
in the trees above them caused the blacks to look up in renewed terror.
The sight that met their eyes made even wise old Mbonga shudder, for
there, turning and twisting in the air, came the dead body of Mirando,
to sprawl with a sickening reverberation upon the ground at their feet.

With one accord the blacks took to their heels; nor did they stop until
the last of them was lost in the dense shadows of the surrounding
jungle.

Again Tarzan came down into the village and renewed his supply of
arrows and ate of the offering of food which the blacks had made to
appease his wrath.

Before he left he carried the body of Mirando to the gate of the
village, and propped it up against the palisade in such a way that the
dead face seemed to be peering around the edge of the gatepost down the
path which led to the jungle.

Then Tarzan returned, hunting, always hunting, to the cabin by the
beach.

It took a dozen attempts on the part of the thoroughly frightened
blacks to reenter their village, past the horrible, grinning face of
their dead fellow, and when they found the food and arrows gone they
knew, what they had only too well feared, that Mirando had seen the
evil spirit of the jungle.

That now seemed to them the logical explanation. Only those who saw
this terrible god of the jungle died; for was it not true that none
left alive in the village had ever seen him? Therefore, those who had
died at his hands must have seen him and paid the penalty with their
lives.

As long as they supplied him with arrows and food he would not harm
them unless they looked upon him, so it was ordered by Mbonga that in
addition to the food offering there should also be laid out an offering
of arrows for this Munan-go-Keewati, and this was done from then on.

If you ever chance to pass that far off African village you will still
see before a tiny thatched hut, built just without the village, a
little iron pot in which is a quantity of food, and beside it a quiver
of well-daubed arrows.

When Tarzan came in sight of the beach where stood his cabin, a strange
and unusual spectacle met his vision.

On the placid waters of the

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