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The Son of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #90 · 540,581 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Son of Tarzan

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs


        
Release date: November 1, 1993 [eBook #90]
                Most recently updated: June 23, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/90


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

[Illustration]




The Son Of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs




To Hulbert Burroughs




Contents

 I.
 II.
 III.
 IV.
 V.
 VI.
 VII.
 VIII.
 IX.
 X.
 XI.
 XII.
 XIII.
 XIV.
 XV.
 XVI.
 XVII.
 XVIII.
 XIX.
 XX.
 XXI.
 XXII.
 XXIII.
 XXIV.
 XXV.
 XXVI.
 XXVII.



I.


The long boat of the _Marjorie W._ was floating down the broad Ugambi
with ebb tide and current. Her crew were lazily enjoying this respite
from the arduous labor of rowing up stream. Three miles below them lay
the _Marjorie W._ herself, quite ready to sail so soon as they should
have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently
the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping
to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a
cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange
apparition of a man.

“Wot the ’ell?” ejaculated one of the crew.

“A white man!” muttered the mate, and then: “Man the oars, boys, and
we’ll just pull over an’ see what he wants.”

When they came close to the shore they saw an emaciated creature with
scant white locks tangled and matted. The thin, bent body was naked but
for a loin cloth. Tears were rolling down the sunken pock-marked
cheeks. The man jabbered at them in a strange tongue.

“Rooshun,” hazarded the mate. “Savvy English?” he called to the man.

He did, and in that tongue, brokenly and haltingly, as though it had
been many years since he had used it, he begged them to take him with
them away from this awful country. Once on board the _Marjorie W._ the
stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation, hardships, and
torture, extending over a period of ten years. How he happened to have
come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had
forgotten the incidents of his life prior to the frightful ordeals that
had wrecked him mentally and physically. He did not even tell them his
true name, and so they knew him only as Michael Sabrov, nor was there
any resemblance between this sorry wreck and the virile, though
unprincipled, Alexis Paulvitch of old.

It had been ten years since the Russian had escaped the fate of his
friend, the arch-fiend Rokoff, and not once, but many times during
those ten years had Paulvitch cursed the fate that had given to
Nicholas Rokoff death and immunity from suffering while it had meted to
him the hideous terrors of an existence infinitely worse than the death
that persistently refused to claim him.

Paulvitch had taken to the jungle when he had seen the beasts of Tarzan
and their savage lord swarm the deck of the _Kincaid_, and in his
terror lest Tarzan pursue and capture him he had stumbled on deep into
the jungle, only to fall at last into the hands of one of the savage
cannibal tribes that had felt the weight of Rokoff’s evil temper and
cruel brutality. Some strange whim of the chief of this tribe saved
Paulvitch from death only to plunge him into a life of misery and
torture. For ten years he had been the butt of the village, beaten and
stoned by the women and children, cut and slashed and disfigured by the
warriors; a victim of often recurring fevers of the most malignant
variety. Yet he did not die. Smallpox laid its hideous clutches upon
him; leaving him unspeakably branded with its repulsive marks. Between
it and the attentions of the tribe the countenance of Alexis Paulvitch
was so altered that his own mother could not have recognized in the
pitiful mask he called his face a single familiar feature. A few
scraggly, yellow-white locks had supplanted the thick, dark hair that
had covered his head. His limbs were bent and twisted, he walked with a
shuffling, unsteady gait, his body doubled forward. His teeth were
gone—knocked out by his savage masters. Even his mentality was but a
sorry mockery of what it once had been.

They took him aboard the _Marjorie W._, and there they fed and nursed
him. He gained a little in strength; but his appearance never altered
for the better—a human derelict, battered and wrecked, they had found
him; a human derelict, battered and wrecked, he would remain until
death claimed him. Though still in his thirties, Alexis Paulvitch could
easily have passed for eighty. Inscrutable Nature had demanded of the
accomplice a greater penalty than his principal had paid.

In the mind of Alexis Paulvitch there lingered no thoughts of
revenge—only a dull hatred of the man whom he and Rokoff had tried to
break, and failed. There was hatred, too, of the memory of Rokoff, for
Rokoff had led him into the horrors he had undergone. There was hatred
of the police of a score of cities from which he had had to flee. There
was hatred of law, hatred of order, hatred of everything. Every moment
of the man’s waking life was filled with morbid thought of hatred—he
had become mentally as he was physically in outward appearance, the
personification of the blighting emotion of Hate. He had little or
nothing to do with the men who had rescued him. He was too weak to work
and too morose for company, and so they quickly left him alone to his
own devices.

The _Marjorie W._ had been chartered by a syndicate of wealthy
manufacturers, equipped with a laboratory and a staff of scientists,
and sent out to search for some natural product which the manufacturers
who footed the bills had been importing from South America at an
enormous cost. What the product was none on board the _Marjorie W._
knew except the scientists, nor is it of any moment to us, other than
that it led the ship to a certain island off the coast of Africa after
Alexis Paulvitch had been taken aboard.

The ship lay at anchor off the coast for several weeks. The monotony of
life aboard her became trying for the crew. They went often ashore, and
finally Paulvitch asked to accompany them—he too was tiring of the
blighting sameness of existence upon the ship.

The island was heavily timbered. Dense jungle ran down almost to the
beach. The scientists were far inland, prosecuting their search for the
valuable commodity that native rumor upon the mainland had led them to
believe might be found here in marketable quantity. The ship’s company
fished, hunted, and explored. Paulvitch shuffled up and down the beach,
or lay in the shade of the great trees that skirted it. One day, as the
men were gathered at a little distance inspecting the body of a panther
that had fallen to the gun of one of them who had been hunting inland,
Paulvitch lay sleeping beneath his tree. He was awakened by the touch
of a hand upon his shoulder. With a start he sat up to see a huge,
anthropoid ape squatting at his side, inspecting him intently. The
Russian was thoroughly frightened. He glanced toward the sailors—they
were a couple of hundred yards away. Again the ape plucked at his
shoulder, jabbering plaintively. Paulvitch saw no menace in the
inquiring gaze, or in the attitude of the beast. He got slowly to his
feet. The ape rose at his side.

Half doubled, the man shuffled cautiously away toward the sailors. The
ape moved with him, taking one of his arms. They had come almost to the
little knot of men before they were seen, and by this time Paulvitch
had become assured that the beast meant no harm. The animal evidently
was accustomed to the association of human beings. It occurred to the
Russian that the ape represented a certain considerable money value,
and before they reached the sailors he had decided he should be the one
to profit by it.

When the men looked up and saw the oddly paired couple shuffling toward
them they were filled with amazement, and started on a run toward the
two. The ape showed no sign of fear. Instead he grasped each sailor by
the shoulder and peered long and earnestly into his face. Having
inspected them all he returned to Paulvitch’s side, disappointment
written strongly upon his countenance and in his carriage.

The men were delighted with him. They gathered about, asking Paulvitch
many questions, and examining his companion. The Russian told them that
the ape was his—nothing further would he offer—but kept harping
continually upon the same theme, “The ape is mine. The ape is mine.”
Tiring of Paulvitch, one of the men essayed a pleasantry. Circling
about behind the ape he prodded the anthropoid in the back with a pin.
Like a flash the beast wheeled upon its tormentor, and, in the briefest
instant of turning, the placid, friendly animal was metamorphosed to a
frenzied demon of rage. The broad grin that had sat upon the sailor’s
face as he perpetrated his little joke froze to an expression of
terror. He attempted to dodge the long arms that reached for him; but,
failing, drew a long knife that hung at his belt. With a single wrench
the ape tore the weapon from the man’s grasp and flung it to one side,
then his yellow fangs were buried in the sailor’s shoulder.

With sticks and knives the man’s companions fell upon the beast, while
Paulvitch danced around the cursing, snarling pack mumbling and
screaming pleas and threats. He saw his visions of wealth rapidly
dissipating before the weapons of the sailors.

The ape, however, proved no easy victim to the superior numbers that
seemed fated to overwhelm him. Rising from the sailor who had
precipitated the battle he shook his giant shoulders, freeing himself
from two of the men that were clinging to his back, and with mighty
blows of his open palms felled one after another of his attackers,
leaping hither and thither with the agility of a small monkey.

The fight had been witnessed by the captain and mate who were just
landing from the _Marjorie W._, and Paulvitch saw these two now running
forward with drawn revolvers while the two sailors who had brought them
ashore trailed at their heels. The ape stood looking about him at the
havoc he had wrought, but whether he was awaiting a renewal of the
attack or was deliberating which of his foes he should exterminate
first Paulvitch could not guess. What he could guess, however, was that
the moment the two officers came within firing distance of the beast
they would put an end to him in short order unless something were done
and done quickly to prevent. The ape had made no move to attack the
Russian but even so the man was none too sure of what might happen were
he to interfere with the savage beast, now thoroughly aroused to
bestial rage, and with the smell of new spilled blood fresh in its
nostrils. For an instant he hesitated, and then again there rose before
him the dreams of affluence which this great anthropoid would doubtless
turn to realities once Paulvitch had landed him safely in some great
metropolis like London.

The captain was shouting to him now to stand aside that he might have a
shot at the animal; but instead Paulvitch shuffled to the ape’s side,
and though the man’s hair quivered at its roots he mastered his fear
and laid hold of the ape’s arm.

“Come!” he commanded, and tugged to pull the beast from among the
sailors, many of whom were now sitting up in wide eyed fright or
crawling away from their conqueror upon hands and knees.

Slowly the ape permitted itself to be led to one side, nor did it show
the slightest indication of a desire to harm the Russian. The captain
came to a halt a few paces from the odd pair.

“Get aside, Sabrov!” he commanded. “I’ll put that brute where he won’t
chew up any more able seamen.”

“It wasn’t his fault, captain,” pleaded Paulvitch. “Please don’t shoot
him. The men started it—they attacked him first. You see, he’s
perfectly gentle—and he’s mine—he’s mine—he’s mine! I won’t let you
kill him,” he concluded, as his half-wrecked mentality pictured anew
the pleasure that money would buy in London—money that he could not
hope to possess without some such windfall as the ape represented.

The captain lowered his weapon. “The men started it, did they?” he
repeated. “How about that?” and he turned toward the sailors who had by
this time picked themselves from the ground, none of them much the
worse for his experience except the fellow who had been the cause of
it, and who would doubtless nurse a sore shoulder for a week or so.

“Simpson done it,” said one of the men. “He stuck a pin into the monk
from behind, and the monk got him—which served him bloomin’ well
right—an’ he got the rest of us, too, for which I can’t blame him,
since we all jumped him to once.”

The captain looked at Simpson, who sheepishly admitted the truth of the
allegation, then he stepped over to the ape as though to discover for
himself the sort of temper the beast possessed, but it was noticeable
that he kept his revolver cocked and leveled as he did so. However, he
spoke soothingly to the animal who squatted at the Russian’s side
looking first at one and then another of the sailors. As the captain
approached him the ape half rose and waddled forward to meet him. Upon
his countenance was the same strange, searching expression that had
marked his scrutiny of each of the sailors he had first encountered. He
came quite close to the officer and laid a paw upon one of the man’s
shoulders, studying his face intently for a long moment, then came the
expression of disappointment accompanied by what was almost a human
sigh, as he turned away to peer in the same curious fashion into the
faces of the mate and the two sailors who had arrived with the
officers. In each instance he sighed and passed on, returning at length
to Paulvitch’s side, where he squatted down once more; thereafter
evincing little or no interest in any of the other men, and apparently
forgetful of his recent battle with them.

When the party returned aboard the _Marjorie W._, Paulvitch was
accompanied by the ape, who seemed anxious to follow him. The captain
interposed no obstacles to the arrangement, and so the great anthropoid
was tacitly admitted to membership in the ship’s company. Once aboard
he examined each new face minutely, evincing the same disappointment in
each instance that had marked his scrutiny of the others. The officers
and scientists aboard often discussed the beast, but they were unable
to account satisfactorily for the strange ceremony with which he
greeted each new face. Had he been discovered upon the mainland, or any
other place than the almost unknown island that had been his home, they
would have concluded that he had formerly been a pet of man; but that
theory was not tenable in the face of the isolation of his uninhabited
island. He seemed continually to be searching for someone, and during
the first days of the return voyage from the island he was often
discovered nosing about in various parts of the ship; but after he had
seen and examined each face of the ship’s company, and explored every
corner of the vessel he lapsed into utter indifference of all about
him. Even the Russian elicited only casual interest when he brought him
food. At other times the ape appeared merely to tolerate him. He never
showed affection for him, or for anyone else upon the _Marjorie W._,
nor did he at any time evince any indication of the savage temper that
had marked his resentment of the attack of the sailors upon him at the
time that he had come among them.

Most of his time was spent in the eye of the ship scanning the horizon
ahead, as though he were endowed with sufficient reason to know that
the vessel was bound for some port where there would be other human
beings to undergo his searching scrutiny. All in all, Ajax, as he had
been dubbed, was considered the most remarkable and intelligent ape
that any one aboard the _Marjorie W._ ever had seen. Nor was his
intelligence the only remarkable attribute he owned. His stature and
physique were, for an ape, awe inspiring. That he was old was quite
evident, but if his age had impaired his physical or mental powers in
the slightest it was not apparent.

And so at length the _Marjorie W._ came to England, and there the
officers and the scientists, filled with compassion for the pitiful
wreck of a man they had rescued from the jungles, furnished Paulvitch
with funds and bid him and his Ajax Godspeed.

Upon the dock and all through the journey to London the Russian had his
hands full with Ajax. Each new face of the thousands that came within
the anthropoid’s ken must be carefully scrutinized, much to the horror
of many of his victims; but at last, failing, apparently, to discover
whom he sought, the great ape relapsed into morbid indifference, only
occasionally evincing interest in a passing face.

In London, Paulvitch went directly with his prize to a certain famous
animal trainer. This man was much impressed with Ajax with the result
that he agreed to train him for a lion’s share of the profits of
exhibiting him, and in the meantime to provide for the keep of both the
ape and his owner.

And so came Ajax to London, and there was forged another link in the
chain of strange circumstances that were to affect the lives of many
people.




II.


Mr. Harold Moore was a bilious-countenanced, studious young man. He
took himself very seriously, and life, and his work, which latter was
the tutoring of the young son of a British nobleman. He felt that his
charge was not making the progress that his parents had a right to
expect, and he was now conscientiously explaining this fact to the
boy’s mother.

“It’s not that he isn’t bright,” he was saying; “if that were true I
should have hopes of succeeding, for then I might bring to bear all my
energies in overcoming his obtuseness; but the trouble is that he is
exceptionally intelligent, and learns so quickly that I can find no
fault in the matter of the preparation of his lessons. What concerns
me, however, is the fact that he evidently takes no interest whatever
in the subjects we are studying. He merely accomplishes each lesson as
a task to be rid of as quickly as possible and I am sure that no lesson
ever again enters his mind until the hours of study and recitation once
more arrive. His sole interests seem to be feats of physical prowess
and the reading of everything that he can get hold of relative to
savage beasts and the lives and customs of uncivilized peoples; but
particularly do stories of animals appeal to him. He will sit for hours
together poring over the work of some African explorer, and upon two
occasions I have found him setting up in bed at night reading Carl
Hagenbeck’s book on men and beasts.”

The boy’s mother tapped her foot nervously upon the hearth rug.

“You discourage this, of course?” she ventured.

Mr. Moore shuffled embarrassedly.

“I—ah—essayed to take the book from him,” he replied, a slight flush
mounting his sallow cheek; “but—ah—your son is quite muscular for one
so young.”

“He wouldn’t let you take it?” asked the mother.

“He would not,” confessed the tutor. “He was perfectly good natured
about it; but he insisted upon pretending that he was a gorilla and
that I was a chimpanzee attempting to steal food from him. He leaped
upon me with the most savage growls I ever heard, lifted me completely
above his head, hurled me upon his bed, and after going through a
pantomime indicative of choking me to death he stood upon my prostrate
form and gave voice to a most fearsome shriek, which he explained was
the victory cry of a bull ape. Then he carried me to the door, shoved
me out into the hall and locked me from his room.”

For several minutes neither spoke again. It was the boy’s mother who
finally broke the silence.

“It is very necessary, Mr. Moore,” she said, “that you do everything in
your power to discourage this tendency in Jack, he—”; but she got no
further. A loud “Whoop!” from the direction of the window brought them
both to their feet. The room was upon the second floor of the house,
and opposite the window to which their attention had been attracted was
a large tree, a branch of which spread to within a few feet of the
sill. Upon this branch now they both discovered the subject of their
recent conversation, a tall, well-built boy, balancing with ease upon
the bending limb and uttering loud shouts of glee as he noted the
terrified expressions upon the faces of his audience.

The mother and tutor both rushed toward the window but before they had
crossed half the room the boy had leaped nimbly to the sill and entered
the apartment with them.

“‘The wild man from Borneo has just come to town,’” he sang, dancing a
species of war dance about his terrified mother and scandalized tutor,
and ending up by throwing his arms about the former’s neck and kissing
her upon either cheek.

“Oh, Mother,” he cried, “there’s a wonderful, educated ape being shown
at one of the music halls. Willie Grimsby saw it last night. He says it
can do everything but talk. It rides a bicycle, eats with knife and
fork, counts up to ten, and ever so many other wonderful things, and
can I go and see it too? Oh, please, Mother—please let me.”

Patting the boy’s cheek affectionately, the mother shook her head
negatively. “No, Jack,” she said; “you know I do not approve of such
exhibitions.”

“I don’t see why not, Mother,” replied the boy. “All the other fellows
go and they go to the Zoo, too, and you’ll never let me do even that.
Anybody’d think I was a girl—or a mollycoddle. Oh, Father,” he
exclaimed, as the door opened to admit a tall gray-eyed man. “Oh,
Father, can’t I go?”

“Go where, my son?” asked the newcomer.

“He wants to go to a music hall to see a trained ape,” said the mother,
looking warningly at her husband.

“Who, Ajax?” questioned the man.

The boy nodded.

“Well, I don’t know that I blame you, my son,” said the father, “I
wouldn’t mind seeing him myself. They say he is very wonderful, and
that for an anthropoid he is unusually large. Let’s all go, Jane—what
do you say?” And he turned toward his wife, but that lady only shook
her head in a most positive manner, and turning to Mr. Moore asked him
if it was not time that he and Jack were in the study for the morning
recitations. When the two had left she turned toward her husband.

“John,” she said, “something must be done to discourage Jack’s tendency
toward anything that may excite the cravings for the savage life which
I fear he has inherited from you. You know from your own experience how
strong is the call of the wild at times. You know that often it has
necessitated a stern struggle on your part to resist the almost insane
desire which occasionally overwhelms you to plunge once again into the
jungle life that claimed you for so many years, and at the same time
you know, better than any other, how frightful a fate it would be for
Jack, were the trail to the savage jungle made either alluring or easy
to him.”

“I doubt if there is any danger of his inheriting a taste for jungle
life from me,” replied the man, “for I cannot conceive that such a
thing may be transmitted from father to son. And sometimes, Jane, I
think that in your solicitude for his future you go a bit too far in
your restrictive measures. His love for animals—his desire, for
example, to see this trained ape—is only natural in a healthy, normal
boy of his age. Just because he wants to see Ajax is no indication that
he would wish to marry an ape, and even should he, far be it from you
Jane to have the right to cry ‘shame!’” and John Clayton, Lord
Greystoke, put an arm about his wife, laughing good-naturedly down into
her upturned face before he bent his head and kissed her. Then, more
seriously, he continued: “You have never told Jack anything concerning
my early life, nor have you permitted me to, and in this I think that
you have made a mistake. Had I been able to tell him of the experiences
of Tarzan of the Apes I could doubtless have taken much of the glamour
and romance from jungle life that naturally surrounds it in the minds
of those who have had no experience of it. He might then have profited
by my experience, but now, should the jungle lust ever claim him, he
will have nothing to guide him but his own impulses, and I know how
powerful these may be in the wrong direction at times.”

But Lady Greystoke only shook her head as she had a hundred other times
when the subject had claimed her attention in the past.

“No, John,” she insisted, “I shall never give my consent to the
implanting in Jack’s mind of any suggestion of the savage life which we
both wish to preserve him from.”

It was evening before the subject was again referred to and then it was
raised by Jack himself. He had been sitting, curled in a large chair,
reading, when he suddenly looked up and addressed his father.

“Why,” he asked, coming directly to the point, “can’t I go and see
Ajax?”

“Your mother does not approve,” replied his father.

“Do you?”

“That is not the question,” evaded Lord Greystoke. “It is enough that
your mother objects.”

“I am going to see him,” announced the boy, after a few moments of
thoughtful silence. “I am not different from Willie Grimsby, or any
other of the fellows who have been to see him. It did not harm them and
it will not harm me. I could go without telling you; but I would not do
that. So I tell you now, beforehand, that I am going to see Ajax.”

There was nothing disrespectful or defiant in the boy’s tone or manner.
His was merely a dispassionate statement of facts. His father could
scarce repress either a smile or a show of the admiration he felt for
the manly course his son had pursued.

“I admire your candor, Jack,” he said. “Permit me to be candid, as
well. If you go to see Ajax without permission, I shall punish you. I
have never inflicted corporal punishment upon you, but I warn you that
should you disobey your mother’s wishes in this instance, I shall.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy; and then: “I shall tell you, sir, when I
have been to see Ajax.”

Mr. Moore’s room was next to that of his youthful charge, and it was
the tutor’s custom to have a look into the boy’s each evening as the
former was about to retire. This evening he was particularly careful
not to neglect his duty, for he had just come from a conference with
the boy’s father and mother in which it had been impressed upon him
that he must exercise the greatest care to prevent Jack visiting the
music hall where Ajax was being shown. So, when he opened the boy’s
door at about half after nine, he was greatly excited, though not
entirely surprised to find the future Lord Greystoke fully dressed for
the street and about to crawl from his open bed room window.

Mr. Moore made a rapid spring across the apartment; but the waste of
energy was unnecessary, for when the boy heard him within the chamber
and realized that he had been discovered he turned back as though to
relinquish his planned adventure.

“Where were you going?” panted the excited Mr. Moore.

“I am going to see Ajax,” replied the boy, quietly.

“I am astonished,” cried Mr. Moore; but a moment later he was
infinitely more astonished, for the boy, approaching close to him,
suddenly seized him about the waist, lifted him from his feet and threw
him face downward upon the bed, shoving his face deep into a soft
pillow.

“Be quiet,” admonished the victor, “or I’ll choke you.”

Mr. Moore struggled; but his efforts were in vain. Whatever else Tarzan
of the Apes may or may not have handed down to his son he had at least
bequeathed him almost as marvelous a physique as he himself had
possessed at the same age. The tutor was as putty in the boy’s hands.
Kneeling upon him, Jack tore strips from a sheet and bound the man’s
hands behind his back. Then he rolled him over and stuffed a gag of the
same material between his teeth, securing it with a strip wound about
the back of his victim’s head. All the while he talked in a low,
conversational tone.

“I am Waja, chief of the Waji,” he explained, “and you are Mohammed
Dubn, the Arab sheik, who would murder my people and steal my ivory,”
and he dexterously trussed Mr. Moore’s hobbled ankles up behind to meet
his hobbled wrists. “Ah—ha! Villain! I have you in me power at last. I
go; but I shall return!” And the son of Tarzan skipped across the room,
slipped through the open window, and slid to liberty by way of the down
spout from an eaves trough.

Mr. Moore wriggled and struggled about the bed. He was sure that he
should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he
managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him
back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before
he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical
fear that had claimed him he now lay quietly searching for some means
of escape from his dilemma. It finally occurred to him that the room in
which Lord and Lady Greystoke had been sitting when he left them was
directly beneath that in which he lay upon the floor. He knew that some
time had elapsed since he had come up stairs and that they might be
gone by this time, for it seemed to him that he had struggled about the
bed, in his efforts to free himself, for an eternity. But the best that
he could do was to attempt to attract attention from below, and so,
after many failures, he managed to work himself into a position in
which he could tap the toe of his boot against the floor. This he
proceeded to do at short intervals, until, after what seemed a very
long time, he was rewarded by hearing footsteps ascending the stairs,
and presently a knock upon the door. Mr. Moore tapped vigorously with
his toe—he could not reply in any other way. The knock was repeated
after a moment’s silence. Again Mr. Moore tapped. Would they never open
the door! Laboriously he rolled in the direction of succor. If he could
get his back against the door he could then tap upon its base, when
surely he must be heard. The knocking was repeated a little louder, and
finally a voice called: “Mr. Jack!”

It was one of the house men—Mr. Moore recognized the fellow’s voice. He
came near to bursting a blood vessel in an endeavor to scream “come in”
through the stifling gag. After a moment the man knocked again, quite
loudly and again called the boy’s name. Receiving no reply he turned
the knob, and at the same instant a sudden recollection filled the
tutor anew with numbing terror—he had, himself, locked the door behind
him when he had entered the room.

He heard the servant try the door several times and then depart. Upon
which Mr. Moore swooned.

In the meantime Jack was enjoying to the full the stolen pleasures of
the music hall. He had reached the temple of mirth just as Ajax’s act
was commencing, and having purchased a box seat was now leaning
breathlessly over the rail watching every move of the great ape, his
eyes wide in wonder. The trainer was not slow to note the boy’s
handsome, eager face, and as one of Ajax’s biggest hits consisted in an
entry to one or more boxes during his performance, ostensibly in search
of a long-lost relative, as the trainer explained, the man realized the
effectiveness of sending him into the box with the handsome boy, who,
doubtless, would be terror stricken by proximity to the shaggy,
powerful beast.

When the time came, therefore, for the ape to return from the wings in
reply to an encore the trainer directed its attention to the boy who
chanced to be the sole occupant of the box in which he sat. With a
spring the huge anthropoid leaped from the stage to the boy’s side; but
if the trainer had looked for a laughable scene of fright he was
mistaken. A broad smile lighted the boy’s features as he laid his hand
upon the shaggy arm of his visitor. The ape, grasping the boy by either
shoulder, peered long and earnestly into his face, while the latter
stroked his head and talked to him in a low voice.

Never had Ajax devoted so long a time to an examination of another as
he did in this instance. He seemed troubled and not a little excited,
jabbering and mumbling to the boy, and now caressing him, as the
trainer had never seen him caress a human being before. Presently he
clambered over into the box with him and snuggled down close to the
boy’s side. The audience was delighted; but they were still more
delighted when the trainer, the period of his act having elapsed,
attempted to persuade Ajax to leave the box. The ape would not budge.
The manager, becoming excited at the delay, urged the trainer to
greater haste, but when the latter entered the box to drag away the
reluctant Ajax he was met by bared fangs and menacing growls.

The audience was delirious with joy. They cheered the ape. They cheered
the boy, and they hooted and jeered at the trainer and the manager,
which luckless individual had inadvertently shown himself and attempted
to assist the trainer.

Finally, reduced to desperation and realizing that this show of mutiny
upon the part of his valuable possession might render the animal
worthless for exhibition purposes in the future if not immediately
subdued, the trainer had hastened to his dressing room and procured a
heavy whip. With this he now returned to the box; but when he had
threatened Ajax with it but once he found himself facing two infuriated
enemies instead of one, for the boy had leaped to his feet, and seizing
a chair was standing ready at the ape’s side to defend his new found
friend. There was no longer a smile upon his handsome face. In his gray
eyes was an expression which gave the trainer pause, and beside him
stood the giant anthropoid growling and ready.

What might have happened, but for a timely interruption, may only be
surmised; but that the trainer would have received a severe mauling, if
nothing more, was clearly indicated by the attitudes of the two who
faced him.

It was a pale-faced man who rushed into the Greystoke library to
announce that he had found Jack’s door locked and had been able to
obtain no response to his repeated knocking and calling other than a
strange tapping and the sound of what might have been a body moving
about upon the floor.

Four steps at a time John Clayton took the stairs that led to the floor
above. His wife and the servant hurried after him. Once he called his
son’s name in a loud voice; but receiving no reply he launched his
great weight, backed by all the undiminished power of his giant
muscles, against the heavy door. With a snapping of iron butts and a
splintering of wood the obstacle burst inward.

At its foot lay the body of the unconscious Mr. Moore, across whom it
fell with a resounding thud. Through the opening leaped Tarzan, and a
moment later the room was flooded with light from a dozen electric
bulbs.

It was several minutes before the tutor was discovered, so completely
had the door covered him; but finally he was dragged forth, his gag and
bonds cut away, and a liberal application of cold water had hastened
returning consciousness.

“Where is Jack?” was John Clayton’s first question, and then; “Who did
this?” as the memory of Rokoff and the fear of a second abduction
seized him.

Slowly Mr. Moore staggered to his feet. His gaze wandered about the
room. Gradually he collected his scattered wits. The details of his
recent harrowing experience returned to him.

“I tender my resignation, sir, to take effect at once,” were his first
words. “You do not need a tutor for your son—what he needs is a wild
animal trainer.”

“But where is he?” cried Lady Greystoke.

“He has gone to see Ajax.”

It was with difficulty that Tarzan restrained a smile, and after
satisfying himself that the tutor was more scared than injured, he
ordered his closed car around and departed in the direction of a
certain well-known music hall.




III.


As the trainer, with raised lash, hesitated an instant at the entrance
to the box where the boy and the ape confronted him, a tall
broad-shouldered man pushed past him and entered. As his eyes fell upon
the newcomer a slight flush mounted the boy’s cheeks.

“Father!” he exclaimed.

The ape gave one look at the English lord, and then leaped toward him,
calling out in excited jabbering. The man, his eyes going wide in
astonishment, stopped as though turned to stone.

“Akut!” he cried.

The boy looked, bewildered, from the ape to his father, and from his
father to the ape. The trainer’s jaw dropped as he listened to what
followed, for from the lips of the Englishman flowed the gutturals of
an ape that were answered in kind by the huge anthropoid that now clung
to him.

And from the wings a hideously bent and disfigured old man watched the
tableau in the box, his pock-marked features working spasmodically in
varying expressions that might have marked every sensation in the gamut
from pleasure to terror.

“Long have I looked for you, Tarzan,” said Akut. “Now that I have found
you I shall come to your jungle and live there always.”

The man stroked the beast’s head. Through his mind there was running
rapidly a train of recollection that carried him far into the depths of
the primeval African forest where this huge, man-like beast had fought
shoulder to shoulder with him years before. He saw the black Mugambi
wielding his deadly knob-stick, and beside them, with bared fangs and
bristling whiskers, Sheeta the terrible; and pressing close behind the
savage and the savage panther, the hideous apes of Akut. The man
sighed. Strong within him surged the jungle lust that he had thought
dead. Ah! if he could go back even for a brief month of it, to feel
again the brush of leafy branches against his naked hide; to smell the
musty rot of dead vegetation—frankincense and myrrh to the jungle born;
to sense the noiseless coming of the great carnivora upon his trail; to
hunt and to be hunted; to kill! The picture was alluring. And then came
another picture—a sweet-faced woman, still young and beautiful;
friends; a home; a son. He shrugged his giant shoulders.

“It cannot be, Akut,” he said; “but if you would return, I shall see
that it is done. You could not be happy here—I may not be happy there.”

The trainer stepped forward. The ape bared his fangs, growling.

“Go with him, Akut,” said Tarzan of the Apes. “I will come and see you
tomorrow.”

The beast moved sullenly to the trainer’s side. The latter, at John
Clayton’s request, told where they might be found. Tarzan turned toward
his son.

“Come!” he said, and the two left the theater. Neither spoke for
several minutes after they had entered the limousine. It was the boy
who broke the silence.

“The ape knew you,” he said, “and you spoke together in the ape’s
tongue. How did the ape know you, and how did you learn his language?”

And then, briefly and for the first time, Tarzan of the Apes told his
son of his early life—of the birth in the jungle, of the death of his
parents, and of how Kala, the great she ape had suckled and raised him
from infancy almost to manhood. He told him, too, of the dangers and
the horrors of the jungle; of the great beasts that stalked one by day
and by night; of the periods of drought, and of the cataclysmic rains;
of hunger; of cold; of intense heat; of nakedness and fear and
suffering. He told him of all those things that seem most horrible to
the creature of civilization in the hope that the knowledge of them
might expunge from the lad’s mind any inherent desire for the jungle.
Yet they were the very things that made the memory of the jungle what
it was to Tarzan—that made up the composite jungle life he loved. And
in the telling he forgot one thing—the principal thing—that the boy at
his side, listening with eager ears, was the son of Tarzan of the Apes.

After the boy had been tucked away in bed—and without the threatened
punishment—John Clayton told his wife of the events of the evening, and
that he had at last acquainted the boy with the facts of his jungle
life. The mother, who had long foreseen that her son must some time
know of those frightful years during which his father had roamed the
jungle, a naked, savage beast of prey, only shook her head, hoping
against hope that the lure she knew was still strong in the father’s
breast had not been transmitted to his son.

Tarzan visited Akut the following day, but though Jack begged to be
allowed to accompany him he was refused. This time Tarzan saw the
pock-marked old owner of the ape, whom he did not recognize as the wily
Paulvitch of former days. Tarzan, influenced by Akut’s pleadings,
broached the question of the ape’s purchase; but Paulvitch would not
name any price, saying that he would consider the matter.

When Tarzan returned home Jack was all excitement to hear the details
of his visit, and finally suggested that his father buy the ape and
bring it home. Lady Greystoke was horrified at the suggestion. The boy
was insistent. Tarzan explained that he had wished to purchase Akut and
return him to his jungle home, and to this the mother assented. Jack
asked to be allowed to visit the ape, but again he was met with flat
refusal. He had the address, however, which the trainer had given his
father, and two days later he found the opportunity to elude his new
tutor—who had replaced the terrified Mr. Moore—and after a considerable
search through a section of London which he had never before visited,
he found the smelly little quarters of the pock-marked old man. The old
fellow himself replied to his knocking, and when he stated that he had
come to see Ajax, opened the door and admitted him to the little room
which he and the great ape occupied. In former years Paulvitch had been
a fastidious scoundrel; but ten years of hideous life among the
cannibals of Africa had eradicated the last vestige of niceness from
his habits. His apparel was wrinkled and soiled. His hands were
unwashed, his few straggling locks uncombed. His room was a jumble of
filthy disorder. As the boy entered he saw the great ape squatting upon
the bed, the coverlets of which were a tangled wad of filthy blankets
and ill-smelling quilts. At sight of the youth the ape leaped to the
floor and shuffled forward. The man, not recognizing his visitor and
fearing that the ape meant mischief, stepped between them, ordering the
ape back to the bed.

“He will not hurt me,” cried the boy. “We are friends, and before, he
was my father’s friend. They knew one another in the jungle. My father
is Lord Greystoke. He does not know that I have come here. My mother
forbid my coming; but I wished to see Ajax, and I will pay you if you
will let me come here often and see him.”

At the mention of the boy’s identity Paulvitch’s eyes narrowed. Since
he had first seen Tarzan again from the wings of the theater there had
been forming in his deadened brain the beginnings of a desire for
revenge. It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute
to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness,
and so now it was that Alexis Paulvitch was slowly recalling the events
of his past life and as he did so laying at the door of the man whom he
and Rokoff had so assiduously attempted to ruin and murder all the
misfortunes that had befallen him in the failure of their various
schemes against their intended victim.

He saw at first no way in which he could, with safety to himself, wreak
vengeance upon Tarzan through the medium of Tarzan’s son; but that
great possibilities for revenge lay in the boy was apparent to him, and
so he determined to cultivate the lad in the hope that fate would play
into his hands in some way in the future. He told the boy all that he
knew of his father’s past life in the jungle and when he found that the
boy had been kept in ignorance of all these things for so many years,
and that he had been forbidden visiting the zoological gardens; that he
had had to bind and gag his tutor to find an opportunity to come to the
music hall and see Ajax, he guessed immediately the nature of the great
fear that lay in the hearts of the boy’s parents—that he might crave
the jungle as his father had craved it.

And so Paulvitch encouraged the boy to come and see him often, and
always he played upon the lad’s craving for tales of the savage world
with which Paulvitch was all too familiar. He left him alone with Akut
much, and it was not long until he was surprised to learn that the boy
could make the great beast understand him—that he had actually learned
many of the words of the primitive language of the anthropoids.

During this period Tarzan came several times to visit Paulvitch. He
seemed anxious to purchase Ajax, and at last he told the man frankly
that he was prompted not only by a desire upon his part to return the
beast to the liberty of his native jungle; but also because his wife
feared that in some way her son might learn the whereabouts of the ape
and through his attachment for the beast become imbued with the roving
instinct which, as Tarzan explained to Paulvitch, had so influenced his
own life.

The Russian could scarce repress a smile as he listened to Lord
Greystoke’s words, since scarce a half hour had passed since the time
the future Lord Greystoke had been sitting upon the disordered bed
jabbering away to Ajax with all the fluency of a born ape.

It was during this interview that a plan occurred to Paulvitch, and as
a result of it he agreed to accept a certain fabulous sum for the ape,
and upon receipt of the money to deliver the beast to a vessel that was
sailing south from Dover for Africa two days later. He had a double
purpose in accepting Clayton’s offer. Primarily, the money
consideration influenced him strongly, as the ape was no longer a
source of revenue to him, having consistently refused to perform upon
the stage after having discovered Tarzan. It was as though the beast
had suffered himself to be brought from his jungle home and exhibited
before thousands of curious spectators for the sole purpose of
searching out his long lost friend and master, and, having found him,
considered further mingling with the common herd of humans unnecessary.
However that may be, the fact remained that no amount of persuasion
could influence him even to show himself upon the music hall stage, and
upon the single occasion that the trainer attempted force the results
were such that the unfortunate man considered himself lucky to have
escaped with his life. All that saved him was the accidental presence
of Jack Clayton, who had been permitted to visit the animal in the
dressing room reserved for him at the music hall, and had immediately
interfered when he saw that the savage beast meant serious mischief.

And after the money consideration, strong in the heart of the Russian
was the desire for revenge, which had been growing with constant
brooding over the failures and miseries of his life, which he
attributed to Tarzan; the latest, and by no means the least, of which
was Ajax’s refusal to longer earn money for him. The ape’s refusal he
traced directly to Tarzan, finally convincing himself that the ape man
had instructed the great anthropoid to refuse to go upon the stage.

Paulvitch’s naturally malign disposition was aggravated by the
weakening and warping of his mental and physical faculties through
torture and privation. From cold, calculating, highly intelligent
perversity it had deteriorated into the indiscriminating, dangerous
menace of the mentally defective. His plan, however, was sufficiently
cunning to at least cast a doubt upon the assertion that his mentality
was wandering. It assured him first of the competence which Lord
Greystoke had promised to pay him for the deportation of the ape, and
then of revenge upon his benefactor through the son he idolized. That
part of his scheme was crude and brutal—it lacked the refinement of
torture that had marked the master strokes of the Paulvitch of old,
when he had worked with that virtuoso of villainy, Nikolas Rokoff—but
it at least assured Paulvitch of immunity from responsibility, placing
that upon the ape, who would thus also be punished for his refusal
longer to support the Russian.

Everything played with fiendish unanimity into Paulvitch’s hands. As
chance would have it, Tarzan’s son overheard his father relating to the
boy’s mother the steps he was taking to return Akut safely to his
jungle home, and having overheard he begged them to bring the ape home
that he might have him for a play-fellow. Tarzan would not have been
averse to this plan; but Lady Greystoke was horrified at the very
thought of it. Jack pleaded with his mother; but all unavailingly. She
was obdurate, and at last the lad appeared to acquiesce in his mother’s
decision that the ape must be returned to Africa and the boy to school,
from which he had been absent on vacation.

He did not attempt to visit Paulvitch’s room again that day, but
instead busied himself in other ways. He had always been well supplied
with money, so that when necessity demanded he had no difficulty in
collecting several hundred pounds. Some of this money he invested in
various strange purchases which he managed to smuggle into the house,
undetected, when he returned late in the afternoon.

The next morning, after giving his father time to precede him and
conclude his business with Paulvitch, the lad hastened to the Russian’s
room. Knowing nothing of the man’s true character the boy dared not
take him fully into his confidence for fear that the old fellow would
not only refuse to aid him, but would report the whole affair to his
father. Instead, he simply asked permission to take Ajax to Dover. He
explained that it would relieve the old man of a tiresome journey, as
well as placing a number of pounds in his pocket, for the lad purposed
paying the Russian well.

“You see,” he went on, “there will be no danger of detection since I am
supposed to be leaving on an afternoon train for school. Instead I will
come here after they have left me on board the train. Then I can take
Ajax to Dover, you see, and arrive at school only a day late. No one
will be the wiser, no harm will be done, and I shall have had an extra
day with Ajax before I lose him forever.”

The plan fitted perfectly with that which Paulvitch had in mind. Had he
known what further the boy contemplated he would doubtless have
entirely abandoned his own scheme of revenge and aided the boy whole
heartedly in the consummation of the lad’s, which would have been
better for Paulvitch, could he have but read the future but a few short
hours ahead.

That afternoon Lord and Lady Greystoke bid their son good-bye and saw
him safely settled in a first-class compartment of the railway carriage
that would set him down at school in a few hours. No sooner had they
left him, however, than he gathered his bags together, descended from
the compartment and sought a cab stand outside the station. Here he
engaged a cabby to take him to the Russian’s address. It was dusk when
he arrived. He found Paulvitch awaiting him. The man was pacing the
floor nervously. The ape was tied with a stout cord to the bed. It was
the first time that Jack had ever seen Ajax thus secured. He looked
questioningly at Paulvitch. The man, mumbling, explained that he
believed the animal had guessed that he was to be sent away and he
feared he would attempt to escape.

Paulvitch carried another piece of cord in his hand. There was a noose
in one end of it which he was continually playing with. He walked back
and forth, up and down the room. His pock-marked features were working
horribly as he talked silent to himself. The boy had never seen him
thus—it made him uneasy. At last Paulvitch stopped on the opposite side
of the room, far from the ape.

“Come here,” he said to the lad. “I will show you how to secure the ape
should he show signs of rebellion during the trip.”

The lad laughed. “It will not be necessary,” he replied. “Ajax will do
whatever I tell him to do.”

The old man stamped his foot angrily. “Come here, as I tell you,” he
repeated. “If you do not do as I say you shall not accompany the ape to
Dover—I will take no chances upon his escaping.”

Still smiling, the lad crossed the room and stood before the Russ.

“Turn around, with your back toward me,” directed the latter, “that I
may show you how to bind him quickly.”

The boy did as he was bid, placing his hands behind him when Paulvitch
told him to do so. Instantly the old man slipped the running noose over
one of the lad’s wrists, took a couple of half hitches about his other
wrist, and knotted the cord.

The moment that the boy was secured the attitude of the man changed.
With an angry oath he wheeled his prisoner about, tripped him and
hurled him violently to the floor, leaping upon his breast as he fell.
From the bed the ape growled and struggled with his bonds. The boy did
not cry out—a trait inherited from his savage sire whom long years in
the jungle following the death of his foster mother, Kala the great
ape, had taught that there was none to come to the succor of the
fallen.

Paulvitch’s fingers sought the lad’s throat. He grinned down horribly
into the face of his victim.

“Your father ruined me,” he mumbled. “This will pay him. He will think
that the ape did it. I will tell him that the ape did it. That I left
him alone for a few minutes, and that you sneaked in and the ape killed
you. I will throw your body upon the bed after I have choked the life
from you, and when I bring your father he will see the ape squatting
over it,” and the twisted fiend cackled in gloating laughter. His
fingers closed upon the boy’s throat.

Behind them the growling of the maddened beast reverberated against the
walls of the little room. The boy paled, but no other sign of fear or
panic showed upon his countenance. He was the son of Tarzan. The
fingers tightened their grip upon his throat. It was with difficulty
that he breathed, gaspingly. The ape lunged against the stout cord that
held him. Turning, he wrapped the cord about his hands, as a man might
have done, and surged heavily backward. The great muscles stood out
beneath his shaggy hide. There was a rending as of splintered wood—the
cord held, but a portion of the footboard of the bed came away.

At the sound Paulvitch looked up. His hideous face went white with
terror—the ape was free.

With a single bound the creature was upon him. The man shrieked. The
brute wrenched him from the body of the boy. Great fingers sunk into
the man’s flesh. Yellow fangs gaped close to his throat—he struggled,
futilely—and when they closed, the soul of Alexis Paulvitch passed into
the keeping of the demons who had long been awaiting it.

The boy struggled to his feet, assisted by Akut. For two hours under
the instructions of the former the ape worked upon the knots that
secured his friend’s wrists. Finally they gave up their secret, and the
boy was free. Then he opened one of his bags and drew forth some
garments. His plans had been well made. He did not consult the beast,
which did all that he directed. Together they slunk from the house, but
no casual observer might have noted that one of them was an ape.




IV.


The killing of the friendless old Russian, Michael Sabrov, by his great
trained ape, was a matter for newspaper comment for a few days. Lord
Greystoke read of it, and while taking special precautions not to
permit his name to become connected with the affair, kept himself well
posted as to the police search for the anthropoid.

As was true of the general public, his chief interest in the matter
centered about the mysterious disappearance of the slayer. Or at least
this was true until he learned, several days subsequent to the tragedy,
that his son Jack had not reported at the public school en route for
which they had seen him safely ensconced in a railway carriage. Even
then the father did not connect the disappearance of his son with the
mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the ape. Nor was it until a
month later that careful investigation revealed the fact that the boy
had left the train before it pulled out of the station at London, and
the cab driver had been found who had driven him to the address of the
old Russian, that Tarzan of the Apes realized that Akut had in some way
been connected with the disappearance of the boy.

Beyond the moment that the cab driver had deposited his fare beside the
curb in front of the house in which the Russian had been quartered
there was no clue. No one had seen either the boy or the ape from that
instant—at least no one who still lived. The proprietor of the house
identified the picture of the lad as that of one who had been a
frequent visitor in the room of the old man. Aside from this he knew
nothing. And there, at the door of a grimy, old building in the slums
of London, the searchers came to a blank wall—baffled.

The day following the death of Alexis Paulvitch a youth accompanying
his invalid grandmother, boarded a steamer at Dover. The old lady was
heavily veiled, and so weakened by age and sickness that she had to be
wheeled aboard the vessel in an invalid chair.

The boy would permit none but himself to wheel her, and with his own
hands assisted her from the chair to the interior of their
stateroom—and that was the last that was seen of the old lady by the
ship’s company until the pair disembarked. The boy even insisted upon
doing the work of their cabin steward, since, as he explained, his
grandmother was suffering from a nervous disposition that made the
presence of strangers extremely distasteful to her.

Outside the cabin—and none there was aboard who knew what he did in the
cabin—the lad was just as any other healthy, normal English boy might
have been. He mingled with his fellow passengers, became a prime
favorite with the officers, and struck up numerous friendships among
the common sailors. He was generous and unaffected, yet carried an air
of dignity and strength of character that inspired his many new friends
with admiration as well as affection for him.

Among the passengers there was an American named Condon, a noted
blackleg and crook who was “wanted” in a half dozen of the larger
cities of the United States. He had paid little attention to the boy
until on one occasion he had seen him accidentally display a roll of
bank notes. From then on Condon cultivated the youthful Briton. He
learned, easily, that the boy was traveling alone with his invalid
grandmother, and that their destination was a small port on the west
coast of Africa, a little below the equator; that their name was
Billings, and that they had no friends in the little settlement for
which they were bound. Upon the point of their purpose in visiting the
place Condon found the boy reticent, and so he did not push the
matter—he had learned all that he cared to know as it was.

Several times Condon attempted to draw the lad into a card game; but
his victim was not interested, and the black looks of several of the
other men passengers decided the American to find other means of
transferring the boy’s bank roll to his own pocket.

At last came the day that the steamer dropped anchor in the lee of a
wooded promontory where a score or more of sheet-iron shacks making an
unsightly blot upon the fair face of nature proclaimed the fact that
civilization had set its heel. Straggling upon the outskirts were the
thatched huts of natives, picturesque in their primeval savagery,
harmonizing with the background of tropical jungle and accentuating the
squalid hideousness of the white man’s pioneer architecture.

The boy, leaning over the rail, was looking far beyond the man-made
town deep into the God-made jungle. A little shiver of anticipation
tingled his spine, and then, quite without volition, he found himself
gazing into the loving eyes of his mother and the strong face of the
father which mirrored, beneath its masculine strength, a love no less
than the mother’s eyes proclaimed. He felt himself weakening in his
resolve. Nearby one of the ship’s officers was shouting orders to a
flotilla of native boats that was approaching to lighter the
consignment of the steamer’s cargo destined for this tiny post.

“When does the next steamer for England touch here?” the boy asked.

“The Emanuel ought to be along most any time now,” replied the officer.
“I figgered we’d find her here,” and he went on with his bellowing
remarks to the dusty horde drawing close to the steamer’s side.

The task of lowering the boy’s grandmother over the side to a waiting
canoe was rather difficult. The lad insisted on being always at her
side, and when at last she was safely ensconced in the bottom of the
craft that was to bear them shoreward her grandson dropped catlike
after her. So interested was he in seeing her comfortably disposed that
he failed to notice the little package that had worked from his pocket
as he assisted in lowering the sling that contained the old woman over
the steamer’s side, nor did he notice it even as it slipped out
entirely and dropped into the sea.

Scarcely had the boat containing the boy and the old woman started for
the shore than Condon hailed a canoe upon the other side of the ship,
and after bargaining with its owner finally lowered his baggage and
himself aboard. Once ashore he kept out of sight of the two-story
atrocity that bore the legend “Hotel” to lure unsuspecting wayfarers to
its multitudinous discomforts. It was quite dark before he ventured to
enter and arrange for accommodations.

In a back room upon the second floor the lad was explaining, not
without considerable difficulty, to his grandmother that he had decided
to return to England upon the next steamer. He was endeavoring to make
it plain to the old lady that she might remain in Africa if she wished
but that for his part his conscience demanded that he return to his
father and mother, who doubtless were even now suffering untold sorrow
because of his absence; from which it may be assumed that his parents
had not been acquainted with the plans that he and the old lady had
made for their adventure into African wilds.

Having come to a decision the lad felt a sense of relief from the worry
that had haunted him for many sleepless nights. When he closed his eyes
in sleep it was to dream of a happy reunion with those at home. And as
he dreamed, Fate, cruel and inexorable, crept stealthily upon him
through the dark corridor of the squalid building in which he
slept—Fate in the form of the American crook, Condon.

Cautiously the man approached the door of the lad’s room. There he
crouched listening until assured by the regular breathing of those
within that both slept. Quietly he inserted a slim, skeleton key in the
lock of the door. With deft fingers, long accustomed to the silent
manipulation of the bars and bolts that guarded other men’s property,
Condon turned the key and the knob simultaneously. Gentle pressure upon
the door swung it slowly inward upon its hinges. The man entered the
room, closing the door behind him. The moon was temporarily overcast by
heavy clouds. The interior of the apartment was shrouded in gloom.
Condon groped his way toward the bed. In the far corner of the room
something moved—moved with a silent stealthiness which transcended even
the trained silence of the burglar. Condon heard nothing. His attention
was riveted upon the bed in which he thought to find a young boy and
his helpless, invalid grandmother.

The American sought only the bank roll. If he could possess himself of
this without detection, well and good; but were he to meet resistance
he was prepared for that too. The lad’s clothes lay across a chair
beside the bed. The American’s fingers felt swiftly through them—the
pockets contained no roll of crisp, new notes. Doubtless they were
beneath the pillows of the bed. He stepped closer toward the sleeper;
his hand was already half way beneath the pillow when the thick cloud
that had obscured the moon rolled aside and the room was flooded with
light. At the same instant the boy opened his eyes and looked straight
into those of Condon. The man was suddenly conscious that the boy was
alone in the bed. Then he clutched for his victim’s throat. As the lad
rose to meet him Condon heard a low growl at his back, then he felt his
wrists seized by the boy, and realized that beneath those tapering,
white fingers played muscles of steel.

He felt other hands at his throat, rough hairy hands that reached over
his shoulders from behind. He cast a terrified glance backward, and the
hairs of his head stiffened at the sight his eyes revealed, for
grasping him from the rear was a huge, man-like ape. The bared fighting
fangs of the anthropoid were close to his throat. The lad pinioned his
wrists. Neither uttered a sound. Where was the grandmother? Condon’s
eyes swept the room in a single all-inclusive glance. His eyes bulged
in horror at the realization of the truth which that glance revealed.
In the power of what creatures of hideous mystery had he placed
himself! Frantically he fought to beat off the lad that he might turn
upon the fearsome thing at his back. Freeing one hand he struck a
savage blow at the lad’s face. His act seemed to unloose a thousand
devils in the hairy creature clinging to his throat. Condon heard a low
and savage snarl. It was the last thing that the American ever heard in
this life. Then he was dragged backward upon the floor, a heavy body
fell upon him, powerful teeth fastened themselves in his jugular, his
head whirled in the sudden blackness which rims eternity—a moment later
the ape rose from his prostrate form; but Condon did not know—he was
quite dead.

The lad, horrified, sprang from the bed to lean over the body of the
man. He knew that Akut had killed in his defense, as he had killed
Michael Sabrov; but here, in savage Africa, far from home and friends
what would they do to him and his faithful ape? The lad knew that the
penalty of murder was death. He even knew that an accomplice might
suffer the death penalty with the principal. Who was there who would
plead for them? All would be against them. It was little more than a
half-civilized community, and the chances were that they would drag
Akut and him forth in the morning and hang them both to the nearest
tree—he had read of such things being done in America, and Africa was
worse even and wilder than the great West of his mother’s native land.
Yes, they would both be hanged in the morning!

Was there no escape? He thought in silence for a few moments, and then,
with an exclamation of relief, he struck his palms together and turned
toward his clothing upon the chair. Money would do anything! Money
would save him and Akut! He felt for the bank roll in the pocket in
which he had been accustomed to carry it. It was not there! Slowly at
first and at last frantically he searched through the remaining pockets
of his clothing. Then he dropped upon his hands and knees and examined
the floor. Lighting the lamp he moved the bed to one side and, inch by
inch, he felt over the entire floor. Beside the body of Condon he
hesitated, but at last he nerved himself to touch it. Rolling it over
he sought beneath it for the money. Nor was it there. He guessed that
Condon had entered their room to rob; but he did not believe that the
man had had time to possess himself of the money; however, as it was
nowhere else, it must be upon the body of the dead man. Again and again
he went over the room, only to return each time to the corpse; but no
where could he find the money.

He was half-frantic with despair. What were they to do? In the morning
they would be discovered and killed. For all his inherited size and
strength he was, after all, only a little boy—a frightened, homesick
little boy—reasoning faultily from the meager experience of childhood.
He could think of but a single glaring fact—they had killed a fellow
man, and they were among savage strangers, thirsting for the blood of
the first victim whom fate cast into their clutches. This much he had
gleaned from penny-dreadfuls.

And they must have money!

Again he approached the corpse. This time resolutely. The ape squatted
in a corner watching his young companion. The youth commenced to remove
the American’s clothing piece by piece, and, piece by piece, he
examined each garment minutely. Even to the shoes he searched with
painstaking care, and when the last article had been removed and
scrutinized he dropped back upon the bed with dilated eyes that saw
nothing in the present—only a grim tableau of the future in which two
forms swung silently from the limb of a great tree.

How long he sat thus he did not know; but finally he was aroused by a
noise coming from the floor below. Springing quickly to his feet he
blew out the lamp, and crossing the floor silently locked the door.
Then he turned toward the ape, his mind made up.

Last evening he had been determined to start for home at the first
opportunity, to beg the forgiveness of his parents for this mad
adventure. Now he knew that he might never return to them. The blood of
a fellow man was upon his hands—in his morbid reflections he had long
since ceased to attribute the death of Condon to the ape. The hysteria
of panic had fastened the guilt upon himself. With money he might have
bought justice; but penniless!—ah, what hope could there be for
strangers without money here?

But what had become of the money? He tried to recall when last he had
seen it. He could not, nor, could he, would he have been able to
account for its disappearance, for he had been entirely unconscious of
the falling of the little package from his pocket into the sea as he
clambered over the ship’s side into the waiting canoe that bore him to
shore.

Now he turned toward Akut. “Come!” he said, in the language of the
great apes.

Forgetful of the fact that he wore only a thin pajama suit he led the
way to the open window. Thrusting his head out he listened attentively.
A single tree grew a few feet from the window. Nimbly the lad sprang to
its bole, clinging cat-like for an instant before he clambered quietly
to the ground below. Close behind him came the great ape. Two hundred
yards away a spur of the jungle ran close to the straggling town.
Toward this the lad led the way. None saw them, and a moment later the
jungle swallowed them, and John Clayton, future Lord Greystoke, passed
from the eyes and the knowledge of men.

It was late the following morning that a native houseman knocked upon
the door of the room that had been assigned to Mrs. Billings and her
grandson. Receiving no response he inserted his pass key in the lock,
only to discover that another key was already there, but from the
inside. He reported the fact to Herr Skopf, the proprietor, who at once
made his way to the second floor where he, too, pounded vigorously upon
the door. Receiving no reply he bent to the key hole in an attempt to
look through into the room beyond. In so doing, being portly, he lost
his balance, which necessitated putting a palm to the floor to maintain
his equilibrium. As he did so he felt something soft and thick and wet
beneath his fingers. He raised his open palm before his eyes in the dim
light of the corridor and peered at it. Then he gave a little shudder,
for even in the semi-darkness he saw a dark red stain upon his hand.
Leaping to his feet he hurled his shoulder against the door. Herr Skopf
is a heavy man—or at least he was then—I have not seen him for several
years. The frail door collapsed beneath his weight, and Herr Skopf
stumbled precipitately into the room beyond.

Before him lay the greatest mystery of his life. Upon the floor at his
feet was the dead body of a strange man. The neck was broken and the
jugular severed as by the fangs of a wild beast. The body was entirely
naked, the clothing being strewn about the corpse. The old lady and her
grandson were gone. The window was open. They must have disappeared
through the window for the door had been locked from the inside.

But how could the boy have carried his invalid grandmother from a
second story window to the ground? It was preposterous. Again Herr
Skopf searched the small room. He noticed that the bed was pulled well
away from the wall—why? He looked beneath it again for the third or
fourth time. The two were gone, and yet his judgment told him that the
old lady could not have gone without porters to carry her down as they
had carried her up the previous day.

Further search deepened the mystery. All the clothing of the two was
still in the room—if they had gone then they must have gone naked or in
their night clothes. Herr Skopf shook his head; then he scratched it.
He was baffled. He had never heard of Sherlock Holmes or he would have
lost no time in invoking the aid of that celebrated sleuth, for here
was a real mystery: An old woman—an invalid who had to be carried from
the ship to her room in the hotel—and a handsome lad, her grandson, had
entered a room on the second floor of his hostelry the day before. They
had had their evening meal served in their room—that was the last that
had been seen of them. At nine the following morning the corpse of a
strange man had been the sole occupant of that room. No boat had left
the harbor in the meantime—there was not a railroad within hundreds of
miles—there was no other white settlement that the two could reach
under several days of arduous marching accompanied by a well-equipped
_safari_. They had simply vanished into thin air, for the native he had
sent to inspect the ground beneath the open window had just returned to
report that there was no sign of a footstep there, and what sort of
creatures were they who could have dropped that distance to the soft
turf without leaving spoor? Herr Skopf shuddered. Yes, it was a great
mystery—there was something uncanny about the whole thing—he hated to
think about it, and he dreaded the coming of night.

It was a great mystery to Herr Skopf—and, doubtless, still is.




V.


Captain Armand Jacot of the Foreign Legion sat upon an outspread saddle
blanket at the foot of a stunted palm tree. His broad shoulders and his
close-cropped head rested in luxurious ease against the rough bole of
the palm. His long legs were stretched straight before him overlapping
the meager blanket, his spurs buried in the sandy soil of the little
desert oasis. The captain was taking his ease after a long day of weary
riding across the shifting sands of the desert.

Lazily he puffed upon his cigarette and watched his orderly who was
preparing his evening meal. Captain Armand Jacot was well satisfied
with himself and the world. A little to his right rose the noisy
activity of his troop of sun-tanned veterans, released for the time
from the irksome trammels of discipline, relaxing tired muscles,
laughing, joking, and smoking as they, too, prepared to eat after a
twelve-hour fast. Among them, silent and taciturn, squatted five
white-robed Arabs, securely bound and under heavy guard.

It was the sight of these that filled Captain Armand Jacot with the
pleasurable satisfaction of a duty well-performed. For a long, hot,
gaunt month he and his little troop had scoured the places of the
desert waste in search of a band of marauders to the sin-stained
account of which were charged innumerable thefts of camels, horses, and
goats, as well as murders enough to have sent the whole unsavory gang
to the guillotine several times over.

A week before, he had come upon them. In the ensuing battle he had lost
two of his own men, but the punishment inflicted upon the marauders had
been severe almost to extinction. A half dozen, perhaps, had escaped;
but the balance, with the exception of the five prisoners, had expiated
their crimes before the nickel jacketed bullets of the legionaries.
And, best of all, the ring leader, Achmet ben Houdin, was among the
prisoners.

From the prisoners Captain Jacot permitted his mind to traverse the
remaining miles of sand to the little garrison post where, upon the
morrow, he should find awaiting him with eager welcome his wife and
little daughter. His eyes softened to the memory of them, as they
always did. Even now he could see the beauty of the mother reflected in
the childish lines of little Jeanne’s face, and both those faces would
be smiling up into his as he swung from his tired mount late the
following afternoon. Already he could feel a soft cheek pressed close
to each of his—velvet against leather.

His reverie was broken in upon by the voice of a sentry summoning a
non-commissioned officer. Captain Jacot raised his eyes. The sun had
not yet set; but the shadows of the few trees huddled about the water
hole and of his men and their horses stretched far away into the east
across the now golden sand. The sentry was pointing in this direction,
and the corporal, through narrowed lids, was searching the distance.
Captain Jacot rose to his feet. He was not a man content to see through
the eyes of others. He must see for himself. Usually he saw things long
before others were aware that there was anything to see—a trait that
had won for him the sobriquet of Hawk. Now he saw, just beyond the long
shadows, a dozen specks rising and falling among the sands. They
disappeared and reappeared, but always they grew larger. Jacot
recognized them immediately. They were horsemen—horsemen of the desert.
Already a sergeant was running toward him. The entire camp was
straining its eyes into the distance. Jacot gave a few terse orders to
the sergeant who saluted, turned upon his heel and returned to the men.
Here he gathered a dozen who saddled their horses, mounted and rode out
to meet the strangers. The remaining men disposed themselves in
readiness for instant action. It was not entirely beyond the range of
possibilities that the horsemen riding thus swiftly toward the camp
might be friends of the prisoners bent upon the release of their
kinsmen by a sudden attack. Jacot doubted this, however, since the
strangers were evidently making no attempt to conceal their presence.
They were galloping rapidly toward the camp in plain view of all. There
might be treachery lurking beneath their fair appearance; but none who
knew The Hawk would be so gullible as to hope to trap him thus.

The sergeant with his detail met the Arabs two hundred yards from the
camp. Jacot could see him in conversation with a tall, white-robed
figure—evidently the leader of the band. Presently the sergeant and
this Arab rode side by side toward camp. Jacot awaited them. The two
reined in and dismounted before him.

“Sheik Amor ben Khatour,” announced the sergeant by way of
introduction.

Captain Jacot eyed the newcomer. He was acquainted with nearly every
principal Arab within a radius of several hundred miles. This man he
never had seen. He was a tall, weather beaten, sour looking man of
sixty or more. His eyes were narrow and evil. Captain Jacot did not
relish his appearance.

“Well?” he asked, tentatively.

The Arab came directly to the point.

“Achmet ben Houdin is my sister’s son,” he said. “If you will give him
into my keeping I will see that he sins no more against the laws of the
French.”

Jacot shook his head. “That cannot be,” he replied. “I must take him
back with me. He will be properly and fairly tried by a civil court. If
he is innocent he will be released.”

“And if he is not innocent?” asked the Arab.

“He is charged with many murders. For any one of these, if he is proved
guilty, he will have to die.”

The Arab’s left hand was hidden beneath his burnous. Now he withdrew it
disclosing a large goatskin purse, bulging and heavy with coins. He
opened the mouth of the purse and let a handful of the contents trickle
into the palm of his right hand—all were pieces of good French gold.
From the size of the purse and its bulging proportions Captain Jacot
concluded that it must contain a small fortune. Sheik Amor ben Khatour
dropped the spilled gold pieces one by one back into the purse. Jacot
was eyeing him narrowly. They were alone. The sergeant, having
introduced the visitor, had withdrawn to some little distance—his back
was toward them. Now the sheik, having returned all the gold pieces,
held the bulging purse outward upon his open palm toward Captain Jacot.

“Achmet ben Houdin, my sister’s son, MIGHT escape tonight,” he said.
“Eh?”

Captain Armand Jacot flushed to the roots of his close-cropped hair.
Then he went very white and took a half-step toward the Arab. His fists
were clenched. Suddenly he thought better of whatever impulse was
moving him.

“Sergeant!” he called. The non-commissioned officer hurried toward him,
saluting as his heels clicked together before his superior.

“Take this black dog back to his people,” he ordered. “See that they
leave at once. Shoot the first man who comes within range of camp
tonight.”

Sheik Amor ben Khatour drew himself up to his full height. His evil
eyes narrowed. He raised the bag of gold level with the eyes of the
French officer.

“You will pay more than this for the life of Achmet ben Houdin, my
sister’s son,” he said. “And as much again for the name that you have
called me and a hundred fold in sorrow in the bargain.”

“Get out of here!” growled Captain Armand Jacot, “before I kick you
out.”

All of this happened some three years before the opening of this tale.
The trail of Achmet ben Houdin and his accomplices is a matter of
record—you may verify it if you care to. He met the death he deserved,
and he met it with the stoicism of the Arab.

A month later little Jeanne Jacot, the seven-year-old daughter of
Captain Armand Jacot, mysteriously disappeared. Neither the wealth of
her father and mother, or all the powerful resources of the great
republic were able to wrest the secret of her whereabouts from the
inscrutable desert that had swallowed her and her abductor.

A reward of such enormous proportions was offered that many adventurers
were attracted to the hunt. This was no case for the modern detective
of civilization, yet several of these threw themselves into the
search—the bones of some are already bleaching beneath the African sun
upon the silent sands of the Sahara.

Two Swedes, Carl Jenssen and Sven Malbihn, after three years of
following false leads at last gave up the search far to the south of
the Sahara to turn their attention to the more profitable business of
ivory poaching. In a great district they were already known for their
relentless cruelty and their greed for ivory. The natives feared and
hated them. The European governments in whose possessions they worked
had long sought them; but, working their way slowly out of the north
they had learned many things in the no-man’s-land south of the Sahara
which gave them immunity from capture through easy avenues of escape
that were unknown to those who pursued them. Their raids were sudden
and swift. They seized ivory and retreated into the trackless wastes of
the north before the guardians of the territory they raped could be
made aware of their presence. Relentlessly they slaughtered elephants
themselves as well as stealing ivory from the natives. Their following
consisted of a hundred or more renegade Arabs and Negro slaves—a
fierce, relentless band of cut-throats. Remember them—Carl Jenssen and
Sven Malbihn, yellow-bearded, Swedish giants—for you will meet them
later.

In the heart of the jungle, hidden away upon the banks of a small
unexplored tributary of a large river that empties into the Atlantic
not so far from the equator, lay a small, heavily palisaded village.
Twenty palm-thatched, beehive huts sheltered its black population,
while a half-dozen goat skin tents in the center of the clearing housed
the score of Arabs who found shelter here while, by trading and
raiding, they collected the cargoes which their ships of the desert
bore northward twice each year to the market of Timbuktu.

Playing before one of the Arab tents was a little girl of ten—a
black-haired, black-eyed little girl who, with her nut-brown skin and
graceful carriage looked every inch a daughter of the desert. Her
little fingers were busily engaged in fashioning a skirt of grasses for
a much-disheveled doll which a kindly disposed slave had made for her a
year or two before. The head of the doll was rudely chipped from ivory,
while the body was a rat skin stuffed with grass. The arms and legs
were bits of wood, perforated at one end and sewn to the rat skin
torso. The doll was quite hideous and altogether disreputable and
soiled, but Meriem thought it the most beautiful and adorable thing in
the whole world, which is not so strange in view of the fact that it
was the only object within that world upon which she might bestow her
confidence and her love.

Everyone else with whom Meriem came in contact was, almost without
exception, either indifferent to her or cruel. There was, for example,
the old black hag who looked after her, Mabunu—toothless, filthy and
ill tempered. She lost no opportunity to cuff the little girl, or even
inflict minor tortures upon her, such as pinching, or, as she had twice
done, searing the tender flesh with hot coals. And there was The Sheik,
her father. She feared him more than she did Mabunu. He often scolded
her for nothing, quite habitually terminating his tirades by cruelly
beating her, until her little body was black and blue.

But when she was alone she was happy, playing with Geeka, or decking
her hair with wild flowers, or making ropes of grasses. She was always
busy and always singing—when they left her alone. No amount of cruelty
appeared sufficient to crush the innate happiness and sweetness from
her full little heart. Only when The Sheik was near was she quiet and
subdued. Him she feared with a fear that was at times almost hysterical
terror. She feared the gloomy jungle too—the cruel jungle that
surrounded the little village with chattering monkeys and screaming
birds by day and the roaring and coughing and moaning of the carnivora
by night. Yes, she feared the jungle; but so much more did she fear The
Sheik that many times it was in her childish head to run away, out into
the terrible jungle forever rather than longer to face the ever present
terror of her father.

As she sat there this day before The Sheik’s goatskin tent, fashioning
a skirt of grasses for Geeka, The Sheik appeared suddenly approaching.
Instantly the look of happiness faded from the child’s face. She shrunk
aside in an attempt to scramble from the path of the leathern-faced old
Arab; but she was not quick enough. With a brutal kick the man sent her
sprawling upon her face, where she lay quite still, tearless but
trembling. Then, with an oath at her, the man passed into the tent. The
old, black hag shook with appreciative laughter, disclosing an
occasional and lonesome yellow fang.

When she was sure The Sheik had gone, the little girl crawled to the
shady side of the tent, where she lay quite still, hugging Geeka close
to her breast, her little form racked at long intervals with choking
sobs. She dared not cry aloud, since that would have brought The Sheik
upon her again. The anguish in her little heart was not alone the
anguish of physical pain; but that infinitely more pathetic anguish—of
love denied a childish heart that yearns for love.

Little Meriem could scarce recall any other existence than that of the
stern cruelty of The Sheik and Mabunu. Dimly, in the back of her
childish memory there lurked a blurred recollection of a gentle mother;
but Meriem was not sure but that even this was but a dream picture
induced by her own desire for the caresses she never received, but
which she lavished upon the much loved Geeka. Never was such a spoiled
child as Geeka. Its little mother, far from fashioning her own conduct
after the example set her by her father and nurse, went to the extreme
of indulgence. Geeka was kissed a thousand times a day. There was play
in which Geeka was naughty; but the little mother never punished.
Instead, she caressed and fondled; her attitude influenced solely by
her own pathetic desire for love.

Now, as she pressed Geeka close to her, her sobs lessened gradually,
until she was able to control her voice, and pour out her misery into
the ivory ear of her only confidante.

“Geeka loves Meriem,” she whispered. “Why does The Sheik, my father,
not love me, too? Am I so naughty? I try to be good; but I never know
why he strikes me, so I cannot tell what I have done which displeases
him. Just now he kicked me and hurt me so, Geeka; but I was only
sitting before the tent making a skirt for you. That must be wicked, or
he would not have kicked me for it. But why is it wicked, Geeka? Oh
dear! I do not know, I do not know. I wish, Geeka, that I were dead.
Yesterday the hunters brought in the body of _El Adrea_. _El Adrea_ was
quite dead. No more will he slink silently upon his unsuspecting prey.
No more will his great head and his maned shoulders strike terror to
the hearts of the grass eaters at the drinking ford by night. No more
will his thundering roar shake the ground. _El Adrea_ is dead. They
beat his body terribly when it was brought into the village; but _El
Adrea_ did not mind. He did not feel the blows, for he was dead. When I
am dead, Geeka, neither shall I feel the blows of Mabunu, or the kicks
of The Sheik, my father. Then shall I be happy. Oh, Geeka, how I wish
that I were dead!”

If Geeka contemplated a remonstrance it was cut short by sounds of
altercation beyond the village gates. Meriem listened. With the
curiosity of childhood she would have liked to have run down there and
learn what it was that caused the men to talk so loudly. Others of the
village were already trooping in the direction of the noise. But Meriem
did not dare. The Sheik would be there, doubtless, and if he saw her it
would be but another opportunity to abuse her, so Meriem lay still and
listened.

Presently she heard the crowd moving up the street toward The Sheik’s
tent. Cautiously she stuck her little head around the edge of the tent.
She could not resist the temptation, for the sameness of the village
life was monotonous, and she craved diversion. What she saw was two
strangers—white men. They were alone, but as they approached she
learned from the talk of the natives that surrounded them that they
possessed a considerable following that was camped outside the village.
They were coming to palaver with The Sheik.

The old Arab met them at the entrance to his tent. His eyes narrowed
wickedly when they had appraised the newcomers. They stopped before
him, exchanging greetings. They had come to trade for ivory they said.
The Sheik grunted. He had no ivory. Meriem gasped. She knew that in a
near-by hut the great tusks were piled almost to the roof. She poked
her little head further forward to get a better view of the strangers.
How white their skins! How yellow their great beards!

Suddenly one of them turned his eyes in her direction. She tried to
dodge back out of sight, for she feared all men; but he saw her. Meriem
noticed the look of almost shocked surprise that crossed his face. The
Sheik saw it too, and guessed the cause of it.

“I have no ivory,” he repeated. “I do not wish to trade. Go away. Go
now.”

He stepped from his tent and almost pushed the strangers about in the
direction of the gates. They demurred, and then The Sheik threatened.
It would have been suicide to have disobeyed, so the two men turned and
left the village, making their way immediately to their own camp.

The Sheik returned to his tent; but he did not enter it. Instead he
walked to the side where little Meriem lay close to the goat skin wall,
very frightened. The Sheik stooped and clutched her by the arm.
Viciously he jerked her to her feet, dragged her to the entrance of the
tent, and shoved her viciously within. Following her he again seized
her, beating her ruthlessly.

“Stay within!” he growled. “Never let the strangers see thy face. Next
time you show yourself to strangers I shall kill you!”

With a final vicious cuff he knocked the child into a far corner of the
tent, where she lay stifling her moans, while The Sheik paced to and
fro muttering to himself. At the entrance sat Mabunu, muttering and
chuckling.

In the camp of the strangers one was speaking rapidly to the other.

“There is no doubt of it, Malbihn,” he was saying. “Not the slightest;
but why the old scoundrel hasn’t claimed the reward long since is what
puzzles me.”

“There are some things dearer to an Arab, Jenssen, than money,”
returned the first speaker—“revenge is one of them.”

“Anyhow it will not harm to try the power of gold,” replied Jenssen.

Malbihn shrugged.

“Not on The Sheik,” he said. “We might try it on one of his people; but
The Sheik will not part with his revenge for gold. To offer it to him
would only confirm his suspicions that we must have awakened when we
were talking to him before his tent. If we got away with our lives,
then, we should be fortunate.”

“Well, try bribery, then,” assented Jenssen.

But bribery failed—grewsomely. The tool they selected after a stay of
several days in their camp outside the village was a tall, old headman
of The Sheik’s native contingent. He fell to the lure of the shining
metal, for he had lived upon the coast and knew the power of gold. He
promised to bring them what they craved, late that night.

Immediately after dark the two white men commenced to make arrangements
to break camp. By midnight all was prepared. The porters lay beside
their loads, ready to swing them aloft at a moment’s notice. The armed
_askaris_ loitered between the balance of the _safari_ and the Arab
village, ready to form a rear guard for the retreat that was to begin
the moment that the head man brought that which the white masters
awaited.

Presently there came the sound of footsteps along the path from the
village. Instantly the _askaris_ and the whites were on the alert. More
than a single man was approaching. Jenssen stepped forward and
challenged the newcomers in a low whisper.

“Who comes?” he queried.

“Mbeeda,” came the reply.

Mbeeda was the name of the traitorous head man. Jenssen was satisfied,
though he wondered why Mbeeda had brought others with him. Presently he
understood. The thing they fetched lay upon a litter borne by two men.
Jenssen cursed beneath his breath. Could the fool be bringing them a
corpse? They had paid for a living prize!

The bearers came to a halt before the white men.

“This has your gold purchased,” said one of the two. They set the
litter down, turned and vanished into the darkness toward the village.
Malbihn looked at Jenssen, a crooked smile twisting his lips. The thing
upon the litter was covered with a piece of cloth.

“Well?” queried the latter. “Raise the covering and see what you have
bought. Much money shall we realize on a corpse—especially after the
six months beneath the burning sun that will be consumed in carrying it
to its destination!”

“The fool should have known that we desired her alive,” grumbled
Malbihn, grasping a corner of the cloth and jerking the cover from the
thing that lay upon the litter.

At sight of what lay beneath both men stepped back—involuntary oaths
upon their lips—for there before them lay the dead body of Mbeeda, the
faithless head man.

Five minutes later the _safari_ of Jenssen and Malbihn was forcing its
way rapidly toward the west, nervous askaris guarding the rear from the
attack they momentarily expected.




VI.


His first night in the jungle was one which the son of Tarzan held
longest in his memory. No savage carnivora menaced him. There was never
a sign of hideous barbarian. Or, if there were, the boy’s troubled mind
took no cognizance of them. His conscience was harassed by the thought
of his mother’s suffering. Self-blame plunged him into the depths of
misery. The killing of the American caused him little or no remorse.
The fellow had earned his fate. Jack’s regret on this score was due
mainly to the effect which the death of Condon had had upon his own
plans. Now he could not return directly to his parents as he had
planned. Fear of the primitive, borderland law, of which he had read
highly colored, imaginary tales, had thrust him into the jungle a
fugitive. He dared not return to the coast at this point—not that he
was so greatly influenced through personal fear as from a desire to
shield his father and mother from further sorrow and from the shame of
having their honored name dragged through the sordid degradation of a
murder trial.

With returning day the boy’s spirits rose. With the rising sun rose new
hope within his breast. He would return to civilization by another way.
None would guess that he had been connected with the killing of the
stranger in the little out-of-the-way trading post upon a remote shore.

Crouched close to the great ape in the crotch of a tree the boy had
shivered through an almost sleepless night. His light pajamas had been
but little protection from the chill dampness of the jungle, and only
that side of him which was pressed against the warm body of his shaggy
companion approximated to comfort. And so he welcomed the rising sun
with its promise of warmth as well as light—the blessed sun, dispeller
of physical and mental ills.

He shook Akut into wakefulness.

“Come,” he said. “I am cold and hungry. We will search for food, out
there in the sunlight,” and he pointed to an open plain, dotted with
stunted trees and strewn with jagged rock.

The boy slid to the ground as he spoke, but the ape first looked
carefully about, sniffing the morning air. Then, satisfied that no
danger lurked near, he descended slowly to the ground beside the boy.

“Numa, and Sabor his mate, feast upon those who descend first and look
afterward, while those who look first and descend afterward live to
feast themselves.” Thus the old ape imparted to the son of Tarzan the
boy’s first lesson in jungle lore. Side by side they set off across the
rough plain, for the boy wished first to be warm. The ape showed him
the best places to dig for rodents and worms; but the lad only gagged
at the thought of devouring the repulsive things. Some eggs they found,
and these he sucked raw, as also he ate roots and tubers which Akut
unearthed. Beyond the plain and across a low bluff they came upon
water—brackish, ill-smelling stuff in a shallow water hole, the sides
and bottom of which were trampled by the feet of many beasts. A herd of
zebra galloped away as they approached.

The lad was too thirsty by now to cavil at anything even remotely
resembling water, so he drank his fill while Akut stood with raised
head, alert for any danger. Before the ape drank he cautioned the boy
to be watchful; but as he drank he raised his head from time to time to
cast a quick glance toward a clump of bushes a hundred yards away upon
the opposite side of the water hole. When he had done he rose and spoke
to the boy, in the language that was their common heritage—the tongue
of the great apes.

“There is no danger near?” he asked.

“None,” replied the boy. “I saw nothing move while you drank.”

“Your eyes will help you but little in the jungle,” said the ape.

“Here, if you would live, you must depend upon your ears and your nose
but most upon your nose. When we came down to drink I knew that no
danger lurked near upon this side of the water hole, for else the
zebras would have discovered it and fled before we came; but upon the
other side toward which the wind blows danger might lie concealed. We
could not smell it for its scent is being blown in the other direction,
and so I bent my ears and eyes down wind where my nose cannot travel.”

“And you found—nothing?” asked the lad, with a laugh.

“I found Numa crouching in that clump of bushes where the tall grasses
grow,” and Akut pointed.

“A lion?” exclaimed the boy. “How do you know? I can see nothing.”

“Numa is there, though,” replied the great ape. “First I heard him
sigh. To you the sigh of Numa may sound no different from the other
noises which the wind makes among the grasses and the trees; but later
you must learn to know the sigh of Numa. Then I watched and at last I
saw the tall grasses moving at one point to a force other than the
force of the wind. See, they are spread there upon either side of
Numa’s great body, and as he breathes—you see? You see the little
motion at either side that is not caused by the wind—the motion that
none of the other grasses have?”

The boy strained his eyes—better eyes than the ordinary boy
inherits—and at last he gave a little exclamation of discovery.

“Yes,” he said, “I see. He lies there,” and he pointed. “His head is
toward us. Is he watching us?”

“Numa is watching us,” replied Akut, “but we are in little danger,
unless we approach too close, for he is lying upon his kill. His belly
is almost full, or we should hear him crunching the bones. He is
watching us in silence merely from curiosity. Presently he will resume
his feeding or he will rise and come down to the water for a drink. As
he neither fears or desires us he will not try to hide his presence
from us; but now is an excellent time to learn to know Numa, for you
must learn to know him well if you would live long in the jungle. Where
the great apes are many Numa leaves us alone. Our fangs are long and
strong, and we can fight; but when we are alone and he is hungry we are
no match for him. Come, we will circle him and catch his scent. The
sooner you learn to know it the better; but keep close to the trees, as
we go around him, for Numa often does that which he is least expected
to do. And keep your ears and your eyes and your nose open. Remember
always that there may be an enemy behind every bush, in every tree and
amongst every clump of jungle grass. While you are avoiding Numa do not
run into the jaws of Sabor, his mate. Follow me,” and Akut set off in a
wide circle about the water hole and the crouching lion.

The boy followed close upon his heels, his every sense upon the alert,
his nerves keyed to the highest pitch of excitement. This was life! For
the instant he forgot his resolutions of a few minutes past to hasten
to the coast at some other point than that at which he had landed and
make his way immediately back to London. He thought now only of the
savage joy of living, and of pitting one’s wits and prowess against the
wiles and might of the savage jungle brood which haunted the broad
plains and the gloomy forest aisles of the great, untamed continent. He
knew no fear. His father had had none to transmit to him; but honor and
conscience he did have and these were to trouble him many times as they
battled with his inherent love of freedom for possession of his soul.

They had passed but a short distance to the rear of Numa when the boy
caught the unpleasant odor of the carnivore. His face lighted with a
smile. Something told him that he would have known that scent among a
myriad of others even if Akut had not told him that a lion lay near.
There was a strange familiarity—a weird familiarity in it that made the
short hairs rise at the nape of his neck, and brought his upper lip
into an involuntary snarl that bared his fighting fangs. There was a
sense of stretching of the skin about his ears, for all the world as
though those members were flattening back against his skull in
preparation for deadly combat. His skin tingled. He was aglow with a
pleasurable sensation that he never before had known. He was, upon the
instant, another creature—wary, alert, ready. Thus did the scent of
Numa, the lion, transform the boy into a beast.

He had never seen a lion—his mother had gone to great pains to prevent
it. But he had devoured countless pictures of them, and now he was
ravenous to feast his eyes upon the king of beasts in the flesh. As he
trailed Akut he kept an eye cocked over one shoulder, rearward, in the
hope that Numa might rise from his kill and reveal himself. Thus it
happened that he dropped some little way behind Akut, and the next he
knew he was recalled suddenly to a contemplation of other matters than
the hidden Numa by a shrill scream of warning from the Ape. Turning his
eyes quickly in the direction of his companion, the boy saw that,
standing in the path directly before him, which sent tremors of
excitement racing along every nerve of his body. With body half-merging
from a clump of bushes in which she must have lain hidden stood a sleek
and beautiful lioness. Her yellow-green eyes were round and staring,
boring straight into the eyes of the boy. Not ten paces separated them.
Twenty paces behind the lioness stood the great ape, bellowing
instructions to the boy and hurling taunts at the lioness in an evident
effort to attract her attention from the lad while he gained the
shelter of a near-by tree.

But Sabor was not to be diverted. She had her eyes upon the lad. He
stood between her and her mate, between her and the kill. It was
suspicious. Probably he had ulterior designs upon her lord and master
or upon the fruits of their hunting. A lioness is short tempered.
Akut’s bellowing annoyed her. She uttered a little rumbling growl,
taking a step toward the boy.

“The tree!” screamed Akut.

The boy turned and fled, and at the same instant the lioness charged.
The tree was but a few paces away. A limb hung ten feet from the
ground, and as the boy leaped for it the lioness leaped for him. Like a
monkey he pulled himself up and to one side. A great forepaw caught him
a glancing blow at the hips—just grazing him. One curved talon hooked
itself into the waist band of his pajama trousers, ripping them from
him as the lioness sped by. Half-naked the lad drew himself to safety
as the beast turned and leaped for him once more.

Akut, from a near-by tree, jabbered and scolded, calling the lioness
all manner of foul names. The boy, patterning his conduct after that of
his preceptor, unstoppered the vials of his invective upon the head of
the enemy, until in realization of the futility of words as weapons he
bethought himself of something heavier to hurl. There was nothing but
dead twigs and branches at hand, but these he flung at the upturned,
snarling face of Sabor just as his father had before him twenty years
ago, when as a boy he too had taunted and tantalized the great cats of
the jungle.

The lioness fretted about the bole of the tree for a short time; but
finally, either realizing the uselessness of her vigil, or prompted by
the pangs of hunger, she stalked majestically away and disappeared in
the brush that hid her lord, who had not once shown himself during the
altercation.

Freed from their retreats Akut and the boy came to the ground, to take
up their interrupted journey once more. The old ape scolded the lad for
his carelessness.

“Had you not been so intent upon the lion behind you you might have
discovered the lioness much sooner than you did.”

“But you passed right by her without seeing her,” retorted the boy.

Akut was chagrined.

“It is thus,” he said, “that jungle folk die. We go cautiously for a
lifetime, and then, just for an instant, we forget, and—” he ground his
teeth in mimicry of the crunching of great jaws in flesh. “It is a
lesson,” he resumed. “You have learned that you may not for too long
keep your eyes and your ears and your nose all bent in the same
direction.”

That night the son of Tarzan was colder than he ever had been in all
his life. The pajama trousers had not been heavy; but they had been
much heavier than nothing. And the next day he roasted in the hot sun,
for again their way led much across wide and treeless plains.

It was still in the boy’s mind to travel to the south, and circle back
to the coast in search of another outpost of civilization. He had said
nothing of this plan to Akut, for he knew that the old ape would look
with displeasure upon any suggestion that savored of separation.

For a month the two wandered on, the boy learning rapidly the laws of
the jungle; his muscles adapting themselves to the new mode of life
that had been thrust upon them. The thews of the sire had been
transmitted to the son—it needed only the hardening of use to develop
them. The lad found that it came quite naturally to him to swing
through the trees. Even at great heights he never felt the slightest
dizziness, and when he had caught the knack of the swing and the
release, he could hurl himself through space from branch to branch with
even greater agility than the heavier Akut.

And with exposure came a toughening and hardening of his smooth, white
skin, browning now beneath the sun and wind. He had removed his pajama
jacket one day to bathe in a little stream that was too small to harbor
crocodiles, and while he and Akut had been disporting themselves in the
cool waters a monkey had dropped down from the over hanging trees,
snatched up the boy’s single remaining article of civilized garmenture,
and scampered away with it.

For a time Jack was angry; but when he had been without the jacket for
a short while he began to realize that being half-clothed is infinitely
more uncomfortable than being entirely naked. Soon he did not miss his
clothing in the least, and from that he came to revel in the freedom of
his unhampered state. Occasionally a smile would cross his face as he
tried to imagine the surprise of his schoolmates could they but see him
now. They would envy him. Yes, how they would envy him. He felt sorry
for them at such times, and again as he thought of them amid luxuries
and comforts of their English homes, happy with their fathers and
mothers, a most uncomfortable lump would arise into the boy’s throat,
and he would see a vision of his mother’s face through a blur of mist
that came unbidden to his eyes. Then it was that he urged Akut onward,
for now they were headed westward toward the coast. The old ape thought
that they were searching for a tribe of his own kind, nor did the boy
disabuse his mind of this belief. It would do to tell Akut of his real
plans when they had come within sight of civilization.

One day as they were moving slowly along beside a river they came
unexpectedly upon a native village. Some children were playing beside
the water. The boy’s heart leaped within his breast at sight of
them—for over a month he had seen no human being. What if these were
naked savages? What if their skins were black? Were they not creatures
fashioned in the mold of their Maker, as was he? They were his brothers
and sisters! He started toward them. With a low warning Akut laid a
hand upon his arm to hold him back. The boy shook himself free, and
with a shout of greeting ran forward toward the ebon players.

The sound of his voice brought every head erect. Wide eyes viewed him
for an instant, and then, with screams of terror, the children turned
and fled toward the village. At their heels ran their mothers, and from
the village gate, in response to the alarm, came a score of warriors,
hastily snatched spears and shields ready in their hands.

At sight of the consternation he had wrought the boy halted. The glad
smile faded from his face as with wild shouts and menacing gestures the
warriors ran toward him. Akut was calling to him from behind to turn
and flee, telling him that the blacks would kill him. For a moment he
stood watching them coming, then he raised his hand with the palm
toward them in signal for them to halt, calling out at the same time
that he came as a friend—that he had only wanted to play with their
children. Of course they did not understand a word that he addressed to
them, and their answer was what any naked creature who had run suddenly
out of the jungle upon their women and children might have expected—a
shower of spears. The missiles struck all about the boy, but none
touched him. Again his spine tingled and the short hairs lifted at the
nape of his neck and along the top of his scalp. His eyes narrowed.
Sudden hatred flared in them to wither the expression of glad
friendliness that had lighted them but an instant before. With a low
snarl, quite similar to that of a baffled beast, he turned and ran into
the jungle. There was Akut awaiting him in a tree. The ape urged him to
hasten in flight, for the wise old anthropoid knew that they two, naked
and unarmed, were no match for the sinewy black warriors who would
doubtless make some sort of search for them through the jungle.

But a new power moved the son of Tarzan. He had come with a boy’s glad
and open heart to offer his friendship to these people who were human
beings like himself. He had been met with suspicion and spears. They
had not even listened to him. Rage and hatred consumed him. When Akut
urged speed he held back. He wanted to fight, yet his reason made it
all too plain that it would be but a foolish sacrifice of his life to
meet these armed men with his naked hands and his teeth—already the boy
thought of his teeth, of his fighting fangs, when possibility of combat
loomed close.

Moving slowly through the trees he kept his eyes over his shoulder,
though he no longer neglected the possibilities of other dangers which
might lurk on either hand or ahead—his experience with the lioness did
not need a repetition to insure the permanency of the lesson it had
taught. Behind he could hear the savages advancing with shouts and
cries. He lagged further behind until the pursuers were in sight. They
did not see him, for they were not looking among the branches of the
trees for human quarry. The lad kept just ahead of them. For a mile
perhaps they continued the search, and then they turned back toward the
village. Here was the boy’s opportunity, that for which he had been
waiting, while the hot blood of revenge coursed through his veins until
he saw his pursuers through a scarlet haze.

When they turned back he turned and followed them. Akut was no longer
in sight. Thinking that the boy followed he had gone on further ahead.
He had no wish to tempt fate within range of those deadly spears.
Slinking silently from tree to tree the boy dogged the footsteps of the
returning warriors. At last one dropped behind his fellows as they
followed a narrow path toward the village. A grim smile lit the lad’s
face. Swiftly he hurried forward until he moved almost above the
unconscious black—stalking him as Sheeta, the panther, stalked his
prey, as the boy had seen Sheeta do on many occasions.

Suddenly and silently he leaped forward and downward upon the broad
shoulders of his prey. In the instant of contact his fingers sought and
found the man’s throat. The weight of the boy’s body hurled the black
heavily to the ground, the knees in his back knocking the breath from
him as he struck. Then a set of strong, white teeth fastened themselves
in his neck, and muscular fingers closed tighter upon his wind-pipe.
For a time the warrior struggled frantically, throwing himself about in
an effort to dislodge his antagonist; but all the while he was
weakening and all the while the grim and silent thing he could not see
clung tenaciously to him, and dragged him slowly into the bush to one
side of the trail.

Hidden there at last, safe from the prying eyes of searchers, should
they miss their fellow and return for him, the lad choked the life from
the body of his victim. At last he knew by the sudden struggle,
followed by limp relaxation, that the warrior was dead. Then a strange
desire seized him. His whole being quivered and thrilled. Involuntarily
he leaped to his feet and placed one foot upon the body of his kill.
His chest expanded. He raised his face toward the heavens and opened
his mouth to voice a strange, weird cry that seemed screaming within
him for outward expression, but no sound passed his lips—he just stood
there for a full minute, his face turned toward the sky, his breast
heaving to the pent emotion, like an animate statue of vengeance.

The silence which marked the first great kill of the son of Tarzan was
to typify all his future kills, just as the hideous victory cry of the
bull ape had marked the kills of his mighty sire.




VII.


Akut, discovering that the boy was not close behind him, turned back to
search for him. He had gone but a short distance in return when he was
brought to a sudden and startled halt by sight of a strange figure
moving through the trees toward him. It was the boy, yet could it be?
In his hand was a long spear, down his back hung an oblong shield such
as the black warriors who had attacked them had worn, and upon ankle
and arm were bands of iron and brass, while a loin cloth was twisted
about the youth’s middle. A knife was thrust through its folds.

When the boy saw the ape he hastened forward to exhibit his trophies.
Proudly he called attention to each of his newly won possessions.
Boastfully he recounted the details of his exploit.

“With my bare hands and my teeth I killed him,” he said. “I would have
made friends with them but they chose to be my enemies. And now that I
have a spear I shall show Numa, too, what it means to have me for a
foe. Only the white men and the great apes, Akut, are our friends. Them
we shall seek, all others must we avoid or kill. This have I learned of
the jungle.”

They made a detour about the hostile village, and resumed their journey
toward the coast. The boy took much pride in his new weapons and
ornaments. He practiced continually with the spear, throwing it at some
object ahead hour by hour as they traveled their loitering way, until
he gained a proficiency such as only youthful muscles may attain to
speedily. All the while his training went on under the guidance of
Akut. No longer was there a single jungle spoor but was an open book to
the keen eyes of the lad, and those other indefinite spoor that elude
the senses of civilized man and are only partially appreciable to his
savage cousin came to be familiar friends of the eager boy. He could
differentiate the innumerable species of the herbivora by scent, and he
could tell, too, whether an animal was approaching or departing merely
by the waxing or waning strength of its effluvium. Nor did he need the
evidence of his eyes to tell him whether there were two lions or four
up wind,—a hundred yards away or half a mile.

Much of this had Akut taught him, but far more was instinctive
knowledge—a species of strange intuition inherited from his father. He
had come to love the jungle life. The constant battle of wits and
senses against the many deadly foes that lurked by day and by night
along the pathway of the wary and the unwary appealed to the spirit of
adventure which breathes strong in the heart of every red-blooded son
of primordial Adam. Yet, though he loved it, he had not let his selfish
desires outweigh the sense of duty that had brought him to a
realization of the moral wrong which lay beneath the adventurous
escapade that had brought him to Africa. His love of father and mother
was strong within him, too strong to permit unalloyed happiness which
was undoubtedly causing them days of sorrow. And so he held tight to
his determination to find a port upon the coast where he might
communicate with them and receive funds for his return to London. There
he felt sure that he could now persuade his parents to let him spend at
least a portion of his time upon those African estates which from
little careless remarks dropped at home he knew his father possessed.
That would be something, better at least than a lifetime of the cramped
and cloying restrictions of civilization.

And so he was rather contented than otherwise as he made his way in the
direction of the coast, for while he enjoyed the liberty and the savage
pleasures of the wild his conscience was at the same time clear, for he
knew that he was doing all that lay in his power to return to his
parents. He rather looked forward, too, to meeting white men
again—creatures of his own kind—for there had been many occasions upon
which he had longed for other companionship than that of the old ape.
The affair with the blacks still rankled in his heart. He had
approached them in such innocent good fellowship and with such
childlike assurance of a hospitable welcome that the reception which
had been accorded him had proved a shock to his boyish ideals. He no
longer looked upon the black man as his brother; but rather as only
another of the innumerable foes of the bloodthirsty jungle—a beast of
prey which walked upon two feet instead of four.

But if the blacks were his enemies there were those in the world who
were not. There were those who always would welcome him with open arms;
who would accept him as a friend and brother, and with whom he might
find sanctuary from every enemy. Yes, there were always white men.
Somewhere along the coast or even in the depths of the jungle itself
there were white men. To them he would be a welcome visitor. They would
befriend him. And there were also the great apes—the friends of his
father and of Akut. How glad they would be to receive the son of Tarzan
of the Apes! He hoped that he could come upon them before he found a
trading post upon the coast. He wanted to be able to tell his father
that he had known his old friends of the jungle, that he had hunted
with them, that he had joined with them in their savage life, and their
fierce, primeval ceremonies—the strange ceremonies of which Akut had
tried to tell him. It cheered him immensely to dwell upon these happy
meetings. Often he rehearsed the long speech which he would make to the
apes, in which he would tell them of the life of their former king
since he had left them.

At other times he would play at meeting with white men. Then he would
enjoy their consternation at sight of a naked white boy trapped in the
war togs of a black warrior and roaming the jungle with only a great
ape as his companion.

And so the days passed, and with the traveling and the hunting and the
climbing the boy’s muscles developed and his agility increased until
even phlegmatic Akut marvelled at the prowess of his pupil. And the
boy, realizing his great strength and revelling in it, became careless.
He strode through the jungle, his proud head erect, defying danger.
Where Akut took to the trees at the first scent of Numa, the lad
laughed in the face of the king of beasts and walked boldly past him.
Good fortune was with him for a long time. The lions he met were
well-fed, perhaps, or the very boldness of the strange creature which
invaded their domain so filled them with surprise that thoughts of
attack were banished from their minds as they stood, round-eyed,
watching his approach and his departure. Whatever the cause, however,
the fact remains that on many occasions the boy passed within a few
paces of some great lion without arousing more than a warning growl.

But no two lions are necessarily alike in character or temper. They
differ as greatly as do individuals of the human family. Because ten
lions act similarly under similar conditions one cannot say that the
eleventh lion will do likewise—the chances are that he will not. The
lion is a creature of high nervous development. He thinks, therefore he
reasons. Having a nervous system and brains he is the possessor of
temperament, which is affected variously by extraneous causes. One day
the boy met the eleventh lion. The former was walking across a small
plain upon which grew little clumps of bushes. Akut was a few yards to
the left of the lad who was the first to discover the presence of Numa.

“Run, Akut,” called the boy, laughing. “Numa lies hid in the bushes to
my right. Take to the trees. Akut! I, the son of Tarzan, will protect
you,” and the boy, laughing, kept straight along his way which led
close beside the brush in which Numa lay concealed.

The ape shouted to him to come away, but the lad only flourished his
spear and executed an improvised war dance to show his contempt for the
king of beasts. Closer and closer to the dread destroyer he came,
until, with a sudden, angry growl, the lion rose from his bed not ten
paces from the youth. A huge fellow he was, this lord of the jungle and
the desert. A shaggy mane clothed his shoulders. Cruel fangs armed his
great jaws. His yellow-green eyes blazed with hatred and challenge.

The boy, with his pitifully inadequate spear ready in his hand,
realized quickly that this lion was different from the others he had
met; but he had gone too far now to retreat. The nearest tree lay
several yards to his left—the lion could be upon him before he had
covered half the distance, and that the beast intended to charge none
could doubt who looked upon him now. Beyond the lion was a thorn
tree—only a few feet beyond him. It was the nearest sanctuary but Numa
stood between it and his prey.

The feel of the long spear shaft in his hand and the sight of the tree
beyond the lion gave the lad an idea—a preposterous idea—a ridiculous,
forlorn hope of an idea; but there was no time now to weigh
chances—there was but a single chance, and that was the thorn tree. If
the lion charged it would be too late—the lad must charge first, and to
the astonishment of Akut and none the less of Numa, the boy leaped
swiftly toward the beast. Just for a second was the lion motionless
with surprise and in that second Jack Clayton put to the crucial test
an accomplishment which he had practiced at school.

Straight for the savage brute he ran, his spear held butt foremost
across his body. Akut shrieked in terror and amazement. The lion stood
with wide, round eyes awaiting the attack, ready to rear upon his hind
feet and receive this rash creature with blows that could crush the
skull of a buffalo.

Just in front of the lion the boy placed the butt of his spear upon the
ground, gave a mighty spring, and, before the bewildered beast could
guess the trick that had been played upon him, sailed over the lion’s
head into the rending embrace of the thorn tree—safe but lacerated.

Akut had never before seen a pole-vault. Now he leaped up and down
within the safety of his own tree, screaming taunts and boasts at the
discomfited Numa, while the boy, torn and bleeding, sought some
position in his thorny retreat in which he might find the least agony.
He had saved his life; but at considerable cost in suffering. It seemed
to him that the lion would never leave, and it was a full hour before
the angry brute gave up his vigil and strode majestically away across
the plain. When he was at a safe distance the boy extricated himself
from the thorn tree; but not without inflicting new wounds upon his
already tortured flesh.

It was many days before the outward evidence of the lesson he had
learned had left him; while the impression upon his mind was one that
was to remain with him for life. Never again did he uselessly tempt
fate.

He took long chances often in his after life; but only when the taking
of chances might further the attainment of some cherished end—and,
always thereafter, he practiced pole-vaulting.

For several days the boy and the ape lay up while the former recovered
from the painful wounds inflicted by the sharp thorns. The great
anthropoid licked the wounds of his human friend, nor, aside from this,
did they receive other treatment, but they soon healed, for healthy
flesh quickly replaces itself.

When the lad felt fit again the two continued their journey toward the
coast, and once more the boy’s mind was filled with pleasurable
anticipation.

And at last the much dreamed of moment came. They were passing through
a tangled forest when the boy’s sharp eyes discovered from the lower
branches through which he was traveling an old but well-marked spoor—a
spoor that set his heart to leaping—the spoor of man, of white men, for
among the prints of naked feet were the well defined outlines of
European made boots. The trail, which marked the passage of a
good-sized company, pointed north at right angles to the course the boy
and the ape were taking toward the coast.

Doubtless these white men knew the nearest coast settlement. They might
even be headed for it now. At any rate it would be worth while
overtaking them if even only for the pleasure of meeting again
creatures of his own kind. The lad was all excitement; palpitant with
eagerness to be off in pursuit. Akut demurred. He wanted nothing of
men. To him the lad was a fellow ape, for he was the son of the king of
apes. He tried to dissuade the boy, telling him that soon they should
come upon a tribe of their own folk where some day when he was older
the boy should be king as his father had before him. But Jack was
obdurate. He insisted that he wanted to see white men again. He wanted
to send a message to his parents. Akut listened and as he listened the
intuition of the beast suggested the truth to him—the boy was planning
to return to his own kind.

The thought filled the old ape with sorrow. He loved the boy as he had
loved the father, with the loyalty and faithfulness of a hound for its
master. In his ape brain and his ape heart he had nursed the hope that
he and the lad would never be separated. He saw all his fondly
cherished plans fading away, and yet he remained loyal to the lad and
to his wishes. Though disconsolate he gave in to the boy’s
determination to pursue the _safari_ of the white men, accompanying him
upon what he believed would be their last journey together.

The spoor was but a couple of days old when the two discovered it,
which meant that the slow-moving caravan was but a few hours distant
from them whose trained and agile muscles could carry their bodies
swiftly through the branches above the tangled undergrowth which had
impeded the progress of the laden carriers of the white men.

The boy was in the lead, excitement and anticipation carrying him ahead
of his companion to whom the attainment of their goal meant only
sorrow. And it was the boy who first saw the rear guard of the caravan
and the white men he had been so anxious to overtake.

Stumbling along the tangled trail of those ahead a dozen heavily laden
blacks who, from fatigue or sickness, had dropped behind were being
prodded by the black soldiers of the rear guard, kicked when they fell,
and then roughly jerked to their feet and hustled onward. On either
side walked a giant white man, heavy blonde beards almost obliterating
their countenances. The boy’s lips formed a glad cry of salutation as
his eyes first discovered the whites—a cry that was never uttered, for
almost immediately he witnessed that which turned his happiness to
anger as he saw that both the white men were wielding heavy whips
brutally upon the naked backs of the poor devils staggering along
beneath loads that would have overtaxed the strength and endurance of
strong men at the beginning of a new day.

Every now and then the rear guard and the white men cast apprehensive
glances rearward as though momentarily expecting the materialization of
some long expected danger from that quarter. The boy had paused after
his first sight of the caravan, and now was following slowly in the
wake of the sordid, brutal spectacle. Presently Akut came up with him.
To the beast there was less of horror in the sight than to the lad, yet
even the great ape growled beneath his breath at useless torture being
inflicted upon the helpless slaves. He looked at the boy. Now that he
had caught up with the creatures of his own kind, why was it that he
did not rush forward and greet them? He put the question to his
companion.

“They are fiends,” muttered the boy. “I would not travel with such as
they, for if I did I should set upon them and kill them the first time
they beat their people as they are beating them now; but,” he added,
after a moment’s thought, “I can ask them the whereabouts of the
nearest port, and then, Akut, we can leave them.”

The ape made no reply, and the boy swung to the ground and started at a
brisk walk toward the _safari_. He was a hundred yards away, perhaps,
when one of the whites caught sight of him. The man gave a shout of
alarm, instantly levelling his rifle upon the boy and firing. The
bullet struck just in front of its mark, scattering turf and fallen
leaves against the lad’s legs. A second later the other white and the
black soldiers of the rear guard were firing hysterically at the boy.

Jack leaped behind a tree, unhit. Days of panic ridden flight through
the jungle had filled Carl Jenssen and Sven Malbihn with jangling
nerves and their native boys with unreasoning terror. Every new note
from behind sounded to their frightened ears the coming of The Sheik
and his bloodthirsty entourage. They were in a blue funk, and the sight
of the naked white warrior stepping silently out of the jungle through
which they had just passed had been sufficient shock to let loose in
action all the pent nerve energy of Malbihn, who had been the first to
see the strange apparition. And Malbihn’s shout and shot had set the
others going.

When their nervous energy had spent itself and they came to take stock
of what they had been fighting it developed that Malbihn alone had seen
anything clearly. Several of the blacks averred that they too had
obtained a good view of the creature but their descriptions of it
varied so greatly that Jenssen, who had seen nothing himself, was
inclined to be a trifle skeptical. One of the blacks insisted that the
thing had been eleven feet tall, with a man’s body and the head of an
elephant. Another had seen THREE immense Arabs with huge, black beards;
but when, after conquering their nervousness, the rear guard advanced
upon the enemy’s position to investigate they found nothing, for Akut
and the boy had retreated out of range of the unfriendly guns.

Jack was disheartened and sad. He had not entirely recovered from the
depressing effect of the unfriendly reception he had received at the
hands of the blacks, and now he had found an even more hostile one
accorded him by men of his own color.

“The lesser beasts flee from me in terror,” he murmured, half to
himself, “the greater beasts are ready to tear me to pieces at sight.
Black men would kill me with their spears or arrows. And now white men,
men of my own kind, have fired upon me and driven me away. Are all the
creatures of the world my enemies? Has the son of Tarzan no friend
other than Akut?”

The old ape drew closer to the boy.

“There are the great apes,” he said. “They only will be the friends of
Akut’s friend. Only the great apes will welcome the son of Tarzan. You
have seen that men want nothing of you. Let us go now and continue our
search for the great apes—our people.”

The language of the great apes is a combination of monosyllabic
gutturals, amplified by gestures and signs. It may not be literally
translated into human speech; but as near as may be this is what Akut
said to the boy.

The two proceeded in silence for some time after Akut had spoken. The
boy was immersed in deep thought—bitter thoughts in which hatred and
revenge predominated. Finally he spoke: “Very well, Akut,” he said, “we
will find our friends, the great apes.”

The anthropoid was overjoyed; but he gave no outward demonstration of
his pleasure. A low grunt was his only response, and a moment later he
had leaped nimbly upon a small and unwary rodent that had been
surprised at a fatal distance from its burrow. Tearing the unhappy
creature in two Akut handed the lion’s share to the lad.




VIII.


A year had passed since the two Swedes had been driven in terror from
the savage country where The Sheik held sway. Little Meriem still
played with Geeka, lavishing all her childish love upon the now almost
hopeless ruin of what had never, even in its palmiest days, possessed
even a slight degree of loveliness. But to Meriem, Geeka was all that
was sweet and adorable. She carried to the deaf ears of the battered
ivory head all her sorrows all her hopes and all her ambitions, for
even in the face of hopelessness, in the clutches of the dread
authority from which there was no escape, little Meriem yet cherished
hopes and ambitions. It is true that her ambitions were rather nebulous
in form, consisting chiefly of a desire to escape with Geeka to some
remote and unknown spot where there were no Sheiks, no Mabunus—where
_El Adrea_ could find no entrance, and where she might play all day
surrounded only by flowers and birds and the harmless little monkeys
playing in the tree tops.

The Sheik had been away for a long time, conducting a caravan of ivory,
skins, and rubber far into the north. The interim had been one of great
peace for Meriem. It is true that Mabunu had still been with her, to
pinch or beat her as the mood seized the villainous old hag; but Mabunu
was only one. When The Sheik was there also there were two of them, and
The Sheik was stronger and more brutal even than Mabunu. Little Meriem
often wondered why the grim old man hated her so. It is true that he
was cruel and unjust to all with whom he came in contact, but to Meriem
he reserved his greatest cruelties, his most studied injustices.

Today Meriem was squatting at the foot of a large tree which grew
inside the palisade close to the edge of the village. She was
fashioning a tent of leaves for Geeka. Before the tent were some pieces
of wood and small leaves and a few stones. These were the household
utensils. Geeka was cooking dinner. As the little girl played she
prattled continuously to her companion, propped in a sitting position
with a couple of twigs. She was totally absorbed in the domestic duties
of Geeka—so much so that she did not note the gentle swaying of the
branches of the tree above her as they bent to the body of the creature
that had entered them stealthily from the jungle.

In happy ignorance the little girl played on, while from above two
steady eyes looked down upon her—unblinking, unwavering. There was none
other than the little girl in this part of the village, which had been
almost deserted since The Sheik had left long months before upon his
journey toward the north.

And out in the jungle, an hour’s march from the village, The Sheik was
leading his returning caravan homeward.

A year had passed since the white men had fired upon the lad and driven
him back into the jungle to take up his search for the only remaining
creatures to whom he might look for companionship—the great apes. For
months the two had wandered eastward, deeper and deeper into the
jungle. The year had done much for the boy—turning his already mighty
muscles to thews of steel, developing his woodcraft to a point where it
verged upon the uncanny, perfecting his arboreal instincts, and
training him in the use of both natural and artificial weapons.

He had become at last a creature of marvelous physical powers and
mental cunning. He was still but a boy, yet so great was his strength
that the powerful anthropoid with which he often engaged in mimic
battle was no match for him. Akut had taught him to fight as the bull
ape fights, nor ever was there a teacher better fitted to instruct in
the savage warfare of primordial man, or a pupil better equipped to
profit by the lessons of a master.

As the two searched for a band of the almost extinct species of ape to
which Akut belonged they lived upon the best the jungle afforded.
Antelope and zebra fell to the boy’s spear, or were dragged down by the
two powerful beasts of prey who leaped upon them from some overhanging
limb or from the ambush of the undergrowth beside the trail to the
water hole or the ford.

The pelt of a leopard covered the nakedness of the youth; but the
wearing of it had not been dictated by any prompting of modesty. With
the rifle shots of the white men showering about him he had reverted to
the savagery of the beast that is inherent in each of us, but that
flamed more strongly in this boy whose father had been raised a beast
of prey. He wore his leopard skin at first in response to a desire to
parade a trophy of his prowess, for he had slain the leopard with his
knife in a hand-to-hand combat. He saw that the skin was beautiful,
which appealed to his barbaric sense of ornamentation, and when it
stiffened and later commenced to decompose because of his having no
knowledge of how to cure or tan it was with sorrow and regret that he
discarded it. Later, when he chanced upon a lone, black warrior wearing
the counterpart of it, soft and clinging and beautiful from proper
curing, it required but an instant to leap from above upon the
shoulders of the unsuspecting black, sink a keen blade into his heart
and possess the rightly preserved hide.

There were no after-qualms of conscience. In the jungle might is right,
nor does it take long to inculcate this axiom in the mind of a jungle
dweller, regardless of what his past training may have been. That the
black would have killed him had he had the chance the boy knew full
well. Neither he nor the black were any more sacred than the lion, or
the buffalo, the zebra or the deer, or any other of the countless
creatures who roamed, or slunk, or flew, or wriggled through the dark
mazes of the forest. Each had but a single life, which was sought by
many. The greater number of enemies slain the better chance to prolong
that life. So the boy smiled and donned the finery of the vanquished,
and went his way with Akut, searching, always searching for the elusive
anthropoids who were to welcome them with open arms. And at last they
found them. Deep in the jungle, buried far from sight of man, they came
upon such another little natural arena as had witnessed the wild
ceremony of the Dum-Dum in which the boy’s father had taken part long
years before.

First, at a great distance, they heard the beating of the drum of the
great apes. They were sleeping in the safety of a huge tree when the
booming sound smote upon their ears. Both awoke at once. Akut was the
first to interpret the strange cadence.

“The great apes!” he growled. “They dance the Dum-Dum. Come, Korak, son
of Tarzan, let us go to our people.”

Months before Akut had given the boy a name of his own choosing, since
he could not master the man given name of Jack. Korak is as near as it
may be interpreted into human speech. In the language of the apes it
means Killer. Now the Killer rose upon the branch of the great tree
where he had been sleeping with his back braced against the stem. He
stretched his lithe young muscles, the moonlight filtering through the
foliage from above dappling his brown skin with little patches of
light.

The ape, too, stood up, half squatting after the manner of his kind.
Low growls rumbled from the bottom of his deep chest—growls of excited
anticipation. The boy growled in harmony with the ape. Then the
anthropoid slid softly to the ground. Close by, in the direction of the
booming drum, lay a clearing which they must cross. The moon flooded it
with silvery light. Half-erect, the great ape shuffled into the full
glare of the moon. At his side, swinging gracefully along in marked
contrast to the awkwardness of his companion, strode the boy, the dark,
shaggy coat of the one brushing against the smooth, clear hide of the
other. The lad was humming now, a music hall air that had found its way
to the forms of the great English public school that was to see him no
more. He was happy and expectant. The moment he had looked forward to
for so long was about to be realized. He was coming into his own. He
was coming home. As the months had dragged or flown along, retarded or
spurred on as privation or adventure predominated, thoughts of his own
home, while oft recurring, had become less vivid. The old life had
grown to seem more like a dream than a reality, and the balking of his
determination to reach the coast and return to London had finally
thrown the hope of realization so remotely into the future that it too
now seemed little more than a pleasant but hopeless dream.

Now all thoughts of London and civilization were crowded so far into
the background of his brain that they might as well have been
non-existent. Except for form and mental development he was as much an
ape as the great, fierce creature at his side.

In the exuberance of his joy he slapped his companion roughly on the
side of the head. Half in anger, half in play the anthropoid turned
upon him, his fangs bared and glistening. Long, hairy arms reached out
to seize him, and, as they had done a thousand times before, the two
clinched in mimic battle, rolling upon the sward, striking, growling
and biting, though never closing their teeth in more than a rough
pinch. It was wondrous practice for them both. The boy brought into
play wrestling tricks that he had learned at school, and many of these
Akut learned to use and to foil. And from the ape the boy learned the
methods that had been handed down to Akut from some common ancestor of
them both, who had roamed the teeming earth when ferns were trees and
crocodiles were birds.

But there was one art the boy possessed which Akut could not master,
though he did achieve fair proficiency in it for an ape—boxing. To have
his bull-like charges stopped and crumpled with a suddenly planted fist
upon the end of his snout, or a painful jolt in the short ribs, always
surprised Akut. It angered him too, and at such times his mighty jaws
came nearer to closing in the soft flesh of his friend than at any
other, for he was still an ape, with an ape’s short temper and brutal
instincts; but the difficulty was in catching his tormentor while his
rage lasted, for when he lost his head and rushed madly into close
quarters with the boy he discovered that the stinging hail of blows
released upon him always found their mark and effectually stopped
him—effectually and painfully. Then he would withdraw growling
viciously, backing away with grinning jaws distended, to sulk for an
hour or so.

Tonight they did not box. Just for a moment or two they wrestled
playfully, until the scent of Sheeta, the panther, brought them to
their feet, alert and wary. The great cat was passing through the
jungle in front of them. For a moment it paused, listening. The boy and
the ape growled menacingly in chorus and the carnivore moved on.

Then the two took up their journey toward the sound of the Dum-Dum.
Louder and louder came the beating of the drum. Now, at last, they
could hear the growling of the dancing apes, and strong to their
nostrils came the scent of their kind. The lad trembled with
excitement. The hair down Akut’s spine stiffened—the symptoms of
happiness and anger are often similar.

Silently they crept through the jungle as they neared the meeting place
of the apes. Now they were in the trees, worming their way forward,
alert for sentinels. Presently through a break in the foliage the scene
burst upon the eager eyes of the boy. To Akut it was a familiar one;
but to Korak it was all new. His nerves tingled at the savage sight.
The great bulls were dancing in the moonlight, leaping in an irregular
circle about the flat-topped earthen drum about which three old females
sat beating its resounding top with sticks worn smooth by long years of
use.

Akut, knowing the temper and customs of his kind, was too wise to make
their presence known until the frenzy of the dance had passed. After
the drum was quiet and the bellies of the tribe well-filled he would
hail them. Then would come a parley, after which he and Korak would be
accepted into membership by the community. There might be those who
would object; but such could be overcome by brute force, of which he
and the lad had an ample surplus. For weeks, possibly months, their
presence might cause ever decreasing suspicion among others of the
tribe; but eventually they would become as born brothers to these
strange apes.

He hoped that they had been among those who had known Tarzan, for that
would help in the introduction of the lad and in the consummation of
Akut’s dearest wish, that Korak should become king of the apes. It was
with difficulty, however, that Akut kept the boy from rushing into the
midst of the dancing anthropoids—an act that would have meant the
instant extermination of them both, since the hysterical frenzy into
which the great apes work themselves during the performance of their
strange rites is of such a nature that even the most ferocious of the
carnivora give them a wide berth at such times.

As the moon declined slowly toward the lofty, foliaged horizon of the
amphitheater the booming of the drum decreased and lessened were the
exertions of the dancers, until, at last, the final note was struck and
the huge beasts turned to fall upon the feast they had dragged hither
for the orgy.

From what he had seen and heard Akut was able to explain to Korak that
the rites proclaimed the choosing of a new king, and he pointed out to
the boy the massive figure of the shaggy monarch, come into his
kingship, no doubt, as many human rulers have come into theirs—by the
murder of his predecessor.

When the apes had filled their bellies and many of them had sought the
bases of the trees to curl up in sleep Akut plucked Korak by the arm.

“Come,” he whispered. “Come slowly. Follow me. Do as Akut does.”

Then he advanced slowly through the trees until he stood upon a bough
overhanging one side of the amphitheater. Here he stood in silence for
a moment. Then he uttered a low growl. Instantly a score of apes leaped
to their feet. Their savage little eyes sped quickly around the
periphery of the clearing. The king ape was the first to see the two
figures upon the branch. He gave voice to an ominous growl. Then he
took a few lumbering steps in the direction of the intruders. His hair
was bristling. His legs were stiff, imparting a halting, jerky motion
to his gait. Behind him pressed a number of bulls.

He stopped just a little before he came beneath the two—just far enough
to be beyond their spring. Wary king! Here he stood rocking himself to
and fro upon his short legs, baring his fangs in hideous grinnings,
rumbling out an ever increasing volume of growls, which were slowly but
steadily increasing to the proportions of roars. Akut knew that he was
planning an attack upon them. The old ape did not wish to fight. He had
come with the boy to cast his lot with the tribe.

“I am Akut,” he said. “This is Korak. Korak is the son of Tarzan who
was king of the apes. I, too, was king of the apes who dwelt in the
midst of the great waters. We have come to hunt with you, to fight with
you. We are great hunters. We are mighty fighters. Let us come in
peace.”

The king ceased his rocking. He eyed the pair from beneath his beetling
brows. His bloodshot eyes were savage and crafty. His kingship was very
new and he was jealous of it. He feared the encroachments of two
strange apes. The sleek, brown, hairless body of the lad spelled “man,”
and man he feared and hated.

“Go away!” he growled. “Go away, or I will kill you.”

The eager lad, standing behind the great Akut, had been pulsing with
anticipation and happiness. He wanted to leap down among these hairy
monsters and show them that he was their friend, that he was one of
them. He had expected that they would receive him with open arms, and
now the words of the king ape filled him with indignation and sorrow.
The blacks had set upon him and driven him away. Then he had turned to
the white men—to those of his own kind—only to hear the ping of bullets
where he had expected words of cordial welcome. The great apes had
remained his final hope. To them he looked for the companionship man
had denied him. Suddenly rage overwhelmed him.

The king ape was almost directly beneath him. The others were formed in
a half circle several yards behind the king. They were watching events
interestedly. Before Akut could guess his intention, or prevent, the
boy leaped to the ground directly in the path of the king, who had now
succeeded in stimulating himself to a frenzy of fury.

“I am Korak!” shouted the boy. “I am the Killer. I came to live among
you as a friend. You want to drive me away. Very well, then, I shall
go; but before I go I shall show you that the son of Tarzan is your
master, as his father was before him—that he is not afraid of your king
or you.”

For an instant the king ape had stood motionless with surprise. He had
expected no such rash action upon the part of either of the intruders.
Akut was equally surprised. Now he shouted excitedly for Korak to come
back, for he knew that in the sacred arena the other bulls might be
expected to come to the assistance of their king against an outsider,
though there was small likelihood that the king would need assistance.
Once those mighty jaws closed upon the boy’s soft neck the end would
come quickly. To leap to his rescue would mean death for Akut, too; but
the brave old ape never hesitated. Bristling and growling, he dropped
to the sward just as the king ape charged.

The beast’s hands clutched for their hold as the animal sprang upon the
lad. The fierce jaws were wide distended to bury the yellow fangs
deeply in the brown hide. Korak, too, leaped forward to meet the
attack; but leaped crouching, beneath the outstretched arms. At the
instant of contact the lad pivoted on one foot, and with all the weight
of his body and the strength of his trained muscles drove a clenched
fist into the bull’s stomach. With a gasping shriek the king ape
collapsed, clutching futilely for the agile, naked creature nimbly
sidestepping from his grasp.

Howls of rage and dismay broke from the bull apes behind the fallen
king, as with murder in their savage little hearts they rushed forward
upon Korak and Akut; but the old ape was too wise to court any such
unequal encounter. To have counseled the boy to retreat now would have
been futile, and Akut knew it. To delay even a second in argument would
have sealed the death warrants of them both. There was but a single
hope and Akut seized it. Grasping the lad around the waist he lifted
him bodily from the ground, and turning ran swiftly toward another tree
which swung low branches above the arena. Close upon their heels
swarmed the hideous mob; but Akut, old though he was and burdened by
the weight of the struggling Korak, was still fleeter than his
pursuers.

With a bound he grasped a low limb, and with the agility of a little
monkey swung himself and the boy to temporary safety. Nor did he
hesitate even here; but raced on through the jungle night, bearing his
burden to safety. For a time the bulls pursued; but presently, as the
swifter outdistanced the slower and found themselves separated from
their fellows they abandoned the chase, standing roaring and screaming
until the jungle reverberated to their hideous noises. Then they turned
and retraced their way to the amphitheater.

When Akut felt assured that they were no longer pursued he stopped and
released Korak. The boy was furious.

“Why did you drag me away?” he cried. “I would have taught them! I
would have taught them all! Now they will think that I am afraid of
them.”

“What they think cannot harm you,” said Akut. “You are alive. If I had
not brought you away you would be dead now and so would I. Do you not
know that even Numa slinks from the path of the great apes when there
are many of them and they are mad?”




IX.


It was an unhappy Korak who wandered aimlessly through the jungle the
day following his inhospitable reception by the great apes. His heart
was heavy from disappointment. Unsatisfied vengeance smoldered in his
breast. He looked with hatred upon the denizens of his jungle world,
baring his fighting fangs and growling at those that came within radius
of his senses. The mark of his father’s early life was strong upon him
and enhanced by months of association with beasts, from whom the
imitative faculty of youth had absorbed a countless number of little
mannerisms of the predatory creatures of the wild.

He bared his fangs now as naturally and upon as slight provocation as
Sheeta, the panther, bared his. He growled as ferociously as Akut
himself. When he came suddenly upon another beast his quick crouch bore
a strange resemblance to the arching of a cat’s back. Korak, the
killer, was looking for trouble. In his heart of hearts he hoped to
meet the king ape who had driven him from the amphitheater. To this end
he insisted upon remaining in the vicinity; but the exigencies of the
perpetual search for food led them several miles further away during
day.

They were moving slowly down wind, and warily because the advantage was
with whatever beast might chance to be hunting ahead of them, where
their scent-spoor was being borne by the light breeze. Suddenly the two
halted simultaneously. Two heads were cocked upon one side. Like
creatures hewn from solid rock they stood immovable, listening. Not a
muscle quivered. For several seconds they remained thus, then Korak
advanced cautiously a few yards and leaped nimbly into a tree. Akut
followed close upon his heels. Neither had made a noise that would have
been appreciable to human ears at a dozen paces.

Stopping often to listen they crept forward through the trees. That
both were greatly puzzled was apparent from the questioning looks they
cast at one another from time to time. Finally the lad caught a glimpse
of a palisade a hundred yards ahead, and beyond it the tops of some
goatskin tents and a number of thatched huts. His lip upcurled in a
savage snarl. Blacks! How he hated them. He signed to Akut to remain
where he was while he advanced to reconnoiter.

Woe betide the unfortunate villager whom The Killer came upon now.
Slinking through the lower branches of the trees, leaping lightly from
one jungle giant to its neighbor where the distance was not too great,
or swinging from one hand hold to another Korak came silently toward
the village. He heard a voice beyond the palisade and toward that he
made his way. A great tree overhung the enclosure at the very point
from which the voice came. Into this Korak crept. His spear was ready
in his hand. His ears told him of the proximity of a human being. All
that his eyes required was a single glance to show him his target.
Then, lightning like, the missile would fly to its goal. With raised
spear he crept among the branches of the tree glaring narrowly downward
in search of the owner of the voice which rose to him from below.

At last he saw a human back. The spear hand flew to the limit of the
throwing position to gather the force that would send the iron shod
missile completely through the body of the unconscious victim. And then
The Killer paused. He leaned forward a little to get a better view of
the target. Was it to insure more perfect aim, or had there been that
in the graceful lines and the childish curves of the little body below
him that had held in check the spirit of murder running riot in his
veins?

He lowered his spear cautiously that it might make no noise by scraping
against foliage or branches. Quietly he crouched in a comfortable
position along a great limb and there he lay with wide eyes looking
down in wonder upon the creature he had crept upon to kill—looking down
upon a little girl, a little nut brown maiden. The snarl had gone from
his lip. His only expression was one of interested attention—he was
trying to discover what the girl was doing. Suddenly a broad grin
overspread his face, for a turn of the girl’s body had revealed Geeka
of the ivory head and the rat skin torso—Geeka of the splinter limbs
and the disreputable appearance. The little girl raised the marred face
to hers and rocking herself backward and forward crooned a plaintive
Arab lullaby to the doll. A softer light entered the eyes of The
Killer. For a long hour that passed very quickly to him Korak lay with
gaze riveted upon the playing child. Not once had he had a view of the
girl’s full face. For the most part he saw only a mass of wavy, black
hair, one brown little shoulder exposed upon the side from where her
single robe was caught beneath her arm, and a shapely knee protruding
from beneath her garment as she sat cross legged upon the ground. A
tilt of the head as she emphasized some maternal admonition to the
passive Geeka revealed occasionally a rounded cheek or a piquant little
chin. Now she was shaking a slim finger at Geeka, reprovingly, and
again she crushed to her heart this only object upon which she might
lavish the untold wealth of her childish affections.

Korak, momentarily forgetful of his bloody mission, permitted the
fingers of his spear hand to relax a little their grasp upon the shaft
of his formidable weapon. It slipped, almost falling; but the
occurrence recalled The Killer to himself. It reminded him of his
purpose in slinking stealthily upon the owner of the voice that had
attracted his vengeful attention. He glanced at the spear, with its
well-worn grip and cruel, barbed head. Then he let his eyes wander
again to the dainty form below him. In imagination he saw the heavy
weapon shooting downward. He saw it pierce the tender flesh, driving
its way deep into the yielding body. He saw the ridiculous doll drop
from its owner’s arms to lie sprawled and pathetic beside the quivering
body of the little girl. The Killer shuddered, scowling at the
inanimate iron and wood of the spear as though they constituted a
sentient being endowed with a malignant mind.

Korak wondered what the girl would do were he to drop suddenly from the
tree to her side. Most likely she would scream and run away. Then would
come the men of the village with spears and guns and set upon him. They
would either kill him or drive him away. A lump rose in the boy’s
throat. He craved the companionship of his own kind, though he scarce
realized how greatly. He would have liked to slip down beside the
little girl and talk with her, though he knew from the words he had
overheard that she spoke a language with which he was unfamiliar. They
could have talked by signs a little. That would have been better than
nothing. Too, he would have been glad to see her face. What he had
glimpsed assured him that she was pretty; but her strongest appeal to
him lay in the affectionate nature revealed by her gentle mothering of
the grotesque doll.

At last he hit upon a plan. He would attract her attention, and
reassure her by a smiling greeting from a greater distance. Silently he
wormed his way back into the tree. It was his intention to hail her
from beyond the palisade, giving her the feeling of security which he
imagined the stout barricade would afford.

He had scarcely left his position in the tree when his attention was
attracted by a considerable noise upon the opposite side of the
village. By moving a little he could see the gate at the far end of the
main street. A number of men, women and children were running toward
it. It swung open, revealing the head of a caravan upon the opposite
side. In trooped the motley organization—black slaves and dark hued
Arabs of the northern deserts; cursing camel drivers urging on their
vicious charges; overburdened donkeys, waving sadly pendulous ears
while they endured with stoic patience the brutalities of their
masters; goats, sheep and horses. Into the village they all trooped
behind a tall, sour, old man, who rode without greetings to those who
shrunk from his path directly to a large goatskin tent in the center of
the village. Here he spoke to a wrinkled hag.

Korak, from his vantage spot, could see it all. He saw the old man
asking questions of the black woman, and then he saw the latter point
toward a secluded corner of the village which was hidden from the main
street by the tents of the Arabs and the huts of the natives in the
direction of the tree beneath which the little girl played. This was
doubtless her father, thought Korak. He had been away and his first
thought upon returning was of his little daughter. How glad she would
be to see him! How she would run and throw herself into his arms, to be
crushed to his breast and covered with his kisses. Korak sighed. He
thought of his own father and mother far away in London.

He returned to his place in the tree above the girl. If he couldn’t
have happiness of this sort himself he wanted to enjoy the happiness of
others. Possibly if he made himself known to the old man he might be
permitted to come to the village occasionally as a friend. It would be
worth trying. He would wait until the old Arab had greeted his
daughter, then he would make his presence known with signs of peace.

The Arab was striding softly toward the girl. In a moment he would be
beside her, and then how surprised and delighted she would be! Korak’s
eyes sparkled in anticipation—and now the old man stood behind the
little girl. His stern old face was still unrelaxed. The child was yet
unconscious of his presence. She prattled on to the unresponsive Geeka.
Then the old man coughed. With a start the child glanced quickly up
over her shoulder. Korak could see her full face now. It was very
beautiful in its sweet and innocent childishness—all soft and lovely
curves. He could see her great, dark eyes. He looked for the happy love
light that would follow recognition; but it did not come. Instead,
terror, stark, paralyzing terror, was mirrored in her eyes, in the
expression of her mouth, in the tense, cowering attitude of her body. A
grim smile curved the thin, cruel lip of the Arab. The child essayed to
crawl away; but before she could get out of his reach the old man
kicked her brutally, sending her sprawling upon the grass. Then he
followed her up to seize and strike her as was his custom.

Above them, in the tree, a beast crouched where a moment before had
been a boy—a beast with dilating nostrils and bared fangs—a beast that
trembled with rage.

The Sheik was stooping to reach for the girl when The Killer dropped to
the ground at his side. His spear was still in his left hand but he had
forgotten it. Instead his right fist was clenched and as The Sheik took
a backward step, astonished by the sudden materialization of this
strange apparition apparently out of clear air, the heavy fist landed
full upon his mouth backed by the weight of the young giant and the
terrific power of his more than human muscles.

Bleeding and senseless The Sheik sank to earth. Korak turned toward the
child. She had regained her feet and stood wide eyed and frightened,
looking first into his face and then, horror struck, at the recumbent
figure of The Sheik. In an involuntary gesture of protection The Killer
threw an arm about the girl’s shoulders and stood waiting for the Arab
to regain consciousness. For a moment they remained thus, when the girl
spoke.

“When he regains his senses he will kill me,” she said, in Arabic.

Korak could not understand her. He shook his head, speaking to her
first in English and then in the language of the great apes; but
neither of these was intelligible to her. She leaned forward and
touched the hilt of the long knife that the Arab wore. Then she raised
her clasped hand above her head and drove an imaginary blade into her
breast above her heart. Korak understood. The old man would kill her.
The girl came to his side again and stood there trembling. She did not
fear him. Why should she? He had saved her from a terrible beating at
the hands of The Sheik. Never, in her memory, had another so befriended
her. She looked up into his face. It was a boyish, handsome face,
nut-brown like her own. She admired the spotted leopard skin that
circled his lithe body from one shoulder to his knees. The metal
anklets and armlets adorning him aroused her envy. Always had she
coveted something of the kind; but never had The Sheik permitted her
more than the single cotton garment that barely sufficed to cover her
nakedness. No furs or silks or jewelry had there ever been for little
Meriem.

And Korak looked at the girl. He had always held girls in a species of
contempt. Boys who associated with them were, in his estimation,
mollycoddles. He wondered what he should do. Could he leave her here to
be abused, possibly murdered, by the villainous old Arab? No! But, on
the other hand, could he take her into the jungle with him? What could
he accomplish burdened by a weak and frightened girl? She would scream
at her own shadow when the moon came out upon the jungle night and the
great beasts roamed, moaning and roaring, through the darkness.

He stood for several minutes buried in thought. The girl watched his
face, wondering what was passing in his mind. She, too, was thinking of
the future. She feared to remain and suffer the vengeance of The Sheik.
There was no one in all the world to whom she might turn, other than
this half-naked stranger who had dropped miraculously from the clouds
to save her from one of The Sheik’s accustomed beatings. Would her new
friend leave her now? Wistfully she gazed at his intent face. She moved
a little closer to him, laying a slim, brown hand upon his arm. The
contact awakened the lad from his absorption. He looked down at her,
and then his arm went about her shoulder once more, for he saw tears
upon her lashes.

“Come,” he said. “The jungle is kinder than man. You shall live in the
jungle and Korak and Akut will protect you.”

She did not understand his words, but the pressure of his arm drawing
her away from the prostrate Arab and the tents was quite intelligible.
One little arm crept about his waist and together they walked toward
the palisade. Beneath the great tree that had harbored Korak while he
watched the girl at play he lifted her in his arms and throwing her
lightly across his shoulder leaped nimbly into the lower branches. Her
arms were about his neck and from one little hand Geeka dangled down
his straight young back.

And so Meriem entered the jungle with Korak, trusting, in her childish
innocence, the stranger who had befriended her, and perhaps influenced
in her belief in him by that strange intuitive power possessed by
woman. She had no conception of what the future might hold. She did not
know, nor could she have guessed the manner of life led by her
protector. Possibly she pictured a distant village similar to that of
The Sheik in which lived other white men like the stranger. That she
was to be taken into the savage, primeval life of a jungle beast could
not have occurred to her. Had it, her little heart would have
palpitated with fear. Often had she wished to run away from the
cruelties of The Sheik and Mabunu; but the dangers of the jungle always
had deterred her.

The two had gone but a short distance from the village when the girl
spied the huge proportions of the great Akut. With a half-stifled
scream she clung more closely to Korak, and pointed fearfully toward
the ape.

Akut, thinking that The Killer was returning with a prisoner, came
growling toward them—a little girl aroused no more sympathy in the
beast’s heart than would a full-grown bull ape. She was a stranger and
therefore to be killed. He bared his yellow fangs as he approached, and
to his surprise The Killer bared his likewise, but he bared them at
Akut, and snarled menacingly.

“Ah,” thought Akut, “The Killer has taken a mate,” and so, obedient to
the tribal laws of his kind, he left them alone, becoming suddenly
absorbed in a fuzzy caterpillar of peculiarly succulent appearance. The
larva disposed of, he glanced from the corner of an eye at Korak. The
youth had deposited his burden upon a large limb, where she clung
desperately to keep from falling.

“She will accompany us,” said Korak to Akut, jerking a thumb in the
direction of the girl. “Do not harm her. We will protect her.”

Akut shrugged. To be burdened by the young of man was in no way to his
liking. He could see from her evident fright at her position on the
branch, and from the terrified glances she cast in his direction that
she was hopelessly unfit. By all the ethics of Akut’s training and
inheritance the unfit should be eliminated; but if The Killer wished
this there was nothing to be done about it but to tolerate her. Akut
certainly didn’t want her—of that he was quite positive. Her skin was
too smooth and hairless. Quite snake-like, in fact, and her face was
most unattractive. Not at all like that of a certain lovely she he had
particularly noticed among the apes in the amphitheater the previous
night. Ah, there was true feminine beauty for one!—a great, generous
mouth; lovely, yellow fangs, and the cutest, softest side whiskers!
Akut sighed. Then he rose, expanded his great chest and strutted back
and forth along a substantial branch, for even a puny thing like this
she of Korak’s might admire his fine coat and his graceful carriage.

But poor little Meriem only shrank closer to Korak and almost wished
that she were back in the village of The Sheik where the terrors of
existence were of human origin, and so more or less familiar. The
hideous ape frightened her. He was so large and so ferocious in
appearance. His actions she could only interpret as a menace, for how
could she guess that he was parading to excite admiration? Nor could
she know of the bond of fellowship which existed between this great
brute and the godlike youth who had rescued her from the Sheik.

Meriem spent an evening and a night of unmitigated terror. Korak and
Akut led her along dizzy ways as they searched for food. Once they hid
her in the branches of a tree while they stalked a near-by buck. Even
her natural terror of being left alone in the awful jungle was
submerged in a greater horror as she saw the man and the beast spring
simultaneously upon their prey and drag it down, as she saw the
handsome face of her preserver contorted in a bestial snarl; as she saw
his strong, white teeth buried in the soft flesh of the kill.

When he came back to her blood smeared his face and hands and breast
and she shrank from him as he offered her a huge hunk of hot, raw meat.
He was evidently much disturbed by her refusal to eat, and when, a
moment later, he scampered away into the forest to return with fruit
for her she was once more forced to alter her estimation of him. This
time she did not shrink, but acknowledged his gift with a smile that,
had she known it, was more than ample payment to the affection starved
boy.

The sleeping problem vexed Korak. He knew that the girl could not
balance herself in safety in a tree crotch while she slept, nor would
it be safe to permit her to sleep upon the ground open to the attacks
of prowling beasts of prey. There was but a single solution that
presented itself—he must hold her in his arms all night. And that he
did, with Akut braced upon one side of her and he upon the other, so
that she was warmed by the bodies of them both.

She did not sleep much until the night was half spent; but at last
Nature overcame her terrors of the black abyss beneath and the hairy
body of the wild beast at her side, and she fell into a deep slumber
which outlasted the darkness. When she opened her eyes the sun was well
up. At first she could not believe in the reality of her position. Her
head had rolled from Korak’s shoulder so that her eyes were directed
upon the hairy back of the ape. At sight of it she shrank away. Then
she realized that someone was holding her, and turning her head she saw
the smiling eyes of the youth regarding her. When he smiled she could
not fear him, and now she shrank closer against him in natural
revulsion toward the rough coat of the brute upon her other side.

Korak spoke to her in the language of the apes; but she shook her head,
and spoke to him in the language of the Arab, which was as
unintelligible to him as was ape speech to her. Akut sat up and looked
at them. He could understand what Korak said but the girl made only
foolish noises that were entirely unintelligible and ridiculous. Akut
could not understand what Korak saw in her to attract him. He looked at
her long and steadily, appraising her carefully, then he scratched his
head, rose and shook himself.

His movement gave the girl a little start—she had forgotten Akut for
the moment. Again she shrank from him. The beast saw that she feared
him, and being a brute enjoyed the evidence of the terror his
brutishness inspired. Crouching, he extended his huge hand stealthily
toward her, as though to seize her. She shrank still further away.
Akut’s eyes were busy drinking in the humor of the situation—he did not
see the narrowing eyes of the boy upon him, nor the shortening neck as
the broad shoulders rose in a characteristic attitude of preparation
for attack. As the ape’s fingers were about to close upon the girl’s
arm the youth rose suddenly with a short, vicious growl. A clenched
fist flew before Meriem’s eyes to land full upon the snout of the
astonished Akut. With an explosive bellow the anthropoid reeled
backward and tumbled from the tree.

Korak stood glaring down upon him when a sudden swish in the bushes
close by attracted his attention. The girl too was looking down; but
she saw nothing but the angry ape scrambling to his feet. Then, like a
bolt from a cross bow, a mass of spotted, yellow fur shot into view
straight for Akut’s back. It was Sheeta, the leopard.




X.


As the leopard leaped for the great ape Meriem gasped in surprise and
horror—not for the impending fate of the anthropoid, but at the act of
the youth who but an instant before had angrily struck his strange
companion; for scarce had the carnivore burst into view than with drawn
knife the youth had leaped far out above him, so that as Sheeta was
almost in the act of sinking fangs and talons in Akut’s broad back The
Killer landed full upon the leopard’s shoulders.

The cat halted in mid air, missed the ape by but a hair’s breadth, and
with horrid snarlings rolled over upon its back, clutching and clawing
in an effort to reach and dislodge the antagonist biting at its neck
and knifing it in the side.

Akut, startled by the sudden rush from his rear, and following hoary
instinct, was in the tree beside the girl with an agility little short
of marvelous in so heavy a beast. But the moment that he turned to see
what was going on below him brought him as quickly to the ground again.
Personal differences were quickly forgotten in the danger which menaced
his human companion, nor was he a whit less eager to jeopardize his own
safety in the service of his friend than Korak had been to succor him.

The result was that Sheeta presently found two ferocious creatures
tearing him to ribbons. Shrieking, snarling and growling, the three
rolled hither and thither among the underbrush, while with staring eyes
the sole spectator of the battle royal crouched trembling in the tree
above them hugging Geeka frantically to her breast.

It was the boy’s knife which eventually decided the battle, and as the
fierce feline shuddered convulsively and rolled over upon its side the
youth and the ape rose and faced one another across the prostrate
carcass. Korak jerked his head in the direction of the little girl in
the tree.

“Leave her alone,” he said; “she is mine.”

Akut grunted, blinked his blood-shot eyes, and turned toward the body
of Sheeta. Standing erect upon it he threw out his great chest, raised
his face toward the heavens and gave voice to so horrid a scream that
once again the little girl shuddered and shrank. It was the victory cry
of the bull ape that has made a kill. The boy only looked on for a
moment in silence; then he leaped into the tree again to the girl’s
side. Akut presently rejoined them. For a few minutes he busied himself
licking his wounds, then he wandered off to hunt his breakfast.

For many months the strange life of the three went on unmarked by any
unusual occurrences. At least without any occurrences that seemed
unusual to the youth or the ape; but to the little girl it was a
constant nightmare of horrors for days and weeks, until she too became
accustomed to gazing into the eyeless sockets of death and to the feel
of the icy wind of his shroud-like mantle. Slowly she learned the
rudiments of the only common medium of thought exchange which her
companions possessed—the language of the great apes. More quickly she
perfected herself in jungle craft, so that the time soon came when she
was an important factor in the chase, watching while the others slept,
or helping them to trace the spoor of whatever prey they might be
stalking. Akut accepted her on a footing which bordered upon equality
when it was necessary for them to come into close contact; but for the
most part he avoided her. The youth always was kind to her, and if
there were many occasions upon which he felt the burden of her presence
he hid it from her. Finding that the night damp and chill caused her
discomfort and even suffering, Korak constructed a tight little shelter
high among the swaying branches of a giant tree. Here little Meriem
slept in comparative warmth and safety, while The Killer and the ape
perched upon near-by branches, the former always before the entrance to
the lofty domicile, where he best could guard its inmate from the
dangers of arboreal enemies. They were too high to feel much fear of
Sheeta; but there was always Histah, the snake, to strike terror to
one’s soul, and the great baboons who lived near-by, and who, while
never attacking always bared their fangs and barked at any of the trio
when they passed near them.

After the construction of the shelter the activities of the three
became localized. They ranged less widely, for there was always the
necessity of returning to their own tree at nightfall. A river flowed
near by. Game and fruit were plentiful, as were fish also. Existence
had settled down to the daily humdrum of the wild—the search for food
and the sleeping upon full bellies. They looked no further ahead than
today. If the youth thought of his past and of those who longed for him
in the distant metropolis it was in a detached and impersonal sort of
way as though that other life belonged to another creature than
himself. He had given up hope of returning to civilization, for since
his various rebuffs at the hands of those to whom he had looked for
friendship he had wandered so far inland as to realize that he was
completely lost in the mazes of the jungle.

Then, too, since the coming of Meriem he had found in her that one
thing which he had most missed before in his savage, jungle life—human
companionship. In his friendship for her there was appreciable no trace
of sex influence of which he was cognizant. They were
friends—companions—that was all. Both might have been boys, except for
the half tender and always masterful manifestation of the protective
instinct which was apparent in Korak’s attitude.

The little girl idolized him as she might have idolized an indulgent
brother had she had one. Love was a thing unknown to either; but as the
youth neared manhood it was inevitable that it should come to him as it
did to every other savage, jungle male.

As Meriem became proficient in their common language the pleasures of
their companionship grew correspondingly, for now they could converse
and aided by the mental powers of their human heritage they amplified
the restricted vocabulary of the apes until talking was transformed
from a task into an enjoyable pastime. When Korak hunted, Meriem
usually accompanied him, for she had learned the fine art of silence,
when silence was desirable. She could pass through the branches of the
great trees now with all the agility and stealth of The Killer himself.
Great heights no longer appalled her. She swung from limb to limb, or
she raced through the mighty branches, surefooted, lithe, and fearless.
Korak was very proud of her, and even old Akut grunted in approval
where before he had growled in contempt.

A distant village of blacks had furnished her with a mantle of fur and
feathers, with copper ornaments, and weapons, for Korak would not
permit her to go unarmed, or unversed in the use of the weapons he
stole for her. A leather thong over one shoulder supported the ever
present Geeka who was still the recipient of her most sacred
confidences. A light spear and a long knife were her weapons of offense
or defense. Her body, rounding into the fulness of an early maturity,
followed the lines of a Greek goddess; but there the similarity ceased,
for her face was beautiful.

As she grew more accustomed to the jungle and the ways of its wild
denizens fear left her. As time wore on she even hunted alone when
Korak and Akut were prowling at a great distance, as they were
sometimes forced to do when game was scarce in their immediate
vicinity. Upon these occasions she usually confined her endeavors to
the smaller animals though sometimes she brought down a deer, and once
even Horta, the boar—a great tusker that even Sheeta might have thought
twice before attacking.

In their stamping grounds in the jungle the three were familiar
figures. The little monkeys knew them well, often coming close to
chatter and frolic about them. When Akut was by, the small folk kept
their distance, but with Korak they were less shy and when both the
males were gone they would come close to Meriem, tugging at her
ornaments or playing with Geeka, who was a never ending source of
amusement to them. The girl played with them and fed them, and when she
was alone they helped her to pass the long hours until Korak’s return.

Nor were they worthless as friends. In the hunt they helped her locate
her quarry. Often they would come racing through the trees to her side
to announce the near presence of antelope or giraffe, or with excited
warnings of the proximity of Sheeta or Numa. Luscious, sun-kissed
fruits which hung far out upon the frail bough of the jungle’s waving
crest were brought to her by these tiny, nimble allies. Sometimes they
played tricks upon her; but she was always kind and gentle with them
and in their wild, half-human way they were kind to her and
affectionate. Their language being similar to that of the great apes
Meriem could converse with them though the poverty of their vocabulary
rendered these exchanges anything but feasts of reason. For familiar
objects they had names, as well as for those conditions which induced
pain or pleasure, joy, sorrow, or rage. These root words were so
similar to those in use among the great anthropoids as to suggest that
the language of the Manus was the mother tongue. At best it lent itself
to but material and sordid exchange. Dreams, aspirations, hopes, the
past, the future held no place in the conversation of Manu, the monkey.
All was of the present—particularly of filling his belly and catching
lice.

Poor food was this to nourish the mental appetite of a girl just upon
the brink of womanhood. And so, finding Manu only amusing as an
occasional playfellow or pet, Meriem poured out her sweetest soul
thoughts into the deaf ears of Geeka’s ivory head. To Geeka she spoke
in Arabic, knowing that Geeka, being but a doll, could not understand
the language of Korak and Akut, and that the language of Korak and Akut
being that of male apes contained nothing of interest to an Arab doll.

Geeka had undergone a transformation since her little mother had left
the village of The Sheik. Her garmenture now reflected in miniature
that of Meriem. A tiny bit of leopard skin covered her ratskin torso
from shoulder to splinter knee. A band of braided grasses about her
brow held in place a few gaudy feathers from the parakeet, while other
bits of grass were fashioned into imitations of arm and leg ornaments
of metal. Geeka was a perfect little savage; but at heart she was
unchanged, being the same omnivorous listener as of yore. An excellent
trait in Geeka was that she never interrupted in order to talk about
herself. Today was no exception. She had been listening attentively to
Meriem for an hour, propped against the bole of a tree while her lithe,
young mistress stretched catlike and luxurious along a swaying branch
before her.

“Little Geeka,” said Meriem, “our Korak has been gone for a long time
today. We miss him, little Geeka, do we not? It is dull and lonesome in
the great jungle when our Korak is away. What will he bring us this
time, eh? Another shining band of metal for Meriem’s ankle? Or a soft,
doeskin loin cloth from the body of a black she? He tells me that it is
harder to get the possessions of the shes, for he will not kill them as
he does the males, and they fight savagely when he leaps upon them to
wrest their ornaments from them. Then come the males with spears and
arrows and Korak takes to the trees. Sometimes he takes the she with
him and high among the branches divests her of the things he wishes to
bring home to Meriem. He says that the blacks fear him now, and at
first sight of him the women and children run shrieking to their huts;
but he follows them within, and it is not often that he returns without
arrows for himself and a present for Meriem. Korak is mighty among the
jungle people—our Korak, Geeka—no, _my_ Korak!”

Meriem’s conversation was interrupted by the sudden plunge of an
excited little monkey that landed upon her shoulders in a flying leap
from a neighboring tree.

“Climb!” he cried. “Climb! The Mangani are coming.”

Meriem glanced lazily over her shoulder at the excited disturber of her
peace.

“Climb, yourself, little Manu,” she said. “The only Mangani in our
jungle are Korak and Akut. It is they you have seen returning from the
hunt. Some day you will see your own shadow, little Manu, and then you
will be frightened to death.”

But the monkey only screamed his warning more lustily before he raced
upward toward the safety of the high terrace where Mangani, the great
ape, could not follow. Presently Meriem heard the sound of approaching
bodies swinging through the trees. She listened attentively. There were
two and they were great apes—Korak and Akut. To her Korak was an ape—a
Mangani, for as such the three always described themselves. Man was an
enemy, so they did not think of themselves as belonging any longer to
the same genus. Tarmangani, or great white ape, which described the
white man in their language, did not fit them all. Gomangani—great
black ape, or Negro—described none of them so they called themselves
plain Mangani.

Meriem decided that she would feign slumber and play a joke on Korak.
So she lay very still with eyes tightly closed. She heard the two
approaching closer and closer. They were in the adjoining tree now and
must have discovered her, for they had halted. Why were they so quiet?
Why did not Korak call out his customary greeting? The quietness was
ominous. It was followed presently by a very stealthy sound—one of them
was creeping upon her. Was Korak planning a joke upon his own account?
Well, she would fool him. Cautiously she opened her eyes the tiniest
bit, and as she did so her heart stood still. Creeping silently toward
her was a huge bull ape that she never before had seen. Behind him was
another like him.

With the agility of a squirrel Meriem was upon her feet and at the same
instant the great bull lunged for her. Leaping from limb to limb the
girl fled through the jungle while close behind her came the two great
apes. Above them raced a bevy of screaming, chattering monkeys, hurling
taunts and insults at the Mangani, and encouragement and advice to the
girl.

From tree to tree swung Meriem working ever upward toward the smaller
branches which would not bear the weight of her pursuers. Faster and
faster came the bull apes after her. The clutching fingers of the
foremost were almost upon her again and again, but she eluded them by
sudden bursts of speed or reckless chances as she threw herself across
dizzy spaces.

Slowly she was gaining her way to the greater heights where safety lay,
when, after a particularly daring leap, the swaying branch she grasped
bent low beneath her weight, nor whipped upward again as it should have
done. Even before the rending sound which followed Meriem knew that she
had misjudged the strength of the limb. It gave slowly at first. Then
there was a ripping as it parted from the trunk. Releasing her hold
Meriem dropped among the foliage beneath, clutching for a new support.
She found it a dozen feet below the broken limb. She had fallen thus
many times before, so that she had no particular terror of a fall—it
was the delay which appalled her most, and rightly, for scarce had she
scrambled to a place of safety than the body of the huge ape dropped at
her side and a great, hairy arm went about her waist.

Almost at once the other ape reached his companion’s side. He made a
lunge at Meriem; but her captor swung her to one side, bared his
fighting fangs and growled ominously. Meriem struggled to escape. She
struck at the hairy breast and bearded cheek. She fastened her strong,
white teeth in one shaggy forearm. The ape cuffed her viciously across
the face, then he had to turn his attention to his fellow who quite
evidently desired the prize for his own.

The captor could not fight to advantage upon the swaying bough,
burdened as he was by a squirming, struggling captive, so he dropped
quickly to the ground beneath. The other followed him, and here they
fought, occasionally abandoning their duel to pursue and recapture the
girl who took every advantage of her captors’ preoccupation in battle
to break away in attempted escape; but always they overtook her, and
first one and then the other possessed her as they struggled to tear
one another to pieces for the prize.

Often the girl came in for many blows that were intended for a hairy
foe, and once she was felled, lying unconscious while the apes,
relieved of the distraction of detaining her by force, tore into one
another in fierce and terrible combat.

Above them screamed the little monkeys, racing hither and thither in a
frenzy of hysterical excitement. Back and forth over the battle field
flew countless birds of gorgeous plumage, squawking their hoarse cries
of rage and defiance. In the distance a lion roared.

The larger bull was slowly tearing his antagonist to pieces. They
rolled upon the ground biting and striking. Again, erect upon their
hind legs they pulled and tugged like human wrestlers; but always the
giant fangs found their bloody part to play until both combatants and
the ground about them were red with gore.

Meriem, through it all, lay still and unconscious upon the ground. At
last one found a permanent hold upon the jugular of the other and thus
they went down for the last time. For several minutes they lay with
scarce a struggle. It was the larger bull who arose alone from the last
embrace. He shook himself. A deep growl rumbled from his hairy throat.
He waddled back and forth between the body of the girl and that of his
vanquished foe. Then he stood upon the latter and gave tongue to his
hideous challenge. The little monkeys broke, screaming, in all
directions as the terrifying noise broke upon their ears. The gorgeous
birds took wing and fled. Once again the lion roared, this time at a
greater distance.

The great ape waddled once more to the girl’s side. He turned her over
upon her back, and stooping commenced to sniff and listen about her
face and breast. She lived. The monkeys were returning. They came in
swarms, and from above hurled down insults upon the victor.

The ape showed his displeasure by baring his teeth and growling up at
them. Then he stooped and lifting the girl to his shoulder waddled off
through the jungle. In his wake followed the angry mob.




XI.


Korak, returning from the hunt, heard the jabbering of the excited
monkeys. He knew that something was seriously amiss. Histah, the snake,
had doubtless coiled his slimy folds about some careless Manu. The
youth hastened ahead. The monkeys were Meriem’s friends. He would help
them if he could. He traveled rapidly along the middle terrace. In the
tree by Meriem’s shelter he deposited his trophies of the hunt and
called aloud to her. There was no answer. He dropped quickly to a lower
level. She might be hiding from him.

Upon a great branch where Meriem often swung at indolent ease he saw
Geeka propped against the tree’s great bole. What could it mean? Meriem
had never left Geeka thus alone before. Korak picked up the doll and
tucked it in his belt. He called again, more loudly; but no Meriem
answered his summons. In the distance the jabbering of the excited
Manus was growing less distinct.

Could their excitement be in any way connected with Meriem’s
disappearance? The bare thought was enough. Without waiting for Akut
who was coming slowly along some distance in his rear, Korak swung
rapidly in the direction of the chattering mob. But a few minutes
sufficed to overtake the rearmost. At sight of him they fell to
screaming and pointing downward ahead of them, and a moment later Korak
came within sight of the cause of their rage.

The youth’s heart stood still in terror as he saw the limp body of the
girl across the hairy shoulders of a great ape. That she was dead he
did not doubt, and in that instant there arose within him a something
which he did not try to interpret nor could have had he tried; but all
at once the whole world seemed centered in that tender, graceful body,
that frail little body, hanging so pitifully limp and helpless across
the bulging shoulders of the brute.

He knew then that little Meriem was his world—his sun, his moon, his
stars—with her going had gone all light and warmth and happiness. A
groan escaped his lips, and after that a series of hideous roars, more
bestial than the beasts’, as he dropped plummet-like in mad descent
toward the perpetrator of this hideous crime.

The bull ape turned at the first note of this new and menacing voice,
and as he turned a new flame was added to the rage and hatred of The
Killer, for he saw that the creature before him was none other than the
king ape which had driven him away from the great anthropoids to whom
he had looked for friendship and asylum.

Dropping the body of the girl to the ground the bull turned to battle
anew for possession of his expensive prize; but this time he looked for
an easy conquest. He too recognized Korak. Had he not chased him away
from the amphitheater without even having to lay a fang or paw upon
him? With lowered head and bulging shoulders he rushed headlong for the
smooth-skinned creature who was daring to question his right to his
prey.

They met head on like two charging bulls, to go down together tearing
and striking. Korak forgot his knife. Rage and bloodlust such as his
could be satisfied only by the feel of hot flesh between rending fangs,
by the gush of new life blood against his bare skin, for, though he did
not realize it, Korak, The Killer, was fighting for something more
compelling than hate or revenge—he was a great male fighting another
male for a she of his own kind.

So impetuous was the attack of the man-ape that he found his hold
before the anthropoid could prevent him—a savage hold, with strong jaws
closed upon a pulsing jugular, and there he clung, with closed eyes,
while his fingers sought another hold upon the shaggy throat.

It was then that Meriem opened her eyes. At the sight before her they
went wide.

“Korak!” she cried. “Korak! My Korak! I knew that you would come. Kill
him, Korak! Kill him!” And with flashing eyes and heaving bosom the
girl, coming to her feet, ran to Korak’s side to encourage him. Nearby
lay The Killer’s spear, where he had flung it as he charged the ape.
The girl saw it and snatched it up. No faintness overcame her in the
face of this battle primeval at her feet. For her there was no
hysterical reaction from the nerve strain of her own personal encounter
with the bull. She was excited; but cool and entirely unafraid. Her
Korak was battling with another Mangani that would have stolen her; but
she did not seek the safety of an overhanging bough there to watch the
battle from afar, as would a she Mangani. Instead she placed the point
of Korak’s spear against the bull ape’s side and plunge

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