Jungle Tales of Tarzan

Published：2026-07-30 06:00:38 Source: best musical plush toys for 2 year olds Author: Comfort Plush

Jungle Tales of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Contents

CHAPTER I
Tarzan’s First Love

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

Just to have seen him there, lolling upon the swaying bough of thejungle-forest giant, his brown skin mottled by the brilliant equatorialsunlight which percolated through the leafy canopy of green above him, hisclean-limbed body relaxed in graceful ease, his shapely head partly turned incontemplative absorption and his intelligent, gray eyes dreamily devouring theobject of their devotion, you would have thought him the reincarnation of somedemigod of old.

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

Nor, could you have read the thoughts which passed through that active, healthybrain, the longings and desires and aspirations which the sight of Teekainspired, would you have been any more inclined to give credence to the realityof the origin of the ape-man. For, from his thoughts alone, you could neverhave gleaned the truth—that he had been born to a gentle English lady or thathis sire had been an English nobleman of time-honored lineage.

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

Yes, Teeka was indeed beautiful!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So now she squatted upon her haunches and insulted both her admirersimpartially. She hurled taunts at them for their cowardice, and called themvile names, such as Histah, the snake, and Dango, the hyena. She threatened tocall Mumga to chastise them with a stick—Mumga, who was so old that she couldno longer climb and so toothless that she was forced to confine her diet almostexclusively to bananas and grubworms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teeka it was who cried out in terror as she fled across a little clearingtoward the trees upon the opposite side, for after her leaped Sheeta, thepanther, in easy, graceful bounds. Sheeta appeared to be in no hurry. His meatwas assured, since even though the ape reached the trees ahead of him she couldnot climb beyond his clutches before he could be upon her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now Sheeta was almost upon the lithe, naked body, and—the body was notthere. Quick as was the great cat, the ape-boy was quicker. He leaped to oneside almost as the panther’s talons were closing upon him, and as Sheeta wenthurtling to the ground beyond, Tarzan was racing for the safety of the nearesttree.

The panther recovered himself almost immediately and, wheeling, tore after hisprey, the ape-boy’s rope dragging along the ground behind him. In doubling backafter Tarzan, Sheeta had passed around a low bush. It was a mere nothing in thepath of any jungle creature of the size and weight of Sheeta—provided it had notrailing rope dangling behind. But Sheeta was handicapped by such a rope, andas he leaped once again after Tarzan of the Apes the rope encircled the smallbush, became tangled in it and brought the panther to a sudden stop. An instantlater Tarzan was safe among the higher branches of a small tree into whichSheeta could not follow him.

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

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

Taug eyed them sullenly. Once when he came close, Teeka bared her fangs andgrowled at him, and Tarzan showed his canines in an ugly snarl; but Taug didnot provoke a quarrel. He seemed to accept after the manner of his kind thedecision of the she as an indication that he had been vanquished in his battlefor her favors.

Later in the day, his rope repaired, Tarzan took to the trees in search ofgame. More than his fellows he required meat, and so, while they were satisfiedwith fruits and herbs and beetles, which could be discovered without mucheffort upon their part, Tarzan spent considerable time hunting the game animalswhose flesh alone satisfied the cravings of his stomach and furnishedsustenance and strength to the mighty thews which, day by day, were buildingbeneath the soft, smooth texture of his brown hide.

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

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

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

Taug grunted, for there was no comparison. How could one compare his beautifulcoat with the smooth and naked hideousness of Tarzan’s bare hide? Who could seebeauty in the stingy nose of the Tarmangani after looking at Taug’s broadnostrils? And Tarzan’s eyes! Hideous things, showing white about them, andentirely unrimmed with red. Taug knew that his own blood-shot eyes werebeautiful, for he had seen them reflected in the glassy surface of many adrinking pool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later he came upon several of Mbonga’s black warriors. He was upon the point ofdropping his noose about the neck of one of them, who was a little distancefrom his companions, when he became interested in the thing which occupied thesavages. They were building a cage in the trail and covering it with leafybranches. When they had completed their work the structure was scarcelyvisible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarzan increased his speed then until he fairly flew through the forest, norwas it long before he came upon the tribe. He saw them before they saw him, forof all the jungle creatures, none passed more quietly than Tarzan of the Apes.He saw Kamma and her mate feeding side by side, their hairy bodies rubbingagainst each other. And he saw Teeka feeding by herself. Not for long would shefeed thus in loneliness, thought Tarzan, as with a bound he landed amongstthem.

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

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

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

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

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

“Where is Taug?” she asked.

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

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

As he did so he noticed, with a start, the strange incongruity of that smooth,brown arm against the black and hairy coat of his lady-love. He recalled thepaw of Sheeta’s mate across Sheeta’s face—no incongruity there. He thought oflittle Manu hugging his she, and how the one seemed to belong to the other.Even the proud male bird, with his gay plumage, bore a close resemblance to hisquieter spouse, while Numa, but for his shaggy mane, was almost a counterpartof Sabor, the lioness. The males and the females differed, it was true; but notwith such differences as existed between Tarzan and Teeka.

Tarzan was puzzled. There was something wrong. His arm dropped from theshoulder of Teeka. Very slowly he drew away from her. She looked at him withher head cocked upon one side. Tarzan rose to his full height and beat upon hisbreast with his fists. He raised his head toward the heavens and opened hismouth. From the depths of his lungs rose the fierce, weird challenge of thevictorious bull ape. The tribe turned curiously to eye him. He had killednothing, nor was there any antagonist to be goaded to madness by the savagescream. No, there was no excuse for it, and they turned back to their feeding,but with an eye upon the ape-man lest he be preparing to suddenly run amuck.

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

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

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

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

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

Tarzan of the Apes gathered himself, and as he did so the black who did notsleep arose and passed around to the rear of the cage. The ape-boy followedjust above his head. Taug was eyeing the warrior and emitting low growls.Tarzan feared that the anthropoid would awaken the sleepers.

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

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

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

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

Taug was a silent witness of the struggle. In his fierce little brain hedoubtless wondered what purpose prompted Tarzan to attack the black. Taug hadnot forgotten his recent battle with the ape-boy, nor the cause of it. Now hesaw the form of the Gomangani suddenly go limp. There was a convulsive shiverand the man lay still.

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

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

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

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

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

“Tarzan has found another she?” asked Taug.

The ape-boy shrugged.

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

CHAPTER II
The Capture of Tarzan

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

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

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

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

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

But were they alone?

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

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

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

So absorbed was the ape-man in speculation as to the purpose of the covered pitthat he permitted the blacks to depart in the direction of their villagewithout the usual baiting which had rendered him the terror of Mbonga’s peopleand had afforded Tarzan both a vehicle of revenge and a source of inexhaustibledelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the years of their association Tarzan had discovered that he possessed aninexplicable power to govern and direct his mighty friend. At his bidding,Tantor would come from a great distance—as far as his keen ears could detectthe shrill and piercing summons of the ape-man—and when Tarzan was squattedupon his head, Tantor would lumber through the jungle in any direction whichhis rider bade him go. It was the power of the man-mind over that of the bruteand it was just as effective as though both fully understood its origin, thoughneither did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was half way across when directly in his path and but a few yards away thererose from a clump of tall grasses a half dozen chattering birds. InstantlyTarzan turned aside, for he knew well enough what manner of creature thepresence of these little sentinels proclaimed. Simultaneously Buto, therhinoceros, scrambled to his short legs and charged furiously. Haphazardcharges Buto, the rhinoceros. With his weak eyes he sees but poorly even atshort distances, and whether his erratic rushes are due to the panic of fear ashe attempts to escape, or to the irascible temper with which he is generallycredited, it is difficult to determine. Nor is the matter of little moment toone whom Buto charges, for if he be caught and tossed, the chances are thatnaught will interest him thereafter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few more steps would precipitate Tantor upon the sharpened stakes; Tarzanfairly flew through the trees until he had come abreast of the fleeing animaland then had passed him. At the pit’s verge the ape-man dropped to the groundin the center of the trail. Tantor was almost upon him before his weak eyespermitted him to recognize his old friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Far out in the jungle Tantor, the elephant, his first panic of fear allayed,stood with up-pricked ears and undulating trunk. What was passing through theconvolutions of his savage brain? Could he be searching for Tarzan? Could herecall and measure the service the ape-man had performed for him? Of that therecan be no doubt. But did he feel gratitude? Would he have risked his own lifeto have saved Tarzan could he have known of the danger which confronted hisfriend? You will doubt it. Anyone at all familiar with elephants will doubt it.Englishmen who have hunted much with elephants in India will tell you that theynever have heard of an instance in which one of these animals has gone to theaid of a man in danger, even though the man had often befriended it. And so itis to be doubted that Tantor would have attempted to overcome his instinctivefear of the black men in an effort to succor Tarzan.

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

Then he stood listening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III
The Fight for the Balu

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

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

The evidence of the change surprised and hurt Tarzan immeasurably. One morninghe saw Teeka squatted upon a low branch hugging something very close to herhairy breast—a wee something which squirmed and wriggled. Tarzan approachedfilled with the curiosity which is common to all creatures endowed with brainswhich have progressed beyond the microscopic stage.

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

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

And now, above the pain of his injured arm and the hurt to his pride, rose astill stronger desire to come close and inspect the new-born son of Taug.Possibly you will wonder that Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter that he was,should have fled before the irritable attack of a she, or that he shouldhesitate to return for the satisfaction of his curiosity when with ease hemight have vanquished the weakened mother of the new-born cub; but you need notwonder. Were you an ape, you would know that only a bull in the throes ofmadness will turn upon a female other than to gently chastise her, with theoccasional exception of the individual whom we find exemplified among our ownkind, and who delights in beating up his better half because she happens to besmaller and weaker than he.

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

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

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

“Let me see it,” urged Tarzan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But now his attention was diverted by the voice of Taug. The threats that hadfilled the ape’s mouth had turned to pleas. The tightening noose was stoppingthe circulation of the blood in his legs—he was beginning to suffer. Severalapes sat near him highly interested in his predicament. They madeuncomplimentary remarks about him, for each of them had felt the weight ofTaug’s mighty hands and the strength of his great jaws. They were enjoyingrevenge.

Teeka, seeing that Tarzan had turned back toward the trees, had halted in thecenter of the clearing, and there she sat hugging her balu and castingsuspicious glances here and there. With the coming of the balu, Teeka’scare-free world had suddenly become peopled with innumerable enemies. She sawan implacable foe in Tarzan, always heretofore her best friend. Even poor oldMumga, half blind and almost entirely toothless, searching patiently forgrubworms beneath a fallen log, represented to her a malignant spirit thirstingfor the blood of little balus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarzan was coiling his rope the while he lectured Taug on the futility ofpitting his poor powers, physical and intellectual, against those of hisbetters. Teeka had come close beneath the tree and was peering upward. Sheetawas worming his way stealthily forward, his belly close to the ground. Inanother moment he would be clear of the underbrush and ready for the rapidcharge and the quick retreat that would end the brief existence of Teeka’sbalu.

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

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

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

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

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

The panther reared to meet the ape-man’s attack. He swung a frightful rakingblow for Tarzan that would have wiped his face away had it landed, but it didnot land, for Tarzan ducked beneath it and closed, his long knife ready in onestrong hand—the knife of his dead father, of the father he never had known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One by one his hairy fellows of the tribe of Kerchak followed his example. Theshes came down from their perches of safety and struck and reviled the deadbody of Sheeta. The young apes refought the battle in mimicry of their mightyelders.

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

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

CHAPTER IV
The God of Tarzan

Among the books of his dead father in the little cabin by the land-lockedharbor, Tarzan of the Apes found many things to puzzle his young head. By muchlabor and through the medium of infinite patience as well, he had, withoutassistance, discovered the purpose of the little bugs which ran riot upon theprinted pages. He had learned that in the many combinations in which he foundthem they spoke in a silent language, spoke in a strange tongue, spoke ofwonderful things which a little ape-boy could not by any chance fullyunderstand, arousing his curiosity, stimulating his imagination and filling hissoul with a mighty longing for further knowledge.

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

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

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

But of the meaning of GOD he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he had graspedit—that God was a mighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani. He was not quitesure, however, since that would mean that God was mightier than Tarzan—a pointwhich Tarzan of the Apes, who acknowledged no equal in the jungle, was loath toconcede.

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

He commenced by questioning Mumga, who was very old and had seen many strangethings in her long life; but Mumga, being an ape, had a faculty for recallingthe trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a sting-bug for an edible beetle hadmade more impression upon Mumga than all the innumerable manifestations of thegreatness of God which she had witnessed, and which, of course, she had notunderstood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you God?” he demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presently he discovered that the deity was speaking and that all listened insilence to his words. Tarzan was sure that none other than God could inspiresuch awe in the hearts of the Gomangani, or stop their mouths so effectuallywithout recourse to arrows or spears. Tarzan had come to look with contemptupon the blacks, principally because of their garrulity. The small apes talkeda great deal and ran away from an enemy. The big, old bulls of Kerchak talkedbut little and fought upon the slightest provocation. Numa, the lion, was notgiven to loquacity, yet of all the jungle folk there were few who fought moreoften than he.

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

Hugely interested, he watched the slashing of the three brown arms and theexchange of blood with Mbonga, the chief, in the rites of the ceremony of bloodbrotherhood. He saw the zebra’s tail dipped into a caldron of water above whichthe witch-doctor had made magical passes the while he danced and leaped aboutit, and he saw the breasts and foreheads of each of the three novitiatessprinkled with the charmed liquid. Could the ape-man have known the purpose ofthis act, that it was intended to render the recipient invulnerable to theattacks of his enemies and fearless in the face of any danger, he woulddoubtless have leaped into the village street and appropriated the zebra’s tailand a portion of the contents of the caldron.

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

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

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

A lion roared, suddenly and loud, close without the palisade. The blacksstarted nervously, dropping into utter silence as they listened for arepetition of that all-too-familiar and always terrorizing voice. Even thewitch-doctor paused in the midst of an intricate step, remaining momentarilyrigid and statuesque as he plumbed his cunning mind for a suggestion as howbest he might take advantage of the condition of his audience and the timelyinterruption.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you God?” asked Tarzan.

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

Tarzan did not pause. He had set out to approach and examine God and nothingupon earth might now stay his feet. Seeing that his antics had no potency withthe visitor, the witch-doctor tried some new medicine. Spitting upon thezebra’s tail, which he still clutched in one hand, he made circles above itwith the arrows in the other hand, meanwhile backing cautiously away fromTarzan and speaking confidentially to the bushy end of the tail.

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

“Beyond this line you cannot pass, for my medicine is strong medicine,” hecried. “Stop, or you will fall dead as your foot touches this spot. My motherwas a voodoo, my father was a snake; I live upon lions’ hearts and the entrailsof the panther; I eat young babies for breakfast and the demons of the jungleare my slaves. I am the most powerful witch-doctor in the world; I fearnothing, for I cannot die. I—” But he got no further; instead he turned andfled as Tarzan of the Apes crossed the magical dead line and still lived.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Others heard, too, and saw, from the darkness of their huts—bold warriors,hideously painted, grasping heavy war spears in nerveless fingers. AgainstNuma, the lion, they would have charged fearlessly. Against many times theirown number of black warriors would they have raced to the protection of theirchief; but this weird jungle demon filled them with terror. There was nothinghuman in the bestial growls that rumbled up from his deep chest; there wasnothing human in the bared fangs, or the catlike leaps.Mbonga’s warriors were terrified—too terrified to leave the seeming security oftheir huts while they watched the beast-man spring full upon the back of theirold chieftain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarzan knew all too well how deep-rooted was Teeka’s terror of Histah. Hescarce could believe the testimony of his own eyes then, when they told himthat she had voluntarily rushed into that deadly embrace. Nor was Teeka’sinnate dread of the monster much greater than Tarzan’s own. Never, willingly,had he touched a snake. Why, he could not say, for he would admit fear ofnothing; nor was it fear, but rather an inherent repulsion bequeathed to him bymany generations of civilized ancestors, and back of them, perhaps, bycountless myriads of such as Teeka, in the breasts of each of which had lurkedthe same nameless terror of the slimy reptile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who made Histah, the snake?

CHAPTER V
Tarzan and the Black Boy

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

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

This would be the strongest, the heaviest rope that Tarzan of the Apes ever hadfashioned. Visions of Numa, the lion, straining futilely in its embracethrilled the ape-man. He was quite content, for his hands and his brain werebusy. Content, too, were his fellows of the tribe of Kerchak, searching forfood in the clearing and the surrounding trees about him. No perplexingthoughts of the future burdened their minds, and only occasionally, dimly aroserecollections of the near past. They were stimulated to a species of brutalcontent by the delectable business of filling their bellies. Afterward theywould sleep—it was their life, and they enjoyed it as we enjoy ours, you andI—as Tarzan enjoyed his. Possibly they enjoyed theirs more than we enjoy ours,for who shall say that the beasts of the jungle do not better fulfill thepurposes for which they are created than does man with his many excursions intostrange fields and his contraventions of the laws of nature? And what givesgreater content and greater happiness than the fulfilling of a destiny?

As Tarzan worked, Gazan, Teeka’s little balu, played about him while Teekasought food upon the opposite side of the clearing. No more did Teeka, themother, or Taug, the sullen sire, harbor suspicions of Tarzan’s intentionstoward their first-born. Had he not courted death to save their Gazan from thefangs and talons of Sheeta? Did he not fondle and cuddle the little one witheven as great a show of affection as Teeka herself displayed? Their fears wereallayed and Tarzan now found himself often in the role of nursemaid to a tinyanthropoid—an avocation which he found by no means irksome, since Gazan was anever-failing fount of surprises and entertainment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But to Tarzan, meat was meat; naught that was edible or tasty might pass ahungry Tarzan unchallenged and unattacked. In hunger, as in battle, the ape-manout-savaged the dreadest denizens of the jungle. He knew neither fear normercy, except upon rare occasions when some strange, inexplicable force stayedhis hand—a force inexplicable to him, perhaps, because of his ignorance of hisown origin and of all the forces of humanitarianism and civilization that werehis rightful heritage because of that origin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the child only whimpered and trembled, for he did not understand the tongueof the great apes, and the voice of Tarzan sounded to him like the barking andgrowling of a beast. Then, too, he had heard stories of this bad, white forestgod. It was he who had slain Kulonga and others of the warriors of Mbonga, thechief. It was he who entered the village stealthily, by magic, in the darknessof the night, to steal arrows and poison, and frighten the women and thechildren and even the great warriors. Doubtless this wicked god fed upon littleboys. Had his mother not said as much when he was naughty and she threatened togive him to the white god of the jungle if he were not good? Little black Tiboshook as with ague.

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

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

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

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

So far the terrible white god of the jungle had offered him no harm. He couldnot expect even this much consideration from the frightful, green-eyedman-eaters. It would be the lesser of two evils, then, to let the white godcarry him away without scratching and biting, as he had done at first.

As Tarzan swung rapidly through the trees, little Tibo closed his eyes interror rather than look longer down into the frightful abysses beneath. Neverbefore in all his life had Tibo been so frightened, yet as the white giant spedon with him through the forest there stole over the child an inexplicablesensation of security as he saw how true were the leaps of the ape-man, howunerring his grasp upon the swaying limbs which gave him hand-hold, and then,too, there was safety in the middle terraces of the forest, far above the reachof the dreaded lions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The little black boy from cringing terror at the sight of Tarzan passed bydegrees into trustfulness and admiration. Only kindness had he ever received atthe hands of the great white devil-god, yet he had seen with what ferocity hiskindly captor could deal with others. He had seen him leap upon a certainhe-ape which persisted in attempting to seize and slay Go-bu-balu. He had seenthe strong, white teeth of the ape-man fastened in the neck of his adversary,and the mighty muscles tensed in battle. He had heard the savage, bestialsnarls and roars of combat, and he had realized with a shudder that he couldnot differentiate between those of his guardian and those of the hairy ape.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The warrior even went to Momaya’s husband, who, in turn, having littleauthority over the vixenish lady of his choice, went to Mbonga, the chief. Thelatter summoned Momaya, threatening her with the direst punishment should sheventure forth upon so unholy an excursion. The old chief’s interest in thematter was due solely to that age-old alliance which exists between church andstate. The local witch-doctor, knowing his own medicine better than any otherknew it, was jealous of all other pretenders to accomplishments in the blackart. He long had heard of the power of Bukawai, and feared lest, should hesucceed in recovering Momaya’s lost child, much of the tribal patronage andconsequent fees would be diverted to the unclean one. As Mbonga received, aschief, a certain proportion of the witch-doctor’s fees and could expect nothingfrom Bukawai, his heart and soul were, quite naturally, wrapped up in theorthodox church.

But if Momaya could view with intrepid heart an excursion into the jungle and avisit to the fear-haunted abode of Bukawai, she was not likely to be deterredby threats of future punishment at the hands of old Mbonga, whom she secretlydespised. Yet she appeared to accede to his injunctions, returning to her hutin silence.

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

So Momaya bided her time until night, and just before the gates of the villagewere closed, she slipped through into the darkness and the jungle. She was muchfrightened, but she set her face resolutely toward the north, and though shepaused often to listen, breathlessly, for the huge cats which, here, were hergreatest terror, she nevertheless continued her way stanchly for severalhours, until a low moan a little to her right and behind her brought her to asudden stop.

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

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

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

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

Tarzan of the Apes, finding that his balu never ceased to give evidence ofterror in the presence of the apes of the tribe, and also that most of theadult apes were a constant menace to Go-bu-balu’s life, so that Tarzan darednot leave him alone with them, took to hunting with the little black boyfarther and farther from the stamping grounds of the anthropoids.

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

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

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

As the two hunted, or rather as Tarzan hunted and Go-bu-balu tagged along inhis wake, the ape-man noticed many things and thought much. Once they came uponSabor moaning in the tall grasses. About her romped and played two little ballsof fur, but her eyes were for one which lay between her great forepaws and didnot romp, one who never would romp again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, from the interior of the cave came the hideous laughter that was notlaughter. This time Momaya recognized it for what it was, the strange cry of ahyena. No more did she shudder, but she held her spear ready and called aloudto Bukawai to come out.

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

“Who comes to Bukawai?” queried the voice.

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

“What do you want?”

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

“Who is Tibo?” asked Bukawai.

Momaya told him.

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

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

The pleasure of haggling over the price was a sufficiently potent lure to drawBukawai to the mouth of the cave. Momaya was sorry when she saw him that he hadnot remained within. There are some things too horrible, too hideous, toorepulsive for description—Bukawai’s face was of these. When Momaya saw him sheunderstood why it was that he was almost inarticulate.

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

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

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

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

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

Bukawai shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And as Tarzan approached the sounds, he heard another, a deep sigh. Momaya didnot hear it, nor did Tibo; but the ears of Tarzan were as the ears of Bara, thedeer. He heard the sigh, and he knew, so he unloosed the heavy spear whichdangled at his back. Even as he sped through the branches of the trees, withthe same ease that you or I might take out a pocket handkerchief as we strollednonchalantly down a lazy country lane, Tarzan of the Apes took the spear fromits thong that it might be ready against any emergency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarzan eyed them in silence. The sight of the boy clinging, sobbing, to hismother aroused within his savage breast a melancholy loneliness. There was nonethus to cling to Tarzan, who yearned so for the love of someone, of something.

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

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

Tarzan sighed.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI
The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fact that he had for a time treated the little black as he might havetreated a real balu of his own had in no way altered the vengeful sentimentswith which he considered the murderers of Kala. The Gomangani were his deadlyenemies, nor could they ever be aught else. Today he looked forward to someslight relief from the monotony of his existence in such excitement as he mightderive from baiting the blacks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have come,” repeated Bukawai patiently, “for the three fat—” But Momaya hadnot waited to hear more of what she already knew by heart. Clasping Tibo closeto her side, she was hurrying away toward the palisaded village of Mbonga, thechief.

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

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

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

Just behind the screen of creepers and matted foliage lurked three horridfigures—an old, old man, black as the pit, with a face half eaten away byleprosy, his sharp-filed teeth, the teeth of a cannibal, showing yellow andrepulsive through the great gaping hole where his mouth and nose had been. Andbeside him, equally hideous, stood two powerful hyenas—carrion-eatersconsorting with carrion.

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

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

To little Tibo, who within his brief existence had passed through suchexperiences as are given to few to pass through in a lifetime, the northwardjourney was a nightmare of terror. He thought now of the time that he had beenwith the great, white jungle god, and he prayed with all his little soul thathe might be back again with the white-skinned giant who consorted with thehairy tree men. Terror-stricken he had been then, but his surroundings had beennothing by comparison with those which he now endured.

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

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

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

Frightful tales were whispered of the cruel tortures he inflicted upon hisvictims. Children were frightened into obedience by the threat of his name.Often had Tibo been thus frightened, and now he was reaping a grisly harvest ofterror from the seeds his mother had innocently sown. The darkness, thepresence of the dreaded witch-doctor, the pain of the contusions, with ahaunting premonition of the future, and the fear of the hyenas combined toalmost paralyze the child. He stumbled and reeled until Bukawai was draggingrather than leading him.

Presently Tibo saw a faint lightness ahead of them, and a moment later theyemerged into a roughly circular chamber to which a little daylight filteredthrough a rift in the rocky ceiling. The hyenas were there ahead of them,waiting. As Bukawai entered with Tibo, the beasts slunk toward them, baringyellow fangs. They were hungry. Toward Tibo they came, and one snapped at hisnaked legs. Bukawai seized a stick from the floor of the chamber and struck avicious blow at the beast, at the same time mumbling forth a volley ofexecrations. The hyena dodged and ran to the side of the chamber, where hestood growling. Bukawai took a step toward the creature, which bristled withrage at his approach. Fear and hatred shot from its evil eyes, but, fortunatelyfor Bukawai, fear predominated.

Seeing that he was unnoticed, the second beast made a short, quick rush forTibo. The child screamed and darted after the witch-doctor, who now turned hisattention to the second hyena. This one he reached with his heavy stick,striking it repeatedly and driving it to the wall. There the two carrion-eaterscommenced to circle the chamber while the human carrion, their master, now in aperfect frenzy of demoniacal rage, ran to and fro in an effort to interceptthem, striking out with his cudgel and lashing them with his tongue, callingdown upon them the curses of whatever gods and demons he could summon tomemory, and describing in lurid figures the ignominy of their ancestors.

Several times one or the other of the beasts would turn to make a stand againstthe witch-doctor, and then Tibo would hold his breath in agonized terror, fornever in his brief life had he seen such frightful hatred depicted upon thecountenance of man or beast; but always fear overcame the rage of the savagecreatures, so that they resumed their flight, snarling and bare-fanged, just atthe moment that Tibo was certain they would spring at Bukawai’s throat.

At last the witch-doctor tired of the futile chase. With a snarl quite asbestial as those of the beasts, he turned toward Tibo. “I go to collect the tenfat goats, the new sleeping mat, and the two pieces of copper wire that yourmother will pay for the medicine I shall make to bring you back to her,” hesaid. “You will stay here. There,” and he pointed toward the passage which theyhad followed to the chamber, “I will leave the hyenas. If you try to escape,they will eat you.”

He cast aside the stick and called to the beasts. They came, snarling andslinking, their tails between their legs. Bukawai led them to the passage anddrove them into it. Then he dragged a rude lattice into place before theopening after he, himself, had left the chamber. “This will keep them fromyou,” he said. “If I do not get the ten fat goats and the other things, theyshall at least have a few bones after I am through.” And he left the boy tothink over the meaning of his all-too-suggestive words.

When he was gone, Tibo threw himself upon the earth floor and broke intochildish sobs of terror and loneliness. He knew that his mother had no ten fatgoats to give and that when Bukawai returned, little Tibo would be killed andeaten. How long he lay there he did not know, but presently he was aroused bythe growling of the hyenas. They had returned through the passage and wereglaring at him from beyond the lattice. He could see their yellow eyes blazingthrough the darkness. They reared up and clawed at the barrier. Tibo shiveredand withdrew to the opposite side of the chamber. He saw the lattice sag andsway to the attacks of the beasts. Momentarily he expected that it would fallinward, letting the creatures upon him.

Wearily the horror-ridden hours dragged their slow way. Night came, and for atime Tibo slept, but it seemed that the hungry beasts never slept. Always theystood just beyond the lattice growling their hideous growls or laughing theirhideous laughs. Through the narrow rift in the rocky roof above him, Tibo couldsee a few stars, and once the moon crossed. At last daylight came again. Tibowas very hungry and thirsty, for he had not eaten since the morning before, andonly once upon the long march had he been permitted to drink, but even hungerand thirst were almost forgotten in the terror of his position.

It was after daylight that the child discovered a second opening in the wallsof the subterranean chamber, almost opposite that at which the hyenas stillstood glaring hungrily at him. It was only a narrow slit in the rocky wall. Itmight lead in but a few feet, or it might lead to freedom! Tibo approached itand looked within. He could see nothing. He extended his arm into theblackness, but he dared not venture farther. Bukawai never would have left opena way of escape, Tibo reasoned, so this passage must lead either nowhere or tosome still more hideous danger.

To the boy’s fear of the actual dangers which menaced him—Bukawai and the twohyenas—his superstition added countless others quite too horrible even to name,for in the lives of the blacks, through the shadows of the jungle day and theblack horrors of the jungle night, flit strange, fantastic shapes peopling thealready hideously peopled forests with menacing figures, as though the lion andthe leopard, the snake and the hyena, and the countless poisonous insects werenot quite sufficient to strike terror to the hearts of the poor, simplecreatures whose lot is cast in earth’s most fearsome spot.

And so it was that little Tibo cringed not only from real menaces but fromimaginary ones. He was afraid even to venture upon a road that might lead toescape, lest Bukawai had set to watch it some frightful demon of the jungle.

But the real menaces suddenly drove the imaginary ones from the boy’s mind, forwith the coming of daylight the half-famished hyenas renewed their efforts tobreak down the frail barrier which kept them from their prey. Rearing upontheir hind feet they clawed and struck at the lattice. With wide eyes Tibo sawit sag and rock. Not for long, he knew, could it withstand the assaults ofthese two powerful and determined brutes. Already one corner had been forcedpast the rocky protuberance of the entrance way which had held it in place. Ashaggy forearm protruded into the chamber. Tibo trembled as with ague, for heknew that the end was near.

Backing against the farther wall he stood flattened out as far from the beastsas he could get. He saw the lattice give still more. He saw a savage, snarlinghead forced past it, and grinning jaws snapping and gaping toward him. Inanother instant the pitiful fabric would fall inward, and the two would be uponhim, rending his flesh from his bones, gnawing the bones themselves, fightingfor possession of his entrails.

* *

Bukawai came upon Momaya outside the palisade of Mbonga, the chief. At sight ofhim the woman drew back in revulsion, then she flew at him, tooth and nail; butBukawai threatening her with a spear held her at a safe distance.

“Where is my baby?” she cried. “Where is my little Tibo?”

Bukawai opened his eyes in well-simulated amazement. “Your baby!” he exclaimed.“What should I know of him, other than that I rescued him from the white god ofthe jungle and have not yet received my pay. I come for the goats and thesleeping mat and the piece of copper wire the length of a tall man’s arm fromthe shoulder to the tips of his fingers.”

“Offal of a hyena!” shrieked Momaya.“My child has been stolen, and you, rotting fragment of a man, have taken him.Return him to me or I shall tear your eyes from your head and feed your heartto the wild hogs.”

Bukawai shrugged his shoulders. “What do I know about your child?” he asked. “Ihave not taken him. If he is stolen again, what should Bukawai know of thematter? Did Bukawai steal him before? No, the white jungle god stole him, andif he stole him once he would steal him again. It is nothing to me. I returnedhim to you before and I have come for my pay. If he is gone and you would havehim returned, Bukawai will return him—for ten fat goats, a new sleeping mat andtwo pieces of copper wire the length of a tall man’s arm from the shoulder tothe tips of his fingers, and Bukawai will say nothing more about the goats andthe sleeping mat and the copper wire which you were to pay for the firstmedicine.”

“Ten fat goats!” screamed Momaya. “I could not pay you ten fat goats in as manyyears. Ten fat goats, indeed!”

“Ten fat goats,” repeated Bukawai. “Ten fat goats, the new sleeping mat and twopieces of copper wire the length of——”

Momaya stopped him with an impatient gesture. “Wait!” she cried. “I have nogoats. You waste your breath. Stay here while I go to my man. He has but threegoats, yet something may be done. Wait!”

Bukawai sat down beneath a tree. He felt quite content, for he knew that heshould have either payment or revenge. He did not fear harm at the hands ofthese people of another tribe, although he well knew that they must fear andhate him. His leprosy alone would prevent their laying hands upon him, whilehis reputation as a witch-doctor rendered him doubly immune from attack. He wasplanning upon compelling them to drive the ten goats to the mouth of his cavewhen Momaya returned. With her were three warriors—Mbonga, the chief, RabbaKega, the village witch-doctor, and Ibeto, Tibo’s father. They were not prettymen even under ordinary circumstances, and now, with their faces marked byanger, they well might have inspired terror in the heart of anyone; but ifBukawai felt any fear, he did not betray it. Instead he greeted them with aninsolent stare, intended to awe them, as they came and squatted in asemi-circle before him.

“Where is Ibeto’s son?” asked Mbonga.

“How should I know?” returned Bukawai. “Doubtless the white devil-god has him.If I am paid I will make strong medicine and then we shall know where isIbeto’s son, and shall get him back again. It was my medicine which got himback the last time, for which I got no pay.”

“I have my own witch-doctor to make medicine,” replied Mbonga with dignity.

Bukawai sneered and rose to his feet. “Very well,” he said, “let him make hismedicine and see if he can bring Ibeto’s son back.” He took a few steps awayfrom them, and then he turned angrily back. “His medicine will not bring thechild back—that I know, and I also know that when you find him it will be toolate for any medicine to bring him back, for he will be dead. This have I justfound out, the ghost of my father’s sister but now came to me and told me.”

Now Mbonga and Rabba Kega might not take much stock in their own magic, andthey might even be skeptical as to the magic of another; but there was always achance of somethingbeing in it, especially if it were not their own.Was it not well known that old Bukawai had speech with the demons themselvesand that two even lived with him in the forms of hyenas! Still they must notaccede too hastily. There was the price to be considered, and Mbonga had nointention of parting lightly with ten goats to obtain the return of a singlelittle boy who might die of smallpox long before he reached a warrior’s estate.

“Wait,” said Mbonga. “Let us see some of your magic, that we may know if it begood magic. Then we can talk about payment. Rabba Kega will make some magic,too. We will see who makes the best magic. Sit down, Bukawai.”

“The payment will be ten goats—fat goats—a new sleeping mat and two pieces ofcopper wire the length of a tall man’s arm from the shoulder to the ends of hisfingers, and it will be made in advance, the goats being driven to my cave.Then will I make the medicine, and on the second day the boy will be returnedto his mother. It cannot be done more quickly than that because it takes timeto make such strong medicine.”

“Make us some medicine now,” said Mbonga. “Let us see what sort of medicine youmake.”

“Bring me fire,” replied Bukawai, “and I will make you a little magic.”

Momaya was dispatched for the fire, and while she was away Mbonga dickered withBukawai about the price. Ten goats, he said, was a high price for anable-bodied warrior. He also called Bukawai’s attention to the fact that he,Mbonga, was very poor, that his people were very poor, and that ten goats wereat least eight too many, to say nothing of a new sleeping mat and the copperwire; but Bukawai was adamant. His medicine was very expensive and he wouldhave to give at least five goats to the gods who helped him make it. They werestill arguing when Momaya returned with the fire.

Bukawai placed a little on the ground before him, took a pinch of powder from apouch at his side and sprinkled it on the embers. A cloud of smoke rose with apuff. Bukawai closed his eyes and rocked back and forth. Then he made a fewpasses in the air and pretended to swoon. Mbonga and the others were muchimpressed. Rabba Kega grew nervous. He saw his reputation waning. There wassome fire left in the vessel which Momaya had brought. He seized the vessel,dropped a handful of dry leaves into it while no one was watching and thenuttered a frightful scream which drew the attention of Bukawai’s audience tohim. It also brought Bukawai quite miraculously out of his swoon, but when theold witch-doctor saw the reason for the disturbance he quickly relapsed intounconsciousness before anyone discovered his faux pas.

Rabba Kega, seeing that he had the attention of Mbonga, Ibeto, and Momaya, blewsuddenly into the vessel, with the result that the leaves commenced to smolder,and smoke issued from the mouth of the receptacle. Rabba Kega was careful tohold it so that none might see the dry leaves. Their eyes opened wide at thisremarkable demonstration of the village witch-doctor’s powers. The latter,greatly elated, let himself out. He shouted, jumped up and down, and madefrightful grimaces; then he put his face close over the mouth of the vessel andappeared to be communing with the spirits within.

It was while he was thus engaged that Bukawai came out of his trance, hiscuriosity finally having gotten the better of him. No one was paying him theslightest attention. He blinked his one eye angrily, then he, too, let out aloud roar, and when he was sure that Mbonga had turned toward him, he stiffenedrigidly and made spasmodic movements with his arms and legs.

“I see him!” he cried. “He is far away. The white devil-god did not get him. Heis alone and in great danger; but,” he added, “if the ten fat goats and theother things are paid to me quickly there is yet time to save him.”

Rabba Kega had paused to listen. Mbonga looked toward him. The chief was in aquandary. He did not know which medicine was the better. “What does your magictell you?” he asked of Rabba Kega.

“I, too, see him,” screamed Rabba Kega; “but he is not where Bukawai says heis. He is dead at the bottom of the river.”

At this Momaya commenced to howl loudly.

Tarzan had followed the spoor of the old man, the two hyenas, and the littleblack boy to the mouth of the cave in the rocky cañon between the two hills.Here he paused a moment before the sapling barrier which Bukawai had set up,listening to the snarls and growls which came faintly from the far recesses ofthe cavern.

Presently, mingled with the beastly cries, there came faintly to the keen earsof the ape-man, the agonized moan of a child. No longer did Tarzan hesitate.Hurling the door aside, he sprang into the dark opening. Narrow and black wasthe corridor; but long use of his eyes in the Stygian blackness of the junglenights had given to the ape-man something of the nocturnal visionary powers ofthe wild things with which he had consorted since babyhood.

He moved rapidly and yet with caution, for the place was dark, unfamiliar andwinding. As he advanced, he heard more and more loudly the savage snarls of thetwo hyenas, mingled with the scraping and scratching of their paws upon wood.The moans of a child grew in volume, and Tarzan recognized in them the voice ofthe little black boy he once had sought to adopt as his balu.

There was no hysteria in the ape-man’s advance. Too accustomed was he to thepassing of life in the jungle to be greatly wrought even by the death of onewhom he knew; but the lust for battle spurred him on. He was only a wild beastat heart and his wild beast’s heart beat high in anticipation of conflict.

In the rocky chamber of the hill’s center, little Tibo crouched low against thewall as far from the hunger-crazed beasts as he could drag himself. He saw thelattice giving to the frantic clawing of the hyenas. He knew that in a fewminutes his little life would flicker out horribly beneath the rending, yellowfangs of these loathsome creatures.

Beneath the buffetings of the powerful bodies, the lattice sagged inward,until, with a crash it gave way, letting the carnivora in upon the boy. Tibocast one affrighted glance toward them, then closed his eyes and buried hisface in his arms, sobbing piteously.

For a moment the hyenas paused, caution and cowardice holding them from theirprey. They stood thus glaring at the lad, then slowly, stealthily, crouching,they crept toward him. It was thus that Tarzan came upon them, bursting intothe chamber swiftly and silently; but not so silently that the keen-earedbeasts did not note his coming. With angry growls they turned from Tibo uponthe ape-man, as, with a smile upon his lips, he ran toward them. For an instantone of the animals stood its ground; but the ape-man did not deign even to drawhis hunting knife against despised Dango. Rushing in upon the brute he graspedit by the scruff of the neck, just as it attempted to dodge past him, andhurled it across the cavern after its fellow which already was slinking intothe corridor, bent upon escape.

Then Tarzan picked Tibo from the floor, and when the child felt human handsupon him instead of the paws and fangs of the hyenas, he rolled his eyes upwardin surprise and incredulity, and as they fell upon Tarzan, sobs of relief brokefrom the childish lips and his hands clutched at his deliverer as though thewhite devil-god was not the most feared of jungle creatures.

When Tarzan came to the cave mouth the hyenas were nowhere in sight, and afterpermitting Tibo to quench his thirst in the spring which rose near by, helifted the boy to his shoulders and set off toward the jungle at a rapid trot,determined to still the annoying howlings of Momaya as quickly as possible, forhe shrewdly had guessed that the absence of her balu was the cause of herlamentation.

“He is not dead at the bottom of the river,” cried Bukawai. “What does thisfellow know about making magic? Who is he, anyway, that he dare say Bukawai’smagic is not good magic? Bukawai sees Momaya’s son. He is far away and aloneand in great danger. Hasten then with the ten fat goats, the—”

But he got no further. There was a sudden interruption from above, from thebranches of the very tree beneath which they squatted, and as the five blackslooked up they almost swooned in fright as they saw the great, white devil-godlooking down upon them; but before they could flee they saw another face, thatof the lost little Tibo, and his face was laughing and very happy.

And then Tarzan dropped fearlessly among them, the boy still upon his back, anddeposited him before his mother. Momaya, Ibeto, Rabba Kega, and Mbonga were allcrowding around the lad trying to question him at the same time. SuddenlyMomaya turned ferociously to fall upon Bukawai, for the boy had told her allthat he had suffered at the hands of the cruel old man; but Bukawai was nolonger there—he had required no recourse to black art to assure him that thevicinity of Momaya would be no healthful place for him after Tibo had told hisstory, and now he was running through the jungle as fast as his old legs wouldcarry him toward the distant lair where he knew no black would dare pursue him.

Tarzan, too, had vanished, as he had a way of doing, to the mystification ofthe blacks. Then Momaya’s eyes lighted upon Rabba Kega. The villagewitch-doctor saw something in those eyes of her’s which boded no good to him,and backed away.

“So my Tibo is dead at the bottom of the river, is he?” the woman shrieked.“And he’s far away and alone and in great danger, is he? Magic!” The scornwhich Momaya crowded into that single word would have done credit to a Thespianof the first magnitude. “Magic, indeed!” she screamed. “Momaya will show yousome magic of her own,” and with that she seized upon a broken limb and struckRabba Kega across the head. With a howl of pain, the man turned and fled,Momaya pursuing him and beating him across the shoulders, through the gatewayand up the length of the village street, to the intense amusement of thewarriors, the women, and the children who were so fortunate as to witness thespectacle, for one and all feared Rabba Kega, and to fear is to hate.

Thus it was that to his host of passive enemies, Tarzan of the Apes added thatday two active foes, both of whom remained awake long into the night planningmeans of revenge upon the white devil-god who had brought them into ridiculeand disrepute, but with their most malevolent schemings was mingled a vein ofreal fear and awe that would not down.

Young Lord Greystoke did not know that they planned against him, nor, knowing,would have cared. He slept as well that night as he did on any other night, andthough there was no roof above him, and no doors to lock against intruders, heslept much better than his noble relative in England, who had eaten altogethertoo much lobster and drank too much wine at dinner that night.

CHAPTER VII
The End of Bukawai

When Tarzan of the Apes was still but a boy he had learned, among other things,to fashion pliant ropes of fibrous jungle grass. Strong and tough were theropes of Tarzan, the little Tarmangani. Tublat, his foster father, would havetold you this much and more. Had you tempted him with a handful of fatcaterpillars he even might have sufficiently unbended to narrate to you a fewstories of the many indignities which Tarzan had heaped upon him by means ofhis hated rope; but then Tublat always worked himself into such a frightfulrage when he devoted any considerable thought either to the rope or to Tarzan,that it might not have proved comfortable for you to have remained close enoughto him to hear what he had to say.

So often had that snakelike noose settled unexpectedly over Tublat’s head, sooften had he been jerked ridiculously and painfully from his feet when he wasleast looking for such an occurrence, that there is little wonder he foundscant space in his savage heart for love of his white-skinned foster child, orthe inventions thereof. There had been other times, too, when Tublat had swunghelplessly in midair, the noose tightening about his neck, death staring him inthe face, and little Tarzan dancing upon a near-by limb, taunting him andmaking unseemly grimaces.

Then there had been another occasion in which the rope had figuredprominently—an occasion, and the only one connected with the rope, which Tublatrecalled with pleasure. Tarzan, as active in brain as he was in body, wasalways inventing new ways in which to play. It was through the medium of playthat he learned much during his childhood. This day he learned something, andthat he did not lose his life in the learning of it, was a matter of greatsurprise to Tarzan, and the fly in the ointment, to Tublat.

The man-child had, in throwing his noose at a playmate in a tree above him,caught a projecting branch instead. When he tried to shake it loose it but drewthe tighter. Then Tarzan started to climb the rope to remove it from thebranch. When he was part way up a frolicsome playmate seized that part of therope which lay upon the ground and ran off with it as far as he could go. WhenTarzan screamed at him to desist, the young ape released the rope a little andthen drew it tight again. The result was to impart a swinging motion toTarzan’s body which the ape-boy suddenly realized was a new and pleasurableform of play. He urged the ape to continue until Tarzan was swinging to and froas far as the short length of rope would permit, but the distance was not greatenough, and, too, he was not far enough above the ground to give the necessarythrills which add so greatly to the pastimes of the young.

So he clambered to the branch where the noose was caught and after removing itcarried the rope far aloft and out upon a long and powerful branch. Here heagain made it fast, and taking the loose end in his hand, clambered quicklydown among the branches as far as the rope would permit him to go; then heswung out upon the end of it, his lithe, young body turning and twisting—ahuman bob upon a pendulum of grass—thirty feet above the ground.

Ah, how delectable! This was indeed a new play of the first magnitude. Tarzanwas entranced. Soon he discovered that by wriggling his body in just the rightway at the proper time he could diminish or accelerate his oscillation, and,being a boy, he chose, naturally, to accelerate. Presently he was swinging farand wide, while below him, the apes of the tribe of Kerchak looked on in mildamaze.

Had it been you or I swinging there at the end of that grass rope, the thingwhich presently happened would not have happened, for we could not have hung onso long as to have made it possible; but Tarzan was quite as much at homeswinging by his hands as he was standing upon his feet, or, at least, almost.At any rate he felt no fatigue long after the time that an ordinary mortalwould have been numb with the strain of the physical exertion. And this was hisundoing.

Tublat was watching him as were others of the tribe. Of all the creatures ofthe wild, there was none Tublat so cordially hated as he did this hideous,hairless, white-skinned, caricature of an ape. But for Tarzan’s nimbleness, andthe zealous watchfulness of savage Kala’s mother love, Tublat would long sincehave rid himself of this stain upon his family escutcheon. So long had it beensince Tarzan became a member of the tribe, that Tublat had forgotten thecircumstances surrounding the entrance of the jungle waif into his family, withthe result that he now imagined that Tarzan was his own offspring, addinggreatly to his chagrin.

Wide and far swung Tarzan of the Apes, until at last, as he reached the highestpoint of the arc the rope, which rapidly had frayed on the rough bark of thetree limb, parted suddenly. The watching apes saw the smooth, brown body shootoutward and down, plummet-like. Tublat leaped high in the air, emitting whatin a human being would have been an exclamation of delight. This would be theend of Tarzan and most of Tublat’s troubles. From now on he could lead his lifein peace and security.

Tarzan fell quite forty feet, alighting on his back in a thick bush. Kala wasthe first to reach his side—ferocious, hideous, loving Kala. She had seen thelife crushed from her own balu in just such a fall years before. Was she tolose this one too in the same way? Tarzan was lying quite still when she foundhim, embedded deeply in the bush. It took Kala several minutes to disentanglehim and drag him forth; but he was not killed. He was not even badly injured.The bush had broken the force of the fall. A cut upon the back of his headshowed where he had struck the tough stem of the shrub and explained hisunconsciousness.

In a few minutes he was as active as ever. Tublat was furious. In his rage hesnapped at a fellow-ape without first discovering the identity of his victim,and was badly mauled for his ill temper, having chosen to vent his spite upon ahusky and belligerent young bull in the full prime of his vigor.

But Tarzan had learned something new. He had learned that continued frictionwould wear through the strands of his rope, though it was many years beforethis knowledge did more for him than merely to keep him from swinging too longat a time, or too far above the ground at the end of his rope.

The day came, however, when the very thing that had once all but killed himproved the means of saving his life.

He was no longer a child, but a mighty jungle male. There was none now to watchover him, solicitously, nor did he need such. Kala was dead. Dead, too, wasTublat, and though with Kala passed the one creature that ever really had lovedhim, there were still many who hated him after Tublat departed unto the arms ofhis fathers. It was not that he was more cruel or more savage than they thatthey hated him, for though he was both cruel and savage as were the beasts, hisfellows, yet too was he often tender, which they never were. No, the thingwhich brought Tarzan most into disrepute with those who did not like him, wasthe possession and practice of a characteristic which they had not and couldnot understand—the human sense of humor. In Tarzan it was a trifle broad,perhaps, manifesting itself in rough and painful practical jokes upon hisfriends and cruel baiting of his enemies.

But to neither of these did he owe the enmity of Bukawai, the witch-doctor, whodwelt in the cave between the two hills far to the north of the village ofMbonga, the chief. Bukawai was jealous of Tarzan, and Bukawai it was who camenear proving the undoing of the ape-man. For months Bukawai had nursed hishatred while revenge seemed remote indeed, since Tarzan of the Apes frequentedanother part of the jungle, miles away from the lair of Bukawai. Only once hadthe black witch-doctor seen the devil-god, as he was most often called amongthe blacks, and upon that occasion Tarzan had robbed him of a fat fee, at thesame time putting the lie in the mouth of Bukawai, and making his medicine seempoor medicine. All this Bukawai never could forgive, though it seemed unlikelythat the opportunity would come to be revenged.

Yet it did come, and quite unexpectedly. Tarzan was hunting far to the north.He had wandered away from the tribe, as he did more and more often as heapproached maturity, to hunt alone for a few days. As a child he had enjoyedromping and playing with the young apes, his companions; but now theseplay-fellows of his had grown to surly, lowering bulls, or to touchy,suspicious mothers, jealously guarding helpless balus. So Tarzan found in hisown man-mind a greater and a truer companionship than any or all of the apes ofKerchak could afford him.

This day, as Tarzan hunted, the sky slowly became overcast. Torn clouds,whipped to ragged streamers, fled low above the tree tops. They reminded Tarzanof frightened antelope fleeing the charge of a hungry lion. But though thelight clouds raced so swiftly, the jungle was motionless. Not a leaf quiveredand the silence was a great, dead weight—insupportable. Even the insects seemedstilled by apprehension of some frightful thing impending, and the largerthings were soundless. Such a forest, such a jungle might have stood there inthe beginning of that unthinkably far-gone age before God peopled the worldwith life, when there were no sounds because there were no ears to hear.

And over all lay a sickly, pallid ocher light through which the scourged cloudsraced. Tarzan had seen all these conditions many times before, yet he nevercould escape a strange feeling at each recurrence of them. He knew no fear, butin the face of Nature’s manifestations of her cruel, immeasurable powers, hefelt very small—very small and very lonely.

Now he heard a low moaning, far away. “The lions seek their prey,” he murmuredto himself, looking up once again at the swift-flying clouds. The moaning roseto a great volume of sound. “They come!” said Tarzan of the Apes, and soughtthe shelter of a thickly foliaged tree. Quite suddenly the trees bent theirtops simultaneously as though God had stretched a hand from the heavens andpressed His flat palm down upon the world. “They pass!” whispered Tarzan. “Thelions pass.” Then came a vivid flash of lightning, followed by deafeningthunder. “The lions have sprung,” cried Tarzan, “and now they roar above thebodies of their kills.”

The trees were waving wildly in all directions now, a perfectly demoniacal windthreshed the jungle pitilessly. In the midst of it the rain came—not as itcomes upon us of the northlands, but in a sudden, choking, blinding deluge.“The blood of the kill,” thought Tarzan, huddling himself closer to the bole ofthe great tree beneath which he stood.

He was close to the edge of the jungle, and at a little distance he had seentwo hills before the storm broke; but now he could see nothing. It amused himto look out into the beating rain, searching for the two hills and imaginingthat the torrents from above had washed them away, yet he knew that presentlythe rain would cease, the sun come out again and all be as it was before,except where a few branches had fallen and here and there some old and rottedpatriarch had crashed back to enrich the soil upon which he had fatted for,maybe, centuries. All about him branches and leaves filled the air or fell toearth, torn away by the strength of the tornado and the weight of the waterupon them. A gaunt corpse toppled and fell a few yards away; but Tarzan wasprotected from all these dangers by the wide-spreading branches of the sturdyyoung giant beneath which his jungle craft had guided him. Here there was but asingle danger, and that a remote one. Yet it came. Without warning the treeabove him was riven by lightning, and when the rain ceased and the sun came outTarzan lay stretched as he had fallen, upon his face amidst the wreckage of thejungle giant that should have shielded him.

Bukawai came to the entrance of his cave after the rain and the storm hadpassed and looked out upon the scene. From his one eye Bukawai could see; buthad he had a dozen eyes he could have found no beauty in the fresh sweetness ofthe revivified jungle, for to such things, in the chemistry of temperament, hisbrain failed to react; nor, even had he had a nose, which he had not for years,could he have found enjoyment or sweetness in the clean-washed air.

At either side of the leper stood his sole and constant companions, the twohyenas, sniffing the air. Presently one of them uttered a low growl and withflattened head started, sneaking and wary, toward the jungle. The otherfollowed. Bukawai, his curiosity aroused, trailed after them, in his hand aheavy knob-stick.

The hyenas halted a few yards from the prostrate Tarzan, sniffing and growling.Then came Bukawai, and at first he could not believe the witness of his owneyes; but when he did and saw that it was indeed the devil-god his rage knew nobounds, for he thought him dead and himself cheated of the revenge he had solong dreamed upon.

The hyenas approached the ape-man with bared fangs. Bukawai, with aninarticulate scream, rushed upon them, striking cruel and heavy blows with hisknob-stick, for there might still be life in the apparently lifeless form. Thebeasts, snapping and snarling, half turned upon their master and theirtormentor, but long fear still held them from his putrid throat. They slunkaway a few yards and squatted upon their haunches, hatred and baffled hungergleaming from their savage eyes.

Bukawai stooped and placed his ear above the ape-man’s heart. It still beat. Aswell as his sloughed features could register pleasure they did so; but it wasnot a pretty sight. At the ape-man’s side lay his long, grass rope. QuicklyBukawai bound the limp arms behind his prisoner’s back, then he raised him toone of his shoulders, for, though Bukawai was old and diseased, he was still astrong man. The hyenas fell in behind as the witch-doctor set off toward thecave, and through the long black corridors they followed as Bukawai bore hisvictim into the bowels of the hills. Through subterranean chambers, connectedby winding passageways, Bukawai staggered with his load. At a sudden turning ofthe corridor, daylight flooded them and Bukawai stepped out into a small,circular basin in the hill, apparently the crater of an ancient volcano, one ofthose which never reached the dignity of a mountain and are little more thanlava-rimmed pits close to the earth’s surface.

Steep walls rimmed the cavity. The only exit was through the passageway bywhich Bukawai had entered. A few stunted trees grew upon the rocky floor. Ahundred feet above could be seen the ragged lips of this cold, dead mouth ofhell.

Bukawai propped Tarzan against a tree and bound him there with his own grassrope, leaving his hands free but securing the knots in such a way that theape-man could not reach them. The hyenas slunk to and fro, growling. Bukawaihated them and they hated him. He knew that they but waited for the time whenhe should be helpless, or when their hatred should rise to such a height as tosubmerge their cringing fear of him.

In his own heart was not a little fear of these repulsive creatures, andbecause of that fear, Bukawai always kept the beasts well fed, often huntingfor them when their own forages for food failed, but ever was he cruel to themwith the cruelty of a little brain, diseased, bestial, primitive.

He had had them since they were puppies. They had known no other life than thatwith him, and though they went abroad to hunt, always they returned. Of lateBukawai had come to believe that they returned not so much from habit as from afiendish patience which would submit to every indignity and pain rather thanforego the final vengeance, and Bukawai needed but little imagination topicture what that vengeance would be. Today he would see for himself what hisend would be; but another should impersonate Bukawai.

When he had trussed Tarzan securely, Bukawai went back into the corridor,driving the hyenas ahead of him, and pulling across the opening a lattice oflaced branches, which shut the pit from the cave during the night that Bukawaimight sleep in security, for then the hyenas were penned in the crater thatthey might not sneak upon a sleeping Bukawai in the darkness.

Bukawai returned to the outer cave mouth, filled a vessel with water at thespring which rose in the little cañon close at hand and returned toward thepit. The hyenas stood before the lattice looking hungrily toward Tarzan. Theyhad been fed in this manner before.

With his water, the witch-doctor approached Tarzan and threw a portion of thecontents of the vessel in the ape-man’s face. There was fluttering of theeyelids, and at the second application Tarzan opened his eyes and looked about.

“Devil-god,” cried Bukawai, “I am the great witch-doctor. My medicine isstrong. Yours is weak. If it is not, why do you stay tied here like a goat thatis bait for lions?”

Tarzan understood nothing the witch-doctor said, therefore he did not reply,but only stared straight at Bukawai with cold and level gaze. The hyenas creptup behind him. He heard them growl; but he did not even turn his head. He was abeast with a man’s brain. The beast in him refused to show fear in the face ofa death which the man-mind already admitted to be inevitable.

Bukawai, not yet ready to give his victim to the beasts, rushed upon the hyenaswith his knob-stick. There was a short scrimmage in which the brutes came offsecond best, as they always did. Tarzan watched it. He saw and realized thehatred which existed between the two animals and the hideous semblance of aman.

With the hyenas subdued, Bukawai returned to the baiting of Tarzan; but findingthat the ape-man understood nothing he said, the witch-doctor finally desisted.Then he withdrew into the corridor and pulled the latticework barrier acrossthe opening. He went back into the cave and got a sleeping mat, which hebrought to the opening, that he might lie down and watch the spectacle of hisrevenge in comfort.

The hyenas were sneaking furtively around the ape-man. Tarzan strained at hisbonds for a moment, but soon realized that the rope he had braided to holdNuma, the lion, would hold him quite as successfully. He did not wish to die;but he could look death in the face now as he had many times before without aquaver.

As he pulled upon the rope he felt it rub against the small tree about which itwas passed. Like a flash of the cinematograph upon the screen, a picture wasflashed before his mind’s eye from the storehouse of his memory. He saw alithe, boyish figure swinging high above the ground at the end of a rope. Hesaw many apes watching from below, and then he saw the rope part and the boyhurtle downward toward the ground. Tarzan smiled. Immediately he commenced todraw the rope rapidly back and forth across the tree trunk.

The hyenas, gaining courage, came closer. They sniffed at his legs; but when hestruck at them with his free arms they slunk off. He knew that with the growthof hunger they would attack. Coolly, methodically, without haste, Tarzan drewthe rope back and forth against the rough trunk of the small tree.

In the entrance to the cavern Bukawai fell asleep. He thought it would be sometime before the beasts gained sufficient courage or hunger to attack thecaptive. Their growls and the cries of the victim would awaken him. In themeantime he might as well rest, and he did.

Thus the day wore on, for the hyenas were not famished, and the rope with whichTarzan was bound was a stronger one than that of his boyhood, which had partedso quickly to the chafing of the rough tree bark. Yet, all the while hunger wasgrowing upon the beasts and the strands of the grass rope were wearing thinnerand thinner. Bukawai slept.

It was late afternoon before one of the beasts, irritated by the gnawing ofappetite, made a quick, growling dash at the ape-man. The noise awoke Bukawai.He sat up quickly and watched what went on within the crater. He saw the hungryhyena charge the man, leaping for the unprotected throat. He saw Tarzan reachout and seize the growling animal, and then he saw the second beast spring forthe devil-god’s shoulder. There was a mighty heave of the great, smooth-skinnedbody. Rounded muscles shot into great, tensed piles beneath the brown hide—theape-man surged forward with all his weight and all his great strength—the bondsparted, and the three were rolling upon the floor of the crater snarling,snapping, and rending.

Bukawai leaped to his feet. Could it be that the devil-god was to prevailagainst his servants? Impossible! The creature was unarmed, and he was downwith two hyenas on top of him; but Bukawai did not know Tarzan.

The ape-man fastened his fingers upon the throat of one of the hyenas and roseto one knee, though the other beast tore at him frantically in an effort topull him down. With a single hand Tarzan held the one, and with the other handhe reached forth and pulled toward him the second beast.

And then Bukawai, seeing the battle going against his forces, rushed forwardfrom the cavern brandishing his knob-stick. Tarzan saw him coming, and risingnow to both feet, a hyena in each hand, he hurled one of the foaming beastsstraight at the witch-doctor’s head. Down went the two in a snarling, bitingheap. Tarzan tossed the second hyena across the crater, while the first gnawedat the rotting face of its master; but this did not suit the ape-man. With akick he sent the beast howling after its companion, and springing to the sideof the prostrate witch-doctor, dragged him to his feet.

Bukawai, still conscious, saw death, immediate and terrible, in the cold eyesof his captor, so he turned upon Tarzan with teeth and nails. The ape-manshuddered at the proximity of that raw face to his. The hyenas had had enoughand disappeared through the small aperture leading into the cave. Tarzan hadlittle difficulty in overpowering and binding Bukawai. Then he led him to thevery tree to which he had been bound; but in binding Bukawai, Tarzan saw to itthat escape after the same fashion that he had escaped would be out of thequestion; then he left him.

As he passed through the winding corridors and the subterranean apartments,Tarzan saw nothing of the hyenas.

“They will return,” he said to himself.

In the crater between the towering walls Bukawai, cold with terror, trembledas with ague.

“They will return!” he cried, his voice rising to a fright-filled shriek.

And they did.

CHAPTER VIII
The Lion

Numa, the lion, crouched behind a thorn bush close beside the drinking poolwhere the river eddied just below the bend. There was a ford there and oneither bank a well-worn trail, broadened far out at the river’s brim, where,for countless centuries, the wild things of the jungle and of the plains beyondhad come down to drink, the carnivora with bold and fearless majesty, theherbivora timorous, hesitating, fearful.

Numa, the lion, was hungry, he was very hungry, and so he was quite silent now.On his way to the drinking place he had moaned often and roared not a little;but as he neared the spot where he would lie in wait for Bara, the deer, orHorta, the boar, or some other of the many luscious-fleshed creatures who camehither to drink, he was silent. It was a grim, a terrible silence, shot throughwith yellow-green light of ferocious eyes, punctuated with undulating tremorsof sinuous tail.

It was Pacco, the zebra, who came first, and Numa, the lion, could scarcerestrain a roar of anger, for of all the plains people, none are more wary thanPacco, the zebra. Behind the black-striped stallion came a herd of thirty orforty of the plump and vicious little horselike beasts. As he neared the river,the leader paused often, cocking his ears and raising his muzzle to sniff thegentle breeze for the telltale scent spoor of the dread flesh-eaters.

Numa shifted uneasily, drawing his hind quarters far beneath his tawny body,gathering himself for the sudden charge and the savage assault. His eyes shothungry fire. His great muscles quivered to the excitement of the moment.

Pacco came a little nearer, halted, snorted, and wheeled. There was a patteringof scurrying hoofs and the herd was gone; but Numa, the lion, moved not. He wasfamiliar with the ways of Pacco, the zebra. He knew that he would return,though many times he might wheel and fly before he summoned the courage to leadhis harem and his offspring to the water. There was the chance that Pacco mightbe frightened off entirely. Numa had seen this happen before, and so he becamealmost rigid lest he be the one to send them galloping, waterless, back to theplain.

Again and again came Pacco and his family, and again and again did they turnand flee; but each time they came closer to the river, until at last the plumpstallion dipped his velvet muzzle daintily into the water. The others, steppingwarily, approached their leader. Numa selected a sleek, fat filly and hisflaming eyes burned greedily as they feasted upon her, for Numa, the lion,loves scarce anything better than the meat of Pacco, perhaps because Pacco is,of all the grass-eaters, the most difficult to catch.

Slowly the lion rose, and as he rose, a twig snapped beneath one of his great,padded paws. Like a shot from a rifle he charged upon the filly; but thesnapped twig had been enough to startle the timorous quarry, so that they werein instant flight simultaneously with Numa’s charge.

The stallion was last, and with a prodigious leap, the lion catapulted throughthe air to seize him; but the snapping twig had robbed Numa of his dinner,though his mighty talons raked the zebra’s glossy rump, leaving four crimsonbars across the beautiful coat.

It was an angry Numa that quitted the river and prowled, fierce, dangerous, andhungry, into the jungle. Far from particular now was his appetite. Even Dango,the hyena, would have seemed a titbit to that ravenous maw. And in this temperit was that the lion came upon the tribe of Kerchak, the great ape.

One does not look for Numa, the lion, thus late in the morning. He should belying up asleep beside his last night’s kill by now; but Numa had made no killlast night. He was still hunting, hungrier than ever.

The anthropoids were idling about the clearing, the first keen desire of themorning’s hunger having been satisfied. Numa scented them long before he sawthem. Ordinarily he would have turned away in search of other game, for evenNuma respected the mighty muscles and the sharp fangs of the great bulls of thetribe of Kerchak, but today he kept on steadily toward them, his bristled snoutwrinkled into a savage snarl.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Numa charged the moment he reached a pointfrom where the apes were visible to him. There were a dozen or more of thehairy, manlike creatures upon the ground in a little glade. In a tree at oneside sat a brown-skinned youth. He saw Numa’s swift charge; he saw the apesturn and flee, huge bulls trampling upon little balus; only a single she heldher ground to meet the charge, a young she inspired by new motherhood to thegreat sacrifice that her balu might escape.

Tarzan leaped from his perch, screaming at the flying bulls beneath and atthose who squatted in the safety of surrounding trees. Had the bulls stoodtheir ground, Numa would not have carried through that charge unless goaded bygreat rage or the gnawing pangs of starvation. Even then he would not have comeoff unscathed.

If the bulls heard, they were too slow in responding, for Numa had seized themother ape and dragged her into the jungle before the males had sufficientlycollected their wits and their courage to rally in defense of their fellow.Tarzan’s angry voice aroused similar anger in the breasts of the apes. Snarlingand barking they followed Numa into the dense labyrinth of foliage wherein hesought to hide himself from them. The ape-man was in the lead, moving rapidlyand yet with caution, depending even more upon his ears and nose than upon hiseyes for information of the lion’s whereabouts.

The spoor was easy to follow, for the dragged body of the victim left a plaintrail, blood-spattered and scentful. Even such dull creatures as you or I mighteasily have followed it. To Tarzan and the apes of Kerchak it was as obvious asa cement sidewalk.

Tarzan knew that they were nearing the great cat even before he heard an angrygrowl of warning just ahead. Calling to the apes to follow his example, heswung into a tree and a moment later Numa was surrounded by a ring of growlingbeasts, well out of reach of his fangs and talons but within plain sight ofhim. The carnivore crouched with his forequarters upon the she-ape. Tarzancould see that the latter was already dead; but something within him made itseem quite necessary to rescue the useless body from the clutches of the enemyand to punish him.

He shrieked taunts and insults at Numa, and tearing dead branches from the treein which he danced, hurled them at the lion. The apes followed his example.Numa roared out in rage and vexation. He was hungry, but under such conditionshe could not feed.

The apes, if they had been left to themselves, would doubtless soon have leftthe lion to peaceful enjoyment of his feast, for was not the she dead? Theycould not restore her to life by throwing sticks at Numa, and they might evennow be feeding in quiet themselves; but Tarzan was of a different mind. Numamust be punished and driven away. He must be taught that even though he killeda Mangani, he would not be permitted to feed upon his kill. The man-mind lookedinto the future, while the apes perceived only the immediate present. Theywould be content to escape today the menace of Numa, while Tarzan saw thenecessity, and the means as well, of safeguarding the days to come.

So he urged the great anthropoids on until Numa was showered with missiles thatkept his head dodging and his voice pealing forth its savage protest; but stillhe clung desperately to his kill.

The twigs and branches hurled at Numa, Tarzan soon realized, did not hurt himgreatly even when they struck him, and did not injure him at all, so theape-man looked about for more effective missiles, nor did he have to look long.An out-cropping of decomposed granite not far from Numa suggested ammunition ofa much more painful nature. Calling to the apes to watch him, Tarzan slipped tothe ground and gathered a handful of small fragments. He knew that when oncethey had seen him carry out his idea they would be much quicker to follow hislead than to obey his instructions, were he to command them to procure piecesof rock and hurl them at Numa, for Tarzan was not then king of the apes of thetribe of Kerchak. That came in later years. Now he was but a youth, though onewho already had wrested for himself a place in the councils of the savagebeasts among whom a strange fate had cast him. The sullen bulls of the oldergeneration still hated him as beasts hate those of whom they are suspicious,whose scent characteristic is the scent characteristic of an alien order and,therefore, of an enemy order. The younger bulls, those who had grown up throughchildhood as his playmates, were as accustomed to Tarzan’s scent as to that ofany other member of the tribe. They felt no greater suspicion of him than ofany other bull of their acquaintance; yet they did not love him, for they lovednone outside the mating season, and the animosities aroused by other bullsduring that season lasted well over until the next. They were a morose andpeevish band at best, though here and there were those among them in whomgerminated the primal seeds of humanity—reversions to type, these, doubtless;reversions to the ancient progenitor who took the first step out of apehoodtoward humanness, when he walked more often upon his hind feet and discoveredother things for idle hands to do.

So now Tarzan led where he could not yet command. He had long since discoveredthe apish propensity for mimicry and learned to make use of it. Having filledhis arms with fragments of rotted granite, he clambered again into a tree, andit pleased him to see that the apes had followed his example.

During the brief respite while they were gathering their ammunition, Numa hadsettled himself to feed; but scarce had he arranged himself and his kill when asharp piece of rock hurled by the practiced hand of the ape-man struck him uponthe cheek. His sudden roar of pain and rage was smothered by a volley from theapes, who had seen Tarzan’s act. Numa shook his massive head and glared upwardat his tormentors. For a half hour they pursued him with rocks and brokenbranches, and though he dragged his kill into densest thickets, yet they alwaysfound a way to reach him with their missiles, giving him no opportunity tofeed, and driving him on and on.

The hairless ape-thing with the man scent was worst of all, for he had even thetemerity to advance upon the ground to within a few yards of the Lord of theJungle, that he might with greater accuracy and force hurl the sharp bits ofgranite and the heavy sticks at him. Time and again did Numa charge—sudden,vicious charges—but the lithe, active tormentor always managed to elude him andwith such insolent ease that the lion forgot even his great hunger in theconsuming passion of his rage, leaving his meat for considerable spaces of timein vain efforts to catch his enemy.

The apes and Tarzan pursued the great beast to a natural clearing, where Numaevidently determined to make a last stand, taking up his position in the centerof the open space, which was far enough from any tree to render him practicallyimmune from the rather erratic throwing of the apes, though Tarzan still foundhim with most persistent and aggravating frequency.

This, however, did not suit the ape-man, since Numa now suffered an occasionalmissile with no more than a snarl, while he settled himself to partake of hisdelayed feast. Tarzan scratched his head, pondering some more effective methodof offense, for he had determined to prevent Numa from profiting in any waythrough his attack upon the tribe. The man-mind reasoned against the future,while the shaggy apes thought only of their present hatred of this ancestralenemy. Tarzan guessed that should Numa find it an easy thing to snatch a mealfrom the tribe of Kerchak, it would be but a short time before their existencewould be one living nightmare of hideous watchfulness and dread. Numa must betaught that the killing of an ape brought immediate punishment and no rewards.It would take but a few lessons to insure the former safety of the tribe. Thismust be some old lion whose failing strength and agility had forced him to anyprey that he could catch; but even a single lion, undisputed, could exterminatethe tribe, or at least make its existence so precarious and so terrifying thatlife would no longer be a pleasant condition.

“Let him hunt among the Gomangani,” thought Tarzan. “He will find them easierprey. I will teach ferocious Numa that he may not hunt the Mangani.”

But how to wrest the body of his victim from the feeding lion was the firstquestion to be solved. At last Tarzan hit upon a plan. To anyone but Tarzan ofthe Apes it might have seemed rather a risky plan, and perhaps it did even tohim; but Tarzan rather liked things that contained a considerable element ofdanger. At any rate, I rather doubt that you or I would have chosen a similarplan for foiling an angry and a hungry lion.

Tarzan required assistance in the scheme he had hit upon and his assistant mustbe equally as brave and almost as active as he. The ape-man’s eyes fell uponTaug, the playmate of his childhood, the rival in his first love and now, ofall the bulls of the tribe, the only one that might be thought to hold in hissavage brain any such feeling toward Tarzan as we describe among ourselves asfriendship. At least, Tarzan knew, Taug was courageous, and he was young andagile and wonderfully muscled.

“Taug!” cried the ape-man. The great ape looked up from a dead limb he wasattempting to tear from a lightning-blasted tree. “Go close to Numa and worryhim,” said Tarzan. “Worry him until he charges. Lead him away from the body ofMamka. Keep him away as long as you can.”

Taug nodded. He was across the clearing from Tarzan. Wresting the limb at lastfrom the tree he dropped to the ground and advanced toward Numa, growling andbarking out his insults. The worried lion looked up and rose to his feet. Histail went stiffly erect and Taug turned in flight, for he knew that warningsignal of the charge.

From behind the lion, Tarzan ran quickly toward the center of the clearing andthe body of Mamka. Numa, all his eyes for Taug, did not see the ape-man.Instead he shot forward after the fleeing bull, who had turned in flight not aninstant too soon, since he reached the nearest tree but a yard or two ahead ofthe pursuing demon. Like a cat the heavy anthropoid scampered up the bole ofhis sanctuary. Numa’s talons missing him by little more than inches.

For a moment the lion paused beneath the tree, glaring up at the ape androaring until the earth trembled, then he turned back again toward his kill,and as he did so, his tail shot once more to rigid erectness and he chargedback even more ferociously than he had come, for what he saw was the nakedman-thing running toward the farther trees with the bloody carcass of his preyacross a giant shoulder.

The apes, watching the grim race from the safety of the trees, screamed tauntsat Numa and warnings to Tarzan. The high sun, hot and brilliant, fell like aspotlight upon the actors in the little clearing, portraying them in glaringrelief to the audience in the leafy shadows of the surrounding trees. Thelight-brown body of the naked youth, all but hidden by the shaggy carcass ofthe killed ape, the red blood streaking his smooth hide, his muscles rolling,velvety, beneath. Behind him the black-maned lion, head flattened, tailextended, racing, a jungle thoroughbred, across the sunlit clearing.

Ah, but this was life! With death at his heels, Tarzan thrilled with the joy ofsuch living as this; but would he reach the trees ahead of the rampant death soclose behind?

Gunto swung from a limb in a tree before him. Gunto was screaming warnings andadvice.

“Catch me!” cried Tarzan, and with his heavy burden leaped straight for the bigbull hanging there by his hind feet and one forepaw. And Gunto caught them—thebig ape-man and the dead weight of the slain she-ape—caught them with onegreat, hairy paw and whirled them upward until Tarzan’s fingers closed upon anear-by branch.

Beneath, Numa leaped; but Gunto, heavy and awkward as he may have appeared, wasas quick as Manu, the monkey, so that the lion’s talons but barely grazed him,scratching a bloody streak beneath one hairy arm.

Tarzan carried Mamka’s corpse to a high crotch, where even Sheeta, the panther,could not get it. Numa paced angrily back and forth beneath the tree, roaringfrightfully. He had been robbed of his kill and his revenge also. He was verysavage indeed; but his despoilers were well out of his reach, and after hurlinga few taunts and missiles at him they swung away through the trees, fiercelyreviling him.

Tarzan thought much upon the little adventure of that day. He foresaw whatmight happen should the great carnivora of the jungle turn their seriousattention upon the tribe of Kerchak, the great ape, but equally he thought uponthe wild scramble of the apes for safety when Numa first charged among them.There is little humor in the jungle that is not grim and awful. The beasts havelittle or no conception of humor; but the young Englishman saw humor in manythings which presented no humorous angle to his associates.

Since earliest childhood he had been a searcher after fun, much to the sorrowof his fellow-apes, and now he saw the humor of the frightened panic of theapes and the baffled rage of Numa even in this grim jungle adventure which hadrobbed Mamka of life, and jeopardized that of many members of the tribe.

It was but a few weeks later that Sheeta, the panther, made a sudden rush amongthe tribe and snatched a little balu from a tree where it had been hidden whileits mother sought food. Sheeta got away with his small prize unmolested. Tarzanwas very wroth. He spoke to the bulls of the ease with which Numa and Sheeta,in a single moon, had slain two members of the tribe.

“They will take us all for food,” he cried. “We hunt as we will through thejungle, paying no heed to approaching enemies. Even Manu, the monkey, does notso. He keeps two or three always watching for enemies. Pacco, the zebra, andWappi, the antelope, have those about the herd who keep watch while the othersfeed, while we, the great Mangani, let Numa, and Sabor, and Sheeta come whenthey will and carry us off to feed their balus.

“Gr-r-rmph,” said Numgo.

“What are we to do?” asked Taug.

“We, too, should have two or three always watching for the approach of Numa,and Sabor, and Sheeta,” replied Tarzan. “No others need we fear, except Histah,the snake, and if we watch for the others we will see Histah if he comes,though gliding ever so silently.”

And so it was that the great apes of the tribe of Kerchak posted sentriesthereafter, who watched upon three sides while the tribe hunted, scattered lessthan had been their wont.

But Tarzan went abroad alone, for Tarzan was a man-thing and sought amusementand adventure and such humor as the grim and terrible jungle offers to thosewho know it and do not fear it—a weird humor shot with blazing eyes and dappledwith the crimson of lifeblood. While others sought only food and love, Tarzanof the Apes sought food and joy.

One day he hovered above the palisaded village of Mbonga, the chief, the jetcannibal of the jungle primeval. He saw, as he had seen many times before, thewitch-doctor, Rabba Kega, decked out in the head and hide of Gorgo, thebuffalo. It amused Tarzan to see a Gomangani parading as Gorgo; but itsuggested nothing in particular to him until he chanced to see stretchedagainst the side of Mbonga’s hut the skin of a lion with the head still on.Then a broad grin widened the handsome face of the savage beast-youth.

Back into the jungle he went until chance, agility, strength, and cunningbacked by his marvelous powers of perception, gave him an easy meal. If Tarzanfelt that the world owed him a living he also realized that it was for him tocollect it, nor was there ever a better collector than this son of an Englishlord, who knew even less of the ways of his forbears than he did of theforbears themselves, which was nothing.

It was quite dark when Tarzan returned to the village of Mbonga and took hisnow polished perch in the tree which overhangs the palisade upon one side ofthe walled enclosure. As there was nothing in particular to feast upon in thevillage there was little life in the single street, for only an orgy of fleshand native beer could draw out the people of Mbonga. Tonight they sat gossipingabout their cooking fires, the older members of the tribe; or, if they wereyoung, paired off in the shadows cast by the palm-thatched huts.

Tarzan dropped lightly into the village, and sneaking stealthily in theconcealment of the denser shadows, approached the hut of the chief, Mbonga.Here he found that which he sought. There were warriors all about him; but theydid not know that the feared devil-god slunk noiselessly so near them, nor didthey see him possess himself of that which he coveted and depart from theirvillage as noiselessly as he had come.

Later that night, as Tarzan curled himself for sleep, he lay for a long timelooking up at the burning planets and the twinkling stars and at Goro the moon,and he smiled. He recalled how ludicrous the great bulls had appeared in theirmad scramble for safety that day when Numa had charged among them and seizedMamka, and yet he knew them to be fierce and courageous. It was the suddenshock of surprise that always sent them into a panic; but of this Tarzan wasnot as yet fully aware. That was something he was to learn in the near future.

He fell asleep with a broad grin upon his face.

Manu, the monkey, awoke him in the morning by dropping discarded bean pods uponhis upturned face from a branch a short distance above him. Tarzan looked upand smiled. He had been awakened thus before many times. He and Manu werefairly good friends, their friendship operating upon a reciprocal basis.Sometimes Manu would come running early in the morning to awaken Tarzan andtell him that Bara, the deer, was feeding close at hand, or that Horta, theboar, was asleep in a mudhole hard by, and in return Tarzan broke open theshells of the harder nuts and fruits for Manu, or frightened away Histah, thesnake, and Sheeta, the panther.

The sun had been up for some time, and the tribe had already wandered off insearch of food. Manu indicated the direction they had taken with a wave of hishand and a few piping notes of his squeaky little voice.

“Come, Manu,” said Tarzan, “and you will see that which shall make you dancefor joy and squeal your wrinkled little head off. Come, follow Tarzan of theApes.”

With that he set off in the direction Manu had indicated and above him,chattering, scolding and squealing, skipped Manu, the monkey. Across Tarzan’sshoulders was the thing he had stolen from the village of Mbonga, the chief,the evening before.

The tribe was feeding in the forest beside the clearing where Gunto, and Taug,and Tarzan had so harassed Numa and finally taken away from him the fruit ofhis kill. Some of them were in the clearing itself. In peace and content theyfed, for were there not three sentries, each watching upon a different side ofthe herd? Tarzan had taught them this, and though he had been away for severaldays hunting alone, as he often did, or visiting at the cabin by the sea, theyhad not as yet forgotten his admonitions, and if they continued for a shorttime longer to post sentries, it would become a habit of their tribal life andthus be perpetuated indefinitely.

But Tarzan, who knew them better than they knew themselves, was confident thatthey had ceased to place the watchers about them the moment that he had leftthem, and now he planned not only to have a little fun at their expense but toteach them a lesson in preparedness, which, by the way, is even a more vitalissue in the jungle than in civilized places. That you and I exist today mustbe due to the preparedness of some shaggy anthropoid of the Oligocene. Ofcourse the apes of Kerchak were always prepared, after their own way—Tarzan hadmerely suggested a new and additional safeguard.

Gunto was posted today to the north of the clearing. He squatted in the fork ofa tree from where he might view the jungle for quite a distance about him. Itwas he who first discovered the enemy. A rustling in the undergrowth attractedhis attention, and a moment later he had a partial view of a shaggy mane andtawny yellow back. Just a glimpse it was through the matted foliage beneathhim; but it brought from Gunto’s leathern lungs a shrill “Kreeg-ah!” which isthe ape for beware, or danger.

Instantly the tribe took up the cry until “Kreeg-ahs!” rang through the jungleabout the clearing as apes swung quickly to places of safety among the lowerbranches of the trees and the great bulls hastened in the direction of Gunto.

And then into the clearing strode Numa, the lion—majestic and mighty, and froma deep chest issued the moan and the cough and the rumbling roar that set stiffhairs to bristling from shaggy craniums down the length of mighty spines.

Inside the clearing, Numa paused and on the instant there fell upon him fromthe trees near by a shower of broken rock and dead limbs torn from age-oldtrees. A dozen times he was hit, and then the apes ran down and gathered otherrocks, pelting him unmercifully.

Numa turned to flee, but his way was barred by a fusilade of sharp-corneredmissiles, and then, upon the edge of the clearing, great Taug met him with ahuge fragment of rock as large as a man’s head, and down went the Lord of theJungle beneath the stunning blow.

With shrieks and roars and loud barkings the great apes of the tribe of Kerchakrushed upon the fallen lion. Sticks and stones and yellow fangs menaced thestill form. In another moment, before he could regain consciousness, Numa wouldbe battered and torn until only a bloody mass of broken bones and matted hairremained of what had once been the most dreaded of jungle creatures.

But even as the sticks and stones were raised above him and the great fangsbared to tear him, there descended like a plummet from the trees above adiminutive figure with long, white whiskers and a wrinkled face. Square uponthe body of Numa it alighted and there it danced and screamed and shrieked outits challenge against the bulls of Kerchak.

For an instant they paused, paralyzed by the wonder of the thing. It was Manu,the monkey, Manu, the little coward, and here he was daring the ferocity of thegreat Mangani, hopping about upon the carcass of Numa, the lion, and crying outthat they must not strike it again.

And when the bulls paused, Manu reached down and seized a tawny ear. With allhis little might he tugged upon the heavy head until slowly it turned back,revealing the tousled, black head and clean-cut profile of Tarzan of the Apes.

Some of the older apes were for finishing what they had commenced; but Taug,sullen, mighty Taug, sprang quickly to the ape-man’s side and straddling theunconscious form warned back those who would have struck his childhoodplaymate. And Teeka, his mate, came too, taking her place with bared fangs atTaug’s side. Others followed their example, until at last Tarzan was surroundedby a ring of hairy champions who would permit no enemy to approach him.

It was a surprised and chastened Tarzan who opened his eyes to consciousness afew minutes later. He looked about him at the surrounding apes and slowly therereturned to him a realization of what had occurred.

Gradually a broad grin illuminated his features. His bruises were many and theyhurt; but the good that had come from his adventure was worth all that it hadcost. He had learned, for instance, that the apes of Kerchak had heeded histeaching, and he had learned that he had good friends among the sullen beastswhom he had thought without sentiment. He had discovered that Manu, themonkey—even little, cowardly Manu—had risked his life in his defense.

It made Tarzan very glad to know these things; but at the other lesson he hadbeen taught he reddened. He had always been a joker, the only joker in the grimand terrible company; but now as he lay there half dead from his hurts, healmost swore a solemn oath forever to forego practical joking—almost; but notquite.

CHAPTER IX
The Nightmare

The blacks of the village of Mbonga, the chief, were feasting, while above themin a large tree sat Tarzan of the Apes—grim, terrible, empty, and envious.Hunting had proved poor that day, for there are lean days as well as fat onesfor even the greatest of the jungle hunters. Oftentimes Tarzan went empty formore than a full sun, and he had passed through entire moons during which hehad been but barely able to stave off starvation; but such times wereinfrequent.

There once had been a period of sickness among the grass-eaters which had leftthe plains almost bare of game for several years, and again the great cats hadincreased so rapidly and so overrun the country that their prey, which was alsoTarzan’s, had been frightened off for a considerable time.

But for the most part Tarzan had fed well always. Today, though, he had goneempty, one misfortune following another as rapidly as he raised new quarry, sothat now, as he sat perched in the tree above the feasting blacks, heexperienced all the pangs of famine and his hatred for his lifelong enemieswaxed strong in his breast. It was tantalizing, indeed, to sit there hungrywhile these Gomangani filled themselves so full of food that their stomachsseemed almost upon the point of bursting, and with elephant steaks at that!

It was true that Tarzan and Tantor were the best of friends, and that Tarzannever yet had tasted of the flesh of the elephant; but the Gomangani evidentlyhad slain one, and as they were eating of the flesh of their kill, Tarzan wasassailed by no doubts as to the ethics of his doing likewise, should he havethe opportunity. Had he known that the elephant had died of sickness severaldays before the blacks discovered the carcass, he might not have been so keento partake of the feast, for Tarzan of the Apes was no carrion-eater. Hunger,however, may blunt the most epicurean taste, and Tarzan was not exactly anepicure.

What he was at this moment was a very hungry wild beast whom caution washolding in leash, for the great cooking pot in the center of the village wassurrounded by black warriors, through whom not even Tarzan of the Apes mighthope to pass unharmed. It would be necessary, therefore, for the watcher toremain there hungry until the blacks had gorged themselves to stupor, and then,if they had left any scraps, to make the best meal he could from such; but tothe impatient Tarzan it seemed that the greedy Gomangani would rather burstthan leave the feast before the last morsel had been devoured. For a time theybroke the monotony of eating by executing portions of a hunting dance, amaneuver which sufficiently stimulated digestion to permit them to fall to oncemore with renewed vigor; but with the consumption of appalling quantities ofelephant meat and native beer they presently became too loggy for physicalexertion of any sort, some reaching a stage where they no longer could risefrom the ground, but lay conveniently close to the great cooking pot, stuffingthemselves into unconsciousness.

It was well past midnight before Tarzan even could begin to see the end of theorgy. The blacks were now falling asleep rapidly; but a few still persisted.From their condition Tarzan had no doubt but that he easily could enterthe village and snatch a handful of meat from before their noses; but a handfulwas not what he wanted. Nothing less than a stomachful would allay the gnawingcraving of that great emptiness. He must therefore have ample time to forage inpeace.

At last but a single warrior remained true to his ideals—an old fellow whoseonce wrinkled belly was now as smooth and as tight as the head of a drum. Withevidences of great discomfort, and even pain, he would crawl toward the pot anddrag himself slowly to his knees, from which position he could reach into thereceptacle and seize a piece of meat. Then he would roll over on his back witha loud groan and lie there while he slowly forced the food between his teethand down into his gorged stomach.

It was evident to Tarzan that the old fellow would eat until he died, or untilthere was no more meat. The ape-man shook his head in disgust. What foulcreatures were these Gomangani? Yet of all the jungle folk they alone resembledTarzan closely in form. Tarzan was a man, and they, too, must be some manner ofmen, just as the little monkeys, and the great apes, and Bolgani, the gorilla,were quite evidently of one great family, though differing in size andappearance and customs. Tarzan was ashamed, for of all the beasts of thejungle, then, man was the most disgusting—man and Dango, the hyena. Only manand Dango ate until they swelled up like a dead rat. Tarzan had seen Dango eathis way into the carcass of a dead elephant and then continue to eat so muchthat he had been unable to get out of the hole through which he had entered.Now he could readily believe that man, given the opportunity, would do thesame. Man, too, was the most unlovely of creatures—with his skinny legs and hisbig stomach, his filed teeth, and his thick, red lips. Man was disgusting.Tarzan’s gaze was riveted upon the hideous old warrior wallowing in filthbeneath him.

There! the thing was struggling to its knees to reach for another morsel offlesh. It groaned aloud in pain and yet it persisted in eating, eating, evereating. Tarzan could endure it no longer—neither his hunger nor his disgust.Silently he slipped to the ground with the bole of the great tree betweenhimself and the feaster.

The man was still kneeling, bent almost double in agony, before the cookingpot. His back was toward the ape-man. Swiftly and noiselessly Tarzan approachedhim. There was no sound as steel fingers closed about the black throat. Thestruggle was short, for the man was old and already half stupefied from theeffects of the gorging and the beer.

Tarzan dropped the inert mass and scooped several large pieces of meat from thecooking pot—enough to satisfy even his great hunger—then he raised the body ofthe feaster and shoved it into the vessel. When the other blacks awoke theywould have something to think about! Tarzan grinned. As he turned toward thetree with his meat, he picked up a vessel containing beer and raised it to hislips, but at the first taste he spat the stuff from his mouth and tossed theprimitive tankard aside. He was quite sure that even Dango would draw the lineat such filthy tasting drink as that, and his contempt for man increased withthe conviction.

Tarzan swung off into the jungle some half mile or so before he paused topartake of his stolen food. He noticed that it gave forth a strange andunpleasant odor, but assumed that this was due to the fact that it had stood ina vessel of water above a fire. Tarzan was, of course, unaccustomed to cookedfood. He did not like it; but he was very hungry and had eaten a considerableportion of his haul before it was really borne in upon him that the stuff wasnauseating. It required far less than he had imagined it would to satisfy hisappetite.

Throwing the balance to the ground he curled up in a convenient crotch andsought slumber; but slumber seemed difficult to woo. Ordinarily Tarzan of theApes was asleep as quickly as a dog after it curls itself upon a hearthrugbefore a roaring blaze; but tonight he squirmed and twisted, for at the pit ofhis stomach was a peculiar feeling that resembled nothing more closely than anattempt upon the part of the fragments of elephant meat reposing there to comeout into the night and search for their elephant; but Tarzan was adamant. Hegritted his teeth and held them back. He was not to be robbed of his meal afterwaiting so long to obtain it.

He had succeeded in dozing when the roaring of a lion awoke him. He sat up todiscover that it was broad daylight. Tarzan rubbed his eyes. Could it be thathe had really slept? He did not feel particularly refreshed as he should haveafter a good sleep. A noise attracted his attention, and he looked down to seea lion standing at the foot of the tree gazing hungrily at him. Tarzan made aface at the king of beasts, whereat Numa, greatly to the ape-man’s surprise,started to climb up into the branches toward him. Now, never before had Tarzanseen a lion climb a tree, yet, for some unaccountable reason, he was notgreatly surprised that this particular lion should do so.

As the lion climbed slowly toward him, Tarzan sought higher branches; but tohis chagrin, he discovered that it was with the utmost difficulty that he couldclimb at all. Again and again he slipped back, losing all that he had gained,while the lion kept steadily at his climbing, coming ever closer and closer tothe ape-man. Tarzan could see the hungry light in the yellow-green eyes. Hecould see the slaver on the drooping jowls, and the great fangs agape to seizeand destroy him. Clawing desperately, the ape-man at last succeeded in gaininga little upon his pursuer. He reached the more slender branches far aloft wherehe well knew no lion could follow; yet on and on came devil-faced Numa. It wasincredible; but it was true. Yet what most amazed Tarzan was that though herealized the incredibility of it all, he at the same time accepted it as amatter of course, first that a lion should climb at all and second that heshould enter the upper terraces where even Sheeta, the panther, dared notventure.

To the very top of a tall tree the ape-man clawed his awkward way and after himcame Numa, the lion, moaning dismally. At last Tarzan stood balanced upon thevery utmost pinnacle of a swaying branch, high above the forest. He could go nofarther. Below him the lion came steadily upward, and Tarzan of the Apesrealized that at last the end had come. He could not do battle upon a tinybranch with Numa, the lion, especially with such a Numa, to which swayingbranches two hundred feet above the ground provided as substantial footing asthe ground itself.

Nearer and nearer came the lion. Another moment and he could reach up with onegreat paw and drag the ape-man downward to those awful jaws. A whirring noiseabove his head caused Tarzan to glance apprehensively upward. A great bird wascircling close above him. He never had seen so large a bird in all his life,yet he recognized it immediately, for had he not seen it hundreds of times inone of the books in the little cabin by the land-locked bay—the moss-growncabin that with its contents was the sole heritage left by his dead and unknownfather to the young Lord Greystoke?

In the picture-book the great bird was shown flying far above the ground with asmall child in its talons while, beneath, a distracted mother stood withuplifted hands. The lion was already reaching forth a taloned paw to seize himwhen the bird swooped and buried no less formidable talons in Tarzan’s back.The pain was numbing; but it was with a sense of relief that the ape-man felthimself snatched from the clutches of Numa.

With a great whirring of wings the bird rose rapidly until the forest lay farbelow. It made Tarzan sick and dizzy to look down upon it from so great aheight, so he closed his eyes tight and held his breath. Higher and higherclimbed the huge bird. Tarzan opened his eyes. The jungle was so far away thathe could see only a dim, green blur below him, but just above and quite closewas the sun. Tarzan reached out his hands and warmed them, for they were verycold. Then a sudden madness seized him. Where was the bird taking him? Was heto submit thus passively to a feathered creature however enormous? Was he,Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter, to die without striking a blow in his owndefense? Never!

He snatched the hunting blade from his gee-string and thrusting upward drove itonce, twice, thrice into the breast above him. The mighty wings fluttered a fewmore times, spasmodically, the talons relaxed their hold, and Tarzan of theApes fell hurtling downward toward the distant jungle.

It seemed to the ape-man that he fell for many minutes before he crashedthrough the leafy verdure of the tree tops. The smaller branches broke hisfall, so that he came to rest for an instant upon the very branch upon which hehad sought slumber the previous night. For an instant he toppled there in afrantic attempt to regain his equilibrium; but at last he rolled off, yet,clutching wildly, he succeeded in grasping the branch and hanging on.

Once more he opened his eyes, which he had closed during the fall. Again it wasnight. With all his old agility he clambered back to the crotch from which hehad toppled. Below him a lion roared, and, looking downward, Tarzan could seethe yellow-green eyes shining in the moonlight as they bored hungrily upwardthrough the darkness of the jungle night toward him.

The ape-man gasped for breath. Cold sweat stood out from every pore, there wasa great sickness at the pit of Tarzan’s stomach. Tarzan of the Apes had dreamedhis first dream.

For a long time he sat watching for Numa to climb into the tree after him, andlistening for the sound of the great wings from above, for to Tarzan of theApes his dream was a reality.

He could not believe what he had seen and yet, having seen even theseincredible things, he could not disbelieve the evidence of his own perceptions.Never in all his life had Tarzan’s senses deceived him badly, and so,naturally, he had great faith in them. Each perception which ever had beentransmitted to Tarzan’s brain had been, with varying accuracy, a trueperception. He could not conceive of the possibility of apparently havingpassed through such a weird adventure in which there was no grain of truth.That a stomach, disordered by decayed elephant flesh, a lion roaring in thejungle, a picture-book, and sleep could have so truly portrayed all theclear-cut details of what he had seemingly experienced was quite beyond hisknowledge; yet he knew that Numa could not climb a tree, he knew that thereexisted in the jungle no such bird as he had seen, and he knew, too, that hecould not have fallen a tiny fraction of the distance he had hurtled downward,and lived.

To say the least, he was a very puzzled Tarzan as he tried to compose himselfonce more for slumber—a very puzzled and a very nauseated Tarzan.

As he thought deeply upon the strange occurrences of the night, he witnessedanother remarkable happening. It was indeed quite preposterous, yet he saw itall with his own eyes—it was nothing less than Histah, the snake, wreathing hissinuous and slimy way up the bole of the tree below him—Histah, with the headof the old man Tarzan had shoved into the cooking pot—the head and the round,tight, black, distended stomach. As the old man’s frightful face, with upturnedeyes, set and glassy, came close to Tarzan, the jaws opened to seize him. Theape-man struck furiously at the hideous face, and as he struck the apparitiondisappeared.

Tarzan sat straight up upon his branch trembling in every limb, wide-eyed andpanting. He looked all around him with his keen, jungle-trained eyes, but hesaw naught of the old man with the body of Histah, the snake, but on his nakedthigh the ape-man saw a caterpillar, dropped from a branch above him. With agrimace he flicked it off into the darkness beneath.

And so the night wore on, dream following dream, nightmare following nightmare,until the distracted ape-man started like a frightened deer at the rustling ofthe wind in the trees about him, or leaped to his feet as the uncanny laugh ofa hyena burst suddenly upon a momentary jungle silence. But at last the tardymorning broke and a sick and feverish Tarzan wound sluggishly through the dankand gloomy mazes of the forest in search of water. His whole body seemed onfire, a great sickness surged upward to his throat. He saw a tangle of almostimpenetrable thicket, and, like the wild beast he was, he crawled into it todie alone and unseen, safe from the attacks of predatory carnivora.

But he did not die. For a long time he wanted to; but presently nature and anoutraged stomach relieved themselves in their own therapeutic manner, theape-man broke into a violent perspiration and then fell into a normal anduntroubled sleep which persisted well into the afternoon. When he awoke hefound himself weak but no longer sick.

Once more he sought water, and after drinking deeply, took his way slowlytoward the cabin by the sea. In times of loneliness and trouble it had longbeen his custom to seek there the quiet and restfulness which he could findnowhere else.

As he approached the cabin and raised the crude latch which his father hadfashioned so many years before, two small, blood-shot eyes watched him from theconcealing foliage of the jungle close by. From beneath shaggy, beetling browsthey glared maliciously upon him, maliciously and with a keen curiosity; thenTarzan entered the cabin and closed the door after him. Here, with all theworld shut out from him, he could dream without fear of interruption. He couldcurl up and look at the pictures in the strange things which were books, hecould puzzle out the printed word he had learned to read without knowledge ofthe spoken language it represented, he could live in a wonderful world of whichhe had no knowledge beyond the covers of his beloved books. Numa and Sabormight prowl about close to him, the elements might rage in all their fury; buthere at least, Tarzan might be entirely off his guard in a delightfulrelaxation which gave him all his faculties for the uninterrupted pursuit ofthis greatest of all his pleasures.

Today he turned to the picture of the huge bird which bore off the littleTarmangani in its talons. Tarzan puckered his brows as he examined the coloredprint. Yes, this was the very bird that had carried him off the day before, forto Tarzan the dream had been so great a reality that he still thought anotherday and a night had passed since he had lain down in the tree to sleep.

But the more he thought upon the matter the less positive he was as to theverity of the seeming adventure through which he had passed, yet where the realhad ceased and the unreal commenced he was quite unable to determine. Had hereally then been to the village of the blacks at all, had he killed the oldGomangani, had he eaten of the elephant meat, had he been sick? Tarzanscratched his tousled black head and wondered. It was all very strange, yet heknew that he never had seen Numa climb a tree, or Histah with the head andbelly of an old black man whom Tarzan already had slain.

Finally, with a sigh he gave up trying to fathom the unfathomable, yet in hisheart of hearts he knew that something had come into his life that he neverbefore had experienced, another life which existed when he slept and theconsciousness of which was carried over into his waking hours.

Then he commenced to wonder if some of these strange creatures which he met inhis sleep might not slay him, for at such times Tarzan of the Apes seemed to bea different Tarzan, sluggish, helpless and timid—wishing to flee his enemies asfled Bara, the deer, most fearful of creatures.

Thus, with a dream, came the first faint tinge of a knowledge of fear, aknowledge which Tarzan, awake, had never experienced, and perhaps he wasexperiencing what his early forbears passed through and transmitted toposterity in the form of superstition first and religion later; for they, asTarzan, had seen things at night which they could not explain by the daylightstandards of sense perception or of reason, and so had built for themselves aweird explanation which included grotesque shapes, possessed of strange anduncanny powers, to whom they finally came to attribute all those inexplicablephenomena of nature which with each recurrence filled them with awe, withwonder, or with terror.

And as Tarzan concentrated his mind on the little bugs upon the printed pagebefore him, the active recollection of his strange adventures presently mergedinto the text of that which he was reading—a story of Bolgani, the gorilla, incaptivity. There was a more or less lifelike illustration of Bolgani in colorsand in a cage, with many remarkable looking Tarmangani standing against a railand peering curiously at the snarling brute. Tarzan wondered not a little, ashe always did, at the odd and seemingly useless array of colored plumage whichcovered the bodies of the Tarmangani. It always caused him to grin a triflewhen he looked at these strange creatures. He wondered if they so covered theirbodies from shame of their hairlessness or because they thought the odd thingsthey wore added any to the beauty of their appearance. Particularly was Tarzanamused by the grotesque headdresses of the pictured people. He wondered howsome of the shes succeeded in balancing theirs in an upright position, and hecame as near to laughing aloud as he ever had, as he contemplated the funnylittle round things upon the heads of the hes.

Slowly the ape-man picked out the meaning of the various combinations ofletters on the printed page, and as he read, the little bugs, for as such healways thought of the letters, commenced to run about in a most confusingmanner, blurring his vision and befuddling his thoughts. Twice he brushed theback of a hand smartly across his eyes; but only for a moment could he bringthe bugs back to coherent and intelligible form. He had slept ill the nightbefore and now he was exhausted from loss of sleep, from sickness, and from theslight fever he had had, so that it became more and more difficult to fix hisattention, or to keep his eyes open.

Tarzan realized that he was falling asleep, and just as the realization wasborne in upon him and he had decided to relinquish himself to an inclinationwhich had assumed almost the proportions of a physical pain, he was aroused bythe opening of the cabin door. Turning quickly toward the interruption Tarzanwas amazed, for a moment, to see bulking large in the doorway the huge andhairy form of Bolgani, the gorilla.

Now there was scarcely a denizen of the great jungle with whom Tarzan wouldrather not have been cooped up inside the small cabin than Bolgani, thegorilla, yet he felt no fear, even though his quick eye noted that Bolgani wasin the throes of that jungle madness which seizes upon so many of the fiercermales. Ordinarily the huge gorillas avoid conflict, hide themselves from theother jungle folk, and are generally the best of neighbors; but when they areattacked, or the madness seizes them, there is no jungle denizen so bold andfierce as to deliberately seek a quarrel with them.

But for Tarzan there was no escape. Bolgani was glowering at him fromred-rimmed, wicked eyes. In a moment he would rush in and seize the ape-man.Tarzan reached for the hunting knife where he had lain it on the table besidehim; but as his fingers did not immediately locate the weapon, he turned aquick glance in search of it. As he did so his eyes fell upon the book he hadbeen looking at which still lay open at the picture of Bolgani. Tarzan foundhis knife, but he merely fingered it idly and grinned in the direction of theadvancing gorilla.

Not again would he be fooled by empty things which came while he slept! In amoment, no doubt, Bolgani would turn into Pamba, the rat, with the head ofTantor, the elephant. Tarzan had seen enough of such strange happeningsrecently to have some idea as to what he might expect; but this time Bolganidid not alter his form as he came slowly toward the young ape-man.

Tarzan was a bit puzzled, too, that he felt no desire to rush frantically tosome place of safety, as had been the sensation most conspicuous in the otherof his new and remarkable adventures. He was just himself now, ready to fight,if necessary; but still sure that no flesh and blood gorilla stood before him.

The thing should be fading away into thin air by now, thought Tarzan, orchanging into something else; yet it did not. Instead it loomed clear-cut andreal as Bolgani himself, the magnificent dark coat glistening with life andhealth in a bar of sunlight which shot across the cabin through the high windowbehind the young Lord Greystoke. This was quite the most realistic of his sleepadventures, thought Tarzan, as he passively awaited the next amusing incident.

And then the gorilla charged. Two mighty, calloused hands seized upon theape-man, great fangs were bared close to his face, a hideous growl burst fromthe cavernous throat and hot breath fanned Tarzan’s cheek, and still he satgrinning at the apparition. Tarzan might be fooled once or twice, but not forso many times in succession! He knew that this Bolgani was no real Bolgani, forhad he been he never could have gained entrance to the cabin, since only Tarzanknew how to operate the latch.

The gorilla seemed puzzled by the strange passivity of the hairless ape. Hepaused an instant with his jaws snarling close to the other’s throat, then heseemed suddenly to come to some decision. Whirling the ape-man across a hairyshoulder, as easily as you or I might lift a babe in arms, Bolgani turned anddashed out into the open, racing toward the great trees.

Now, indeed, was Tarzan sure that this was a sleep adventure, and so grinnedlargely as the giant gorilla bore him, unresisting, away. Presently, reasonedTarzan, he would awaken and find himself back in the cabin where he had fallenasleep. He glanced back at the thought and saw the cabin door standing wideopen. This would never do! Always had he been careful to close and latch itagainst wild intruders. Manu, the monkey, would make sad havoc there amongTarzan’s treasures should he have access to the interior for even a fewminutes. The question which arose in Tarzan’s mind was a baffling one. Wheredid sleep adventures end and reality commence? How was he to be sure that thecabin door was not really open? Everything about him appeared quitenormal—there were none of the grotesque exaggerations of his former sleepadventures. It would be better then to be upon the safe side and make sure thatthe cabin door was closed—it would do no harm even if all that seemed to behappening were not happening at all.

Tarzan essayed to slip from Bolgani’s shoulder; but the great beast onlygrowled ominously and gripped him tighter. With a mighty effort the ape-manwrenched himself loose, and as he slid to the ground, the dream gorilla turnedferociously upon him, seized him once more and buried great fangs in a sleek,brown shoulder.

The grin of derision faded from Tarzan’s lips as the pain and the hot bloodaroused his fighting instincts. Asleep or awake, this thing was no longer ajoke! Biting, tearing, and snarling, the two rolled over upon the ground. Thegorilla now was frantic with insane rage. Again and again he loosed his holdupon the ape-man’s shoulder in an attempt to seize the jugular; but Tarzan ofthe Apes had fought before with creatures who struck first for the vital vein,and each time he wriggled out of harm’s way as he strove to get his fingersupon his adversary’s throat. At last he succeeded—his great muscles tensed andknotted beneath his smooth hide as he forced with every ounce of his mightystrength to push the hairy torso from him. And as he choked Bolgani andstrained him away, his other hand crept slowly upward between them until thepoint of the hunting knife rested over the savage heart—there was a quickmovement of the steel-thewed wrist and the blade plunged to its goal.

Bolgani, the gorilla, voiced a single frightful shriek, tore himself loose fromthe grasp of the ape-man, rose to his feet, staggered a few steps and thenplunged to earth. There were a few spasmodic movements of the limbs and thebrute was still.

Tarzan of the Apes stood looking down upon his kill, and as he stood there heran his fingers through his thick, black shock of hair. Presently he stoopedand touched the dead body. Some of the red life-blood of the gorilla crimsonedhis fingers. He raised them to his nose and sniffed. Then he shook his head andturned toward the cabin. The door was still open. He closed it and fastened thelatch. Returning toward the body of his kill he again paused and scratched hishead.

If this was a sleep adventure, what then was reality? How was he to know theone from the other? How much of all that had happened in his life had been realand how much unreal?

He placed a foot upon the prostrate form and raising his face to the heavensgave voice to the kill cry of the bull ape. Far in the distance a lionanswered. It was very real and, yet, he did not know. Puzzled, he turned awayinto the jungle.

No, he did not know what was real and what was not; but there was one thingthat he did know—never again would he eat of the flesh of Tantor, the elephant.

CHAPTER X
The Battle for Teeka

The day was perfect. A cool breeze tempered the heat of the equatorial sun.Peace had reigned within the tribe for weeks and no alien enemy had trespassedupon its preserves from without. To the ape-mind all this was sufficientevidence that the future would be identical with the immediate past—that Utopiawould persist.

The sentinels, now from habit become a fixed tribal custom, either relaxedtheir vigilance or entirely deserted their posts, as the whim seized them. Thetribe was far scattered in search of food. Thus may peace and prosperityundermine the safety of the most primitive community even as it does that ofthe most cultured.

Even the individuals became less watchful and alert, so that one might havethought Numa and Sabor and Sheeta entirely deleted from the scheme of things.The shes and the balus roamed unguarded through the sullen jungle, while thegreedy males foraged far afield, and thus it was that Teeka and Gazan, herbalu, hunted upon the extreme southern edge of the tribe with no great malenear them.

Still farther south there moved through the forest a sinister figure—a hugebull ape, maddened by solitude and defeat. A week before he had contended forthe kingship of a tribe far distant, and now battered, and still sore, heroamed the wilderness an outcast. Later he might return to his own tribe andsubmit to the will of the hairy brute he had attempted to dethrone; but for thetime being he dared not do so, since he had sought not only the crown but thewives, as well, of his lord and master. It would require an entire moon atleast to bring forgetfulness to him he had wronged, and so Toog wandered astrange jungle, grim, terrible, hate-filled.

It was in this mental state that Toog came unexpectedly upon a young shefeeding alone in the jungle—a stranger she, lithe and strong and beautifulbeyond compare. Toog caught his breath and slunk quickly to one side of thetrail where the dense foliage of the tropical underbrush concealed him fromTeeka while permitting him to feast his eyes upon her loveliness.

But not alone were they concerned with Teeka—they roved the surrounding junglein search of the bulls and cows and balus of her tribe, though principally forthe bulls. When one covets a she of an alien tribe one must take intoconsideration the great, fierce, hairy guardians who seldom wander far fromtheir wards and who will fight a stranger to the death in protection of themate or offspring of a fellow, precisely as they would fight for their own.

Toog could see no sign of any ape other than the strange she and a young baluplaying near by. His wicked, blood-shot eyes half closed as they rested uponthe charms of the former—as for the balu, one snap of those great jaws upon theback of its little neck would prevent it from raising any unnecessary alarm.

Toog was a fine, big male, resembling in many ways Teeka’s mate, Taug. Each wasin his prime, and each was wonderfully muscled, perfectly fanged and ashorrifyingly ferocious as the most exacting and particular she could wish. HadToog been of her own tribe, Teeka might as readily have yielded to him as toTaug when her mating time arrived; but now she was Taug’s and no other malecould claim her without first defeating Taug in personal combat. And even thenTeeka retained some rights in the matter. If she did not favor a corespondent,she could enter the lists with her rightful mate and do her part towarddiscouraging his advances, a part, too, which would prove no mean assistance toher lord and master, for Teeka, even though her fangs were smaller than amale’s, could use them to excellent effect.

Just now Teeka was occupied in a fascinating search for beetles, to theexclusion of all else. She did not realize how far she and Gazan had becomeseparated from the balance of the tribe, nor were her defensive senses upon thealert as they should have been. Months of immunity from danger under theprotecting watchfulness of the sentries, which Tarzan had taught the tribe topost, had lulled them all into a sense of peaceful security based on thatfallacy which has wrecked many enlightened communities in the past and willcontinue to wreck others in the future—that because they have not been attackedthey never will be.

Toog, having satisfied himself that only the she and her balu were in theimmediate vicinity, crept stealthily forward. Teeka’s back was toward him whenhe finally rushed upon her; but her senses were at last awakened to thepresence of danger and she wheeled to face the strange bull just before hereached her. Toog halted a few paces from her. His anger had fled before theseductive feminine charms of the stranger. He made conciliatory noises—aspecies of clucking sound with his broad, flat lips—that were, too, not greatlydissimilar to that which might be produced in an osculatory solo.

But Teeka only bared her fangs and growled. Little Gazan started to run towardhis mother, but she warned him away with a quick “Kreeg-ah!” telling him to runhigh into a tall tree. Evidently Teeka was not favorably impressed by her newsuitor. Toog realized this and altered his methods accordingly. He swelled hisgiant chest, beat upon it with his calloused knuckles and swaggered to and frobefore her.

“I am Toog,” he boasted. “Look at my fighting fangs. Look at my great arms andmy mighty legs. With one bite I can slay your biggest bull. Alone have I slainSheeta. I am Toog. Toog wants you.” Then he waited for the effect, nor did hehave long to wait. Teeka turned with a swiftness which belied her great weightand bolted in the opposite direction. Toog, with an angry growl, leaped inpursuit; but the smaller, lighter female was too fleet for him. He chased herfor a few yards and then, foaming and barking, he halted and beat upon theground with his hard fists.

From the tree above him little Gazan looked down and witnessed the strangerbull’s discomfiture. Being young, and thinking himself safe above the reach ofthe heavy male, Gazan screamed an ill-timed insult at their tormentor. Tooglooked up. Teeka had halted at a little distance—she would not go far from herbalu; that Toog quickly realized and as quickly determined to take advantageof. He saw that the tree in which the young ape squatted was isolated and thatGazan could not reach another without coming to earth. He would obtain themother through her love for her young.

He swung himself into the lower branches of the tree. Little Gazan ceased toinsult him; his expression of deviltry changed to one of apprehension, whichwas quickly followed by fear as Toog commenced to ascend toward him. Teekascreamed to Gazan to climb higher, and the little fellow scampered upward amongthe tiny branches which would not support the weight of the great bull; butnevertheless Toog kept on climbing. Teeka was not fearful. She knew that hecould not ascend far enough to reach Gazan, so she sat at a little distancefrom the tree and applied jungle opprobrium to him. Being a female, she was apast master of the art.

But she did not know the malevolent cunning of Toog’s little brain. She took itfor granted that the bull would climb as high as he could toward Gazan andthen, finding that he could not reach him, resume his pursuit of her, which sheknew would prove equally fruitless. So sure was she of the safety of her baluand her own ability to take care of herself that she did not voice the cry forhelp which would soon have brought the other members of the tribe flocking toher side.

Toog slowly reached the limit to which he dared risk his great weight to theslender branches. Gazan was still fifteen feet above him. The bull bracedhimself and seized the main branch in his powerful hands, then he commencedshaking it vigorously. Teeka was appalled. Instantly she realized what the bullpurposed. Gazan clung far out upon a swaying limb. At the first shake he losthis balance, though he did not quite fall, clinging still with his four hands;but Toog redoubled his efforts; the shaking produced a violent snapping of thelimb to which the young ape clung. Teeka saw all too plainly what the outcomemust be and forgetting her own danger in the depth of her mother love, rushedforward to ascend the tree and give battle to the fearsome creature thatmenaced the life of her little one.

But before ever she reached the bole, Toog had succeeded, by violent shaking ofthe branch, to loosen Gazan’s hold. With a cry the little fellow plunged downthrough the foliage, clutching futilely for a new hold, and alighted with asickening thud at his mother’s feet, where he lay silent and motionless.Moaning, Teeka stooped to lift the still form in her arms; but at the sameinstant Toog was upon her.

Struggling and biting she fought to free herself; but the giant muscles of thegreat bull were too much for her lesser strength. Toog struck and choked herrepeatedly until finally, half unconscious, she lapsed into quasi submission.Then the bull lifted her to his shoulder and turned back to the trail towardthe south from whence he had come.

Upon the ground lay the quiet form of little Gazan. He did not moan. He did notmove. The sun rose slowly toward meridian. A mangy thing, lifting its nose toscent the jungle breeze, crept through the underbrush. It was Dango, the hyena.Presently its ugly muzzle broke through some near-by foliage and its cruel eyesfastened upon Gazan.

Early that morning, Tarzan of the Apes had gone to the cabin by the sea, wherehe passed many an hour at such times as the tribe was ranging in the vicinity.On the floor lay the skeleton of a man—all that remained of the former LordGreystoke—lay as it had fallen some twenty years before when Kerchak, the greatape, had thrown it, lifeless, there. Long since had the termites and the smallrodents picked clean the sturdy English bones. For years Tarzan had seen itlying there, giving it no more attention than he gave the countless thousandbones that strewed his jungle haunts. On the bed another, smaller, skeletonreposed and the youth ignored it as he ignored the other. How could he knowthat the one had been his father, the other his mother? The little pile ofbones in the rude cradle, fashioned with such loving care by the former LordGreystoke, meant nothing to him—that one day that little skull was to helpprove his right to a proud title was as far beyond his ken as the satellites ofthe suns of Orion. To Tarzan they were bones—just bones. He did not need them,for there was no meat left upon them, and they were not in his way, for he knewno necessity for a bed, and the skeleton upon the floor he easily could stepover.

Today he was restless. He turned the pages first of one book and then ofanother. He glanced at pictures which he knew by heart, and tossed the booksaside. He rummaged for the thousandth time in the cupboard. He took out a bagwhich contained several small, round pieces of metal. He had played with themmany times in the years gone by; but always he replaced them carefully in thebag, and the bag in the cupboard, upon the very shelf where first he haddiscovered it. In strange ways did heredity manifest itself in the ape-man.Come of an orderly race, he himself was orderly without knowing why. The apesdropped things wherever their interest in them waned—in the tall grass or fromthe high-flung branches of the trees. What they dropped they sometimes foundagain, by accident; but not so the ways of Tarzan. For his few belongings hehad a place and scrupulously he returned each thing to its proper place when hewas done with it. The round pieces of metal in the little bag always interestedhim. Raised pictures were upon either side, the meaning of which he did notquite understand. The pieces were bright and shiny. It amused him to arrangethem in various figures upon the table. Hundreds of times had he played thus.Today, while so engaged, he dropped a lovely yellow piece—an Englishsovereign—which rolled beneath the bed where lay all that was mortal of theonce beautiful Lady Alice.

True to form, Tarzan at once dropped to his hands and knees and searchedbeneath the bed for the lost gold piece. Strange as it might appear, he hadnever before looked beneath the bed. He found the gold piece, and somethingelse he found, too—a small wooden box with a loose cover. Bringing them bothout he returned the sovereign to its bag and the bag to its shelf within thecupboard; then he investigated the box. It contained a quantity of cylindricalbits of metal, cone-shaped at one end and flat at the other, with a projectingrim. They were all quite green and dull, coated with years of verdigris.

Tarzan removed a handful of them from the box and examined them. He rubbed oneupon another and discovered that the green came off, leaving a shiny surfacefor two-thirds of their length and a dull gray over the cone-shaped end.Finding a bit of wood he rubbed one of the cylinders rapidly and was rewardedby a lustrous sheen which pleased him.

At his side hung a pocket pouch taken from the body of one of the numerousblack warriors he had slain. Into this pouch he put a handful of the newplaythings, thinking to polish them at his leisure; then he replaced the boxbeneath the bed, and finding nothing more to amuse him, left the cabin andstarted back in the direction of the tribe.

Shortly before he reached them he heard a great commotion ahead of him—the loudscreams of shes and balus, the savage, angry barking and growling of the greatbulls. Instantly he increased his speed, for the “Kreeg-ahs” that came to hisears warned him that something was amiss with his fellows.

While Tarzan had been occupied with his own devices in the cabin of his deadsire, Taug, Teeka’s mighty mate, had been hunting a mile to the north of thetribe. At last, his belly filled, he had turned lazily back toward the clearingwhere he had last seen the tribe and presently commenced passing its membersscattered alone or in twos or threes. Nowhere did he see Teeka or Gazan, andsoon he began inquiring of the other apes where they might be; but none hadseen them recently.

Now the lower orders are not highly imaginative. They do not, as you and I,paint vivid mental pictures of things which might have occurred, and so Taugdid not now apprehend that any misfortune had overtaken his mate and theiroffspring—he merely knew that he wished to find Teeka that he might lie downin the shade and have her scratch his back while his breakfast digested; butthough he called to her and searched for her and asked each whom he met, hecould find no trace of Teeka, nor of Gazan either.

He was beginning to become peeved and had about made up his mind to chastiseTeeka for wandering so far afield when he wanted her. He was moving south alonga game trail, his calloused soles and knuckles giving forth no sound, when hecame upon Dango at the opposite side of a small clearing. The eater of carriondid not see Taug, for all his eyes were for something which lay in the grassbeneath a tree—something upon which he was sneaking with the cautious stealthof his breed.

Taug, always cautious himself, as it behooves one to be who fares up and downthe jungle and desires to survive, swung noiselessly into a tree, where hecould have a better view of the clearing. He did not fear Dango; but he wantedto see what it was that Dango stalked. In a way, possibly, he was actuated asmuch by curiosity as by caution.

And when Taug reached a place in the branches from which he could have anunobstructed view of the clearing he saw Dango already sniffing at somethingdirectly beneath him—something which Taug instantly recognized as the lifelessform of his little Gazan.

With a cry so frightful, so bestial, that it momentarily paralyzed the startledDango, the great ape launched his mighty bulk upon the surprised hyena. With acry and a snarl, Dango, crushed to earth, turned to tear at his assailant; butas effectively might a sparrow turn upon a hawk. Taug’s great, gnarled fingersclosed upon the hyena’s throat and back, his jaws snapped once on the mangyneck, crushing the vertebrae, and then he hurled the dead body contemptuouslyaside.

Again he raised his voice in the call of the bull ape to its mate, but therewas no reply; then he leaned down to sniff at the body of Gazan. In the breastof this savage, hideous beast there beat a heart which was moved, howeverslightly, by the same emotions of paternal love which affect us. Even had we noactual evidence of this, we must know it still, since only thus might beexplained the survival of the human race in which the jealousy and selfishnessof the bulls would, in the earliest stages of the race, have wiped out theyoung as rapidly as they were brought into the world had not God implanted inthe savage bosom that paternal love which evidences itself most strongly in theprotective instinct of the male.

In Taug the protective instinct was not alone highly developed; but affectionfor his offspring as well, for Taug was an unusually intelligent specimen ofthese great, manlike apes which the natives of the Gobi speak of in whispers;but which no white man ever had seen, or, if seeing, lived to tell of untilTarzan of the Apes came among them.

And so Taug felt sorrow as any other father might feel sorrow at the loss of alittle child. To you little Gazan might have seemed a hideous and repulsivecreature, but to Taug and Teeka he was as beautiful and as cute as is yourlittle Mary or Johnnie or Elizabeth Ann to you, and he was their first-born,their only balu, and a he—three things which might make a young ape the appleof any fond father’s eye.

For a moment Taug sniffed at the quiet little form. With his muzzle and histongue he smoothed and caressed the rumpled coat. From his savage lips broke alow moan; but quickly upon the heels of sorrow came the overmastering desirefor revenge.

Leaping to his feet he screamed out a volley of “Kreeg-ahs,” punctuated fromtime to time by the blood-freezing cry of an angry, challenging bull—a rage-madbull with the blood lust strong upon him.

Answering his cries came the cries of the tribe as they swung through the treestoward him. It was these that Tarzan heard on his return from his cabin, and inreply to them he raised his own voice and hurried forward with increased speeduntil he fairly flew through the middle terraces of the forest.

When at last he came upon the tribe he saw their members gathered about Taugand something which lay quietly upon the ground. Dropping among them, Tarzanapproached the center of the group. Taug was still roaring out his challenges;but when he saw Tarzan he ceased and stooping picked up Gazan in his arms andheld him out for Tarzan to see. Of all the bulls of the tribe, Taug heldaffection for Tarzan only. Tarzan he trusted and looked up to as one wiser andmore cunning. To Tarzan he came now—to the playmate of his balu days, thecompanion of innumerable battles of his maturity.

When Tarzan saw the still form in Taug’s arms, a low growl broke from his lips,for he too loved Teeka’s little balu.

“Who did it?” he asked. “Where is Teeka?”

“I do not know,” replied Taug. “I found him lying here with Dango about to feedupon him; but it was not Dango that did it—there are no fang marks upon him.”

Tarzan came closer and placed an ear against Gazan’s breast. “He is not dead,”he said. “Maybe he will not die.” He pressed through the crowd of apes andcircled once about them, examining the ground step by step. Suddenly he stoppedand placing his nose close to the earth sniffed. Then he sprang to his feet,giving a peculiar cry. Taug and the others pressed forward, for the sound toldthem that the hunter had found the spoor of his quarry.

“A stranger bull has been here,” said Tarzan. “It was he that hurt Gazan. Hehas carried off Teeka.”

Taug and the other bulls commenced to roar and threaten; but they did nothing.Had the stranger bull been within sight they would have torn him to pieces; butit did not occur to them to follow him.

“If the three bulls had been watching around the tribe this would not havehappened,” said Tarzan. “Such things will happen as long as you do not keep thethree bulls watching for an enemy. The jungle is full of enemies, and yet youlet your shes and your balus feed where they will, alone and unprotected.Tarzan goes now—he goes to find Teeka and bring her back to the tribe.”

The idea appealed to the other bulls. “We will all go,” they cried.

“No,” said Tarzan, “you will not all go. We cannot take shes and balus when wego out to hunt and fight. You must remain to guard them or you will lose themall.”

They scratched their heads. The wisdom of his advice was dawning upon them, butat first they had been carried away by the new idea—the idea of following up anenemy offender to wrest his prize from him and punish him. The communityinstinct was ingrained in their characters through ages of custom. They did notknow why they had not thought to pursue and punish the offender—they could notknow that it was because they had as yet not reached a mental plane which wouldpermit them to work as individuals. In times of stress, the community instinctsent them huddling into a compact herd where the great bulls, by the weight oftheir combined strength and ferocity, could best protect them from an enemy.The idea of separating to do battle with a foe had not yet occurred to them—itwas too foreign to custom, too inimical to community interests; but to Tarzanit was the first and most natural thought. His senses told him that there wasbut a single bull connected with the attack upon Teeka and Gazan. A singleenemy did not require the entire tribe for his punishment. Two swift bullscould quickly overhaul him and rescue Teeka.

In the past no one ever had thought to go forth in search of the shes that wereoccasionally stolen from the tribe. If Numa, Sabor, Sheeta or a wandering bullape from another tribe chanced to carry off a maid or a matron while no one waslooking, that was the end of it—she was gone, that was all. The bereavedhusband, if the victim chanced to have been mated, growled around for a day ortwo and then, if he were strong enough, took another mate within the tribe, andif not, wandered far into the jungle on the chance of stealing one from anothercommunity.

In the past Tarzan of the Apes had condoned this practice for the reason thathe had had no interest in those who had been stolen; but Teeka had been hisfirst love and Teeka’s balu held a place in his heart such as a balu of his ownwould have held. Just once before had Tarzan wished to follow and revenge. Thathad been years before when Kulonga, the son of Mbonga, the chief, had slainKala. Then, single-handed, Tarzan had pursued and avenged. Now, though to alesser degree, he was moved by the same passion.

He turned toward Taug. “Leave Gazan with Mumga,” he said. “She is old and herfangs are broken and she is no good; but she can take care of Gazan until wereturn with Teeka, and if Gazan is dead when we come back,” he turned toaddress Mumga, “I will kill you, too.”

“Where are we going?” asked Taug.

“We are going to get Teeka,” replied the ape-man, “and kill the bull who hasstolen her. Come!”

He turned again to the spoor of the stranger bull, which showed plainly to histrained senses, nor did he glance back to note if Taug followed. The latterlaid Gazan in Mumga’s arms with a parting: “If he dies Tarzan will kill you,”and he followed after the brown-skinned figure that already was moving at aslow trot along the jungle trail.

No other bull of the tribe of Kerchak was so good a trailer as Tarzan, for histrained senses were aided by a high order of intelligence. His judgment toldhim the natural trail for a quarry to follow, so that he need but note the mostapparent marks upon the way, and today the trail of Toog was as plain to him astype upon a printed page to you or me.

Following close behind the lithe figure of the ape-man came the huge and shaggybull ape. No words passed between them. They moved as silently as two shadowsamong the myriad shadows of the forest. Alert as his eyes and ears, wasTarzan’s patrician nose. The spoor was fresh, and now that they had passed fromthe range of the strong ape odor of the tribe he had little difficulty infollowing Toog and Teeka by scent alone. Teeka’s familiar scent spoor told bothTarzan and Taug that they were upon her trail, and soon the scent of Toogbecame as familiar as the other.

They were progressing rapidly when suddenly dense clouds overcast the sun.Tarzan accelerated his pace. Now he fairly flew along the jungle trail, or,where Toog had taken to the trees, followed nimbly as a squirrel along thebending, undulating pathway of the foliaged branches, swinging from tree to treeas Toog had swung before them; but more rapidly because they were nothandicapped by a burden such as Toog’s.

Tarzan felt that they must be almost upon the quarry, for the scent spoor wasbecoming stronger and stronger, when the jungle was suddenly shot by lividlightning, and a deafening roar of thunder reverberated through the heavens andthe forest until the earth trembled and shook. Then came the rain—not as itcomes to us of the temperate zones, but as a mighty avalanche of water—a delugewhich spills tons instead of drops upon the bending forest giants and theterrified creatures which haunt their shade.

And the rain did what Tarzan knew that it would do—it wiped the spoor of thequarry from the face of the earth. For a half hour the torrents fell—then thesun burst forth, jeweling the forest with a million scintillant gems; but todaythe ape-man, usually alert to the changing wonders of the jungle, saw them not.Only the fact that the spoor of Teeka and her abductor was obliterated foundlodgment in his thoughts.

Even among the branches of the trees there are well-worn trails, just as thereare trails upon the surface of the ground; but in the trees they branch andcross more often, since the way is more open than among the dense undergrowthat the surface. Along one of these well-marked trails Tarzan and Taug continuedafter the rain had ceased, because the ape-man knew that this was the mostlogical path for the thief to follow; but when they came to a fork, they wereat a loss. Here they halted, while Tarzan examined every branch and leaf whichmight have been touched by the fleeing ape.

He sniffed the bole of the tree, and with his keen eyes he sought to find uponthe bark some sign of the way the quarry had taken. It was slow work and allthe time, Tarzan knew, the bull of the alien tribe was forging steadily awayfrom them—gaining precious minutes that might carry him to safety before theycould catch up with him.

First along one fork he went, and then another, applying every test that hiswonderful junglecraft was cognizant of; but again and again he was baffled, forthe scent had been washed away by the heavy downpour, in every exposed place.For a half hour Tarzan and Taug searched, until at last, upon the bottom of abroad leaf, Tarzan’s keen nose caught the faint trace of the scent spoor ofToog, where the leaf had brushed a hairy shoulder as the great ape passedthrough the foliage.

Once again the two took up the trail, but it was slow work now and there weremany discouraging delays when the spoor seemed lost beyond recovery. To you orme there would have been no spoor, even before the coming of the rain, except,possibly, where Toog had come to earth and followed a game trail. In suchplaces the imprint of a huge handlike foot and the knuckles of one great handwere sometimes plain enough for an ordinary mortal to read. Tarzan knew fromthese and other indications that the ape was yet carrying Teeka. The depth ofthe imprint of his feet indicated a much greater weight than that of any of thelarger bulls, for they were made under the combined weight of Toog and Teeka,while the fact that the knuckles of but one hand touched the ground at any timeshowed that the other hand was occupied in some other business—the business ofholding the prisoner to a hairy shoulder. Tarzan could follow, in shelteredplaces, the changing of the burden from one shoulder to another, as indicatedby the deepening of the foot imprint upon the side of the load, and thechanging of the knuckle imprints from one side of the trail to the other.

There were stretches along the surface paths where the ape had gone forconsiderable distances entirely erect upon his hind feet—walking as a manwalks; but the same might have been true of any of the great anthropoids of thesame species, for, unlike the chimpanzee and the gorilla, they walk without theaid of their hands quite as readily as with. It was such things, however, whichhelped to identify to Tarzan and to Taug the appearance of the abductor, andwith his individual scent characteristic already indelibly impressed upon theirmemories, they were in a far better position to know him when they came uponhim, even should he have disposed of Teeka before, than is a modern sleuth withhis photographs and Bertillon measurements, equipped to recognize a fugitivefrom civilized justice.

But with all their high-strung and delicately attuned perceptive faculties thetwo bulls of the tribe of Kerchak were often sore pressed to follow the trailat all, and at best were so delayed that in the afternoon of the second day,they still had not overhauled the fugitive. The scent was now strong, for ithad been made since the rain, and Tarzan knew that it would not be long beforethey came upon the thief and his loot. Above them, as they crept stealthilyforward, chattered Manu, the monkey, and his thousand fellows; squawked andscreamed the brazen-throated birds of plumage; buzzed and hummed the countlessinsects amid the rustling of the forest leaves, and, as they passed, a littlegray-beard, squeaking and scolding upon a swaying branch, looked down and sawthem. Instantly the scolding and the squeaking ceased, and off tore the long-tailedmite as though Sheeta, the panther, had been endowed with wings and was inclose pursuit of him. To all appearances he was only a very much frightenedlittle monkey, fleeing for his life—there seemed nothing sinister about him.

And what of Teeka during all this time? Was she at last resigned to her fateand accompanying her new mate in the proper humility of a loving and tractablespouse? A single glance at the pair would have answered these questions to theutter satisfaction of the most captious. She was torn and bleeding from manywounds, inflicted by the sullen Toog in his vain efforts to subdue her to hiswill, and Toog too was disfigured and mutilated; but with stubborn ferocity, hestill clung to his now useless prize.

On through the jungle he forced his way in the direction of the stamping groundof his tribe. He hoped that his king would have forgotten his treason; but ifnot he was still resigned to his fate—any fate would be better than sufferinglonger the sole companionship of this frightful she, and then, too, he wishedto exhibit his captive to his fellows. Maybe he could wish her on the king—itis possible that such a thought urged him on.

At last they came upon two bulls feeding in a parklike grove—a beautiful grovedotted with huge boulders half embedded in the rich loam—mute monuments,possibly, to a forgotten age when mighty glaciers rolled their slow coursewhere now a torrid sun beats down upon a tropic jungle.

The two bulls looked up, baring long fighting fangs, as Toog appeared in thedistance. The latter recognized the two as friends. “It is Toog,” he growled.“Toog has come back with a new she.”

The apes waited his nearer approach. Teeka turned a snarling, fanged facetoward them. She was not pretty to look upon, yet through the blood and hatredupon her countenance they realized that she was beautiful, and they enviedToog—alas! they did not know Teeka.

As they squatted looking at one another there raced through the trees towardthem a long-tailed little monkey with gray whiskers. He was a very excitedlittle monkey when he came to a halt upon the limb of a tree directly overhead.

“Two strange bulls come,” he cried. “One is a Mangani, the other a hideous apewithout hair upon his body. They follow the spoor of Toog. I saw them.”

The four apes turned their eyes backward along the trail Toog had just come;then they looked at one another for a minute. “Come,” said the larger of Toog’stwo friends, “we will wait for the strangers in the thick bushes beyond theclearing.”

He turned and waddled away across the open place, the others following him. Thelittle monkey danced about, all excitement. His chief diversion in life was tobring about bloody encounters between the larger denizens of the forest, thathe might sit in the safety of the trees and witness the spectacles. He was aglutton for gore, was this little, whiskered, gray monkey, so long as it wasthe gore of others—a typical fight fan was the graybeard.

The apes hid themselves in the shrubbery beside the trail along which the twostranger bulls would pass. Teeka trembled with excitement. She had heard thewords of Manu, and she knew that the hairless ape must be Tarzan, while theother was, doubtless, Taug. Never, in her wildest hopes, had she expectedsuccor of this sort. Her one thought had been to escape and find her way backto the tribe of Kerchak; but even this had appeared to her practicallyimpossible, so closely did Toog watch her.

As Taug and Tarzan reached the grove where Toog had come upon his friends, theape scent became so strong that both knew the quarry was but a short distanceahead. And so they went even more cautiously, for they wished to come upon thethief from behind if they could and charge him before he was aware of theirpresence. That a little gray-whiskered monkey had forestalled them they did notknow, nor that three pairs of savage eyes were already watching their everymove and waiting for them to come within reach of itching paws and slaveringjowls.

On they came across the grove, and as they entered the path leading into thedense jungle beyond, a sudden “Kreeg-ah!” shrilled out close before them—a“Kreeg-ah” in the familiar voice of Teeka. The small brains of Toog and hiscompanions had not been able to foresee that Teeka might betray them, and nowthat she had, they went wild with rage. Toog struck the she a mighty blow thatfelled her, and then the three rushed forth to do battle with Tarzan and Taug.The little monkey danced upon his perch and screamed with delight.

And indeed he might well be delighted, for it was a lovely fight. There were nopreliminaries, no formalities, no introductions—the five bulls merely chargedand clinched. They rolled in the narrow trail and into the thick verdure besideit. They bit and clawed and scratched and struck, and all the while they keptup the most frightful chorus of growlings and barkings and roarings. In fiveminutes they were torn and bleeding, and the little graybeard leaped high,shrilling his primitive bravos; but always his attitude was “thumbs down.” Hewanted to see something killed. He did not care whether it were friend or foe.It was blood he wanted—blood and death.

Taug had been set upon by Toog and another of the apes, while Tarzan had thethird—a huge brute with the strength of a buffalo. Never before had Tarzan’sassailant beheld so strange a creature as this slippery, hairless bull withwhich he battled. Sweat and blood covered Tarzan’s sleek, brown hide. Again andagain he slipped from the clutches of the great bull, and all the while hestruggled to free his hunting knife from the scabbard in which it had stuck.

At length he succeeded—a brown hand shot out and clutched a hairy throat,another flew upward clutching the sharp blade. Three swift, powerful strokesand the bull relaxed with a groan, falling limp beneath his antagonist.Instantly Tarzan broke from the clutches of the dying bull and sprang to Taug’sassistance. Toog saw him coming and wheeled to meet him. In the impact of thecharge, Tarzan’s knife was wrenched from his hand and then Toog closed withhim. Now was the battle even—two against two—while on the verge, Teeka, nowrecovered from the blow that had felled her, slunk waiting for an opportunityto aid. She saw Tarzan’s knife and picked it up. She never had used it, butknew how Tarzan used it. Always had she been afraid of the thing which dealtdeath to the mightiest of the jungle people with the ease that Tantor’s greattusks deal death to Tantor’s enemies.

She saw Tarzan’s pocket pouch torn from his side, and with the curiosity of anape, that even danger and excitement cannot entirely dispel, she picked thisup, too.

Now the bulls were standing—the clinches had been broken. Blood streamed downtheir sides—their faces were crimsoned with it. Little graybeard was sofascinated that at last he had even forgotten to scream and dance; but satrigid with delight in the enjoyment of the spectacle.

Back across the grove Tarzan and Taug forced their adversaries. Teeka followedslowly. She scarce knew what to do. She was lame and sore and exhausted fromthe frightful ordeal through which she had passed, and she had the confidenceof her sex in the prowess of her mate and the other bull of her tribe—theywould not need the help of a she in their battle with these two strangers.

The roars and screams of the fighters reverberated through the jungle,awakening the echoes in the distant hills. From the throat of Tarzan’santagonist had come a score of “Kreeg-ahs!” and now from behind came the replyhe had awaited. Into the grove, barking and growling, came a score of huge bullapes—the fighting men of Toog’s tribe.

Teeka saw them first and screamed a warning to Tarzan and Taug. Then she fledpast the fighters toward the opposite side of the clearing, fear for a momentclaiming her. Nor can one censure her after the frightful ordeal from which shewas still suffering.

Down upon them came the great apes. In a moment Tarzan and Taug would be tornto shreds that would later form the pièce de résistanceof the savageorgy of a Dum-Dum. Teeka turned to glance back. She saw the impending fate ofher defenders and there sprang to life in her savage bosom the spark ofmartyrdom, that some common forbear had transmitted alike to Teeka, the wildape, and the glorious women of a higher order who have invited death for theirmen. With a shrill scream she ran toward the battlers who were rolling in agreat mass at the foot of one of the huge boulders which dotted the grove; butwhat could she do? The knife she held she could not use to advantage because ofher lesser strength. She had seen Tarzan throw missiles, and she had learnedthis with many other things from her childhood playmate. She sought forsomething to throw and at last her fingers touched upon the hard objects in thepouch that had been torn from the ape-man. Tearing the receptacle open, shegathered a handful of shiny cylinders—heavy for their size, they seemed to her,and good missiles. With all her strength she hurled them at the apes battlingin front of the granite boulder.

The result surprised Teeka quite as much as it did the apes. There was a loudexplosion, which deafened the fighters, and a puff of acrid smoke. Never beforehad one there heard such a frightful noise. Screaming with terror, the strangerbulls leaped to their feet and fled back toward the stamping ground of theirtribe, while Taug and Tarzan slowly gathered themselves together and arose,lame and bleeding, to their feet. They, too, would have fled had they not seenTeeka standing there before them, the knife and the pocket pouch in her hands.

“What was it?” asked Tarzan.

Teeka shook her head. “I hurled these at the stranger bulls,” and she heldforth another handful of the shiny metal cylinders with the dull gray,cone-shaped ends.

Tarzan looked at them and scratched his head.

“What are they?” asked Taug.

“I do not know,” said Tarzan. “I found them.”

The little monkey with the gray beard halted among the trees a mile away andhuddled, terrified, against a branch. He did not know that the dead father ofTarzan of the Apes, reaching back out of the past across a span of twentyyears, had saved his son’s life.

Nor did Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, know it either.

CHAPTER XI
A Jungle Joke

Time seldom hung heavily upon Tarzan’s hands. Even where there is samenessthere cannot be monotony if most of the sameness consists in dodging deathfirst in one form and then in another; or in inflicting death upon others.There is a spice to such an existence; but even this Tarzan of the Apes variedin activities of his own invention.

He was full grown now, with the grace of a Greek god and the thews of a bull,and, by all the tenets of apedom, should have been sullen, morose, andbrooding; but he was not. His spirits seemed not to age at all—he was still aplayful child, much to the discomfiture of his fellow-apes. They could notunderstand him or his ways, for with maturity they quickly forgot their youthand its pastimes.

Nor could Tarzan quite understand them. It seemed strange to him that a fewmoons since, he had roped Taug about an ankle and dragged him screaming throughthe tall jungle grasses, and then rolled and tumbled in good-natured mimicbattle when the young ape had freed himself, and that today when he had come upbehind the same Taug and pulled him over backward upon the turf, instead of theplayful young ape, a great, snarling beast had whirled and leaped for histhroat.

Easily Tarzan eluded the charge and quickly Taug’s anger vanished, though itwas not replaced with playfulness; yet the ape-man realized that Taug was notamused nor was he amusing. The big bull ape seemed to have lost whatever senseof humor he once may have possessed. With a grunt of disappointment, young LordGreystoke turned to other fields of endeavor. A strand of black hair fellacross one eye. He brushed it aside with the palm of a hand and a toss of hishead. It suggested something to do, so he sought his quiver which lay cached inthe hollow bole of a lightning-riven tree. Removing the arrows he turned thequiver upside down, emptying upon the ground the contents of its bottom—his fewtreasures. Among them was a flat bit of stone and a shell which he had pickedup from the beach near his father’s cabin.

With great care he rubbed the edge of the shell back and forth upon the flatstone until the soft edge was quite fine and sharp. He worked much as a barberdoes who hones a razor, and with every evidence of similar practice; but hisproficiency was the result of years of painstaking effort. Unaided he hadworked out a method of his own for putting an edge upon the shell—he eventested it with the ball of his thumb—and when it met with his approval hegrasped a wisp of the hair which fell across his eyes, grasped it between the thumband first finger of his left hand and sawed upon it with the sharpened shelluntil it was severed. All around his head he went until his black shock wasrudely bobbed with a ragged bang in front. For the appearance of it he carednothing; but in the matter of safety and comfort it meant everything. A lock ofhair falling in one’s eyes at the wrong moment might mean all the differencebetween life and death, while straggly strands, hanging down one’s back weremost uncomfortable, especially when wet with dew or rain or perspiration.

As Tarzan labored at his tonsorial task, his active mind was busy with manythings. He recalled his recent battle with Bolgani, the gorilla, the wounds ofwhich were but just healed. He pondered the strange sleep adventures of hisfirst dreams, and he smiled at the painful outcome of his last practical jokeupon the tribe, when, dressed in the hide of Numa, the lion, he had comeroaring upon them, only to be leaped upon and almost killed by the great bullswhom he had taught how to defend themselves from an attack of their ancientenemy.

His hair lopped off to his entire satisfaction, and seeing no possibility ofpleasure in the company of the tribe, Tarzan swung leisurely into the trees andset off in the direction of his cabin; but when part way there his attentionwas attracted by a strong scent spoor coming from the north. It was the scentof the Gomangani.

Curiosity, that best-developed, common heritage of man and ape, always promptedTarzan to investigate where the Gomangani were concerned. There was that aboutthem which aroused his imagination. Possibly it was because of the diversity oftheir activities and interests. The apes lived to eat and sleep and propagate.The same was true of all the other denizens of the jungle, save the Gomangani.

These black fellows danced and sang, scratched around in the earth from whichthey had cleared the trees and underbrush; they watched things grow, and whenthey had ripened, they cut them down and put them in straw-thatched huts. Theymade bows and spears and arrows, poison, cooking pots, things of metal to weararound their arms and legs. If it hadn’t been for their black faces, theirhideously disfigured features, and the fact that one of them had slain Kala,Tarzan might have wished to be one of them. At least he sometimes thought so,but always at the thought there rose within him a strange revulsion of feeling,which he could not interpret or understand—he simply knew that he hated theGomangani, and that he would rather be Histah, the snake, than one of these.

But their ways were interesting, and Tarzan never tired of spying upon them,and from them he learned much more than he realized, though always hisprincipal thought was of some new way in which he could render their livesmiserable. The baiting of the blacks was Tarzan’s chief divertisement.

Tarzan realized now that the blacks were very near and that there were many ofthem, so he went silently and with great caution. Noiselessly he moved throughthe lush grasses of the open spaces, and where the forest was dense, swung fromone swaying branch to another, or leaped lightly over tangled masses of fallentrees where there was no way through the lower terraces, and the ground waschoked and impassable.

And so presently he came within sight of the black warriors of Mbonga, thechief. They were engaged in a pursuit with which Tarzan was more or lessfamiliar, having watched them at it upon other occasions. They were placing andbaiting a trap for Numa, the lion. In a cage upon wheels they were tying a kid,so fastening it that when Numa seized the unfortunate creature, the door of thecage would drop behind him, making him a prisoner.

These things the blacks had learned in their old home, before they escapedthrough the untracked jungle to their new village. Formerly they had dwelt inthe Belgian Congo until the cruelties of their heartless oppressors had driventhem to seek the safety of unexplored solitudes beyond the boundaries ofLeopold’s domain.

In their old life they often had trapped animals for the agents of Europeandealers, and had learned from them certain tricks, such as this one, whichpermitted them to capture even Numa without injuring him, and to transport himin safety and with comparative ease to their village.

No longer was there a white market for their savage wares; but there was stilla sufficient incentive for the taking of Numa—alive. First was the necessityfor ridding the jungle of man-eaters, and it was only after depredations bythese grim and terrible scourges that a lion hunt was organized. Secondarilywas the excuse for an orgy of celebration was the hunt successful, and the factthat such fetes were rendered doubly pleasurable by the presence of a livecreature that might be put to death by torture.

Tarzan had witnessed these cruel rites in the past. Being himself more savagethan the savage warriors of the Gomangani, he was not so shocked by the crueltyof them as he should have been, yet they did shock him. He could not understandthe strange feeling of revulsion which possessed him at such times. He had nolove for Numa, the lion, yet he bristled with rage when the blacks inflictedupon his enemy such indignities and cruelties as only the mind of the onecreature molded in the image of God can conceive.

Upon two occasions he had freed Numa from the trap before the blacks hadreturned to discover the success or failure of their venture. He would do thesame today—that he decided immediately he realized the nature of theirintentions.

Leaving the trap in the center of a broad elephant trail near the drinkinghole, the warriors turned back toward their village. On the morrow they wouldcome again. Tarzan looked after them, upon his lips an unconscious sneer—theheritage of unguessed caste. He saw them file along the broad trail, beneaththe overhanging verdure of leafy branch and looped and festooned creepers,brushing ebon shoulders against gorgeous blooms which inscrutable Nature hasseen fit to lavish most profusely farthest from the eye of man.

As Tarzan watched, through narrowed lids, the last of the warriors disappearbeyond a turn in the trail, his expression altered to the urge of a newbornthought. A slow, grim smile touched his lips. He looked down upon thefrightened, bleating kid, advertising, in its fear and its innocence, itspresence and its helplessness.

Dropping to the ground, Tarzan approached the trap and entered. Withoutdisturbing the fiber cord, which was adjusted to drop the door at the propertime, he loosened the living bait, tucked it under an arm and stepped out ofthe cage.

With his hunting knife he quieted the frightened animal, severing its jugular;then he dragged it, bleeding, along the trail down to the drinking hole, thehalf smile persisting upon his ordinarily grave face. At the water’s edge theape-man stooped and with hunting knife and quick strong fingers deftly removedthe dead kid’s viscera. Scraping a hole in the mud, he buried these parts whichhe did not eat, and swinging the body to his shoulder took to the trees.

For a short distance he pursued his way in the wake of the black warriors,coming down presently to bury the meat of his kill where it would be safe fromthe depredations of Dango, the hyena, or the other meat-eating beasts and birdsof the jungle. He was hungry. Had he been all beast he would have eaten; buthis man-mind could entertain urges even more potent than those of the belly,and now he was concerned with an idea which kept a smile upon his lips and hiseyes sparkling in anticipation. An idea, it was, which permitted him to forgetthat he was hungry.

The meat safely cached, Tarzan trotted along the elephant trail after theGomangani. Two or three miles from the cage he overtook them and then he swunginto the trees and followed above and behind them—waiting his chance.

Among the blacks was Rabba Kega, the witch-doctor. Tarzan hated them all; butRabba Kega he especially hated. As the blacks filed along the winding path,Rabba Kega, being lazy, dropped behind. This Tarzan noted, and it filled himwith satisfaction—his being radiated a grim and terrible content. Like an angelof death he hovered above the unsuspecting black.

Rabba Kega, knowing that the village was but a short distance ahead, sat downto rest. Rest well, O Rabba Kega! It is thy last opportunity.

Tarzan crept stealthily among the branches of the tree above the well-fed,self-satisfied witch-doctor. He made no noise that the dull ears of man couldhear above the soughing of the gentle jungle breeze among the undulatingfoliage of the upper terraces, and when he came close above the black man hehalted, well concealed by leafy branch and heavy creeper.

Rabba Kega sat with his back against the bole of a tree, facing Tarzan. Theposition was not such as the waiting beast of prey desired, and so, with theinfinite patience of the wild hunter, the ape-man crouched motionless andsilent as a graven image until the fruit should be ripe for the plucking. Apoisonous insect buzzed angrily out of space. It loitered, circling, close toTarzan’s face. The ape-man saw and recognized it. The virus of its stingspelled death for lesser things than he—for him it would mean days of anguish.He did not move. His glittering eyes remained fixed upon Rabba Kega afteracknowledging the presence of the winged torture by a single glance. He heardand followed the movements of the insect with his keen ears, and then he feltit alight upon his forehead. No muscle twitched, for the muscles of such as heare the servants of the brain. Down across his face crept the horrid thing—overnose and lips and chin. Upon his throat it paused, and turning, retraced itssteps. Tarzan watched Rabba Kega. Now not even his eyes moved. So motionless hecrouched that only death might counterpart his movelessness. The insect crawledupward over the nut-brown cheek and stopped with its antennae brushing thelashes of his lower lid. You or I would have started back, closing our eyes andstriking at the thing; but you and I are the slaves, not the masters of ournerves. Had the thing crawled upon the eyeball of the ape-man, it is believablethat he could yet have remained wide-eyed and rigid; but it did not. For amoment it loitered there close to the lower lid, then it rose and buzzed away.

Down toward Rabba Kega it buzzed and the black man heard it, saw it, struck atit, and was stung upon the cheek before he killed it. Then he rose with a howlof pain and anger, and as he turned up the trail toward the village of Mbonga,the chief, his broad, black back was exposed to the silent thing waiting abovehim.

And as Rabba Kega turned, a lithe figure shot outward and downward from thetree above upon his broad shoulders. The impact of the springing creaturecarried Rabba Kega to the ground. He felt strong jaws close upon his neck, andwhen he tried to scream, steel fingers throttled his throat. The powerful blackwarrior struggled to free himself; but he was as a child in the grip of hisadversary.

Presently Tarzan released his grip upon the other’s throat; but each time thatRabba Kega essayed a scream, the cruel fingers choked him painfully. At lastthe warrior desisted. Then Tarzan half rose and kneeled upon his victim’s back,and when Rabba Kega struggled to arise, the ape-man pushed his face down intothe dirt of the trail. With a bit of the rope that had secured the kid, Tarzanmade Rabba Kega’s wrists secure behind his back, then he rose and jerked hisprisoner to his feet, faced him back along the trail and pushed him on ahead.

Not until he came to his feet did Rabba Kega obtain a square look at hisassailant. When he saw that it was the white devil-god his heart sank withinhim and his knees trembled; but as he walked along the trail ahead of hiscaptor and was neither injured nor molested his spirits slowly rose, so that hetook heart again. Possibly the devil-god did not intend to kill him after all.Had he not had little Tibo in his power for days without harming him, and hadhe not spared Momaya, Tibo’s mother, when he easily might have slain her?

And then they came upon the cage which Rabba Kega, with the other blackwarriors of the village of Mbonga, the chief, had placed and baited for Numa.Rabba Kega saw that the bait was gone, though there was no lion within thecage, nor was the door dropped. He saw and he was filled with wonder notunmixed with apprehension. It entered his dull brain that in some way thiscombination of circumstances had a connection with his presence there as theprisoner of the white devil-god.

Nor was he wrong. Tarzan pushed him roughly into the cage, and in anothermoment Rabba Kega understood. Cold sweat broke from every pore of his body—hetrembled as with ague—for the ape-man was binding him securely in the very spotthe kid had previously occupied. The witch-doctor pleaded, first for his life,and then for a death less cruel; but he might as well have saved his pleas forNuma, since already they were directed toward a wild beast who understood noword of what he said.

But his constant jabbering not only annoyed Tarzan, who worked in silence, butsuggested that later the black might raise his voice in cries for succor, so hestepped out of the cage, gathered a handful of grass and a small stick andreturning, jammed the grass into Rabba Kega’s mouth, laid the stick crosswisebetween his teeth and fastened it there with the thong from Rabba Kega’s loincloth. Now could the witch-doctor but roll his eyes and sweat. Thus Tarzan lefthim.

The ape-man went first to the spot where he had cached the body of the kid.Digging it up, he ascended into a tree and proceeded to satisfy his hunger.What remained he again buried; then he swung away through the trees to thewater hole, and going to the spot where fresh, cold water bubbled from betweentwo rocks, he drank deeply. The other beasts might wade in and drink stagnantwater; but not Tarzan of the Apes. In such matters he was fastidious. From hishands he washed every trace of the repugnant scent of the Gomangani, and fromhis face the blood of the kid. Rising, he stretched himself not unlike somehuge, lazy cat, climbed into a near-by tree and fell asleep.

When he awoke it was dark, though a faint luminosity still tinged the westernheavens. A lion moaned and coughed as it strode through the jungle towardwater. It was approaching the drinking hole. Tarzan grinned sleepily, changedhis position and fell asleep again.

When the blacks of Mbonga, the chief, reached their village they discoveredthat Rabba Kega was not among them. When several hours had elapsed they decidedthat something had happened to him, and it was the hope of the majority of thetribe that whatever had happened to him might prove fatal. They did not lovethe witch-doctor. Love and fear seldom are playmates; but a warrior is awarrior, and so Mbonga organized a searching party. That his own grief was notunassuagable might have been gathered from the fact that he remained at homeand went to sleep. The young warriors whom he sent out remained steadfast totheir purpose for fully half an hour, when, unfortunately for Rabba Kega—uponso slight a thing may the fate of a man rest—a honey bird attracted theattention of the searchers and led them off for the delicious store itpreviously had marked down for betrayal, and Rabba Kega’s doom was sealed.

When the searchers returned empty handed, Mbonga was wroth; but when he saw thegreat store of honey they brought with them his rage subsided. Already Tubuto,young, agile and evil-minded, with face hideously painted, was practicing theblack art upon a sick infant in the fond hope of succeeding to the office andperquisites of Rabba Kega. Tonight the women of the old witch-doctor would moanand howl. Tomorrow he would be forgotten. Such is life, such is fame, such ispower—in the center of the world’s highest civilization, or in the depths ofthe black, primeval jungle. Always, everywhere, man is man, nor has he alteredgreatly beneath his veneer since he scurried into a hole between two rocks toescape the tyrannosaurus six million years ago.

The morning following the disappearance of Rabba Kega, the warriors set outwith Mbonga, the chief, to examine the trap they had set for Numa. Long beforethey reached the cage, they heard the roaring of a great lion and guessed thatthey had made a successful bag, so it was with shouts of joy that theyapproached the spot where they should find their captive.

Yes! there he was, a great, magnificent specimen—a huge, black-maned lion. Thewarriors were frantic with delight. They leaped into the air and uttered savagecries—hoarse victory cries, and then they came closer, and the cries died upontheir lips, and their eyes went wide so that the whites showed all around theiririses, and their pendulous lower lips drooped with their drooping jaws. Theydrew back in terror at the sight within the cage—the mauled and mutilatedcorpse of what had, yesterday, been Rabba Kega, the witch-doctor.

The captured lion had been too angry and frightened to feed upon the body ofhis kill; but he had vented upon it much of his rage, until it was a frightfulthing to behold.

From his perch in a near-by tree Tarzan of the Apes, Lord Greystoke, lookeddown upon the black warriors and grinned. Once again his self-pride in hisability as a practical joker asserted itself. It had lain dormant for some timefollowing the painful mauling he had received that time he leaped among theapes of Kerchak clothed in the skin of Numa; but this joke was a decidedsuccess.

After a few moments of terror, the blacks came closer to the cage, rage takingthe place of fear—rage and curiosity. How had Rabba Kega happened to be in thecage? Where was the kid? There was no sign nor remnant of the original bait.They looked closely and they saw, to their horror, that the corpse of theirerstwhile fellow was bound with the very cord with which they had secured thekid. Who could have done this thing? They looked at one another.

Tubuto was the first to speak. He had come hopefully out with the expeditionthat morning. Somewhere he might find evidence of the death of Rabba Kega. Nowhe had found it, and he was the first to find an explanation.

“The white devil-god,” he whispered. “It is the work of the white devil-god!”

No one contradicted Tubuto, for, indeed, who else could it have been but thegreat, hairless ape they all so feared? And so their hatred of Tarzan increasedagain with an increased fear of him. And Tarzan sat in his tree and huggedhimself.

No one there felt sorrow because of the death of Rabba Kega; but each of theblacks experienced a personal fear of the ingenious mind which might discoverfor any of them a death equally horrible to that which the witch-doctor hadsuffered. It was a subdued and thoughtful company which dragged the captivelion along the broad elephant path back to the village of Mbonga, the chief.

And it was with a sigh of relief that they finally rolled it into the villageand closed the gates behind them. Each had experienced the sensation of beingspied upon from the moment they left the spot where the trap had been set,though none had seen or heard aught to give tangible food to his fears.

At the sight of the body within the cage with the lion, the women and childrenof the village set up a most frightful lamentation, working themselves into ajoyous hysteria which far transcended the happy misery derived by their morecivilized prototypes who make a business of dividing their time between themovies and the neighborhood funerals of friends and strangers—especiallystrangers.

From a tree overhanging the palisade, Tarzan watched all that passed within thevillage. He saw the frenzied women tantalizing the great lion with sticks andstones. The cruelty of the blacks toward a captive always induced in Tarzan afeeling of angry contempt for the Gomangani. Had he attempted to analyze thisfeeling he would have found it difficult, for during all his life he had beenaccustomed to sights of suffering and cruelty. He, himself, was cruel. All thebeasts of the jungle were cruel; but the cruelty of the blacks was of adifferent order. It was the cruelty of wanton torture of the helpless, whilethe cruelty of Tarzan and the other beasts was the cruelty of necessity or ofpassion.

Perhaps, had he known it, he might have credited this feeling of repugnance atthe sight of unnecessary suffering to heredity—to the germ of British love offair play which had been bequeathed to him by his father and his mother; but,of course, he did not know, since he still believed that his mother had beenKala, the great ape.

And just in proportion as his anger rose against the Gomangani his savagesympathy went out to Numa, the lion, for, though Numa was his lifetime enemy,there was neither bitterness nor contempt in Tarzan’s sentiments toward him. Inthe ape-man’s mind, therefore, the determination formed to thwart the blacksand liberate the lion; but he must accomplish this in some way which wouldcause the Gomangani the greatest chagrin and discomfiture.

As he squatted there watching the proceeding beneath him, he saw the warriorsseize upon the cage once more and drag it between two huts. Tarzan knew that itwould remain there now until evening, and that the blacks were planning a feastand orgy in celebration of their capture. When he saw that two warriors wereplaced beside the cage, and that these drove off the women and children andyoung men who would have eventually tortured Numa to death, he knew that thelion would be safe until he was needed for the evening’s entertainment, when hewould be more cruelly and scientifically tortured for the edification of theentire tribe.

Now Tarzan preferred to bait the blacks in as theatric a manner as his fertileimagination could evolve. He had some half-formed conception of theirsuperstitious fears and of their especial dread of night, and so he decided towait until darkness fell and the blacks partially worked to hysteria by theirdancing and religious rites before he took any steps toward the freeing ofNuma. In the meantime, he hoped, an idea adequate to the possibilities of thevarious factors at hand would occur to him. Nor was it long before one did.

He had swung off through the jungle to search for food when the plan came tohim. At first it made him smile a little and then look dubious, for he stillretained a vivid memory of the dire results that had followed the carrying outof a very wonderful idea along almost identical lines, yet he did not abandonhis intention, and a moment later, food temporarily forgotten, he was swingingthrough the middle terraces in rapid flight toward the stamping ground of thetribe of Kerchak, the great ape.

As was his wont, he alighted in the midst of the little band without announcinghis approach save by a hideous scream just as he sprang from a branch abovethem. Fortunate are the apes of Kerchak that their kind is not subject to heartfailure, for the methods of Tarzan subjected them to one severe shock afteranother, nor could they ever accustom themselves to the ape-man’s peculiarstyle of humor.

Now, when they saw who it was they merely snarled and grumbled angrily for amoment and then resumed their feeding or their napping which he hadinterrupted, and he, having had his little joke, made his way to the hollowtree where he kept his treasures hid from the inquisitive eyes and fingers ofhis fellows and the mischievous little manus. Here he withdrew a closely rolledhide—the hide of Numa with the head on; a clever bit of primitive curing andmounting, which had once been the property of the witch-doctor, Rabba Kega,until Tarzan had stolen it from the village.

With this he made his way back through the jungle toward the village of theblacks, stopping to hunt and feed upon the way, and, in the afternoon, evennapping for an hour, so that it was already dusk when he entered the great treewhich overhung the palisade and gave him a view of the entire village. He sawthat Numa was still alive and that the guards were even dozing beside the cage.A lion is no great novelty to a black man in the lion country, and the firstkeen edge of their desire to worry the brute having worn off, the villagerspaid little or no attention to the great cat, preferring now to await the grandevent of the night.

Nor was it long after dark before the festivities commenced. To the beating oftom-toms, a lone warrior, crouched half doubled, leaped into the firelight inthe center of a great circle of other warriors, behind whom stood or squattedthe women and the children. The dancer was painted and armed for the hunt andhis movements and gestures suggested the search for the spoor of game. Bendinglow, sometimes resting for a moment on one knee, he searched the ground forsigns of the quarry; again he poised, statuesque, listening. The warrior wasyoung and lithe and graceful; he was full-muscled and arrow-straight. Thefirelight glistened upon his ebon body and brought out into bold relief thegrotesque designs painted upon his face, breasts, and abdomen.

Presently he bent low to the earth, then leaped high in air. Every line of faceand body showed that he had struck the scent. Immediately he leaped toward thecircle of warriors about him, telling them of his find and summoning them tothe hunt. It was all in pantomime; but so truly done that even Tarzan couldfollow it all to the least detail.

He saw the other warriors grasp their hunting spears and leap to their feet tojoin in the graceful, stealthy “stalking dance.” It was very interesting; butTarzan realized that if he was to carry his design to a successful conclusionhe must act quickly. He had seen these dances before and knew that after thestalk would come the game at bay and then the kill, during which Numa would besurrounded by warriors, and unapproachable.

With the lion’s skin under one arm the ape-man dropped to the ground in thedense shadows beneath the tree and then circled behind the huts until he cameout directly in the rear of the cage, in which Numa paced nervously to and fro.The cage was now unguarded, the two warriors having left it to take theirplaces among the other dancers.

Behind the cage Tarzan adjusted the lion’s skin about him, just as he had uponthat memorable occasion when the apes of Kerchak, failing to pierce hisdisguise, had all but slain him. Then, on hands and knees, he crept forward,emerged from between the two huts and stood a few paces back of the duskyaudience, whose whole attention was centered upon the dancers before them.

Tarzan saw that the blacks had now worked themselves to a proper pitch ofnervous excitement to be ripe for the lion. In a moment the ring of spectatorswould break at a point nearest the caged lion and the victim would be rolledinto the center of the circle. It was for this moment that Tarzan waited.

At last it came. A signal was given by Mbonga, the chief, at which the womenand children immediately in front of Tarzan rose and moved to one side, leavinga broad path opening toward the caged lion. At the same instant Tarzan gavevoice to the low, coughing roar of an angry lion and slunk slowly forwardthrough the open lane toward the frenzied dancers.

A woman saw him first and screamed. Instantly there was a panic in theimmediate vicinity of the ape-man. The strong light from the fire fell fullupon the lion head and the blacks leaped to the conclusion, as Tarzan had knownthey would, that their captive had escaped his cage.

With another roar, Tarzan moved forward. The dancing warriors paused but aninstant. They had been hunting a lion securely housed within a strong cage, andnow that he was at liberty among them, an entirely different aspect was placedupon the matter. Their nerves were not attuned to this emergency. The women andchildren already had fled to the questionable safety of the nearest huts, andthe warriors were not long in following their example, so that presently Tarzanwas left in sole possession of the village street.

But not for long. Nor did he wish to be left thus long alone. It would notcomport with his scheme. Presently a head peered forth from a near-by hut, andthen another and another until a score or more of warriors were looking outupon him, waiting for his next move—waiting for the lion to charge or toattempt to escape from the village.

Their spears were ready in their hands against either a charge or a bolt forfreedom, and then the lion rose erect upon its hind legs, the tawny skindropped from it and there stood revealed before them in the firelight thestraight young figure of the white devil-god.

For an instant the blacks were too astonished to act. They feared thisapparition fully as much as they did Numa, yet they would gladly have slain thething could they quickly enough have gathered together their wits; but fear andsuperstition and a natural mental density held them paralyzed while the ape-manstooped and gathered up the lion skin. They saw him turn then and walk backinto the shadows at the far end of the village. Not until then did they gaincourage to pursue him, and when they had come in force, with brandished spearsand loud war cries, the quarry was gone.

Not an instant did Tarzan pause in the tree. Throwing the skin over a branch heleaped again into the village upon the opposite side of the great bole, anddiving into the shadow of a hut, ran quickly to where lay the caged lion.Springing to the top of the cage he pulled upon the cord which raised the door,and a moment later a great lion in the prime of his strength and vigor leapedout into the village.

The warriors, returning from a futile search for Tarzan, saw him step into thefirelight. Ah! there was the devil-god again, up to his old trick. Did he thinkhe could twice fool the men of Mbonga, the chief, the same way in so short atime? They would show him! For long they had waited for such an opportunity torid themselves forever of this fearsome jungle demon. As one they rushedforward with raised spears.

The women and the children came from the huts to witness the slaying of thedevil-god. The lion turned blazing eyes upon them and then swung about towardthe advancing warriors.

With shouts of savage joy and triumph they came toward him, menacing him withtheir spears. The devil-god was theirs!

And then, with a frightful roar, Numa, the lion, charged.

The men of Mbonga, the chief, met Numa with ready spears and screams ofraillery. In a solid mass of muscled ebony they waited the coming of thedevil-god; yet beneath their brave exteriors lurked a haunting fear that allmight not be quite well with them—that this strange creature could yet proveinvulnerable to their weapons and inflict upon them full punishment for theireffrontery. The charging lion was all too lifelike—they saw that in the briefinstant of the charge; but beneath the tawny hide they knew was hid the softflesh of a white man, and how could that withstand the assault of many warspears?

In their forefront stood a huge young warrior in the full arrogance of hismight and his youth. Afraid? Not he! He laughed as Numa bore down upon him; helaughed and couched his spear, setting the point for the broad breast. And thenthe lion was upon him. A great paw swept away the heavy war spear, splinteringit as the hand of man might splinter a dry twig.

Down went the black, his skull crushed by another blow. And then the lion wasin the midst of the warriors, clawing and tearing to right and left. Not forlong did they stand their ground; but a dozen men were mauled before the othersmade good their escape from those frightful talons and gleaming fangs.

In terror the villagers fled hither and thither. No hut seemed a sufficientlysecure asylum with Numa ranging within the palisade. From one to another fledthe frightened blacks, while in the center of the village Numa stood glaringand growling above his kills.

At last a tribesman flung wide the gates of the village and sought safety amidthe branches of the forest trees beyond. Like sheep his fellows followed him,until the lion and his dead remained alone in the village.

From the nearer trees the men of Mbonga saw the lion lower his great head andseize one of his victims by the shoulder and then with slow and stately treadmove down the village street past the open gates and on into the jungle. Theysaw and shuddered, and from another tree Tarzan of the Apes saw and smiled.

A full hour elapsed after the lion had disappeared with his feast before theblacks ventured down from the trees and returned to their village. Wide eyesrolled from side to side, and naked flesh contracted more to the chill of fearthan to the chill of the jungle night.

“It was he all the time,” murmured one. “It was the devil-god.”

“He changed himself from a lion to a man, and back again into a lion,”whispered another.

“And he dragged Mweeza into the forest and is eating him,” said a third,shuddering.

“We are no longer safe here,” wailed a fourth. “Let us take our belongings andsearch for another village site far from the haunts of the wicked devil-god.”

But with morning came renewed courage, so that the experiences of the precedingevening had little other effect than to increase their fear of Tarzan andstrengthen their belief in his supernatural origin.

And thus waxed the fame and the power of the ape-man in the mysterious hauntsof the savage jungle where he ranged, mightiest of beasts because of theman-mind which directed his giant muscles and his flawless courage.

CHAPTER XII
Tarzan Rescues the Moon

The moon shone down out of a cloudless sky—a huge, swollen moon that seemed soclose to earth that one might wonder that she did not brush the crooning treetops. It was night, and Tarzan was abroad in the jungle—Tarzan, the ape-man;mighty fighter, mighty hunter. Why he swung through the dark shadows of thesomber forest he could not have told you. It was not that he was hungry—he hadfed well this day, and in a safe cache were the remains of his kill, readyagainst the coming of a new appetite. Perhaps it was the very joy of livingthat urged him from his arboreal couch to pit his muscles and his sensesagainst the jungle night, and then, too, Tarzan always was goaded by an intensedesire to know.

The jungle which is presided over by Kudu, the sun, is a very different junglefrom that of Goro, the moon. The diurnal jungle has its own aspect—its ownlights and shades, its own birds, its own blooms, its own beasts; its noisesare the noises of the day. The lights and shades of the nocturnal jungle are asdifferent as one might imagine the lights and shades of another world to differfrom those of our world; its beasts, its blooms, and its birds are not those ofthe jungle of Kudu, the sun.

Because of these differences Tarzan loved to investigate the jungle by night.Not only was the life another life; but it was richer in numbers and inromance; it was richer in dangers, too, and to Tarzan of the Apes danger wasthe spice of life. And the noises of the jungle night—the roar of the lion, thescream of the leopard, the hideous laughter of Dango, the hyena, were music tothe ears of the ape-man.

The soft padding of unseen feet, the rustling of leaves and grasses to thepassage of fierce beasts, the sheen of opalesque eyes flaming through the dark,the million sounds which proclaimed the teeming life that one might hear andscent, though seldom see, constituted the appeal of the nocturnal jungle toTarzan.

Tonight he had swung a wide circle—toward the east first and then toward thesouth, and now he was rounding back again into the north. His eyes, his earsand his keen nostrils were ever on the alert. Mingled with the sounds he knew,there were strange sounds—weird sounds which he never heard until after Kuduhad sought his lair below the far edge of the big water—sounds which belongedto Goro, the moon—and to the mysterious period of Goro’s supremacy. Thesesounds often caused Tarzan profound speculation. They baffled him because hethought that he knew his jungle so well that there could be nothing within itunfamiliar to him. Sometimes he thought that as colors and forms appeared todiffer by night from their familiar daylight aspects, so sounds altered withthe passage of Kudu and the coming of Goro, and these thoughts roused withinhis brain a vague conjecture that perhaps Goro and Kudu influenced thesechanges. And what more natural that eventually he came to attribute to the sunand the moon personalities as real as his own? The sun was a living creatureand ruled the day. The moon, endowed with brains and miraculous powers, ruledthe night.

Thus functioned the untrained man-mind groping through the dark night ofignorance for an explanation of the things he could not touch or smell or hearand of the great, unknown powers of nature which he could not see.

As Tarzan swung north again upon his wide circle the scent of the Gomanganicame to his nostrils, mixed with the acrid odor of wood smoke. The ape-manmoved quickly in the direction from which the scent was borne down to him uponthe gentle night wind. Presently the ruddy sheen of a great fire filteredthrough the foliage to him ahead, and when Tarzan came to a halt in the treesnear it, he saw a party of half a dozen black warriors huddled close to theblaze. It was evidently a hunting party from the village of Mbonga, the chief,caught out in the jungle after dark. In a rude circle about them they hadconstructed a thorn boma which, with the aid of the fire, they apparently hopedwould discourage the advances of the larger carnivora.

That hope was not conviction was evidenced by the very palpable terror in whichthey crouched, wide-eyed and trembling, for already Numa and Sabor were moaningthrough the jungle toward them. There were other creatures, too, in the shadowsbeyond the firelight. Tarzan could see their yellow eyes flaming there. Theblacks saw them and shivered. Then one arose and grasping a burning branch fromthe fire hurled it at the eyes, which immediately disappeared. The black satdown again. Tarzan watched and saw that it was several minutes before the eyesbegan to reappear in twos and fours.

Then came Numa, the lion, and Sabor, his mate. The other eyes scattered toright and left before the menacing growls of the great cats, and then the hugeorbs of the man-eaters flamed alone out of the darkness. Some of the blacksthrew themselves upon their faces and moaned; but he who before had hurled theburning branch now hurled another straight at the faces of the hungry lions,and they, too, disappeared as had the lesser lights before them. Tarzan wasmuch interested. He saw a new reason for the nightly fires maintained by theblacks—a reason in addition to those connected with warmth and light andcooking. The beasts of the jungle feared fire, and so fire was, in a measure, aprotection from them. Tarzan himself knew a certain awe of fire. Once he had,in investigating an abandoned fire in the village of the blacks, picked up alive coal. Since then he had maintained a respectful distance from such firesas he had seen. One experience had sufficed.

For a few minutes after the black hurled the firebrand no eyes appeared, thoughTarzan could hear the soft padding of feet all about him. Then flashed oncemore the twin fire spots that marked the return of the lord of the jungle and amoment later, upon a slightly lower level, there appeared those of Sabor, hismate.

For some time they remained fixed and unwavering—a constellation of fiercestars in the jungle night—then the male lion advanced slowly toward the boma,where all but a single black still crouched in trembling terror. When this loneguardian saw that Numa was again approaching, he threw another firebrand, and,as before, Numa retreated and with him Sabor, the lioness; but not so far, thistime, nor for so long. Almost instantly they turned and began circling theboma, their eyes turning constantly toward the firelight, while low, throatygrowls evidenced their increasing displeasure. Beyond the lions glowed theflaming eyes of the lesser satellites, until the black jungle was shot allaround the black men’s camp with little spots of fire.

Again and again the black warrior hurled his puny brands at the two big cats;but Tarzan noticed that Numa paid little or no attention to them after thefirst few retreats. The ape-man knew by Numa’s voice that the lion was hungryand surmised that he had made up his mind to feed upon a Gomangani; but wouldhe dare a closer approach to the dreaded flames?

Even as the thought was passing in Tarzan’s mind, Numa stopped his restlesspacing and faced the boma. For a moment he stood motionless, except for thequick, nervous upcurving of his tail, then he walked deliberately forward,while Sabor moved restlessly to and fro where he had left her. The black mancalled to his comrades that the lion was coming, but they were too far gone infear to do more than huddle closer together and moan more loudly than before.

Seizing a blazing branch the man cast it straight into the face of the lion.There was an angry roar, followed by a swift charge. With a single bound thesavage beast cleared the boma wall as, with almost equal agility, the warriorcleared it upon the opposite side and, chancing the dangers lurking in thedarkness, bolted for the nearest tree.

Numa was out of the boma almost as soon as he was inside it; but as he wentback over the low thorn wall, he took a screaming negro with him. Dragging hisvictim along the ground he walked back toward Sabor, the lioness, who joinedhim, and the two continued into the blackness, their savage growls minglingwith the piercing shrieks of the doomed and terrified man.

At a little distance from the blaze the lions halted, there ensued a shortsuccession of unusually vicious growls and roars, during which the cries andmoans of the black man ceased—forever.

Presently Numa reappeared in the firelight. He made a second trip into the bomaand the former grisly tragedy was reenacted with another howling victim.

Tarzan rose and stretched lazily. The entertainment was beginning to bore him.He yawned and turned upon his way toward the clearing where the tribe would besleeping in the encircling trees.

Yet even when he had found his familiar crotch and curled himself for slumber,he felt no desire to sleep. For a long time he lay awake thinking and dreaming.He looked up into the heavens and watched the moon and the stars. He wonderedwhat they were and what power kept them from falling. His was an inquisitivemind. Always he had been full of questions concerning all that passed aroundhim; but there never had been one to answer his questions. In childhood he hadwanted to KNOW, and, denied almost all knowledge, he still, in manhood, wasfilled with the great, unsatisfied curiosity of a child.

He was never quite content merely to perceive that things happened—he desiredto know WHY they happened. He wanted to know what made things go. The secret oflife interested him immensely. The miracle of death he could not quite fathom.Upon innumerable occasions he had investigated the internal mechanism of hiskills, and once or twice he had opened the chest cavity of victims in time tosee the heart still pumping.

He had learned from experience that a knife thrust through this organ broughtimmediate death nine times out of ten, while he might stab an antagonistinnumerable times in other places without even disabling him. And so he hadcome to think of the heart, or, as he called it, “the red thing that breathes,”as the seat and origin of life.

The brain and its functionings he did not comprehend at all. That his senseperceptions were transmitted to his brain and there translated, classified, andlabeled was something quite beyond him. He thought that his fingers knew whenthey touched something, that his eyes knew when they saw, his ears when theyheard, his nose when it scented.

He considered his throat, epidermis, and the hairs of his head as the threeprincipal seats of emotion. When Kala had been slain a peculiar chokingsensation had possessed his throat; contact with Histah, the snake, imparted anunpleasant sensation to the skin of his whole body; while the approach of anenemy made the hairs on his scalp stand erect.

Imagine, if you can, a child filled with the wonders of nature, bursting withqueries and surrounded only by beasts of the jungle to whom his questioningswere as strange as Sanskrit would have been. If he asked Gunto what made itrain, the big old ape would but gaze at him in dumb astonishment for an instantand then return to his interesting and edifying search for fleas; and when hequestioned Mumga, who was very old and should have been very wise, but wasn’t,as to the reason for the closing of certain flowers after Kudu had deserted thesky, and the opening of others during the night, he was surprised to discoverthat Mumga had never noticed these interesting facts, though she could tell toan inch just where the fattest grubworm should be hiding.

To Tarzan these things were wonders. They appealed to his intellect and to hisimagination. He saw the flowers close and open; he saw certain blooms whichturned their faces always toward the sun; he saw leaves which moved when therewas no breeze; he saw vines crawl like living things up the boles and over thebranches of great trees; and to Tarzan of the Apes the flowers and the vinesand the trees were living creatures. He often talked to them, as he talked toGoro, the moon, and Kudu, the sun, and always was he disappointed that they didnot reply. He asked them questions; but they could not answer, though he knewthat the whispering of the leaves was the language of the leaves—they talkedwith one another.

The wind he attributed to the trees and grasses. He thought that they swayedthemselves to and fro, creating the wind. In no other way could he account forthis phenomenon. The rain he finally attributed to the stars, the moon, and thesun; but his hypothesis was entirely unlovely and unpoetical.

Tonight as Tarzan lay thinking, there sprang to his fertile imagination anexplanation of the stars and the moon. He became quite excited about it. Taugwas sleeping in a near-by crotch. Tarzan swung over beside him.

“Taug!” he cried. Instantly the great bull was awake and bristling, sensingdanger from the nocturnal summons. “Look, Taug!” exclaimed Tarzan, pointingtoward the stars. “See the eyes of Numa and Sabor, of Sheeta and Dango. Theywait around Goro to leap in upon him for their kill. See the eyes and the noseand the mouth of Goro. And the light that shines upon his face is the light ofthe great fire he has built to frighten away Numa and Sabor and Dango andSheeta.

“All about him are the eyes, Taug, you can see them! But they do not come veryclose to the fire—there are few eyes close to Goro. They fear the fire! It isthe fire that saves Goro from Numa. Do you see them, Taug? Some night Numa willbe very hungry and very angry—then he will leap over the thorn bushes whichencircle Goro and we will have no more light after Kudu seeks his lair—thenight will be black with the blackness that comes when Goro is lazy and sleepslate into the night, or when he wanders through the skies by day, forgettingthe jungle and its people.”

Taug looked stupidly at the heavens and then at Tarzan. A meteor fell, blazinga flaming way through the sky.

“Look!” cried Tarzan. “Goro has thrown a burning branch at Numa.”

Taug grumbled. “Numa is down below,” he said. “Numa does not hunt above thetrees.” But he looked curiously and a little fearfully at the bright starsabove him, as though he saw them for the first time, and doubtless it was thefirst time that Taug ever had seen the stars, though they had been in the skyabove him every night of his life. To Taug they were as the gorgeous jungleblooms—he could not eat them and so he ignored them.

Taug fidgeted and was nervous. For a long time he lay sleepless, watching thestars—the flaming eyes of the beasts of prey surrounding Goro, the moon—Goro,by whose light the apes danced to the beating of their earthen drums. If Goroshould be eaten by Numa there could be no more Dum-Dums. Taug was overwhelmedby the thought. He glanced at Tarzan half fearfully. Why was his friend sodifferent from the others of the tribe? No one else whom Taug ever had knownhad had such queer thoughts as Tarzan. The ape scratched his head and wondered,dimly, if Tarzan was a safe companion, and then he recalled slowly, and by alaborious mental process, that Tarzan had served him better than any other ofthe apes, even the strong and wise bulls of the tribe.

Tarzan it was who had freed him from the blacks at the very time that Taug hadthought Tarzan wanted Teeka. It was Tarzan who had saved Taug’s little balufrom death. It was Tarzan who had conceived and carried out the plan to pursueTeeka’s abductor and rescue the stolen one. Tarzan had fought and bled inTaug’s service so many times that Taug, although only a brutal ape, had hadimpressed upon his mind a fierce loyalty which nothing now could swerve—hisfriendship for Tarzan had become a habit, a tradition almost, which wouldendure while Taug endured. He never showed any outward demonstration ofaffection—he growled at Tarzan as he growled at the other bulls who came tooclose while he was feeding—but he would have died for Tarzan. He knew it andTarzan knew it; but of such things apes do not speak—their vocabulary, for thefiner instincts, consisting more of actions than words. But now Taug wasworried, and he fell asleep again still thinking of the strange words of hisfellow.

The following day he thought of them again, and without any intention ofdisloyalty he mentioned to Gunto what Tarzan had suggested about the eyessurrounding Goro, and the possibility that sooner or later Numa would chargethe moon and devour him. To the apes all large things in nature are male, andso Goro, being the largest creature in the heavens by night, was, to them, abull.

Gunto bit a sliver from a horny finger and recalled the fact that Tarzan hadonce said that the trees talked to one another, and Gozan recounted having seenthe ape-man dancing alone in the moonlight with Sheeta, the panther. They didnot know that Tarzan had roped the savage beast and tied him to a tree beforehe came to earth and leaped about before the rearing cat, to tantalize him.

Others told of seeing Tarzan ride upon the back of Tantor, the elephant; of hisbringing the black boy, Tibo, to the tribe, and of mysterious things with whichhe communed in the strange lair by the sea. They had never understood hisbooks, and after he had shown them to one or two of the tribe and discoveredthat even the pictures carried no impression to their brains, he had desisted.

“Tarzan is not an ape,” said Gunto. “He will bring Numa to eat us, as he isbringing him to eat Goro. We should kill him.”

Immediately Taug bristled. Kill Tarzan! “First you will kill Taug,” he said,and lumbered away to search for food.

But others joined the plotters. They thought of many things which Tarzan haddone—things which apes did not do and could not understand. Again Gunto voicedthe opinion that the Tarmangani, the white ape, should be slain, and theothers, filled with terror about the stories they had heard, and thinkingTarzan was planning to slay Goro, greeted the proposal with growls of accord.

Among them was Teeka, listening with all her ears; but her voice was not raisedin furtherance of the plan. Instead she bristled, showing her fangs, andafterward she went away in search of Tarzan; but she could not find him, as hewas roaming far afield in search of meat. She found Taug, though, and told himwhat the others were planning, and the great bull stamped upon the ground androared. His blood-shot eyes blazed with wrath, his upper lip curled up to exposehis fighting fangs, and the hair upon his spine stood erect, and then a rodentscurried across the open and Taug sprang to seize it. In an instant he seemedto have forgotten his rage against the enemies of his friend; but such is themind of an ape.

Several miles away Tarzan of the Apes lolled upon the broad head of Tantor, theelephant. He scratched beneath the great ears with the point of a sharp stick,and he talked to the huge pachyderm of everything which filled hisblack-thatched head. Little, or nothing, of what he said did Tantor understand;but Tantor is a good listener. Swaying from side to side he stood thereenjoying the companionship of his friend, the friend he loved, and absorbingthe delicious sensations of the scratching.

Numa, the lion, caught the scent of man, and warily stalked it until he camewithin sight of his prey upon the head of the mighty tusker; then he turned,growling and muttering, away in search of more propitious hunting grounds.

The elephant caught the scent of the lion, borne to him by an eddying breeze,and lifting his trunk trumpeted loudly. Tarzan stretched back luxuriously,lying supine at full length along the rough hide. Flies swarmed about his face;but with a leafy branch torn from a tree he lazily brushed them away.

“Tantor,” he said, “it is good to be alive. It is good to lie in the coolshadows. It is good to look upon the green trees and the bright colors of theflowers—upon everything which Bulamutumumo has put here for us. He is very goodto us, Tantor; He has given you tender leaves and bark, and rich grasses toeat; to me He has given Bara and Horta and Pisah, the fruits and the nuts andthe roots. He provides for each the food that each likes best. All that He asksis that we be strong enough or cunning enough to go forth and take it. Yes,Tantor, it is good to live. I should hate to die.”

Tantor made a little sound in his throat and curled his trunk upward that hemight caress the ape-man’s cheek with the finger at its tip.

“Tantor,” said Tarzan presently, “turn and feed in the direction of the tribeof Kerchak, the great ape, that Tarzan may ride home upon your head withoutwalking.”

The tusker turned and moved slowly off along a broad, tree-arched trail,pausing occasionally to pluck a tender branch, or strip the edible bark from anadjacent tree. Tarzan sprawled face downward upon the beast’s head and back,his legs hanging on either side, his head supported by his open palms, hiselbows resting on the broad cranium. And thus they made their leisurely waytoward the gathering place of the tribe.

Just before they arrived at the clearing from the north there reached it fromthe south another figure—that of a well-knit black warrior, who steppedcautiously through the jungle, every sense upon the alert against the manydangers which might lurk anywhere along the way. Yet he passed beneath thesouthernmost sentry that was posted in a great tree commanding the trail fromthe south. The ape permitted the Gomangani to pass unmolested, for he saw thathe was alone; but the moment that the warrior had entered the clearing a loud“Kreeg-ah!” rang out from behind him, immediately followed by a chorus ofreplies from different directions, as the great bulls crashed through the treesin answer to the summons of their fellow.

The black man halted at the first cry and looked about him. He could seenothing, but he knew the voice of the hairy tree men whom he and his kindfeared, not alone because of the strength and ferocity of the savage beings,but as well through a superstitious terror engendered by the manlike appearanceof the apes.

But Bulabantu was no coward. He heard the apes all about him; he knew thatescape was probably impossible, so he stood his ground, his spear ready in hishand and a war cry trembling on his lips. He would sell his life dearly, wouldBulabantu, under-chief of the village of Mbonga, the chief.

Tarzan and Tantor were but a short distance away when the first cry of thesentry rang out through the quiet jungle. Like a flash the ape-man leaped fromthe elephant’s back to a near-by tree and was swinging rapidly in the directionof the clearing before the echoes of the first “Kreeg-ah” had died away. Whenhe arrived he saw a dozen bulls circling a single Gomangani. With ablood-curdling scream Tarzan sprang to the attack. He hated the blacks evenmore than did the apes, and here was an opportunity for a kill in the open.What had the Gomangani done? Had he slain one of the tribe?

Tarzan asked the nearest ape. No, the Gomangani had harmed none. Gozan, beingon watch, had seen him coming through the forest and had warned the tribe—thatwas all. The ape-man pushed through the circle of bulls, none of which as yethad worked himself into sufficient frenzy for a charge, and came where he had afull and close view of the black. He recognized the man instantly. Only thenight before he had seen him facing the eyes in the dark, while his fellowsgroveled in the dirt at his feet, too terrified even to defend themselves. Herewas a brave man, and Tarzan had deep admiration for bravery. Even his hatred ofthe blacks was not so strong a passion as his love of courage. He would havejoyed in battling with a black warrior at almost any time; but this one he didnot wish to kill—he felt, vaguely, that the man had earned his life by hisbrave defense of it on the preceding night, nor did he fancy the odds that werepitted against the lone warrior.

He turned to the apes. “Go back to your feeding,” he said, “and let thisGomangani go his way in peace. He has not harmed us, and last night I saw himfighting Numa and Sabor with fire, alone in the jungle. He is brave. Why shouldwe kill one who is brave and who has not attacked us? Let him go.”

The apes growled. They were displeased. “Kill the Gomangani!” cried one.

“Yes,” roared another, “kill the Gomangani and the Tarmangani as well.”

“Kill the white ape!” screamed Gozan, “he is no ape at all; but a Gomanganiwith his skin off.”

“Kill Tarzan!” bellowed Gunto. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

The bulls were now indeed working themselves into the frenzy of slaughter; butagainst Tarzan rather than the black man. A shaggy form charged through them,hurling those it came in contact with to one side as a strong man might scatterchildren. It was Taug—great, savage Taug.

“Who says ‘kill Tarzan’?” he demanded. “Who kills Tarzan must kill Taug, too.Who can kill Taug? Taug will tear your insides from you and feed them toDango.”

“We can kill you all,” replied Gunto. “There are many of us and few of you,”and he was right. Tarzan knew that he was right. Taug knew it; but neitherwould admit such a possibility. It is not the way of bull apes.

“I am Tarzan,” cried the ape-man. “I am Tarzan. Mighty hunter; mighty fighter.In all the jungle none so great as Tarzan.”

Then, one by one, the opposing bulls recounted their virtues and their prowess.And all the time the combatants came closer and closer to one another. Thus dothe bulls work themselves to the proper pitch before engaging in battle.

Gunto came, stiff-legged, close to Tarzan and sniffed at him, with bared fangs.Tarzan rumbled forth a low, menacing growl. They might repeat these tactics adozen times; but sooner or later one bull would close with another and then thewhole hideous pack would be tearing and rending at their prey.

Bulabantu, the black man, had stood wide-eyed in wonder from the moment he hadseen Tarzan approaching through the apes. He had heard much of this devil-godwho ran with the hairy tree people; but never before had he seen him in fulldaylight. He knew him well enough from the description of those who had seenhim and from the glimpses he had had of the marauder upon several occasionswhen the ape-man had entered the village of Mbonga, the chief, by night, in theperpetration of one of his numerous ghastly jokes.

Bulabantu could not, of course, understand anything which passed between Tarzanand the apes; but he saw that the ape-man and one of the larger bulls were inargument with the others. He saw that these two were standing with their backtoward him and between him and the balance of the tribe, and he guessed, thoughit seemed improbable, that they might be defending him. He knew that Tarzan hadonce spared the life of Mbonga, the chief, and that he had succored Tibo, andTibo’s mother, Momaya. So it was not impossible that he would help Bulabantu;but how he could accomplish it Bulabantu could not guess; nor as a matter offact could Tarzan, for the odds against him were too great.

Gunto and the others were slowly forcing Tarzan and Taug back toward Bulabantu.The ape-man thought of his words with Tantor just a short time before: “Yes,Tantor, it is good to live. I should hate to die.” And now he knew that he wasabout to die, for the temper of the great bulls was mounting rapidly againsthim. Always had many of them hated him, and all were suspicious of him. Theyknew he was different. Tarzan knew it too; but he was glad that he was—he was aMAN; that he had learned from his picture-books, and he was very proud of thedistinction. Presently, though, he would be a dead man.

Gunto was preparing to charge. Tarzan knew the signs. He knew that the balanceof the bulls would charge with Gunto. Then it would soon be over. Somethingmoved among the verdure at the opposite side of the clearing. Tarzan saw itjust as Gunto, with the terrifying cry of a challenging ape, sprang forward.Tarzan voiced a peculiar call and then crouched to meet the assault. Taugcrouched, too, and Bulabantu, assured now that these two were fighting upon hisside, couched his spear and sprang between them to receive the first charge ofthe enemy.

Simultaneously a huge bulk broke into the clearing from the jungle behind thecharging bulls. The trumpeting of a mad tusker rose shrill above the cries ofthe anthropoids, as Tantor, the elephant, dashed swiftly across the clearing tothe aid of his friend.

Gunto never closed upon the ape-man, nor did a fang enter flesh upon eitherside. The terrific reverberation of Tantor’s challenge sent the bulls scurryingto the trees, jabbering and scolding. Taug raced off with them. Only Tarzan andBulabantu remained. The latter stood his ground because he saw that thedevil-god did not run, and because the black had the courage to face a certainand horrible death beside one who had quite evidently dared death for him.

But it was a surprised Gomangani who saw the mighty elephant come to a suddenhalt in front of the ape-man and caress him with his long, sinuous trunk.

Tarzan turned toward the black man. “Go!” he said in the language of the apes,and pointed in the direction of the village of Mbonga. Bulabantu understood thegesture, if not the word, nor did he lose time in obeying. Tarzan stoodwatching him until he had disappeared. He knew that the apes would not follow.Then he said to the elephant: “Pick me up!” and the tusker swung him lightly tohis head.

“Tarzan goes to his lair by the big water,” shouted the ape-man to the apes inthe trees. “All of you are more foolish than Manu, except Taug and Teeka. Taugand Teeka may come to see Tarzan; but the others must keep away. Tarzan is donewith the tribe of Kerchak.”

He prodded Tantor with a calloused toe and the big beast swung off across theclearing, the apes watching them until they were swallowed up by the jungle.

Before the night fell Taug killed Gunto, picking a quarrel with him over hisattack upon Tarzan.

For a moon the tribe saw nothing of Tarzan of the Apes. Many of them probablynever gave him a thought; but there were those who missed him more than Tarzanimagined. Taug and Teeka often wished that he was back, and Taug determined adozen times to go and visit Tarzan in his seaside lair; but first one thing andthen another interfered.

One night when Taug lay sleepless looking up at the starry heavens he recalledthe strange things that Tarzan once had suggested to him—that the bright spotswere the eyes of the meat-eaters waiting in the dark of the jungle sky to leapupon Goro, the moon, and devour him. The more he thought about this matter themore perturbed he became.

And then a strange thing happened. Even as Taug looked at Goro, he saw aportion of one edge disappear, precisely as though something was gnawing uponit. Larger and larger became the hole in the side of Goro. With a scream, Taugleaped to his feet. His frenzied “Kreeg-ahs!” brought the terrified tribescreaming and chattering toward him.

“Look!” cried Taug, pointing at the moon. “Look! It is as Tarzan said. Numa hassprung through the fires and is devouring Goro. You called Tarzan names anddrove him from the tribe; now see how wise he was. Let one of you who hatedTarzan go to Goro’s aid. See the eyes in the dark jungle all about Goro. He isin danger and none can help him—none except Tarzan. Soon Goro will be devouredby Numa and we shall have no more light after Kudu seeks his lair. How shall wedance the Dum-Dum without the light of Goro?”

The apes trembled and whimpered. Any manifestation of the powers of naturealways filled them with terror, for they could not understand.

“Go and bring Tarzan,” cried one, and then they all took up the cry of“Tarzan!” “Bring Tarzan!” “He will save Goro.” But who was to travel the darkjungle by night to fetch him?

“I will go,” volunteered Taug, and an instant later he was off through theStygian gloom toward the little land-locked harbor by the sea.

And as the tribe waited they watched the slow devouring of the moon. AlreadyNuma had eaten out a great semicircular piece. At that rate Goro would beentirely gone before Kudu came again. The apes trembled at the thought ofperpetual darkness by night. They could not sleep. Restlessly they moved hereand there among the branches of trees, watching Numa of the skies at his deadlyfeast, and listening for the coming of Taug with Tarzan.

Goro was nearly gone when the apes heard the sounds of the approach through thetrees of the two they awaited, and presently Tarzan, followed by Taug, swunginto a near-by tree.

The ape-man wasted no time in idle words. In his hand was his long bow and athis back hung a quiver full of arrows, poisoned arrows that he had stolen fromthe village of the blacks; just as he had stolen the bow. Up into a great treehe clambered, higher and higher until he stood swaying upon a small limb whichbent low beneath his weight. Here he had a clear and unobstructed view of theheavens. He saw Goro and the inroads which the hungry Numa had made into hisshining surface.

Raising his face to the moon, Tarzan shrilled forth his hideous challenge.Faintly and from afar came the roar of an answering lion. The apes shivered.Numa of the skies had answered Tarzan.

Then the ape-man fitted an arrow to his bow, and drawing the shaft far back,aimed its point at the heart of Numa where he lay in the heavens devouringGoro. There was a loud twang as the released bolt shot into the dark heavens.Again and again did Tarzan of the Apes launch his arrows at Numa, and all thewhile the apes of the tribe of Kerchak huddled together in terror.

At last came a cry from Taug. “Look! Look!” he screamed. “Numa is killed.Tarzan has killed Numa. See! Goro is emerging from the belly of Numa,” and,sure enough, the moon was gradually emerging from whatever had devoured her,whether it was Numa, the lion, or the shadow of the earth; but were you to tryto convince an ape of the tribe of Kerchak that it was aught but Numa who sonearly devoured Goro that night, or that another than Tarzan preserved thebrilliant god of their savage and mysterious rites from a frightful death, youwould have difficulty—and a fight on your hands.

And so Tarzan of the Apes came back to the tribe of Kerchak, and in his cominghe took a long stride toward the kingship, which he ultimately won, for now theapes looked up to him as a superior being.

In all the tribe there was but one who was at all skeptical about theplausibility of Tarzan’s remarkable rescue of Goro, and that one, strange as itmay seem, was Tarzan of the Apes.

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