Tarzan of the Apes
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Contents
CHAPTER I. Out to Sea
CHAPTER II. The Savage Home
CHAPTER III. Life and Death
CHAPTER IV. The Apes
CHAPTER V. The White Ape
CHAPTER VI. Jungle Battles
CHAPTER VII. The Light of Knowledge
CHAPTER VIII. The Tree-top Hunter
CHAPTER IX. Man and Man
CHAPTER X. The Fear-Phantom
CHAPTER XI. “King of the Apes”
CHAPTER XII. Man’s Reason
CHAPTER XIII. His Own Kind
CHAPTER XIV. At the Mercy of the Jungle
CHAPTER XV. The Forest God
CHAPTER XVI. “Most Remarkable”
CHAPTER XVII. Burials
CHAPTER XVIII. The Jungle Toll
CHAPTER XIX. The Call of the Primitive
CHAPTER XX. Heredity
CHAPTER XXI. The Village of Torture
CHAPTER XXII. The Search Party
CHAPTER XXIII. Brother Men
CHAPTER XXIV. Lost Treasure
CHAPTER XXV. The Outpost of the World
CHAPTER XXVI. The Height of Civilization
CHAPTER XXVII. The Giant Again
CHAPTER XXVIII. Conclusion
CHAPTER I.
Out to Sea
I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to
any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon
the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity
during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.
When my convivial host discovered that he had told me so much, and that
I was prone to doubtfulness, his foolish pride assumed the task the old
vintage had commenced, and so he unearthed written evidence in the form
of musty manuscript, and dry official records of the British Colonial
Office to support many of the salient features of his remarkable
narrative.
I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings
which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have
taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently
evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it _may_ be true.
The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the
records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of
my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly
pieced it out from these several various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in
acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.
From the records of the Colonial Office and from the dead man’s diary
we learn that a certain young English nobleman, whom we shall call John
Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate
investigation of conditions in a British West Coast African Colony from
whose simple native inhabitants another European power was known to be
recruiting soldiers for its native army, which it used solely for the
forcible collection of rubber and ivory from the savage tribes along
the Congo and the Aruwimi. The natives of the British Colony complained
that many of their young men were enticed away through the medium of
fair and glowing promises, but that few if any ever returned to their
families.
The Englishmen in Africa went even further, saying that these poor
blacks were held in virtual slavery, since after their terms of
enlistment expired their ignorance was imposed upon by their white
officers, and they were told that they had yet several years to serve.
And so the Colonial Office appointed John Clayton to a new post in
British West Africa, but his confidential instructions centered on a
thorough investigation of the unfair treatment of black British
subjects by the officers of a friendly European power. Why he was sent,
is, however, of little moment to this story, for he never made an
investigation, nor, in fact, did he ever reach his destination.
Clayton was the type of Englishman that one likes best to associate
with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand
victorious battlefields—a strong, virile man—mentally, morally, and
physically.
In stature he was above the average height; his eyes were gray, his
features regular and strong; his carriage that of perfect, robust
health influenced by his years of army training.
Political ambition had caused him to seek transference from the army to
the Colonial Office and so we find him, still young, entrusted with a
delicate and important commission in the service of the Queen.
When he received this appointment he was both elated and appalled. The
preferment seemed to him in the nature of a well-merited reward for
painstaking and intelligent service, and as a stepping stone to posts
of greater importance and responsibility; but, on the other hand, he
had been married to the Hon. Alice Rutherford for scarce a three
months, and it was the thought of taking this fair young girl into the
dangers and isolation of tropical Africa that appalled him.
For her sake he would have refused the appointment, but she would not
have it so. Instead she insisted that he accept, and, indeed, take her
with him.
There were mothers and brothers and sisters, and aunts and cousins to
express various opinions on the subject, but as to what they severally
advised history is silent.
We know only that on a bright May morning in 1888, John, Lord
Greystoke, and Lady Alice sailed from Dover on their way to Africa.
A month later they arrived at Freetown where they chartered a small
sailing vessel, the _Fuwalda_, which was to bear them to their final
destination.
And here John, Lord Greystoke, and Lady Alice, his wife, vanished from
the eyes and from the knowledge of men.
Two months after they weighed anchor and cleared from the port of
Freetown a half dozen British war vessels were scouring the south
Atlantic for trace of them or their little vessel, and it was almost
immediately that the wreckage was found upon the shores of St. Helena
which convinced the world that the _Fuwalda_ had gone down with all on
board, and hence the search was stopped ere it had scarce begun; though
hope lingered in longing hearts for many years.
The _Fuwalda_, a barkentine of about one hundred tons, was a vessel of
the type often seen in coastwise trade in the far southern Atlantic,
their crews composed of the offscourings of the sea—unhanged murderers
and cutthroats of every race and every nation.
The _Fuwalda_ was no exception to the rule. Her officers were swarthy
bullies, hating and hated by their crew. The captain, while a competent
seaman, was a brute in his treatment of his men. He knew, or at least
he used, but two arguments in his dealings with them—a belaying pin and
a revolver—nor is it likely that the motley aggregation he signed would
have understood aught else.
So it was that from the second day out from Freetown John Clayton and
his young wife witnessed scenes upon the deck of the _Fuwalda_ such as
they had believed were never enacted outside the covers of printed
stories of the sea.
It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged
in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life
for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of
man.
Two sailors were washing down the decks of the _Fuwalda_, the first
mate was on duty, and the captain had stopped to speak with John
Clayton and Lady Alice.
The men were working backwards toward the little party who were facing
away from the sailors. Closer and closer they came, until one of them
was directly behind the captain. In another moment he would have passed
by and this strange narrative would never have been recorded.
But just that instant the officer turned to leave Lord and Lady
Greystoke, and, as he did so, tripped against the sailor and sprawled
headlong upon the deck, overturning the water-pail so that he was
drenched in its dirty contents.
For an instant the scene was ludicrous; but only for an instant. With a
volley of awful oaths, his face suffused with the scarlet of
mortification and rage, the captain regained his feet, and with a
terrific blow felled the sailor to the deck.
The man was small and rather old, so that the brutality of the act was
thus accentuated. The other seaman, however, was neither old nor
small—a huge bear of a man, with fierce black mustachios, and a great
bull neck set between massive shoulders.
As he saw his mate go down he crouched, and, with a low snarl, sprang
upon the captain crushing him to his knees with a single mighty blow.
From scarlet the officer’s face went white, for this was mutiny; and
mutiny he had met and subdued before in his brutal career. Without
waiting to rise he whipped a revolver from his pocket, firing point
blank at the great mountain of muscle towering before him; but, quick
as he was, John Clayton was almost as quick, so that the bullet which
was intended for the sailor’s heart lodged in the sailor’s leg instead,
for Lord Greystoke had struck down the captain’s arm as he had seen the
weapon flash in the sun.
Words passed between Clayton and the captain, the former making it
plain that he was disgusted with the brutality displayed toward the
crew, nor would he countenance anything further of the kind while he
and Lady Greystoke remained passengers.
The captain was on the point of making an angry reply, but, thinking
better of it, turned on his heel and black and scowling, strode aft.
He did not care to antagonize an English official, for the Queen’s
mighty arm wielded a punitive instrument which he could appreciate, and
which he feared—England’s far-reaching navy.
The two sailors picked themselves up, the older man assisting his
wounded comrade to rise. The big fellow, who was known among his mates
as Black Michael, tried his leg gingerly, and, finding that it bore his
weight, turned to Clayton with a word of gruff thanks.
Though the fellow’s tone was surly, his words were evidently well
meant. Ere he had scarce finished his little speech he had turned and
was limping off toward the forecastle with the very apparent intention
of forestalling any further conversation.
They did not see him again for several days, nor did the captain accord
them more than the surliest of grunts when he was forced to speak to
them.
They took their meals in his cabin, as they had before the unfortunate
occurrence; but the captain was careful to see that his duties never
permitted him to eat at the same time.
The other officers were coarse, illiterate fellows, but little above
the villainous crew they bullied, and were only too glad to avoid
social intercourse with the polished English noble and his lady, so
that the Claytons were left very much to themselves.
This in itself accorded perfectly with their desires, but it also
rather isolated them from the life of the little ship so that they were
unable to keep in touch with the daily happenings which were to
culminate so soon in bloody tragedy.
There was in the whole atmosphere of the craft that undefinable
something which presages disaster. Outwardly, to the knowledge of the
Claytons, all went on as before upon the little vessel; but that there
was an undertow leading them toward some unknown danger both felt,
though they did not speak of it to each other.
On the second day after the wounding of Black Michael, Clayton came on
deck just in time to see the limp body of one of the crew being carried
below by four of his fellows while the first mate, a heavy belaying pin
in his hand, stood glowering at the little party of sullen sailors.
Clayton asked no questions—he did not need to—and the following day, as
the great lines of a British battleship grew out of the distant
horizon, he half determined to demand that he and Lady Alice be put
aboard her, for his fears were steadily increasing that nothing but
harm could result from remaining on the lowering, sullen _Fuwalda_.