Tarzan of the Apes
cover his hairless body that he might no longer resemble hideous
Histah, the snake; but now he was proud of his sleek skin for it
betokened his descent from a mighty race, and the conflicting desires
to go naked in prideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to the
customs of his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparel
found first one and then the other in the ascendency.
As the tribe continued their slow way through the forest after the
passing of Sabor, Tarzan’s head was filled with his great scheme for
slaying his enemy, and for many days thereafter he thought of little
else.
On this day, however, he presently had other and more immediate
interests to attract his attention.
Suddenly it became as midnight; the noises of the jungle ceased; the
trees stood motionless as though in paralyzed expectancy of some great
and imminent disaster. All nature waited—but not for long.
Faintly, from a distance, came a low, sad moaning. Nearer and nearer it
approached, mounting louder and louder in volume.
The great trees bent in unison as though pressed earthward by a mighty
hand. Farther and farther toward the ground they inclined, and still
there was no sound save the deep and awesome moaning of the wind.
Then, suddenly, the jungle giants whipped back, lashing their mighty
tops in angry and deafening protest. A vivid and blinding light flashed
from the whirling, inky clouds above. The deep cannonade of roaring
thunder belched forth its fearsome challenge. The deluge came—all hell
broke loose upon the jungle.
The tribe shivering from the cold rain, huddled at the bases of great
trees. The lightning, darting and flashing through the blackness,
showed wildly waving branches, whipping streamers and bending trunks.
Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rent by a flashing
bolt, would crash in a thousand pieces among the surrounding trees,
carrying down numberless branches and many smaller neighbors to add to
the tangled confusion of the tropical jungle.
Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of the tornado,
hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carrying death and
destruction to countless unhappy denizens of the thickly peopled world
below.
For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease, and still
the tribe huddled close in shivering fear. In constant danger from
falling trunks and branches and paralyzed by the vivid flashing of
lightning and the bellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful misery
until the storm passed.
The end was as sudden as the beginning. The wind ceased, the sun shone
forth—nature smiled once more.
The dripping leaves and branches, and the moist petals of gorgeous
flowers glistened in the splendor of the returning day. And, so—as
Nature forgot, her children forgot also. Busy life went on as it had
been before the darkness and the fright.
But to Tarzan a dawning light had come to explain the mystery of
_clothes_. How snug he would have been beneath the heavy coat of Sabor!
And so was added a further incentive to the adventure.
For several months the tribe hovered near the beach where stood
Tarzan’s cabin, and his studies took up the greater portion of his
time, but always when journeying through the forest he kept his rope in
readiness, and many were the smaller animals that fell into the snare
of the quick thrown noose.
Once it fell about the short neck of Horta, the boar, and his mad lunge
for freedom toppled Tarzan from the overhanging limb where he had lain
in wait and from whence he had launched his sinuous coil.
The mighty tusker turned at the sound of his falling body, and, seeing
only the easy prey of a young ape, he lowered his head and charged
madly at the surprised youth.
Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the fall, alighting catlike upon all
fours far outspread to take up the shock. He was on his feet in an
instant and, leaping with the agility of the monkey he was, he gained
the safety of a low limb as Horta, the boar, rushed futilely beneath.
Thus it was that Tarzan learned by experience the limitations as well
as the possibilities of his strange weapon.
He lost a long rope on this occasion, but he knew that had it been
Sabor who had thus dragged him from his perch the outcome might have
been very different, for he would have lost his life, doubtless, into
the bargain.
It took him many days to braid a new rope, but when, finally, it was
done he went forth purposely to hunt, and lie in wait among the dense
foliage of a great branch right above the well-beaten trail that led to
water.
Several small animals passed unharmed beneath him. He did not want such
insignificant game. It would take a strong animal to test the efficacy
of his new scheme.
At last came she whom Tarzan sought, with lithe sinews rolling beneath
shimmering hide; fat and glossy came Sabor, the lioness.
Her great padded feet fell soft and noiseless on the narrow trail. Her
head was high in ever alert attention; her long tail moved slowly in
sinuous and graceful undulations.
Nearer and nearer she came to where Tarzan of the Apes crouched upon
his limb, the coils of his long rope poised ready in his hand.
Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death, sat Tarzan. Sabor passed
beneath. One stride beyond she took—a second, a third, and then the
silent coil shot out above her.
For an instant the spreading noose hung above her head like a great
snake, and then, as she looked upward to detect the origin of the
swishing sound of the rope, it settled about her neck. With a quick
jerk Tarzan snapped the noose tight about the glossy throat, and then
he dropped the rope and clung to his support with both hands.
Sabor was trapped.
With a bound the startled beast turned into the jungle, but Tarzan was
not to lose another rope through the same cause as the first. He had
learned from experience. The lioness had taken but half her second
bound when she felt the rope tighten about her neck; her body turned
completely over in the air and she fell with a heavy crash upon her
back. Tarzan had fastened the end of the rope securely to the trunk of
the great tree on which he sat.
Thus far his plan had worked to perfection, but when he grasped the
rope, bracing himself behind a crotch of two mighty branches, he found
that dragging the mighty, struggling, clawing, biting, screaming mass
of iron-muscled fury up to the tree and hanging her was a very
different proposition.
The weight of old Sabor was immense, and when she braced her huge paws
nothing less than Tantor, the elephant, himself, could have budged her.
The lioness was now back in the path where she could see the author of
the indignity which had been placed upon her. Screaming with rage she
suddenly charged, leaping high into the air toward Tarzan, but when her
huge body struck the limb on which Tarzan had been, Tarzan was no
longer there.
Instead he perched lightly upon a smaller branch twenty feet above the
raging captive. For a moment Sabor hung half across the branch, while
Tarzan mocked, and hurled twigs and branches at her unprotected face.
Presently the beast dropped to the earth again and Tarzan came quickly
to seize the rope, but Sabor had now found that it was only a slender
cord that held her, and grasping it in her huge jaws severed it before
Tarzan could tighten the strangling noose a second time.
Tarzan was much hurt. His well-laid plan had come to naught, so he sat
there screaming at the roaring creature beneath him and making mocking
grimaces at it.
Sabor paced back and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times she
crouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as well
have clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through the tree tops.
At last Tarzan tired of the sport, and with a parting roar of challenge
and a well-aimed ripe fruit that spread soft and sticky over the
snarling face of his enemy, he swung rapidly through the trees, a
hundred feet above the ground, and in a short time was among the
members of his tribe.
Here he recounted the details of his adventure, with swelling chest and
so considerable swagger that he quite impressed even his bitterest
enemies, while Kala fairly danced for joy and pride.
CHAPTER IX.
Man and Man
Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little
change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and
learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay
somewhere outside his primeval forest.
To him life was never monotonous or stale. There was always Pisah, the
fish, to be caught in the many streams and the little lakes, and Sabor,
with her ferocious cousins to keep one ever on the alert and give zest
to every instant that one spent upon the ground.
Often they hunted him, and more often he hunted them, but though they
never quite reached him with those cruel, sharp claws of theirs, yet
there were times when one could scarce have passed a thick leaf between
their talons and his smooth hide.
Quick was Sabor, the lioness, and quick were Numa and Sheeta, but
Tarzan of the Apes was lightning.
With Tantor, the elephant, he made friends. How? Ask not. But this is
known to the denizens of the jungle, that on many moonlight nights
Tarzan of the Apes and Tantor, the elephant, walked together, and where
the way was clear Tarzan rode, perched high upon Tantor’s mighty back.
Many days during these years he spent in the cabin of his father, where
still lay, untouched, the bones of his parents and the skeleton of
Kala’s baby. At eighteen he read fluently and understood nearly all he
read in the many and varied volumes on the shelves.
Also could he write, with printed letters, rapidly and plainly, but
script he had not mastered, for though there were several copy books
among his treasure, there was so little written English in the cabin
that he saw no use for bothering with this other form of writing,
though he could read it, laboriously.
Thus, at eighteen, we find him, an English lordling, who could speak no
English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never
had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area
traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down
the savage natives of the interior.
High hills shut it off on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was
alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes
of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human
beasts beyond its frontier.
But as Tarzan of the Apes sat one day in the cabin of his father
delving into the mysteries of a new book, the ancient security of his
jungle was broken forever.
At the far eastern confine a strange cavalcade strung, in single file,
over the brow of a low hill.
In advance were fifty black warriors armed with slender wooden spears
with ends hard baked over slow fires, and long bows and poisoned
arrows. On their backs were oval shields, in their noses huge rings,
while from the kinky wool of their heads protruded tufts of gay
feathers.
Across their foreheads were tattooed three parallel lines of color, and
on each breast three concentric circles. Their yellow teeth were filed
to sharp points, and their great protruding lips added still further to
the low and bestial brutishness of their appearance.
Following them were several hundred women and children, the former
bearing upon their heads great burdens of cooking pots, household
utensils and ivory. In the rear were a hundred warriors, similar in all
respects to the advance guard.
That they more greatly feared an attack from the rear than whatever
unknown enemies lurked in their advance was evidenced by the formation