Tarzan of the Apes
howls, and mighty wailing. He was startled. Had he remained too long?
Quickly he reached the doorway and peered down the village street
toward the village gate.
The natives were not yet in sight, though he could plainly hear them
approaching across the plantation. They must be very near.
Like a flash he sprang across the opening to the pile of arrows.
Gathering up all he could carry under one arm, he overturned the
seething cauldron with a kick, and disappeared into the foliage above
just as the first of the returning natives entered the gate at the far
end of the village street. Then he turned to watch the proceeding
below, poised like some wild bird ready to take swift wing at the first
sign of danger.
The natives filed up the street, four of them bearing the dead body of
Kulonga. Behind trailed the women, uttering strange cries and weird
lamentation. On they came to the portals of Kulonga’s hut, the very one
in which Tarzan had wrought his depredations.
Scarcely had half a dozen entered the building ere they came rushing
out in wild, jabbering confusion. The others hastened to gather about.
There was much excited gesticulating, pointing, and chattering; then
several of the warriors approached and peered within.
Finally an old fellow with many ornaments of metal about his arms and
legs, and a necklace of dried human hands depending upon his chest,
entered the hut.
It was Mbonga, the king, father of Kulonga.
For a few moments all was silent. Then Mbonga emerged, a look of
mingled wrath and superstitious fear writ upon his hideous countenance.
He spoke a few words to the assembled warriors, and in an instant the
men were flying through the little village searching minutely every hut
and corner within the palisades.
Scarcely had the search commenced than the overturned cauldron was
discovered, and with it the theft of the poisoned arrows. Nothing more
they found, and it was a thoroughly awed and frightened group of
savages which huddled around their king a few moments later.
Mbonga could explain nothing of the strange events that had taken
place. The finding of the still warm body of Kulonga—on the very verge
of their fields and within easy earshot of the village—knifed and
stripped at the door of his father’s home, was in itself sufficiently
mysterious, but these last awesome discoveries within the village,
within the dead Kulonga’s own hut, filled their hearts with dismay, and
conjured in their poor brains only the most frightful of superstitious
explanations.
They stood in little groups, talking in low tones, and ever casting
affrighted glances behind them from their great rolling eyes.
Tarzan of the Apes watched them for a while from his lofty perch in the
great tree. There was much in their demeanor which he could not
understand, for of superstition he was ignorant, and of fear of any
kind he had but a vague conception.
The sun was high in the heavens. Tarzan had not broken fast this day,
and it was many miles to where lay the toothsome remains of Horta the
boar.
So he turned his back upon the village of Mbonga and melted away into
the leafy fastness of the forest.
CHAPTER XI.
“King of the Apes”
It was not yet dark when he reached the tribe, though he stopped to
exhume and devour the remains of the wild boar he had cached the
preceding day, and again to take Kulonga’s bow and arrows from the tree
top in which he had hidden them.
It was a well-laden Tarzan who dropped from the branches into the midst
of the tribe of Kerchak.
With swelling chest he narrated the glories of his adventure and
exhibited the spoils of conquest.
Kerchak grunted and turned away, for he was jealous of this strange
member of his band. In his little evil brain he sought for some excuse
to wreak his hatred upon Tarzan.
The next day Tarzan was practicing with his bow and arrows at the first
gleam of dawn. At first he lost nearly every bolt he shot, but finally
he learned to guide the little shafts with fair accuracy, and ere a
month had passed he was no mean shot; but his proficiency had cost him
nearly his entire supply of arrows.
The tribe continued to find the hunting good in the vicinity of the
beach, and so Tarzan of the Apes varied his archery practice with
further investigation of his father’s choice though little store of
books.
It was during this period that the young English lord found hidden in
the back of one of the cupboards in the cabin a small metal box. The
key was in the lock, and a few moments of investigation and
experimentation were rewarded with the successful opening of the
receptacle.
In it he found a faded photograph of a smooth faced young man, a golden
locket studded with diamonds, linked to a small gold chain, a few
letters and a small book.
Tarzan examined these all minutely.
The photograph he liked most of all, for the eyes were smiling, and the
face was open and frank. It was his father.
The locket, too, took his fancy, and he placed the chain about his neck
in imitation of the ornamentation he had seen to be so common among the
black men he had visited. The brilliant stones gleamed strangely
against his smooth, brown hide.
The letters he could scarcely decipher for he had learned little or
nothing of script, so he put them back in the box with the photograph
and turned his attention to the book.
This was almost entirely filled with fine script, but while the little
bugs were all familiar to him, their arrangement and the combinations
in which they occurred were strange, and entirely incomprehensible.
Tarzan had long since learned the use of the dictionary, but much to
his sorrow and perplexity it proved of no avail to him in this
emergency. Not a word of all that was writ in the book could he find,
and so he put it back in the metal box, but with a determination to
work out the mysteries of it later on.
Little did he know that this book held between its covers the key to
his origin—the answer to the strange riddle of his strange life. It was
the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke—kept in French, as had always
been his custom.
Tarzan replaced the box in the cupboard, but always thereafter he
carried the features of the strong, smiling face of his father in his
heart, and in his head a fixed determination to solve the mystery of
the strange words in the little black book.
At present he had more important business in hand, for his supply of
arrows was exhausted, and he must needs journey to the black men’s
village and renew it.
Early the following morning he set out, and, traveling rapidly, he came
before midday to the clearing. Once more he took up his position in the
great tree, and, as before, he saw the women in the fields and the
village street, and the cauldron of bubbling poison directly beneath
him.
For hours he lay awaiting his opportunity to drop down unseen and
gather up the arrows for which he had come; but nothing now occurred to
call the villagers away from their homes. The day wore on, and still
Tarzan of the Apes crouched above the unsuspecting woman at the
cauldron.
Presently the workers in the fields returned. The hunting warriors
emerged from the forest, and when all were within the palisade the
gates were closed and barred.
Many cooking pots were now in evidence about the village. Before each
hut a woman presided over a boiling stew, while little cakes of
plantain, and cassava puddings were to be seen on every hand.
Suddenly there came a hail from the edge of the clearing.
Tarzan looked.
It was a party of belated hunters returning from the north, and among
them they half led, half carried a struggling animal.
As they approached the village the gates were thrown open to admit
them, and then, as the people saw the victim of the chase, a savage cry
rose to the heavens, for the quarry was a man.
As he was dragged, still resisting, into the village street, the women
and children set upon him with sticks and stones, and Tarzan of the
Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel
brutality of his own kind.
Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey.
The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their
victims.
Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways
of human beings.
When he had followed Kulonga through the forest he had expected to come
to a city of strange houses on wheels, puffing clouds of black smoke
from a huge tree stuck in the roof of one of them—or to a sea covered
with mighty floating buildings which he had learned were called,
variously, ships and boats and steamers and craft.
He had been sorely disappointed with the poor little village of the
blacks, hidden away in his own jungle, and with not a single house as
large as his own cabin upon the distant beach.
He saw that these people were more wicked than his own apes, and as
savage and cruel as Sabor, herself. Tarzan began to hold his own kind
in low esteem.
Now they had tied their poor victim to a great post near the center of
the village, directly before Mbonga’s hut, and here they formed a
dancing, yelling circle of warriors about him, alive with flashing
knives and menacing spears.
In a larger circle squatted the women, yelling and beating upon drums.
It reminded Tarzan of the Dum-Dum, and so he knew what to expect. He
wondered if they would spring upon their meat while it was still alive.
The Apes did not do such things as that.
The circle of warriors about the cringing captive drew closer and
closer to their prey as they danced in wild and savage abandon to the
maddening music of the drums. Presently a spear reached out and pricked
the victim. It was the signal for fifty others.
Eyes, ears, arms and legs were pierced; every inch of the poor writhing
body that did not cover a vital organ became the target of the cruel
lancers.
The women and children shrieked their delight.
The warriors licked their hideous lips in anticipation of the feast to
come, and vied with one another in the savagery and loathsomeness of
the cruel indignities with which they tortured the still conscious
prisoner.
Then it was that Tarzan of the Apes saw his chance. All eyes were fixed
upon the thrilling spectacle at the stake. The light of day had given
place to the darkness of a moonless night, and only the fires in the
immediate vicinity of the orgy had been kept alight to cast a restless
glow upon the restless scene.
Gently the lithe boy dropped to the soft earth at the end of the
village street. Quickly he gathered up the arrows—all of them this
time, for he had brought a number of long fibers to bind them into a
bundle.
Without haste he wrapped them securely, and then, ere he turned to
leave, the devil of capriciousness entered his heart. He looked about
for some hint of a wild prank to play upon these strange, grotesque
creatures that they might be again aware of his presence among them.
Dropping his bundle of arrows at the foot of the tree, Tarzan crept
among the shadows at the side of the street until he came to the same
hut he had entered on the occasion of his first visit.
Inside all was darkness, but his groping hands soon found the object
for which he sought, and without further delay he turned again toward
the door.
He had taken but a step, however, ere his quick ear caught the sound of
approaching footsteps immediately without. In another instant the
figure of a woman darkened the entrance of the hut.
Tarzan drew back silently to the far wall, and his hand sought the
long, keen hunting knife of his father. The woman came quickly to the
center of the hut. There she paused for an instant feeling about with
her hands for the thing she sought. Evidently it was not in its