Tarzan of the Apes
accustomed place, for she explored ever nearer and nearer the wall
where Tarzan stood.
So close was she now that the ape-man felt the animal warmth of her
naked body. Up went the hunting knife, and then the woman turned to one
side and soon a guttural “ah” proclaimed that her search had at last
been successful.
Immediately she turned and left the hut, and as she passed through the
doorway Tarzan saw that she carried a cooking pot in her hand.
He followed closely after her, and as he reconnoitered from the shadows
of the doorway he saw that all the women of the village were hastening
to and from the various huts with pots and kettles. These they were
filling with water and placing over a number of fires near the stake
where the dying victim now hung, an inert and bloody mass of suffering.
Choosing a moment when none seemed near, Tarzan hastened to his bundle
of arrows beneath the great tree at the end of the village street. As
on the former occasion he overthrew the cauldron before leaping,
sinuous and catlike, into the lower branches of the forest giant.
Silently he climbed to a great height until he found a point where he
could look through a leafy opening upon the scene beneath him.
The women were now preparing the prisoner for their cooking pots, while
the men stood about resting after the fatigue of their mad revel.
Comparative quiet reigned in the village.
Tarzan raised aloft the thing he had pilfered from the hut, and, with
aim made true by years of fruit and coconut throwing, launched it
toward the group of savages.
Squarely among them it fell, striking one of the warriors full upon the
head and felling him to the ground. Then it rolled among the women and
stopped beside the half-butchered thing they were preparing to feast
upon.
All gazed in consternation at it for an instant, and then, with one
accord, broke and ran for their huts.
It was a grinning human skull which looked up at them from the ground.
The dropping of the thing out of the open sky was a miracle well aimed
to work upon their superstitious fears.
Thus Tarzan of the Apes left them filled with terror at this new
manifestation of the presence of some unseen and unearthly evil power
which lurked in the forest about their village.
Later, when they discovered the overturned cauldron, and that once more
their arrows had been pilfered, it commenced to dawn upon them that
they had offended some great god by placing their village in this part
of the jungle without propitiating him. From then on an offering of
food was daily placed below the great tree from whence the arrows had
disappeared in an effort to conciliate the mighty one.
But the seed of fear was deep sown, and had he but known it, Tarzan of
the Apes had laid the foundation for much future misery for himself and
his tribe.
That night he slept in the forest not far from the village, and early
the next morning set out slowly on his homeward march, hunting as he
traveled. Only a few berries and an occasional grub worm rewarded his
search, and he was half famished when, looking up from a log he had
been rooting beneath, he saw Sabor, the lioness, standing in the center
of the trail not twenty paces from him.
The great yellow eyes were fixed upon him with a wicked and baleful
gleam, and the red tongue licked the longing lips as Sabor crouched,
worming her stealthy way with belly flattened against the earth.
Tarzan did not attempt to escape. He welcomed the opportunity for
which, in fact, he had been searching for days past, now that he was
armed with something more than a rope of grass.
Quickly he unslung his bow and fitted a well-daubed arrow, and as Sabor
sprang, the tiny missile leaped to meet her in mid-air. At the same
instant Tarzan of the Apes jumped to one side, and as the great cat
struck the ground beyond him another death-tipped arrow sunk deep into
Sabor’s loin.
With a mighty roar the beast turned and charged once more, only to be
met with a third arrow full in one eye; but this time she was too close
to the ape-man for the latter to sidestep the onrushing body.
Tarzan of the Apes went down beneath the great body of his enemy, but
with gleaming knife drawn and striking home. For a moment they lay
there, and then Tarzan realized that the inert mass lying upon him was
beyond power ever again to injure man or ape.
With difficulty he wriggled from beneath the great weight, and as he
stood erect and gazed down upon the trophy of his skill, a mighty wave
of exultation swept over him.
With swelling breast, he placed a foot upon the body of his powerful
enemy, and throwing back his fine young head, roared out the awful
challenge of the victorious bull ape.
The forest echoed to the savage and triumphant paean. Birds fell still,
and the larger animals and beasts of prey slunk stealthily away, for
few there were of all the jungle who sought for trouble with the great
anthropoids.
And in London another Lord Greystoke was speaking to _his_ kind in the
House of Lords, but none trembled at the sound of his soft voice.
Sabor proved unsavory eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger
served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and
ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep
again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for
this as for any other purpose that he had desired to destroy Sabor.
Deftly he removed the great pelt, for he had practiced often on smaller
animals. When the task was finished he carried his trophy to the fork
of a high tree, and there, curling himself securely in a crotch, he
fell into deep and dreamless slumber.
What with loss of sleep, arduous exercise, and a full belly, Tarzan of
the Apes slept the sun around, awakening about noon of the following
day. He straightway repaired to the carcass of Sabor, but was angered
to find the bones picked clean by other hungry denizens of the jungle.
Half an hour’s leisurely progress through the forest brought to sight a
young deer, and before the little creature knew that an enemy was near
a tiny arrow had lodged in its neck.
So quickly the virus worked that at the end of a dozen leaps the deer
plunged headlong into the undergrowth, dead. Again did Tarzan feast
well, but this time he did not sleep.
Instead, he hastened on toward the point where he had left the tribe,
and when he had found them proudly exhibited the skin of Sabor, the
lioness.
“Look!” he cried, “Apes of Kerchak. See what Tarzan, the mighty killer,
has done. Who else among you has ever killed one of Numa’s people?
Tarzan is mightiest amongst you for Tarzan is no ape. Tarzan is—” But
here he stopped, for in the language of the anthropoids there was no
word for man, and Tarzan could only write the word in English; he could
not pronounce it.
The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of his wondrous
prowess, and to listen to his words.
Only Kerchak hung back, nursing his hatred and his rage.
Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of the
anthropoid. With a frightful roar the great beast sprang among the
assemblage.
Biting, and striking with his huge hands, he killed and maimed a dozen
ere the balance could escape to the upper terraces of the forest.
Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of his fury, Kerchak looked
about for the object of his greatest hatred, and there, upon a near-by
limb, he saw him sitting.
“Come down, Tarzan, great killer,” cried Kerchak. “Come down and feel
the fangs of a greater! Do mighty fighters fly to the trees at the
first approach of danger?” And then Kerchak emitted the volleying
challenge of his kind.
Quietly Tarzan dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watched
from their lofty perches as Kerchak, still roaring, charged the
relatively puny figure.
Nearly seven feet stood Kerchak on his short legs. His enormous
shoulders were bunched and rounded with huge muscles. The back of his
short neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond the
base of his skull, so that his head seemed like a small ball protruding
from a huge mountain of flesh.
His back-drawn, snarling lips exposed his great fighting fangs, and his
little, wicked, blood-shot eyes gleamed in horrid reflection of his
madness.
Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal, but his six
feet of height and his great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequate
to the ordeal which awaited them.
His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had dropped them
while showing Sabor’s hide to his fellow apes, so that he confronted
Kerchak now with only his hunting knife and his superior intellect to
offset the ferocious strength of his enemy.
As his antagonist came roaring toward him, Lord Greystoke tore his long
knife from its sheath, and with an answering challenge as horrid and
bloodcurdling as that of the beast he faced, rushed swiftly to meet the
attack. He was too shrewd to allow those long hairy arms to encircle
him, and just as their bodies were about to crash together, Tarzan of
the Apes grasped one of the huge wrists of his assailant, and,
springing lightly to one side, drove his knife to the hilt into
Kerchak’s body, below the heart.
Before he could wrench the blade free again, the bull’s quick lunge to
seize him in those awful arms had torn the weapon from Tarzan’s grasp.
Kerchak aimed a terrific blow at the ape-man’s head with the flat of
his hand, a blow which, had it landed, might easily have crushed in the
side of Tarzan’s skull.
The man was too quick, and, ducking beneath it, himself delivered a
mighty one, with clenched fist, in the pit of Kerchak’s stomach.
The ape was staggered, and what with the mortal wound in his side had
almost collapsed, when, with one mighty effort he rallied for an
instant—just long enough to enable him to wrest his arm free from
Tarzan’s grasp and close in a terrific clinch with his wiry opponent.
Straining the ape-man close to him, his great jaws sought Tarzan’s
throat, but the young lord’s sinewy fingers were at Kerchak’s own
before the cruel fangs could close on the sleek brown skin.
Thus they struggled, the one to crush out his opponent’s life with
those awful teeth, the other to close forever the windpipe beneath his
strong grasp while he held the snarling mouth from him.
The greater strength of the ape was slowly prevailing, and the teeth of
the straining beast were scarce an inch from Tarzan’s throat when, with
a shuddering tremor, the great body stiffened for an instant and then
sank limply to the ground.
Kerchak was dead.
Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered him master of far
mightier muscles than his own, Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon
the neck of his vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through the
forest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.
And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.
CHAPTER XII.
Man’s Reason
There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and
that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and
the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation of
his objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzan
knew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingship
from him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on his
guard against surprise.
For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before,
except that Tarzan’s greater intelligence and his ability as a hunter
were the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before.
Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change in
rulers.
Tarzan led them by night to the fields of the black men, and there,