Tarzan of the Apes
His arm was passed beneath Terkoz’s arm from behind and his hand and
forearm encircled the back of Terkoz’s neck. It was the half-Nelson of
modern wrestling which the untaught ape-man had stumbled upon, but
superior reason showed him in an instant the value of the thing he had
discovered. It was the difference to him between life and death.
And so he struggled to encompass a similar hold with the left hand, and
in a few moments Terkoz’s bull neck was creaking beneath a full-Nelson.
There was no more lunging about now. The two lay perfectly still upon
the ground, Tarzan upon Terkoz’s back. Slowly the bullet head of the
ape was being forced lower and lower upon his chest.
Tarzan knew what the result would be. In an instant the neck would
break. Then there came to Terkoz’s rescue the same thing that had put
him in these sore straits—a man’s reasoning power.
“If I kill him,” thought Tarzan, “what advantage will it be to me? Will
it not rob the tribe of a great fighter? And if Terkoz be dead, he will
know nothing of my supremacy, while alive he will ever be an example to
the other apes.”
“_Ka-goda?_” hissed Tarzan in Terkoz’s ear, which, in ape tongue,
means, freely translated: “Do you surrender?”
For a moment there was no reply, and Tarzan added a few more ounces of
pressure, which elicited a horrified shriek of pain from the great
beast.
“_Ka-goda?_” repeated Tarzan.
“_Ka-goda!_” cried Terkoz.
“Listen,” said Tarzan, easing up a trifle, but not releasing his hold.
“I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all
the jungle there is none so great.
“You have said: ‘_Ka-goda_’ to me. All the tribe have heard. Quarrel no
more with your king or your people, for next time I shall kill you. Do
you understand?”
“_Huh_,” assented Terkoz.
“And you are satisfied?”
“_Huh_,” said the ape.
Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at their
vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of
their primeval forest haunts.
But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan
was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had
it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to
live—unharmed.
That afternoon as the tribe came together, as was their wont before
darkness settled on the jungle, Tarzan, his wounds washed in the waters
of the stream, called the old males about him.
“You have seen again to-day that Tarzan of the Apes is the greatest
among you,” he said.
“_Huh_,” they replied with one voice, “Tarzan is great.”
“Tarzan,” he continued, “is not an ape. He is not like his people. His
ways are not their ways, and so Tarzan is going back to the lair of his
own kind by the waters of the great lake which has no farther shore.
You must choose another to rule you, for Tarzan will not return.”
And thus young Lord Greystoke took the first step toward the goal which
he had set—the finding of other white men like himself.
CHAPTER XIII.
His Own Kind
The following morning, Tarzan, lame and sore from the wounds of his
battle with Terkoz, set out toward the west and the seacoast.
He traveled very slowly, sleeping in the jungle at night, and reaching
his cabin late the following morning.
For several days he moved about but little, only enough to gather what
fruits and nuts he required to satisfy the demands of hunger.
In ten days he was quite sound again, except for a terrible,
half-healed scar, which, starting above his left eye ran across the top
of his head, ending at the right ear. It was the mark left by Terkoz
when he had torn the scalp away.
During his convalescence Tarzan tried to fashion a mantle from the skin
of Sabor, which had lain all this time in the cabin. But he found the
hide had dried as stiff as a board, and as he knew naught of tanning,
he was forced to abandon his cherished plan.
Then he determined to filch what few garments he could from one of the
black men of Mbonga’s village, for Tarzan of the Apes had decided to
mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and
nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than
ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments
he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and
silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond
encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a
quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of
loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by
himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his
father’s hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga’s hung over
his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his
mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his
hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall
before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient
Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and
sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous
combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.
A personification, was Tarzan of the Apes, of the primitive man, the
hunter, the warrior.
With the noble poise of his handsome head upon those broad shoulders,
and the fire of life and intelligence in those fine, clear eyes, he
might readily have typified some demigod of a wild and warlike bygone
people of his ancient forest.
But of these things Tarzan did not think. He was worried because he had
not clothing to indicate to all the jungle folks that he was a man and
not an ape, and grave doubt often entered his mind as to whether he
might not yet become an ape.
Was not hair commencing to grow upon his face? All the apes had hair
upon theirs but the black men were entirely hairless, with very few
exceptions.
True, he had seen pictures in his books of men with great masses of
hair upon lip and cheek and chin, but, nevertheless, Tarzan was afraid.
Almost daily he whetted his keen knife and scraped and whittled at his
young beard to eradicate this degrading emblem of apehood.
And so he learned to shave—rudely and painfully, it is true—but,
nevertheless, effectively.
When he felt quite strong again, after his bloody battle with Terkoz,
Tarzan set off one morning towards Mbonga’s village. He was moving
carelessly along a winding jungle trail, instead of making his progress
through the trees, when suddenly he came face to face with a black
warrior.
The look of surprise on the savage face was almost comical, and before
Tarzan could unsling his bow the fellow had turned and fled down the
path crying out in alarm as though to others before him.
Tarzan took to the trees in pursuit, and in a few moments came in view
of the men desperately striving to escape.
There were three of them, and they were racing madly in single file
through the dense undergrowth.
Tarzan easily distanced them, nor did they see his silent passage above
their heads, nor note the crouching figure squatted upon a low branch
ahead of them beneath which the trail led them.
Tarzan let the first two pass beneath him, but as the third came
swiftly on, the quiet noose dropped about the black throat. A quick
jerk drew it taut.
There was an agonized scream from the victim, and his fellows turned to
see his struggling body rise as by magic slowly into the dense foliage
of the trees above.
With frightened shrieks they wheeled once more and plunged on in their
efforts to escape.
Tarzan dispatched his prisoner quickly and silently; removed the
weapons and ornaments, and—oh, the greatest joy of all—a handsome
deerskin breechcloth, which he quickly transferred to his own person.
Now indeed was he dressed as a man should be. None there was who could
now doubt his high origin. How he should have liked to have returned to
the tribe to parade before their envious gaze this wondrous finery.
Taking the body across his shoulder, he moved more slowly through the
trees toward the little palisaded village, for he again needed arrows.
As he approached quite close to the enclosure he saw an excited group
surrounding the two fugitives, who, trembling with fright and
exhaustion, were scarce able to recount the uncanny details of their
adventure.
Mirando, they said, who had been ahead of them a short distance, had
suddenly come screaming toward them, crying that a terrible white and
naked warrior was pursuing him. The three of them had hurried toward
the village as rapidly as their legs would carry them.
Again Mirando’s shrill cry of mortal terror had caused them to look
back, and there they had seen the most horrible sight—their companion’s
body flying upwards into the trees, his arms and legs beating the air
and his tongue protruding from his open mouth. No other sound did he
utter nor was there any creature in sight about him.
The villagers were worked up into a state of fear bordering on panic,
but wise old Mbonga affected to feel considerable skepticism regarding
the tale, and attributed the whole fabrication to their fright in the
face of some real danger.
“You tell us this great story,” he said, “because you do not dare to
speak the truth. You do not dare admit that when the lion sprang upon
Mirando you ran away and left him. You are cowards.”
Scarcely had Mbonga ceased speaking when a great crashing of branches
in the trees above them caused the blacks to look up in renewed terror.
The sight that met their eyes made even wise old Mbonga shudder, for
there, turning and twisting in the air, came the dead body of Mirando,
to sprawl with a sickening reverberation upon the ground at their feet.
With one accord the blacks took to their heels; nor did they stop until
the last of them was lost in the dense shadows of the surrounding
jungle.
Again Tarzan came down into the village and renewed his supply of
arrows and ate of the offering of food which the blacks had made to
appease his wrath.
Before he left he carried the body of Mirando to the gate of the
village, and propped it up against the palisade in such a way that the
dead face seemed to be peering around the edge of the gatepost down the
path which led to the jungle.
Then Tarzan returned, hunting, always hunting, to the cabin by the
beach.
It took a dozen attempts on the part of the thoroughly frightened
blacks to reenter their village, past the horrible, grinning face of
their dead fellow, and when they found the food and arrows gone they
knew, what they had only too well feared, that Mirando had seen the
evil spirit of the jungle.
That now seemed to them the logical explanation. Only those who saw
this terrible god of the jungle died; for was it not true that none
left alive in the village had ever seen him? Therefore, those who had
died at his hands must have seen him and paid the penalty with their
lives.
As long as they supplied him with arrows and food he would not harm
them unless they looked upon him, so it was ordered by Mbonga that in
addition to the food offering there should also be laid out an offering
of arrows for this Munan-go-Keewati, and this was done from then on.
If you ever chance to pass that far off African village you will still
see before a tiny thatched hut, built just without the village, a
little iron pot in which is a quantity of food, and beside it a quiver
of well-daubed arrows.
When Tarzan came in sight of the beach where stood his cabin, a strange
and unusual spectacle met his vision.