Tarzan of the Apes
“Who could it have been?” whispered Jane Porter, and the young man
turned to see her standing, wide-eyed and wondering, close beside him.
“I dare say Tarzan of the Apes is watching us all right,” he answered,
in a dubious tone. “I wonder, now, who that spear was intended for. If
for Snipes, then our ape friend is a friend indeed.
“By jove, where are your father and Mr. Philander? There’s someone or
something in that jungle, and it’s armed, whatever it is. Ho!
Professor! Mr. Philander!” young Clayton shouted. There was no
response.
“What’s to be done, Miss Porter?” continued the young man, his face
clouded by a frown of worry and indecision.
“I can’t leave you here alone with these cutthroats, and you certainly
can’t venture into the jungle with me; yet someone must go in search of
your father. He is more than apt to wandering off aimlessly, regardless
of danger or direction, and Mr. Philander is only a trifle less
impractical than he. You will pardon my bluntness, but our lives are
all in jeopardy here, and when we get your father back something must
be done to impress upon him the dangers to which he exposes you as well
as himself by his absent-mindedness.”
“I quite agree with you,” replied the girl, “and I am not offended at
all. Dear old papa would sacrifice his life for me without an instant’s
hesitation, provided one could keep his mind on so frivolous a matter
for an entire instant. There is only one way to keep him in safety, and
that is to chain him to a tree. The poor dear is SO impractical.”
“I have it!” suddenly exclaimed Clayton. “You can use a revolver, can’t
you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I have one. With it you and Esmeralda will be comparatively safe in
this cabin while I am searching for your father and Mr. Philander.
Come, call the woman and I will hurry on. They can’t have gone far.”
Jane did as he suggested and when he saw the door close safely behind
them Clayton turned toward the jungle.
Some of the sailors were drawing the spear from their wounded comrade
and, as Clayton approached, he asked if he could borrow a revolver from
one of them while he searched the jungle for the professor.
The rat-faced one, finding he was not dead, had regained his composure,
and with a volley of oaths directed at Clayton refused in the name of
his fellows to allow the young man any firearms.
This man, Snipes, had assumed the role of chief since he had killed
their former leader, and so little time had elapsed that none of his
companions had as yet questioned his authority.
Clayton’s only response was a shrug of the shoulders, but as he left
them he picked up the spear which had transfixed Snipes, and thus
primitively armed, the son of the then Lord Greystoke strode into the
dense jungle.
Every few moments he called aloud the names of the wanderers. The
watchers in the cabin by the beach heard the sound of his voice growing
ever fainter and fainter, until at last it was swallowed up by the
myriad noises of the primeval wood.
When Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his assistant, Samuel T.
Philander, after much insistence on the part of the latter, had finally
turned their steps toward camp, they were as completely lost in the
wild and tangled labyrinth of the matted jungle as two human beings
well could be, though they did not know it.
It was by the merest caprice of fortune that they headed toward the
west coast of Africa, instead of toward Zanzibar on the opposite side
of the dark continent.
When in a short time they reached the beach, only to find no camp in
sight, Philander was positive that they were north of their proper
destination, while, as a matter of fact they were about two hundred
yards south of it.
It never occurred to either of these impractical theorists to call
aloud on the chance of attracting their friends’ attention. Instead,
with all the assurance that deductive reasoning from a wrong premise
induces in one, Mr. Samuel T. Philander grasped Professor Archimedes Q.
Porter firmly by the arm and hurried the weakly protesting old
gentleman off in the direction of Cape Town, fifteen hundred miles to
the south.
When Jane and Esmeralda found themselves safely behind the cabin door
the Negress’s first thought was to barricade the portal from the
inside. With this idea in mind she turned to search for some means of
putting it into execution; but her first view of the interior of the
cabin brought a shriek of terror to her lips, and like a frightened
child the huge woman ran to bury her face on her mistress’ shoulder.
Jane, turning at the cry, saw the cause of it lying prone upon the
floor before them—the whitened skeleton of a man. A further glance
revealed a second skeleton upon the bed.
“What horrible place are we in?” murmured the awe-struck girl. But
there was no panic in her fright.
At last, disengaging herself from the frantic clutch of the still
shrieking Esmeralda, Jane crossed the room to look into the little
cradle, knowing what she should see there even before the tiny skeleton
disclosed itself in all its pitiful and pathetic frailty.
What an awful tragedy these poor mute bones proclaimed! The girl
shuddered at thought of the eventualities which might lie before
herself and her friends in this ill-fated cabin, the haunt of
mysterious, perhaps hostile, beings.
Quickly, with an impatient stamp of her little foot, she endeavored to
shake off the gloomy forebodings, and turning to Esmeralda bade her
cease her wailing.
“Stop, Esmeralda, stop it this minute!” she cried. “You are only making
it worse.”
She ended lamely, a little quiver in her own voice as she thought of
the three men, upon whom she depended for protection, wandering in the
depth of that awful forest.
Soon the girl found that the door was equipped with a heavy wooden bar
upon the inside, and after several efforts the combined strength of the
two enabled them to slip it into place, the first time in twenty years.
Then they sat down upon a bench with their arms about one another, and
waited.
CHAPTER XIV.
At the Mercy of the Jungle
After Clayton had plunged into the jungle, the sailors—mutineers of the
_Arrow_—fell into a discussion of their next step; but on one point all
were agreed—that they should hasten to put off to the anchored _Arrow_,
where they could at least be safe from the spears of their unseen foe.
And so, while Jane Porter and Esmeralda were barricading themselves
within the cabin, the cowardly crew of cutthroats were pulling rapidly
for their ship in the two boats that had brought them ashore.
So much had Tarzan seen that day that his head was in a whirl of
wonder. But the most wonderful sight of all, to him, was the face of
the beautiful white girl.
Here at last was one of his own kind; of that he was positive. And the
young man and the two old men; they, too, were much as he had pictured
his own people to be.
But doubtless they were as ferocious and cruel as other men he had
seen. The fact that they alone of all the party were unarmed might
account for the fact that they had killed no one. They might be very
different if provided with weapons.
Tarzan had seen the young man pick up the fallen revolver of the
wounded Snipes and hide it away in his breast; and he had also seen him
slip it cautiously to the girl as she entered the cabin door.
He did not understand anything of the motives behind all that he had
seen; but, somehow, intuitively he liked the young man and the two old
men, and for the girl he had a strange longing which he scarcely
understood. As for the big black woman, she was evidently connected in
some way to the girl, and so he liked her, also.
For the sailors, and especially Snipes, he had developed a great
hatred. He knew by their threatening gestures and by the expression
upon their evil faces that they were enemies of the others of the
party, and so he decided to watch closely.
Tarzan wondered why the men had gone into the jungle, nor did it ever
occur to him that one could become lost in that maze of undergrowth
which to him was as simple as is the main street of your own home town
to you.
When he saw the sailors row away toward the ship, and knew that the
girl and her companion were safe in his cabin, Tarzan decided to follow
the young man into the jungle and learn what his errand might be. He
swung off rapidly in the direction taken by Clayton, and in a short
time heard faintly in the distance the now only occasional calls of the
Englishman to his friends.
Presently Tarzan came up with the white man, who, almost fagged, was
leaning against a tree wiping the perspiration from his forehead. The
ape-man, hiding safe behind a screen of foliage, sat watching this new
specimen of his own race intently.
At intervals Clayton called aloud and finally it came to Tarzan that he
was searching for the old man.
Tarzan was on the point of going off to look for them himself, when he
caught the yellow glint of a sleek hide moving cautiously through the
jungle toward Clayton.
It was Sheeta, the leopard. Now, Tarzan heard the soft bending of
grasses and wondered why the young white man was not warned. Could it
be he had failed to note the loud warning? Never before had Tarzan
known Sheeta to be so clumsy.
No, the white man did not hear. Sheeta was crouching for the spring,
and then, shrill and horrible, there rose from the stillness of the
jungle the awful cry of the challenging ape, and Sheeta turned,
crashing into the underbrush.
Clayton came to his feet with a start. His blood ran cold. Never in all
his life had so fearful a sound smote upon his ears. He was no coward;
but if ever man felt the icy fingers of fear upon his heart, William
Cecil Clayton, eldest son of Lord Greystoke of England, did that day in
the fastness of the African jungle.
The noise of some great body crashing through the underbrush so close
beside him, and the sound of that bloodcurdling shriek from above,
tested Clayton’s courage to the limit; but he could not know that it
was to that very voice he owed his life, nor that the creature who
hurled it forth was his own cousin—the real Lord Greystoke.
The afternoon was drawing to a close, and Clayton, disheartened and
discouraged, was in a terrible quandary as to the proper course to
pursue; whether to keep on in search of Professor Porter, at the almost
certain risk of his own death in the jungle by night, or to return to
the cabin where he might at least serve to protect Jane from the perils
which confronted her on all sides.
He did not wish to return to camp without her father; still more, he
shrank from the thought of leaving her alone and unprotected in the
hands of the mutineers of the _Arrow_, or to the hundred unknown
dangers of the jungle.
Possibly, too, he thought, the professor and Philander might have
returned to camp. Yes, that was more than likely. At least he would
return and see, before he continued what seemed to be a most fruitless
quest. And so he started, stumbling back through the thick and matted
underbrush in the direction that he thought the cabin lay.
To Tarzan’s surprise the young man was heading further into the jungle
in the general direction of Mbonga’s village, and the shrewd young
ape-man was convinced that he was lost.
To Tarzan this was scarcely comprehensible; his judgment told him that
no man would venture toward the village of the cruel blacks armed only
with a spear which, from the awkward way in which he carried it, was
evidently an unaccustomed weapon to this white man. Nor was he
following the trail of the old men. That, they had crossed and left
long since, though it had been fresh and plain before Tarzan’s eyes.
Tarzan was perplexed. The fierce jungle would make easy prey of this