Tarzan of the Apes
When they had finished their breakfast Tarzan went to her bower and
recovered his knife. The girl had entirely forgotten it. She realized
that it was because she had forgotten the fear that prompted her to
accept it.
Motioning her to follow, Tarzan walked toward the trees at the edge of
the arena, and taking her in one strong arm swung to the branches
above.
The girl knew that he was taking her back to her people, and she could
not understand the sudden feeling of loneliness and sorrow which crept
over her.
For hours they swung slowly along.
Tarzan of the Apes did not hurry. He tried to draw out the sweet
pleasure of that journey with those dear arms about his neck as long as
possible, and so he went far south of the direct route to the beach.
Several times they halted for brief rests, which Tarzan did not need,
and at noon they stopped for an hour at a little brook, where they
quenched their thirst, and ate.
So it was nearly sunset when they came to the clearing, and Tarzan,
dropping to the ground beside a great tree, parted the tall jungle
grass and pointed out the little cabin to her.
She took him by the hand to lead him to it, that she might tell her
father that this man had saved her from death and worse than death,
that he had watched over her as carefully as a mother might have done.
But again the timidity of the wild thing in the face of human
habitation swept over Tarzan of the Apes. He drew back, shaking his
head.
The girl came close to him, looking up with pleading eyes. Somehow she
could not bear the thought of his going back into the terrible jungle
alone.
Still he shook his head, and finally he drew her to him very gently and
stooped to kiss her, but first he looked into her eyes and waited to
learn if she were pleased, or if she would repulse him.
Just an instant the girl hesitated, and then she realized the truth,
and throwing her arms about his neck she drew his face to hers and
kissed him—unashamed.
“I love you—I love you,” she murmured.
From far in the distance came the faint sound of many guns. Tarzan and
Jane raised their heads.
From the cabin came Mr. Philander and Esmeralda.
From where Tarzan and the girl stood they could not see the two vessels
lying at anchor in the harbor.
Tarzan pointed toward the sounds, touched his breast and pointed again.
She understood. He was going, and something told her that it was
because he thought her people were in danger.
Again he kissed her.
“Come back to me,” she whispered. “I shall wait for you—always.”
He was gone—and Jane turned to walk across the clearing to the cabin.
Mr. Philander was the first to see her. It was dusk and Mr. Philander
was very near sighted.
“Quickly, Esmeralda!” he cried. “Let us seek safety within; it is a
lioness. Bless me!”
Esmeralda did not bother to verify Mr. Philander’s vision. His tone was
enough. She was within the cabin and had slammed and bolted the door
before he had finished pronouncing her name. The “Bless me” was
startled out of Mr. Philander by the discovery that Esmeralda, in the
exuberance of her haste, had fastened him upon the same side of the
door as was the close-approaching lioness.
He beat furiously upon the heavy portal.
“Esmeralda! Esmeralda!” he shrieked. “Let me in. I am being devoured by
a lion.”
Esmeralda thought that the noise upon the door was made by the lioness
in her attempts to pursue her, so, after her custom, she fainted.
Mr. Philander cast a frightened glance behind him.
Horrors! The thing was quite close now. He tried to scramble up the
side of the cabin, and succeeded in catching a fleeting hold upon the
thatched roof.
For a moment he hung there, clawing with his feet like a cat on a
clothesline, but presently a piece of the thatch came away, and Mr.
Philander, preceding it, was precipitated upon his back.
At the instant he fell a remarkable item of natural history leaped to
his mind. If one feigns death lions and lionesses are supposed to
ignore one, according to Mr. Philander’s faulty memory.
So Mr. Philander lay as he had fallen, frozen into the horrid semblance
of death. As his arms and legs had been extended stiffly upward as he
came to earth upon his back the attitude of death was anything but
impressive.
Jane had been watching his antics in mild-eyed surprise. Now she
laughed—a little choking gurgle of a laugh; but it was enough. Mr.
Philander rolled over upon his side and peered about. At length he
discovered her.
“Jane!” he cried. “Jane Porter. Bless me!”
He scrambled to his feet and rushed toward her. He could not believe
that it was she, and alive.
“Bless me!” Where did you come from? Where in the world have you been?
How—”
“Mercy, Mr. Philander,” interrupted the girl, “I can never remember so
many questions.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Philander. “Bless me! I am so filled with
surprise and exuberant delight at seeing you safe and well again that I
scarcely know what I am saying, really. But come, tell me all that has
happened to you.”
CHAPTER XXI.
The Village of Torture
As the little expedition of sailors toiled through the dense jungle
searching for signs of Jane Porter, the futility of their venture
became more and more apparent, but the grief of the old man and the
hopeless eyes of the young Englishman prevented the kind hearted
D’Arnot from turning back.
He thought that there might be a bare possibility of finding her body,
or the remains of it, for he was positive that she had been devoured by
some beast of prey. He deployed his men into a skirmish line from the
point where Esmeralda had been found, and in this extended formation
they pushed their way, sweating and panting, through the tangled vines
and creepers. It was slow work. Noon found them but a few miles inland.
They halted for a brief rest then, and after pushing on for a short
distance further one of the men discovered a well-marked trail.
It was an old elephant track, and D’Arnot after consulting with
Professor Porter and Clayton decided to follow it.
The path wound through the jungle in a northeasterly direction, and
along it the column moved in single file.
Lieutenant D’Arnot was in the lead and moving at a quick pace, for the
trail was comparatively open. Immediately behind him came Professor
Porter, but as he could not keep pace with the younger man D’Arnot was
a hundred yards in advance when suddenly a half dozen black warriors
arose about him.
D’Arnot gave a warning shout to his column as the blacks closed on him,
but before he could draw his revolver he had been pinioned and dragged
into the jungle.
His cry had alarmed the sailors and a dozen of them sprang forward past
Professor Porter, running up the trail to their officer’s aid.
They did not know the cause of his outcry, only that it was a warning
of danger ahead. They had rushed past the spot where D’Arnot had been
seized when a spear hurled from the jungle transfixed one of the men,
and then a volley of arrows fell among them.
Raising their rifles they fired into the underbrush in the direction
from which the missiles had come.
By this time the balance of the party had come up, and volley after
volley was fired toward the concealed foe. It was these shots that
Tarzan and Jane Porter had heard.
Lieutenant Charpentier, who had been bringing up the rear of the
column, now came running to the scene, and on hearing the details of
the ambush ordered the men to follow him, and plunged into the tangled
vegetation.
In an instant they were in a hand-to-hand fight with some fifty black
warriors of Mbonga’s village. Arrows and bullets flew thick and fast.
Queer African knives and French gun butts mingled for a moment in
savage and bloody duels, but soon the natives fled into the jungle,
leaving the Frenchmen to count their losses.
Four of the twenty were dead, a dozen others were wounded, and
Lieutenant D’Arnot was missing. Night was falling rapidly, and their
predicament was rendered doubly worse when they could not even find the
elephant trail which they had been following.
There was but one thing to do, make camp where they were until
daylight. Lieutenant Charpentier ordered a clearing made and a circular
abatis of underbrush constructed about the camp.
This work was not completed until long after dark, the men building a
huge fire in the center of the clearing to give them light to work by.
When all was safe as possible against attack of wild beasts and savage
men, Lieutenant Charpentier placed sentries about the little camp and
the tired and hungry men threw themselves upon the ground to sleep.
The groans of the wounded, mingled with the roaring and growling of the
great beasts which the noise and firelight had attracted, kept sleep,
except in its most fitful form, from the tired eyes. It was a sad and
hungry party that lay through the long night praying for dawn.
The blacks who had seized D’Arnot had not waited to participate in the
fight which followed, but instead had dragged their prisoner a little
way through the jungle and then struck the trail further on beyond the
scene of the fighting in which their fellows were engaged.
They hurried him along, the sounds of battle growing fainter and
fainter as they drew away from the contestants until there suddenly
broke upon D’Arnot’s vision a good-sized clearing at one end of which
stood a thatched and palisaded village.
It was now dusk, but the watchers at the gate saw the approaching trio
and distinguished one as a prisoner ere they reached the portals.
A cry went up within the palisade. A great throng of women and children
rushed out to meet the party.
And then began for the French officer the most terrifying experience
which man can encounter upon earth—the reception of a white prisoner
into a village of African cannibals.
To add to the fiendishness of their cruel savagery was the poignant
memory of still crueler barbarities practiced upon them and theirs by
the white officers of that arch hypocrite, Leopold II of Belgium,
because of whose atrocities they had fled the Congo Free State—a
pitiful remnant of what once had been a mighty tribe.
They fell upon D’Arnot tooth and nail, beating him with sticks and
stones and tearing at him with claw-like hands. Every vestige of
clothing was torn from him, and the merciless blows fell upon his bare
and quivering flesh. But not once did the Frenchman cry out in pain. He
breathed a silent prayer that he be quickly delivered from his torture.
But the death he prayed for was not to be so easily had. Soon the
warriors beat the women away from their prisoner. He was to be saved
for nobler sport than this, and the first wave of their passion having
subsided they contented themselves with crying out taunts and insults
and spitting upon him.
Presently they reached the center of the village. There D’Arnot was
bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever been
released.
A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and
water, while others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast
were to be boiled while the balance would be slowly dried in strips for
future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many
prisoners. The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the
warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the white men,
so that it was quite late when all were in the village, and the dance
of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.
Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, D’Arnot watched from beneath
half-closed lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrid
nightmare from which he must soon awake.
The bestial faces, daubed with color—the huge mouths and flabby hanging