Tarzan of the Apes
lips—the yellow teeth, sharp filed—the rolling, demon eyes—the shining
naked bodies—the cruel spears. Surely no such creatures really existed
upon earth—he must indeed be dreaming.
The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth
and touched his arm. The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling
blood assured him of the awful reality of his hopeless position.
Another spear and then another touched him. He closed his eyes and held
his teeth firm set—he would not cry out.
He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an
officer and a gentleman died.
Tarzan of the Apes needed no interpreter to translate the story of
those distant shots. With Jane Porter’s kisses still warm upon his lips
he was swinging with incredible rapidity through the forest trees
straight toward the village of Mbonga.
He was not interested in the location of the encounter, for he judged
that that would soon be over. Those who were killed he could not aid,
those who escaped would not need his assistance.
It was to those who had neither been killed or escaped that he
hastened. And he knew that he would find them by the great post in the
center of Mbonga village.
Many times had Tarzan seen Mbonga’s black raiding parties return from
the northward with prisoners, and always were the same scenes enacted
about that grim stake, beneath the flaring light of many fires.
He knew, too, that they seldom lost much time before consummating the
fiendish purpose of their captures. He doubted that he would arrive in
time to do more than avenge.
On he sped. Night had fallen and he traveled high along the upper
terrace where the gorgeous tropic moon lighted the dizzy pathway
through the gently undulating branches of the tree tops.
Presently he caught the reflection of a distant blaze. It lay to the
right of his path. It must be the light from the camp fire the two men
had built before they were attacked—Tarzan knew nothing of the presence
of the sailors.
So sure was Tarzan of his jungle knowledge that he did not turn from
his course, but passed the glare at a distance of a half mile. It was
the camp fire of the Frenchmen.
In a few minutes more Tarzan swung into the trees above Mbonga’s
village. Ah, he was not quite too late! Or, was he? He could not tell.
The figure at the stake was very still, yet the black warriors were but
pricking it.
Tarzan knew their customs. The death blow had not been struck. He could
tell almost to a minute how far the dance had gone.
In another instant Mbonga’s knife would sever one of the victim’s
ears—that would mark the beginning of the end, for very shortly after
only a writhing mass of mutilated flesh would remain.
There would still be life in it, but death then would be the only
charity it craved.
The stake stood forty feet from the nearest tree. Tarzan coiled his
rope. Then there rose suddenly above the fiendish cries of the dancing
demons the awful challenge of the ape-man.
The dancers halted as though turned to stone.
The rope sped with singing whir high above the heads of the blacks. It
was quite invisible in the flaring lights of the camp fires.
D’Arnot opened his eyes. A huge black, standing directly before him,
lunged backward as though felled by an invisible hand.
Struggling and shrieking, his body, rolling from side to side, moved
quickly toward the shadows beneath the trees.
The blacks, their eyes protruding in horror, watched spellbound.
Once beneath the trees, the body rose straight into the air, and as it
disappeared into the foliage above, the terrified negroes, screaming
with fright, broke into a mad race for the village gate.
D’Arnot was left alone.
He was a brave man, but he had felt the short hairs bristle upon the
nape of his neck when that uncanny cry rose upon the air.
As the writhing body of the black soared, as though by unearthly power,
into the dense foliage of the forest, D’Arnot felt an icy shiver run
along his spine, as though death had risen from a dark grave and laid a
cold and clammy finger on his flesh.
As D’Arnot watched the spot where the body had entered the tree he
heard the sounds of movement there.
The branches swayed as though under the weight of a man’s body—there
was a crash and the black came sprawling to earth again,—to lie very
quietly where he had fallen.
Immediately after him came a white body, but this one alighted erect.
D’Arnot saw a clean-limbed young giant emerge from the shadows into the
firelight and come quickly toward him.
What could it mean? Who could it be? Some new creature of torture and
destruction, doubtless.
D’Arnot waited. His eyes never left the face of the advancing man. Nor
did the other’s frank, clear eyes waver beneath D’Arnot’s fixed gaze.
D’Arnot was reassured, but still without much hope, though he felt that
that face could not mask a cruel heart.
Without a word Tarzan of the Apes cut the bonds which held the
Frenchman. Weak from suffering and loss of blood, he would have fallen
but for the strong arm that caught him.
He felt himself lifted from the ground. There was a sensation as of
flying, and then he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Search Party
When dawn broke upon the little camp of Frenchmen in the heart of the
jungle it found a sad and disheartened group.
As soon as it was light enough to see their surroundings Lieutenant
Charpentier sent men in groups of three in several directions to locate
the trail, and in ten minutes it was found and the expedition was
hurrying back toward the beach.
It was slow work, for they bore the bodies of six dead men, two more
having succumbed during the night, and several of those who were
wounded required support to move even very slowly.
Charpentier had decided to return to camp for reinforcements, and then
make an attempt to track down the natives and rescue D’Arnot.
It was late in the afternoon when the exhausted men reached the
clearing by the beach, but for two of them the return brought so great
a happiness that all their suffering and heartbreaking grief was
forgotten on the instant.
As the little party emerged from the jungle the first person that
Professor Porter and Cecil Clayton saw was Jane, standing by the cabin
door.
With a little cry of joy and relief she ran forward to greet them,
throwing her arms about her father’s neck and bursting into tears for
the first time since they had been cast upon this hideous and
adventurous shore.
Professor Porter strove manfully to suppress his own emotions, but the
strain upon his nerves and weakened vitality were too much for him, and
at length, burying his old face in the girl’s shoulder, he sobbed
quietly like a tired child.
Jane led him toward the cabin, and the Frenchmen turned toward the
beach from which several of their fellows were advancing to meet them.
Clayton, wishing to leave father and daughter alone, joined the sailors
and remained talking with the officers until their boat pulled away
toward the cruiser whither Lieutenant Charpentier was bound to report
the unhappy outcome of his adventure.
Then Clayton turned back slowly toward the cabin. His heart was filled
with happiness. The woman he loved was safe.
He wondered by what manner of miracle she had been spared. To see her
alive seemed almost unbelievable.
As he approached the cabin he saw Jane coming out. When she saw him she
hurried forward to meet him.
“Jane!” he cried, “God has been good to us, indeed. Tell me how you
escaped—what form Providence took to save you for—us.”
He had never before called her by her given name. Forty-eight hours
before it would have suffused Jane with a soft glow of pleasure to have
heard that name from Clayton’s lips—now it frightened her.
“Mr. Clayton,” she said quietly, extending her hand, “first let me
thank you for your chivalrous loyalty to my dear father. He has told me
how noble and self-sacrificing you have been. How can we repay you!”
Clayton noticed that she did not return his familiar salutation, but he
felt no misgivings on that score. She had been through so much. This
was no time to force his love upon her, he quickly realized.
“I am already repaid,” he said. “Just to see you and Professor Porter
both safe, well, and together again. I do not think that I could much
longer have endured the pathos of his quiet and uncomplaining grief.
“It was the saddest experience of my life, Miss Porter; and then, added
to it, there was my own grief—the greatest I have ever known. But his
was so hopeless—his was pitiful. It taught me that no love, not even
that of a man for his wife may be so deep and terrible and
self-sacrificing as the love of a father for his daughter.”
The girl bowed her head. There was a question she wanted to ask, but it
seemed almost sacrilegious in the face of the love of these two men and
the terrible suffering they had endured while she sat laughing and
happy beside a godlike creature of the forest, eating delicious fruits
and looking with eyes of love into answering eyes.
But love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger, so
she asked her question.
“Where is the forest man who went to rescue you? Why did he not
return?”
“I do not understand,” said Clayton. “Whom do you mean?”
“He who has saved each of us—who saved me from the gorilla.”
“Oh,” cried Clayton, in surprise. “It was he who rescued you? You have
not told me anything of your adventure, you know.”
“But the wood man,” she urged. “Have you not seen him? When we heard
the shots in the jungle, very faint and far away, he left me. We had
just reached the clearing, and he hurried off in the direction of the
fighting. I know he went to aid you.”
Her tone was almost pleading—her manner tense with suppressed emotion.
Clayton could not but notice it, and he wondered, vaguely, why she was
so deeply moved—so anxious to know the whereabouts of this strange
creature.
Yet a feeling of apprehension of some impending sorrow haunted him, and
in his breast, unknown to himself, was implanted the first germ of
jealousy and suspicion of the ape-man, to whom he owed his life.
“We did not see him,” he replied quietly. “He did not join us.” And
then after a moment of thoughtful pause: “Possibly he joined his own
tribe—the men who attacked us.” He did not know why he had said it, for
he did not believe it.
The girl looked at him wide eyed for a moment.
“No!” she exclaimed vehemently, much too vehemently he thought. “It
could not be. They were savages.”
Clayton looked puzzled.
“He is a strange, half-savage creature of the jungle, Miss Porter. We
know nothing of him. He neither speaks nor understands any European
tongue—and his ornaments and weapons are those of the West Coast
savages.”
Clayton was speaking rapidly.
“There are no other human beings than savages within hundreds of miles,
Miss Porter. He must belong to the tribes which attacked us, or to some
other equally savage—he may even be a cannibal.”
Jane blanched.
“I will not believe it,” she half whispered. “It is not true. You shall
see,” she said, addressing Clayton, “that he will come back and that he
will prove that you are wrong. You do not know him as I do. I tell you
that he is a gentleman.”
Clayton was a generous and chivalrous man, but something in the girl’s
breathless defense of the forest man stirred him to unreasoning
jealousy, so that for the instant he forgot all that they owed to this
wild demi-god, and he answered her with a half sneer upon his lip.
“Possibly you are right, Miss Porter,” he said, “but I do not think
that any of us need worry about our carrion-eating acquaintance. The
chances are that he is some half-demented castaway who will forget us