Tarzan of the Apes
islands, Tarzan asked him to point out the spot where they now were.
D’Arnot did so.
“Now point out America,” said Tarzan.
And as D’Arnot placed his finger upon North America, Tarzan smiled and
laid his palm upon the page, spanning the great ocean that lay between
the two continents.
“You see it is not so very far,” he said; “scarce the width of my
hand.”
D’Arnot laughed. How could he make the man understand?
Then he took a pencil and made a tiny point upon the shore of Africa.
“This little mark,” he said, “is many times larger upon this map than
your cabin is upon the earth. Do you see now how very far it is?”
Tarzan thought for a long time.
“Do any white men live in Africa?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where are the nearest?”
D’Arnot pointed out a spot on the shore just north of them.
“So close?” asked Tarzan, in surprise.
“Yes,” said D’Arnot; “but it is not close.”
“Have they big boats to cross the ocean?”
“Yes.”
“We shall go there to-morrow,” announced Tarzan.
Again D’Arnot smiled and shook his head.
“It is too far. We should die long before we reached them.”
“Do you wish to stay here then forever?” asked Tarzan.
“No,” said D’Arnot.
“Then we shall start to-morrow. I do not like it here longer. I should
rather die than remain here.”
“Well,” answered D’Arnot, with a shrug, “I do not know, my friend, but
that I also would rather die than remain here. If you go, I shall go
with you.”
“It is settled then,” said Tarzan. “I shall start for America
to-morrow.”
“How will you get to America without money?” asked D’Arnot.
“What is money?” inquired Tarzan.
It took a long time to make him understand even imperfectly.
“How do men get money?” he asked at last.
“They work for it.”
“Very well. I will work for it, then.”
“No, my friend,” returned D’Arnot, “you need not worry about money, nor
need you work for it. I have enough money for two—enough for twenty.
Much more than is good for one man and you shall have all you need if
ever we reach civilization.”
So on the following day they started north along the shore. Each man
carrying a rifle and ammunition, beside bedding and some food and
cooking utensils.
The latter seemed to Tarzan a most useless encumbrance, so he threw his
away.
“But you must learn to eat cooked food, my friend,” remonstrated
D’Arnot. “No civilized men eat raw flesh.”
“There will be time enough when I reach civilization,” said Tarzan. “I
do not like the things and they only spoil the taste of good meat.”
For a month they traveled north. Sometimes finding food in plenty and
again going hungry for days.
They saw no signs of natives nor were they molested by wild beasts.
Their journey was a miracle of ease.
Tarzan asked questions and learned rapidly. D’Arnot taught him many of
the refinements of civilization—even to the use of knife and fork; but
sometimes Tarzan would drop them in disgust and grasp his food in his
strong brown hands, tearing it with his molars like a wild beast.
Then D’Arnot would expostulate with him, saying:
“You must not eat like a brute, Tarzan, while I am trying to make a
gentleman of you. _Mon Dieu!_ Gentlemen do not thus—it is terrible.”
Tarzan would grin sheepishly and pick up his knife and fork again, but
at heart he hated them.
On the journey he told D’Arnot about the great chest he had seen the
sailors bury; of how he had dug it up and carried it to the gathering
place of the apes and buried it there.
“It must be the treasure chest of Professor Porter,” said D’Arnot. “It
is too bad, but of course you did not know.”
Then Tarzan recalled the letter written by Jane to her friend—the one
he had stolen when they first came to his cabin, and now he knew what
was in the chest and what it meant to Jane.
“To-morrow we shall go back after it,” he announced to D’Arnot.
“Go back?” exclaimed D’Arnot. “But, my dear fellow, we have now been
three weeks upon the march. It would require three more to return to
the treasure, and then, with that enormous weight which required, you
say, four sailors to carry, it would be months before we had again
reached this spot.”
“It must be done, my friend,” insisted Tarzan. “You may go on toward
civilization, and I will return for the treasure. I can go very much
faster alone.”
“I have a better plan, Tarzan,” exclaimed D’Arnot. “We shall go on
together to the nearest settlement, and there we will charter a boat
and sail back down the coast for the treasure and so transport it
easily. That will be safer and quicker and also not require us to be
separated. What do you think of that plan?”
“Very well,” said Tarzan. “The treasure will be there whenever we go
for it; and while I could fetch it now, and catch up with you in a moon
or two, I shall feel safer for you to know that you are not alone on
the trail. When I see how helpless you are, D’Arnot, I often wonder how
the human race has escaped annihilation all these ages which you tell
me about. Why, Sabor, single handed, could exterminate a thousand of
you.”
D’Arnot laughed.
“You will think more highly of your genus when you have seen its armies
and navies, its great cities, and its mighty engineering works. Then
you will realize that it is mind, and not muscle, that makes the human
animal greater than the mighty beasts of your jungle.
“Alone and unarmed, a single man is no match for any of the larger
beasts; but if ten men were together, they would combine their wits and
their muscles against their savage enemies, while the beasts, being
unable to reason, would never think of combining against the men.
Otherwise, Tarzan of the Apes, how long would you have lasted in the
savage wilderness?”
“You are right, D’Arnot,” replied Tarzan, “for if Kerchak had come to
Tublat’s aid that night at the Dum-Dum, there would have been an end of
me. But Kerchak could never think far enough ahead to take advantage of
any such opportunity. Even Kala, my mother, could never plan ahead. She
simply ate what she needed when she needed it, and if the supply was
very scarce, even though she found plenty for several meals, she would
never gather any ahead.
“I remember that she used to think it very silly of me to burden myself
with extra food upon the march, though she was quite glad to eat it
with me, if the way chanced to be barren of sustenance.”
“Then you knew your mother, Tarzan?” asked D’Arnot, in surprise.
“Yes. She was a great, fine ape, larger than I, and weighing twice as
much.”
“And your father?” asked D’Arnot.
“I did not know him. Kala told me he was a white ape, and hairless like
myself. I know now that he must have been a white man.”
D’Arnot looked long and earnestly at his companion.
“Tarzan,” he said at length, “it is impossible that the ape, Kala, was
your mother. If such a thing can be, which I doubt, you would have
inherited some of the characteristics of the ape, but you have not—you
are pure man, and, I should say, the offspring of highly bred and
intelligent parents. Have you not the slightest clue to your past?”
“Not the slightest,” replied Tarzan.
“No writings in the cabin that might have told something of the lives
of its original inmates?”
“I have read everything that was in the cabin with the exception of one
book which I know now to be written in a language other than English.
Possibly you can read it.”
Tarzan fished the little black diary from the bottom of his quiver, and
handed it to his companion.
D’Arnot glanced at the title page.
“It is the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, an English nobleman,
and it is written in French,” he said.
Then he proceeded to read the diary that had been written over twenty
years before, and which recorded the details of the story which we
already know—the story of adventure, hardships and sorrow of John
Clayton and his wife Alice, from the day they left England until an
hour before he was struck down by Kerchak.
D’Arnot read aloud. At times his voice broke, and he was forced to stop
reading for the pitiful hopelessness that spoke between the lines.
Occasionally he glanced at Tarzan; but the ape-man sat upon his
haunches, like a carven image, his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Only when the little babe was mentioned did the tone of the diary alter
from the habitual note of despair which had crept into it by degrees
after the first two months upon the shore.
Then the passages were tinged with a subdued happiness that was even
sadder than the rest.
One entry showed an almost hopeful spirit.
To-day our little boy is six months old. He is sitting in Alice’s lap
beside the table where I am writing—a happy, healthy, perfect child.
Somehow, even against all reason, I seem to see him a grown man,
taking his father’s place in the world—the second John Clayton—and
bringing added honors to the house of Greystoke.
There—as though to give my prophecy the weight of his
endorsement—he has grabbed my pen in his chubby fists and with his
inkbegrimed little fingers has placed the seal of his tiny finger
prints upon the page.
And there, on the margin of the page, were the partially blurred
imprints of four wee fingers and the outer half of the thumb.
When D’Arnot had finished the diary the two men sat in silence for some
minutes.
“Well! Tarzan of the Apes, what think you?” asked D’Arnot. “Does not
this little book clear up the mystery of your parentage?
“Why, man, you are Lord Greystoke.”
“The book speaks of but one child,” he replied. “Its little skeleton
lay in the crib, where it died crying for nourishment, from the first
time I entered the cabin until Professor Porter’s party buried it, with
its father and mother, beside the cabin.
“No, that was the babe the book speaks of—and the mystery of my origin
is deeper than before, for I have thought much of late of the
possibility of that cabin having been my birthplace. I am afraid that
Kala spoke the truth,” he concluded sadly.
D’Arnot shook his head. He was unconvinced, and in his mind had sprung
the determination to prove the correctness of his theory, for he had
discovered the key which alone could unlock the mystery, or consign it
forever to the realms of the unfathomable.
A week later the two men came suddenly upon a clearing in the forest.
In the distance were several buildings surrounded by a strong palisade.
Between them and the enclosure stretched a cultivated field in which a
number of negroes were working.
The two halted at the edge of the jungle.
Tarzan fitted his bow with a poisoned arrow, but D’Arnot placed a hand
upon his arm.
“What would you do, Tarzan?” he asked.
“They will try to kill us if they see us,” replied Tarzan. “I prefer to
be the killer.”
“Maybe they are friends,” suggested D’Arnot.
“They are black,” was Tarzan’s only reply.
And again he drew back his shaft.
“You must not, Tarzan!” cried D’Arnot. “White men do not kill wantonly.
_Mon Dieu!_ but you have much to learn.
“I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild man, when I take you to
Paris. I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the
guillotine.”
Tarzan lowered his bow and smiled.
“I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle,
yet not kill them here. Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon
us, I should say, then, I presume: Good morning, Monsieur Numa, how is
Madame Numa; eh?”
“Wait until the blacks spring upon you,” replied D’Arnot, “then you may
kill them. Do not assume that men are your enemies until they prove
it.”
“Come,” said Tarzan, “let us go and present ourselves to be killed,”
and he started straight across the field, his head high held and the
tropical sun beating upon his smooth, brown skin.