Tarzan of the Apes
nostrils of his companion. Such a generous nose! Why it spread half
across his face! It certainly must be fine to be so handsome, thought
poor little Tarzan.
But when he saw his own eyes; ah, that was the final blow—a brown spot,
a gray circle and then blank whiteness! Frightful! not even the snakes
had such hideous eyes as he.
So intent was he upon this personal appraisement of his features that
he did not hear the parting of the tall grass behind him as a great
body pushed itself stealthily through the jungle; nor did his
companion, the ape, hear either, for he was drinking and the noise of
his sucking lips and gurgles of satisfaction drowned the quiet approach
of the intruder.
Not thirty paces behind the two she crouched—Sabor, the huge
lioness—lashing her tail. Cautiously she moved a great padded paw
forward, noiselessly placing it before she lifted the next. Thus she
advanced; her belly low, almost touching the surface of the ground—a
great cat preparing to spring upon its prey.
Now she was within ten feet of the two unsuspecting little
playfellows—carefully she drew her hind feet well up beneath her body,
the great muscles rolling under the beautiful skin.
So low she was crouching now that she seemed flattened to the earth
except for the upward bend of the glossy back as it gathered for the
spring.
No longer the tail lashed—quiet and straight behind her it lay.
An instant she paused thus, as though turned to stone, and then, with
an awful scream, she sprang.
Sabor, the lioness, was a wise hunter. To one less wise the wild alarm
of her fierce cry as she sprang would have seemed a foolish thing, for
could she not more surely have fallen upon her victims had she but
quietly leaped without that loud shriek?
But Sabor knew well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their
almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of
one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her
loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap
without a little noise.
Her wild scream was not a warning. It was voiced to freeze her poor
victims in a paralysis of terror for the tiny fraction of an instant
which would suffice for her mighty claws to sink into their soft flesh
and hold them beyond hope of escape.
So far as the ape was concerned, Sabor reasoned correctly. The little
fellow crouched trembling just an instant, but that instant was quite
long enough to prove his undoing.
Not so, however, with Tarzan, the man-child. His life amidst the
dangers of the jungle had taught him to meet emergencies with
self-confidence, and his higher intelligence resulted in a quickness of
mental action far beyond the powers of the apes.
So the scream of Sabor, the lioness, galvanized the brain and muscles
of little Tarzan into instant action.
Before him lay the deep waters of the little lake, behind him certain
death; a cruel death beneath tearing claws and rending fangs.
Tarzan had always hated water except as a medium for quenching his
thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and
discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder
and lightning and wind which accompanied them.
The deep waters of the lake he had been taught by his wild mother to
avoid, and further, had he not seen little Neeta sink beneath its quiet
surface only a few short weeks before never to return to the tribe?
But of the two evils his quick mind chose the lesser ere the first note
of Sabor’s scream had scarce broken the quiet of the jungle, and before
the great beast had covered half her leap Tarzan felt the chill waters
close above his head.
He could not swim, and the water was very deep; but still he lost no
particle of that self-confidence and resourcefulness which were the
badges of his superior being.
Rapidly he moved his hands and feet in an attempt to scramble upward,
and, possibly more by chance than design, he fell into the stroke that
a dog uses when swimming, so that within a few seconds his nose was
above water and he found that he could keep it there by continuing his
strokes, and also make progress through the water.
He was much surprised and pleased with this new acquirement which had
been so suddenly thrust upon him, but he had no time for thinking much
upon it.
He was now swimming parallel to the bank and there he saw the cruel
beast that would have seized him crouching upon the still form of his
little playmate.
The lioness was intently watching Tarzan, evidently expecting him to
return to shore, but this the boy had no intention of doing.
Instead he raised his voice in the call of distress common to his
tribe, adding to it the warning which would prevent would-be rescuers
from running into the clutches of Sabor.
Almost immediately there came an answer from the distance, and
presently forty or fifty great apes swung rapidly and majestically
through the trees toward the scene of tragedy.
In the lead was Kala, for she had recognized the tones of her best
beloved, and with her was the mother of the little ape who lay dead
beneath cruel Sabor.
Though more powerful and better equipped for fighting than the apes,
the lioness had no desire to meet these enraged adults, and with a
snarl of hatred she sprang quickly into the brush and disappeared.
Tarzan now swam to shore and clambered quickly upon dry land. The
feeling of freshness and exhilaration which the cool waters had
imparted to him, filled his little being with grateful surprise, and
ever after he lost no opportunity to take a daily plunge in lake or
stream or ocean when it was possible to do so.
For a long time Kala could not accustom herself to the sight; for
though her people could swim when forced to it, they did not like to
enter water, and never did so voluntarily.
The adventure with the lioness gave Tarzan food for pleasurable
memories, for it was such affairs which broke the monotony of his daily
life—otherwise but a dull round of searching for food, eating, and
sleeping.
The tribe to which he belonged roamed a tract extending, roughly,
twenty-five miles along the seacoast and some fifty miles inland. This
they traversed almost continually, occasionally remaining for months in
one locality; but as they moved through the trees with great speed they
often covered the territory in a very few days.
Much depended upon food supply, climatic conditions, and the prevalence
of animals of the more dangerous species; though Kerchak often led them
on long marches for no other reason than that he had tired of remaining
in the same place.
At night they slept where darkness overtook them, lying upon the
ground, and sometimes covering their heads, and more seldom their
bodies, with the great leaves of the elephant’s ear. Two or three might
lie cuddled in each other’s arms for additional warmth if the night
were chill, and thus Tarzan had slept in Kala’s arms nightly for all
these years.
That the huge, fierce brute loved this child of another race is beyond
question, and he, too, gave to the great, hairy beast all the affection
that would have belonged to his fair young mother had she lived.
When he was disobedient she cuffed him, it is true, but she was never
cruel to him, and was more often caressing him than chastising him.
Tublat, her mate, always hated Tarzan, and on several occasions had
come near ending his youthful career.
Tarzan on his part never lost an opportunity to show that he fully
reciprocated his foster father’s sentiments, and whenever he could
safely annoy him or make faces at him or hurl insults upon him from the
safety of his mother’s arms, or the slender branches of the higher
trees, he did so.
His superior intelligence and cunning permitted him to invent a
thousand diabolical tricks to add to the burdens of Tublat’s life.
Early in his boyhood he had learned to form ropes by twisting and tying
long grasses together, and with these he was forever tripping Tublat or
attempting to hang him from some overhanging branch.
By constant playing and experimenting with these he learned to tie rude
knots, and make sliding nooses; and with these he and the younger apes
amused themselves. What Tarzan did they tried to do also, but he alone
originated and became proficient.
One day while playing thus Tarzan had thrown his rope at one of his
fleeing companions, retaining the other end in his grasp. By accident
the noose fell squarely about the running ape’s neck, bringing him to a
sudden and surprising halt.
Ah, here was a new game, a fine game, thought Tarzan, and immediately
he attempted to repeat the trick. And thus, by painstaking and
continued practice, he learned the art of roping.
Now, indeed, was the life of Tublat a living nightmare. In sleep, upon
the march, night or day, he never knew when that quiet noose would slip
about his neck and nearly choke the life out of him.
Kala punished, Tublat swore dire vengeance, and old Kerchak took notice
and warned and threatened; but all to no avail.
Tarzan defied them all, and the thin, strong noose continued to settle
about Tublat’s neck whenever he least expected it.
The other apes derived unlimited amusement from Tublat’s discomfiture,
for Broken Nose was a disagreeable old fellow, whom no one liked,
anyway.
In Tarzan’s clever little mind many thoughts revolved, and back of
these was his divine power of reason.
If he could catch his fellow apes with his long arm of many grasses,
why not Sabor, the lioness?
It was the germ of a thought, which, however, was destined to mull
around in his conscious and subconscious mind until it resulted in
magnificent achievement.
But that came in later years.
CHAPTER VI.
Jungle Battles
The wanderings of the tribe brought them often near the closed and
silent cabin by the little land-locked harbor. To Tarzan this was
always a source of never-ending mystery and pleasure.
He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbing upon the roof,
peer down the black depths of the chimney in vain endeavor to solve the
unknown wonders that lay within those strong walls.
His child-like imagination pictured wonderful creatures within, and the
very impossibility of forcing entrance added a thousandfold to his
desire to do so.
He could clamber about the roof and windows for hours attempting to
discover means of ingress, but to the door he paid little attention,
for this was apparently as solid as the walls.
It was in the next visit to the vicinity, following the adventure with
old Sabor, that, as he approached the cabin, Tarzan noticed that from a
distance the door appeared to be an independent part of the wall in
which it was set, and for the first time it occurred to him that this
might prove the means of entrance which had so long eluded him.
He was alone, as was often the case when he visited the cabin, for the
apes had no love for it; the story of the thunder-stick having lost
nothing in the telling during these ten years had quite surrounded the
white man’s deserted abode with an atmosphere of weirdness and terror
for the simians.
The story of his own connection with the cabin had never been told him.
The language of the apes had so few words that they could talk but
little of what they had seen in the cabin, having no words to
accurately describe either the strange people or their belongings, and
so, long before Tarzan was old enough to understand, the subject had
been forgotten by the tribe.
Only in a dim, vague way had Kala explained to him that his father had
been a strange white ape, but he did not know that Kala was not his own
mother.
On this day, then, he went directly to the door and spent hours
examining it and fussing with the hinges, the knob and the latch.