Tarzan of the Apes
but it was still a formidable weapon, and one which he meant to use to
advantage whenever the opportunity presented itself. He had in mind
that no more would he run from the wanton attacks of old Tublat.
In another moment he was at the cabin, and after a short time had again
thrown the latch and entered. His first concern was to learn the
mechanism of the lock, and this he did by examining it closely while
the door was open, so that he could learn precisely what caused it to
hold the door, and by what means it released at his touch.
He found that he could close and lock the door from within, and this he
did so that there would be no chance of his being molested while at his
investigation.
He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was
soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful
influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for
the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child’s readers, numerous
picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but
the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs
which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder
and deepest thought.
Squatting upon his haunches on the table top in the cabin his father
had built—his smooth, brown, naked little body bent over the book which
rested in his strong slender hands, and his great shock of long, black
hair falling about his well-shaped head and bright, intelligent
eyes—Tarzan of the apes, little primitive man, presented a picture
filled, at once, with pathos and with promise—an allegorical figure of
the primordial groping through the black night of ignorance toward the
light of learning.
His little face was tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a
hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to
prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem of the strange
little bugs.
In his hands was a primer opened at a picture of a little ape similar
to himself, but covered, except for hands and face, with strange,
colored fur, for such he thought the jacket and trousers to be. Beneath
the picture were three little bugs—
BOY.
And now he had discovered in the text upon the page that these three
were repeated many times in the same sequence.
Another fact he learned—that there were comparatively few individual
bugs; but these were repeated many times, occasionally alone, but more
often in company with others.
Slowly he turned the pages, scanning the pictures and the text for a
repetition of the combination _b-o-y_. Presently he found it beneath a
picture of another little ape and a strange animal which went upon four
legs like the jackal and resembled him not a little. Beneath this
picture the bugs appeared as:
A BOY AND A DOG
There they were, the three little bugs which always accompanied the
little ape.
And so he progressed very, very slowly, for it was a hard and laborious
task which he had set himself without knowing it—a task which might
seem to you or me impossible—learning to read without having the
slightest knowledge of letters or written language, or the faintest
idea that such things existed.
He did not accomplish it in a day, or in a week, or in a month, or in a
year; but slowly, very slowly, he learned after he had grasped the
possibilities which lay in those little bugs, so that by the time he
was fifteen he knew the various combinations of letters which stood for
every pictured figure in the little primer and in one or two of the
picture books.
Of the meaning and use of the articles and conjunctions, verbs and
adverbs and pronouns he had but the faintest conception.
One day when he was about twelve he found a number of lead pencils in a
hitherto undiscovered drawer beneath the table, and in scratching upon
the table top with one of them he was delighted to discover the black
line it left behind it.
He worked so assiduously with this new toy that the table top was soon
a mass of scrawly loops and irregular lines and his pencil-point worn
down to the wood. Then he took another pencil, but this time he had a
definite object in view.
He would attempt to reproduce some of the little bugs that scrambled
over the pages of his books.
It was a difficult task, for he held the pencil as one would grasp the
hilt of a dagger, which does not add greatly to ease in writing or to
the legibility of the results.
But he persevered for months, at such times as he was able to come to
the cabin, until at last by repeated experimenting he found a position
in which to hold the pencil that best permitted him to guide and
control it, so that at last he could roughly reproduce any of the
little bugs.
Thus he made a beginning of writing.
Copying the bugs taught him another thing—their number; and though he
could not count as we understand it, yet he had an idea of quantity,
the base of his calculations being the number of fingers upon one of
his hands.
His search through the various books convinced him that he had
discovered all the different kinds of bugs most often repeated in
combination, and these he arranged in proper order with great ease
because of the frequency with which he had perused the fascinating
alphabet picture book.
His education progressed; but his greatest finds were in the
inexhaustible storehouse of the huge illustrated dictionary, for he
learned more through the medium of pictures than text, even after he
had grasped the significance of the bugs.
When he discovered the arrangement of words in alphabetical order he
delighted in searching for and finding the combinations with which he
was familiar, and the words which followed them, their definitions, led
him still further into the mazes of erudition.
By the time he was seventeen he had learned to read the simple, child’s
primer and had fully realized the true and wonderful purpose of the
little bugs.
No longer did he feel shame for his hairless body or his human
features, for now his reason told him that he was of a different race
from his wild and hairy companions. He was a M-A-N, they were A-P-E-S,
and the little apes which scurried through the forest top were
M-O-N-K-E-Y-S. He knew, too, that old Sabor was a L-I-O-N-E-S-S, and
Histah a S-N-A-K-E, and Tantor an E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T. And so he learned to
read. From then on his progress was rapid. With the help of the great
dictionary and the active intelligence of a healthy mind endowed by
inheritance with more than ordinary reasoning powers he shrewdly
guessed at much which he could not really understand, and more often
than not his guesses were close to the mark of truth.
There were many breaks in his education, caused by the migratory habits
of his tribe, but even when removed from his books his active brain
continued to search out the mysteries of his fascinating avocation.
Pieces of bark and flat leaves and even smooth stretches of bare earth
provided him with copy books whereon to scratch with the point of his
hunting knife the lessons he was learning.
Nor did he neglect the sterner duties of life while following the bent
of his inclination toward the solving of the mystery of his library.
He practiced with his rope and played with his sharp knife, which he
had learned to keep keen by whetting upon flat stones.
The tribe had grown larger since Tarzan had come among them, for under
the leadership of Kerchak they had been able to frighten the other
tribes from their part of the jungle so that they had plenty to eat and
little or no loss from predatory incursions of neighbors.
Hence the younger males as they became adult found it more comfortable
to take mates from their own tribe, or if they captured one of another
tribe to bring her back to Kerchak’s band and live in amity with him
rather than attempt to set up new establishments of their own, or fight
with the redoubtable Kerchak for supremacy at home.
Occasionally one more ferocious than his fellows would attempt this
latter alternative, but none had come yet who could wrest the palm of
victory from the fierce and brutal ape.
Tarzan held a peculiar position in the tribe. They seemed to consider
him one of them and yet in some way different. The older males either
ignored him entirely or else hated him so vindictively that but for his
wondrous agility and speed and the fierce protection of the huge Kala
he would have been dispatched at an early age.
Tublat was his most consistent enemy, but it was through Tublat that,
when he was about thirteen, the persecution of his enemies suddenly
ceased and he was left severely alone, except on the occasions when one
of them ran amuck in the throes of one of those strange, wild fits of
insane rage which attacks the males of many of the fiercer animals of
the jungle. Then none was safe.
On the day that Tarzan established his right to respect, the tribe was
gathered about a small natural amphitheater which the jungle had left
free from its entangling vines and creepers in a hollow among some low
hills.
The open space was almost circular in shape. Upon every hand rose the
mighty giants of the untouched forest, with the matted undergrowth
banked so closely between the huge trunks that the only opening into
the little, level arena was through the upper branches of the trees.
Here, safe from interruption, the tribe often gathered. In the center
of the amphitheater was one of those strange earthen drums which the
anthropoids build for the queer rites the sounds of which men have
heard in the fastnesses of the jungle, but which none has ever
witnessed.
Many travelers have seen the drums of the great apes, and some have
heard the sounds of their beating and the noise of the wild, weird
revelry of these first lords of the jungle, but Tarzan, Lord Greystoke,
is, doubtless, the only human being who ever joined in the fierce, mad,
intoxicating revel of the Dum-Dum.
From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms
and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through all the
countless ages, back beyond the uttermost ramparts of a dawning
humanity our fierce, hairy forebears danced out the rites of the
Dum-Dum to the sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light
of a tropical moon in the depth of a mighty jungle which stands
unchanged today as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim,
unthinkable vistas of the long dead past when our first shaggy ancestor
swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon the soft turf of
the first meeting place.
On the day that Tarzan won his emancipation from the persecution that
had followed him remorselessly for twelve of his thirteen years of
life, the tribe, now a full hundred strong, trooped silently through
the lower terrace of the jungle trees and dropped noiselessly upon the
floor of the amphitheater.
The rites of the Dum-Dum marked important events in the life of the
tribe—a victory, the capture of a prisoner, the killing of some large
fierce denizen of the jungle, the death or accession of a king, and
were conducted with set ceremonialism.
Today it was the killing of a giant ape, a member of another tribe, and
as the people of Kerchak entered the arena two mighty bulls were seen
bearing the body of the vanquished between them.
They laid their burden before the earthen drum and then squatted there
beside it as guards, while the other members of the community curled
themselves in grassy nooks to sleep until the rising moon should give
the signal for the commencement of their savage orgy.
For hours absolute quiet reigned in the little clearing, except as it
was broken by the discordant notes of brilliantly feathered parrots, or