الفصل الفصل 21 · The Village of Torture

. 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

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.