Bab Bab 8 · The Tree-top Hunter

. The Tree-top Hunter

The morning after the Dum-Dum the tribe started slowly back through the

forest toward the coast.

The body of Tublat lay where it had fallen, for the people of Kerchak

do not eat their own dead.

The march was but a leisurely search for food. Cabbage palm and gray

plum, pisang and scitamine they found in abundance, with wild

pineapple, and occasionally small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles, and

insects. The nuts they cracked between their powerful jaws, or, if too

hard, broke by pounding between stones.

Once old Sabor, crossing their path, sent them scurrying to the safety

of the higher branches, for if she respected their number and their

sharp fangs, they on their part held her cruel and mighty ferocity in

equal esteem.

Upon a low-hanging branch sat Tarzan directly above the majestic,

supple body as it forged silently through the thick jungle. He hurled a

pineapple at the ancient enemy of his people. The great beast stopped

and, turning, eyed the taunting figure above her.

With an angry lash of her tail she bared her yellow fangs, curling her

great lips in a hideous snarl that wrinkled her bristling snout in

serried ridges and closed her wicked eyes to two narrow slits of rage

and hatred.

With back-laid ears she looked straight into the eyes of Tarzan of the

Apes and sounded her fierce, shrill challenge. And from the safety of

his overhanging limb the ape-child sent back the fearsome answer of his

kind.

For a moment the two eyed each other in silence, and then the great cat

turned into the jungle, which swallowed her as the ocean engulfs a

tossed pebble.

But into the mind of Tarzan a great plan sprang. He had killed the

fierce Tublat, so was he not therefore a mighty fighter? Now would he

track down the crafty Sabor and slay her likewise. He would be a mighty

hunter, also.

At the bottom of his little English heart beat the great desire to

cover his nakedness with _clothes_ for he had learned from his picture

books that all _men_ were so covered, while _monkeys_ and _apes_ and

every other living thing went naked.

_Clothes_ therefore, must be truly a badge of greatness; the insignia

of the superiority of _man_ over all other animals, for surely there

could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things.

Many moons ago, when he had been much smaller, he had desired the skin

of Sabor, the lioness, or Numa, the lion, or Sheeta, the leopard to

cover his hairless body that he might no longer resemble hideous

Histah, the snake; but now he was proud of his sleek skin for it

betokened his descent from a mighty race, and the conflicting desires

to go naked in prideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to the

customs of his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparel

found first one and then the other in the ascendency.

As the tribe continued their slow way through the forest after the

passing of Sabor, Tarzan’s head was filled with his great scheme for

slaying his enemy, and for many days thereafter he thought of little

else.

On this day, however, he presently had other and more immediate

interests to attract his attention.

Suddenly it became as midnight; the noises of the jungle ceased; the

trees stood motionless as though in paralyzed expectancy of some great

and imminent disaster. All nature waited—but not for long.

Faintly, from a distance, came a low, sad moaning. Nearer and nearer it

approached, mounting louder and louder in volume.

The great trees bent in unison as though pressed earthward by a mighty

hand. Farther and farther toward the ground they inclined, and still

there was no sound save the deep and awesome moaning of the wind.

Then, suddenly, the jungle giants whipped back, lashing their mighty

tops in angry and deafening protest. A vivid and blinding light flashed

from the whirling, inky clouds above. The deep cannonade of roaring

thunder belched forth its fearsome challenge. The deluge came—all hell

broke loose upon the jungle.

The tribe shivering from the cold rain, huddled at the bases of great

trees. The lightning, darting and flashing through the blackness,

showed wildly waving branches, whipping streamers and bending trunks.

Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rent by a flashing

bolt, would crash in a thousand pieces among the surrounding trees,

carrying down numberless branches and many smaller neighbors to add to

the tangled confusion of the tropical jungle.

Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of the tornado,

hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carrying death and

destruction to countless unhappy denizens of the thickly peopled world

below.

For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease, and still

the tribe huddled close in shivering fear. In constant danger from

falling trunks and branches and paralyzed by the vivid flashing of

lightning and the bellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful misery

until the storm passed.

The end was as sudden as the beginning. The wind ceased, the sun shone

forth—nature smiled once more.

The dripping leaves and branches, and the moist petals of gorgeous

flowers glistened in the splendor of the returning day. And, so—as

Nature forgot, her children forgot also. Busy life went on as it had

been before the darkness and the fright.

But to Tarzan a dawning light had come to explain the mystery of

_clothes_. How snug he would have been beneath the heavy coat of Sabor!

And so was added a further incentive to the adventure.

For several months the tribe hovered near the beach where stood

Tarzan’s cabin, and his studies took up the greater portion of his

time, but always when journeying through the forest he kept his rope in

readiness, and many were the smaller animals that fell into the snare

of the quick thrown noose.

Once it fell about the short neck of Horta, the boar, and his mad lunge

for freedom toppled Tarzan from the overhanging limb where he had lain

in wait and from whence he had launched his sinuous coil.

The mighty tusker turned at the sound of his falling body, and, seeing

only the easy prey of a young ape, he lowered his head and charged

madly at the surprised youth.

Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the fall, alighting catlike upon all

fours far outspread to take up the shock. He was on his feet in an

instant and, leaping with the agility of the monkey he was, he gained

the safety of a low limb as Horta, the boar, rushed futilely beneath.

Thus it was that Tarzan learned by experience the limitations as well

as the possibilities of his strange weapon.

He lost a long rope on this occasion, but he knew that had it been

Sabor who had thus dragged him from his perch the outcome might have

been very different, for he would have lost his life, doubtless, into

the bargain.

It took him many days to braid a new rope, but when, finally, it was

done he went forth purposely to hunt, and lie in wait among the dense

foliage of a great branch right above the well-beaten trail that led to

water.

Several small animals passed unharmed beneath him. He did not want such

insignificant game. It would take a strong animal to test the efficacy

of his new scheme.

At last came she whom Tarzan sought, with lithe sinews rolling beneath

shimmering hide; fat and glossy came Sabor, the lioness.

Her great padded feet fell soft and noiseless on the narrow trail. Her

head was high in ever alert attention; her long tail moved slowly in

sinuous and graceful undulations.

Nearer and nearer she came to where Tarzan of the Apes crouched upon

his limb, the coils of his long rope poised ready in his hand.

Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death, sat Tarzan. Sabor passed

beneath. One stride beyond she took—a second, a third, and then the

silent coil shot out above her.

For an instant the spreading noose hung above her head like a great

snake, and then, as she looked upward to detect the origin of the

swishing sound of the rope, it settled about her neck. With a quick

jerk Tarzan snapped the noose tight about the glossy throat, and then

he dropped the rope and clung to his support with both hands.

Sabor was trapped.

With a bound the startled beast turned into the jungle, but Tarzan was

not to lose another rope through the same cause as the first. He had

learned from experience. The lioness had taken but half her second

bound when she felt the rope tighten about her neck; her body turned

completely over in the air and she fell with a heavy crash upon her

back. Tarzan had fastened the end of the rope securely to the trunk of

the great tree on which he sat.

Thus far his plan had worked to perfection, but when he grasped the

rope, bracing himself behind a crotch of two mighty branches, he found

that dragging the mighty, struggling, clawing, biting, screaming mass

of iron-muscled fury up to the tree and hanging her was a very

different proposition.

The weight of old Sabor was immense, and when she braced her huge paws

nothing less than Tantor, the elephant, himself, could have budged her.

The lioness was now back in the path where she could see the author of

the indignity which had been placed upon her. Screaming with rage she

suddenly charged, leaping high into the air toward Tarzan, but when her

huge body struck the limb on which Tarzan had been, Tarzan was no

longer there.

Instead he perched lightly upon a smaller branch twenty feet above the

raging captive. For a moment Sabor hung half across the branch, while

Tarzan mocked, and hurled twigs and branches at her unprotected face.

Presently the beast dropped to the earth again and Tarzan came quickly

to seize the rope, but Sabor had now found that it was only a slender

cord that held her, and grasping it in her huge jaws severed it before

Tarzan could tighten the strangling noose a second time.

Tarzan was much hurt. His well-laid plan had come to naught, so he sat

there screaming at the roaring creature beneath him and making mocking

grimaces at it.

Sabor paced back and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times she

crouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as well

have clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through the tree tops.

At last Tarzan tired of the sport, and with a parting roar of challenge

and a well-aimed ripe fruit that spread soft and sticky over the

snarling face of his enemy, he swung rapidly through the trees, a

hundred feet above the ground, and in a short time was among the

members of his tribe.

Here he recounted the details of his adventure, with swelling chest and

so considerable swagger that he quite impressed even his bitterest

enemies, while Kala fairly danced for joy and pride.