บทที่ บทที่ 8 · The Lion

s seek their prey,” he

murmured to himself, looking up once again at the swift-flying clouds.

The moaning rose to a great volume of sound. “They come!” said Tarzan

of the Apes, and sought the shelter of a thickly foliaged tree. Quite

suddenly the trees bent their tops simultaneously as though God had

stretched a hand from the heavens and pressed His flat palm down upon

the world. “They pass!” whispered Tarzan. “The lions pass.” Then came a

vivid flash of lightning, followed by deafening thunder. “The lions

have sprung,” cried Tarzan, “and now they roar above the bodies of

their kills.”

The trees were waving wildly in all directions now, a perfectly

demoniacal wind threshed the jungle pitilessly. In the midst of it the

rain came—not as it comes upon us of the northlands, but in a sudden,

choking, blinding deluge. “The blood of the kill,” thought Tarzan,

huddling himself closer to the bole of the great tree beneath which he

stood.

He was close to the edge of the jungle, and at a little distance he had

seen two hills before the storm broke; but now he could see nothing. It

amused him to look out into the beating rain, searching for the two

hills and imagining that the torrents from above had washed them away,

yet he knew that presently the rain would cease, the sun come out again

and all be as it was before, except where a few branches had fallen and

here and there some old and rotted patriarch had crashed back to enrich

the soil upon which he had fatted for, maybe, centuries. All about him

branches and leaves filled the air or fell to earth, torn away by the

strength of the tornado and the weight of the water upon them. A gaunt

corpse toppled and fell a few yards away; but Tarzan was protected from

all these dangers by the wide-spreading branches of the sturdy young

giant beneath which his jungle craft had guided him. Here there was but

a single danger, and that a remote one. Yet it came. Without warning

the tree above him was riven by lightning, and when the rain ceased and

the sun came out Tarzan lay stretched as he had fallen, upon his face

amidst the wreckage of the jungle giant that should have shielded him.

Bukawai came to the entrance of his cave after the rain and the storm

had passed and looked out upon the scene. From his one eye Bukawai

could see; but had he had a dozen eyes he could have found no beauty in

the fresh sweetness of the revivified jungle, for to such things, in

the chemistry of temperament, his brain failed to react; nor, even had

he had a nose, which he had not for years, could he have found

enjoyment or sweetness in the clean-washed air.

At either side of the leper stood his sole and constant companions, the

two hyenas, sniffing the air. Presently one of them uttered a low growl

and with flattened head started, sneaking and wary, toward the jungle.

The other followed. Bukawai, his curiosity aroused, trailed after them,

in his hand a heavy knob-stick.

The hyenas halted a few yards from the prostrate Tarzan, sniffing and

growling. Then came Bukawai, and at first he could not believe the

witness of his own eyes; but when he did and saw that it was indeed the

devil-god his rage knew no bounds, for he thought him dead and himself

cheated of the revenge he had so long dreamed upon.

The hyenas approached the ape-man with bared fangs. Bukawai, with an

inarticulate scream, rushed upon them, striking cruel and heavy blows

with his knob-stick, for there might still be life in the apparently

lifeless form. The beasts, snapping and snarling, half turned upon

their master and their tormentor, but long fear still held them from

his putrid throat. They slunk away a few yards and squatted upon their

haunches, hatred and baffled hunger gleaming from their savage eyes.

Bukawai stooped and placed his ear above the ape-man’s heart. It still

beat. As well as his sloughed features could register pleasure they did

so; but it was not a pretty sight. At the ape-man’s side lay his long,

grass rope. Quickly Bukawai bound the limp arms behind his prisoner’s

back, then he raised him to one of his shoulders, for, though Bukawai

was old and diseased, he was still a strong man. The hyenas fell in

behind as the witch-doctor set off toward the cave, and through the

long black corridors they followed as Bukawai bore his victim into the

bowels of the hills. Through subterranean chambers, connected by

winding passageways, Bukawai staggered with his load. At a sudden

turning of the corridor, daylight flooded them and Bukawai stepped out

into a small, circular basin in the hill, apparently the crater of an

ancient volcano, one of those which never reached the dignity of a

mountain and are little more than lava-rimmed pits close to the

earth’s surface.

Steep walls rimmed the cavity. The only exit was through the passageway

by which Bukawai had entered. A few stunted trees grew upon the rocky

floor. A hundred feet above could be seen the ragged lips of this cold,

dead mouth of hell.

Bukawai propped Tarzan against a tree and bound him there with his own

grass rope, leaving his hands free but securing the knots in such a way

that the ape-man could not reach them. The hyenas slunk to and fro,

growling. Bukawai hated them and they hated him. He knew that they but

waited for the time when he should be helpless, or when their hatred

should rise to such a height as to submerge their cringing fear of him.

In his own heart was not a little fear of these repulsive creatures,

and because of that fear, Bukawai always kept the beasts well fed,

often hunting for them when their own forages for food failed, but ever

was he cruel to them with the cruelty of a little brain, diseased,

bestial, primitive.

He had had them since they were puppies. They had known no other life

than that with him, and though they went abroad to hunt, always they

returned. Of late Bukawai had come to believe that they returned not so

much from habit as from a fiendish patience which would submit to every

indignity and pain rather than forego the final vengeance, and Bukawai

needed but little imagination to picture what that vengeance would be.

Today he would see for himself what his end would be; but another

should impersonate Bukawai.

When he had trussed Tarzan securely, Bukawai went back into the

corridor, driving the hyenas ahead of him, and pulling across the

opening a lattice of laced branches, which shut the pit from the cave

during the night that Bukawai might sleep in security, for then the

hyenas were penned in the crater that they might not sneak upon a

sleeping Bukawai in the darkness.

Bukawai returned to the outer cave mouth, filled a vessel with water at

the spring which rose in the little cañon close at hand and returned

toward the pit. The hyenas stood before the lattice looking hungrily

toward Tarzan. They had been fed in this manner before.

With his water, the witch-doctor approached Tarzan and threw a portion

of the contents of the vessel in the ape-man’s face. There was

fluttering of the eyelids, and at the second application Tarzan opened

his eyes and looked about.

“Devil-god,” cried Bukawai, “I am the great witch-doctor. My medicine

is strong. Yours is weak. If it is not, why do you stay tied here like

a goat that is bait for lions?”

Tarzan understood nothing the witch-doctor said, therefore he did not

reply, but only stared straight at Bukawai with cold and level gaze.

The hyenas crept up behind him. He heard them growl; but he did not

even turn his head. He was a beast with a man’s brain. The beast in him

refused to show fear in the face of a death which the man-mind already

admitted to be inevitable.

Bukawai, not yet ready to give his victim to the beasts, rushed upon

the hyenas with his knob-stick. There was a short scrimmage in which

the brutes came off second best, as they always did. Tarzan watched it.

He saw and realized the hatred which existed between the two animals

and the hideous semblance of a man.

With the hyenas subdued, Bukawai returned to the baiting of Tarzan; but

finding that the ape-man understood nothing he said, the witch-doctor

finally desisted. Then he withdrew into the corridor and pulled the

latticework barrier across the opening. He went back into the cave and

got a sleeping mat, which he brought to the opening, that he might lie

down and watch the spectacle of his revenge in comfort.

The hyenas were sneaking furtively around the ape-man. Tarzan strained

at his bonds for a moment, but soon realized that the rope he had

braided to hold Numa, the lion, would hold him quite as successfully.

He did not wish to die; but he could look death in the face now as he

had many times before without a quaver.

As he pulled upon the rope he felt it rub against the small tree about

which it was passed. Like a flash of the cinematograph upon the screen,

a picture was flashed before his mind’s eye from the storehouse of his

memory. He saw a lithe, boyish figure swinging high above the ground at

the end of a rope. He saw many apes watching from below, and then he

saw the rope part and the boy hurtle downward toward the ground. Tarzan

smiled. Immediately he commenced to draw the rope rapidly back and

forth across the tree trunk.

The hyenas, gaining courage, came closer. They sniffed at his legs; but

when he struck at them with his free arms they slunk off. He knew that

with the growth of hunger they would attack. Coolly, methodically,

without haste, Tarzan drew the rope back and forth against the rough

trunk of the small tree.

In the entrance to the cavern Bukawai fell asleep. He thought it would

be some time before the beasts gained sufficient courage or hunger to

attack the captive. Their growls and the cries of the victim would

awaken him. In the meantime he might as well rest, and he did.

Thus the day wore on, for the hyenas were not famished, and the rope

with which Tarzan was bound was a stronger one than that of his

boyhood, which had parted so quickly to the chafing of the rough tree

bark. Yet, all the while hunger was growing upon the beasts and the

strands of the grass rope were wearing thinner and thinner. Bukawai

slept.

It was late afternoon before one of the beasts, irritated by the

gnawing of appetite, made a quick, growling dash at the ape-man. The

noise awoke Bukawai. He sat up quickly and watched what went on within

the crater. He saw the hungry hyena charge the man, leaping for the

unprotected throat. He saw Tarzan reach out and seize the growling

animal, and then he saw the second beast spring for the devil-god’s

shoulder. There was a mighty heave of the great, smooth-skinned body.

Rounded muscles shot into great, tensed piles beneath the brown

hide—the ape-man surged forward with all his weight and all his great

strength—the bonds parted, and the three were rolling upon the floor of

the crater snarling, snapping, and rending.

Bukawai leaped to his feet. Could it be that the devil-god was to

prevail against his servants? Impossible! The creature was unarmed, and

he was down with two hyenas on top of him; but Bukawai did not know

Tarzan.

The ape-man fastened his fingers upon the throat of one of the hyenas

and rose to one knee, though the other beast tore at him frantically in

an effort to pull him down. With a single hand Tarzan held the one, and

with the other hand he reached forth and pulled toward him the second

beast.

And then Bukawai, seeing the battle going against his forces, rushed

forward from the cavern brandishing his knob-stick. Tarzan saw him

coming, and rising now to both feet, a hyena in each hand, he hurled

one of the foaming beasts straight at the witch-doctor’s head. Down

went the two in a snarling, biting heap. Tarzan tossed the second hyena

across the crater, while the first gnawed at the rotting face of its

master; but this did not suit the ape-man. With a kick he sent the

beast howling after its companion, and springing to the side of the

prostrate witch-doctor, dragged him to his feet.

Bukawai, still conscious, saw death, immediate and terrible, in the

cold eyes of his captor, so he turned upon Tarzan with teeth and nails.

The ape-man shuddered at the proximity of that raw face to his. The

hyenas had had enough and disappeared through the small aperture

leading into the cave. Tarzan had little difficulty in overpowering and

binding Bukawai. Then he led him to the very tree to which he had been

bound; but in binding Bukawai, Tarzan saw to it that escape after the

same fashion that he had escaped would be out of the question; then he

left him.

As he passed through the winding corridors and the subterranean

apartments, Tarzan saw nothing of the hyenas.

“They will return,” he said to himself.

In the crater between the towering walls Bukawai, cold with terror,

trembled as with ague.

“They will return!” he cried, his voice rising to a fright-filled

shriek.

And they did.

CHAPTER 8. The Lion

Numa, the lion, crouched behind a thorn bush close beside the drinking

pool where the river eddied just below the bend. There was a ford there

and on either bank a well-worn trail, broadened far out at the river’s

brim, where, for countless centuries, the wild things of the jungle and

of the plains beyond had come down to drink, the carnivora with bold

and fearless majesty, the herbivora timorous, hesitating, fearful.

Numa, the lion, was hungry, he was very hungry, and so he was quite

silent now. On his way to the drinking place he had moaned often and

roared not a little; but as he neared the spot where he would lie in

wait for Bara, the deer, or Horta, the boar, or some other of the many

luscious-fleshed creatures who came hither to drink, he was silent. It

was a grim, a terrible silence, shot through with yellow-green light of

ferocious eyes, punctuated with undulating tremors of sinuous tail.

It was Pacco, the zebra, who came first, and Numa, the lion, could

scarce restrain a roar of anger, for of all the plains people, none are

more wary than Pacco, the zebra. Behind the black-striped stallion came

a herd of thirty or forty of the plump and vicious little horselike

beasts. As he neared the river, the leader paused often, cocking his

ears and raising his muzzle to sniff the gentle breeze for the

telltale scent spoor of the dread flesh-eaters.

Numa shifted uneasily, drawing his hind quarters far beneath his tawny

body, gathering himself for the sudden charge and the savage assault.

His eyes shot hungry fire. His great muscles quivered to the excitement

of the moment.

Pacco came a little nearer, halted, snorted, and wheeled. There was a

pattering of scurrying hoofs and the herd was gone; but Numa, the lion,

moved not. He was familiar with the ways of Pacco, the zebra. He knew

that he would return, though many times he might wheel and fly before

he summoned the courage to lead his harem and his offspring to the

water. There was the chance that Pacco might be frightened off

entirely. Numa had seen this happen before, and so he became almost

rigid lest he be the one to send them galloping, waterless, back to the

plain.

Again and again came Pacco and his family, and again and again did they

turn and flee; but each time they came closer to the river, until at

last the plump stallion dipped his velvet muzzle daintily into the

water. The others, stepping warily, approached their leader. Numa

selected a sleek, fat filly and his flaming eyes burned greedily as

they feasted upon her, for Numa, the lion, loves scarce anything better

than the meat of Pacco, perhaps because Pacco is, of all the

grass-eaters, the most difficult to catch.

Slowly the lion rose, and as he rose, a twig snapped beneath one of his

great, padded paws. Like a shot from a rifle he charged upon the filly;

but the snapped twig had been enough to startle the timorous quarry, so

that they were in instant flight simultaneously with Numa’s charge.

The stallion was last, and with a prodigious leap, the lion catapulted

through the air to seize him; but the snapping twig had robbed Numa of

his dinner, though his mighty talons raked the zebra’s glossy rump,

leaving four crimson bars across the beautiful coat.

It was an angry Numa that quitted the river and prowled, fierce,

dangerous, and hungry, into the jungle. Far from particular now was his

appetite. Even Dango, the hyena, would have seemed a titbit to that

ravenous maw. And in this temper it was that the lion came upon the

tribe of Kerchak, the great ape.

One does not look for Numa, the lion, thus late in the morning. He

should be lying up asleep beside his last night’s kill by now; but Numa

had made no kill last night. He was still hunting, hungrier than ever.

The anthropoids were idling about the clearing, the first keen desire

of the morning’s hunger having been satisfied. Numa scented them long

before he saw them. Ordinarily he would have turned away in search of

other game, for even Numa respected the mighty muscles and the sharp

fangs of the great bulls of the tribe of Kerchak, but today he kept on

steadily toward them, his bristled snout wrinkled into a savage snarl.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Numa charged the moment he reached a

point from where the apes were visible to him. There were a dozen or

more of the hairy, manlike creatures upon the ground in a little glade.

In a tree at one side sat a brown-skinned youth. He saw Numa’s swift

charge; he saw the apes turn and flee, huge bulls trampling upon little

balus; only a single she held her ground to meet the charge, a young

she inspired by new motherhood to the great sacrifice that her balu

might escape.

Tarzan leaped from his perch, screaming at the flying bulls beneath and

at those who squatted in the safety of surrounding trees. Had the bulls

stood their ground, Numa would not have carried through that charge

unless goaded by great rage or the gnawing pangs of starvation. Even

then he would not have come off unscathed.

If the bulls heard, they were too slow in responding, for Numa had

seized the mother ape and dragged her into the jungle before the males

had sufficiently collected their wits and their courage to rally in

defense of their fellow. Tarzan’s angry voice aroused similar anger in

the breasts of the apes. Snarling and barking they followed Numa into

the dense labyrinth of foliage wherein he sought to hide himself from

them. The ape-man was in the lead, moving rapidly and yet with caution,

depending even more upon his ears and nose than upon his eyes for

information of the lion’s whereabouts.

The spoor was easy to follow, for the dragged body of the victim left a

plain trail, blood-spattered and scentful. Even such dull creatures as

you or I might easily have followed it. To Tarzan and the apes of

Kerchak it was as obvious as a cement sidewalk.

Tarzan knew that they were nearing the great cat even before he heard

an angry growl of warning just ahead. Calling to the apes to follow his

example, he swung into a tree and a moment later Numa was surrounded by

a ring of growling beasts, well out of reach of his fangs and talons

but within plain sight of him. The carnivore crouched with his

forequarters upon the she-ape. Tarzan could see that the latter was

already dead; but something within him made it seem quite necessary to

rescue the useless body from the clutches of the enemy and to punish

him.

He shrieked taunts and insults at Numa, and tearing dead branches from

the tree in which he danced, hurled them at the lion. The apes followed

his example. Numa roared out in rage and vexation. He was hungry, but

under such conditions he could not feed.

The apes, if they had been left to themselves, would doubtless soon

have left the lion to peaceful enjoyment of his feast, for was not the

she dead? They could not restore her to life by throwing sticks at

Numa, and they might even now be feeding in quiet themselves; but

Tarzan was of a different mind. Numa must be punished and driven away.

He must be taught that even though he killed a Mangani, he would not be

permitted to feed upon his kill. The man-mind looked into the future,

while the apes perceived only the immediate present. They would be

content to escape today the menace of Numa, while Tarzan saw the

necessity, and the means as well, of safeguarding the days to come.

So he urged the great anthropoids on until Numa was showered with

missiles that kept his head dodging and his voice pealing forth its

savage protest; but still he clung desperately to his kill.

The twigs and branches hurled at Numa, Tarzan soon realized, did not

hurt him greatly even when they struck him, and did not injure him at

all, so the ape-man looked about for more effective missiles, nor did

he have to look long. An out-cropping of decomposed granite not far

from Numa suggested ammunition of a much more painful nature. Calling

to the apes to watch him, Tarzan slipped to the ground and gathered a

handful of small fragments. He knew that when once they had seen him

carry out his idea they would be much quicker to follow his lead than

to obey his instructions, were he to command them to procure pieces of

rock and hurl them at Numa, for Tarzan was not then king of the apes of

the tribe of Kerchak. That came in later years. Now he was but a youth,

though one who already had wrested for himself a place in the councils

of the savage beasts among whom a strange fate had cast him. The sullen

bulls of the older generation still hated him as beasts hate those of

whom they are suspicious, whose scent characteristic is the scent

characteristic of an alien order and, therefore, of an enemy order. The

younger bulls, those who had grown up through childhood as his

playmates, were as accustomed to Tarzan’s scent as to that of any other

member of the tribe. They felt no greater suspicion of him than of any

other bull of their acquaintance; yet they did not love him, for they

loved none outside the mating season, and the animosities aroused by

other bulls during that season lasted well over until the next. They

were a morose and peevish band at best, though here and there were

those among them in whom germinated the primal seeds of

humanity—reversions to type, these, doubtless; reversions to the

ancient progenitor who took the first step out of apehood toward

humanness, when he walked more often upon his hind feet and discovered

other things for idle hands to do.

So now Tarzan led where he could not yet command. He had long since

discovered the apish propensity for mimicry and learned to make use of

it. Having filled his arms with fragments of rotted granite, he

clambered again into a tree, and it pleased him to see that the apes

had followed his example.

During the brief respite while they were gathering their ammunition,

Numa had settled himself to feed; but scarce had he arranged himself

and his kill when a sharp piece of rock hurled by the practiced hand of

the ape-man struck him upon the cheek. His sudden roar of pain and rage

was smothered by a volley from the apes, who had seen Tarzan’s act.

Numa shook his massive head and glared upward at his tormentors. For a

half hour they pursued him with rocks and broken branches, and though

he dragged his kill into densest thickets, yet they always found a way

to reach him with their missiles, giving him no opportunity to feed,

and driving him on and on.

The hairless ape-thing with the man scent was worst of all, for he had

even the temerity to advance upon the ground to within a few yards of

the Lord of the Jungle, that he might with greater accuracy and force

hurl the sharp bits of granite and the heavy sticks at him. Time and

again did Numa charge—sudden, vicious charges—but the lithe, active

tormentor always managed to elude him and with such insolent ease that

the lion forgot even his great hunger in the consuming passion of his

rage, leaving his meat for considerable spaces of time in vain efforts

to catch his enemy.

The apes and Tarzan pursued the great beast to a natural clearing,

where Numa evidently determined to make a last stand, taking up his

position in the center of the open space, which was far enough from any

tree to render him practically immune from the rather erratic throwing

of the apes, though Tarzan still found him with most persistent and

aggravating frequency.

This, however, did not suit the ape-man, since Numa now suffered an

occasional missile with no more than a snarl, while he settled himself

to partake of his delayed feast. Tarzan scratched his head, pondering

some more effective method of offense, for he had determined to prevent

Numa from profiting in any way through his attack upon the tribe. The

man-mind reasoned against the future, while the shaggy apes thought

only of their present hatred of this ancestral enemy. Tarzan guessed

that should Numa find it an easy thing to snatch a meal from the tribe

of Kerchak, it would be but a short time before their existence would

be one living nightmare of hideous watchfulness and dread. Numa must be

taught that the killing of an ape brought immediate punishment and no

rewards. It would take but a few lessons to insure the former safety of

the tribe. This must be some old lion whose failing strength and

agility had forced him to any prey that he could catch; but even a

single lion, undisputed, could exterminate the tribe, or at least make

its existence so precarious and so terrifying that life would no longer

be a pleasant condition.

“Let him hunt among the Gomangani,” thought Tarzan. “He will find them

easier prey. I will teach ferocious Numa that he may not hunt the

Mangani.”

But how to wrest the body of his victim from the feeding lion was the

first question to be solved. At last Tarzan hit upon a plan. To anyone

but Tarzan of the Apes it might have seemed rather a risky plan, and

perhaps it did even to him; but Tarzan rather liked things that

contained a considerable element of danger. At any rate, I rather doubt

that you or I would have chosen a similar plan for foiling an angry and

a hungry lion.

Tarzan required assistance in the scheme he had hit upon and his

assistant must be equally as brave and almost as active as he. The

ape-man’s eyes fell upon Taug, the playmate of his childhood, the rival

in his first love and now, of all the bulls of the tribe, the only one

that might be thought to hold in his savage brain any such feeling

toward Tarzan as we describe among ourselves as friendship. At least,

Tarzan knew, Taug was courageous, and he was young and agile and

wonderfully muscled.

“Taug!” cried the ape-man. The great ape looked up from a dead limb he

was attempting to tear from a lightning-blasted tree. “Go close to Numa

and worry him,” said Tarzan. “Worry him until he charges. Lead him away

from the body of Mamka. Keep him away as long as you can.”

Taug nodded. He was across the clearing from Tarzan. Wresting the limb

at last from the tree he dropped to the ground and advanced toward

Numa, growling and barking out his insults. The worried lion looked up

and rose to his feet. His tail went stiffly erect and Taug turned in

flight, for he knew that warning signal of the charge.

From behind the lion, Tarzan ran quickly toward the center of the

clearing and the body of Mamka. Numa, all his eyes for Taug, did not

see the ape-man. Instead he shot forward after the fleeing bull, who

had turned in flight not an instant too soon, since he reached the

nearest tree but a yard or two ahead of the pursuing demon. Like a cat

the heavy anthropoid scampered up the bole of his sanctuary. Numa’s

talons missing him by little more than inches.

For a moment the lion paused beneath the tree, glaring up at the ape

and roaring until the earth trembled, then he turned back again toward

his kill, and as he did so, his tail shot once more to rigid erectness

and he charged back even more ferociously than he had come, for what he

saw was the naked man-thing running toward the farther trees with the

bloody carcass of his prey across a giant shoulder.

The apes, watching the grim race from the safety of the trees, screamed

taunts at Numa and warnings to Tarzan. The high sun, hot and brilliant,

fell like a spotlight upon the actors in the little clearing,

portraying them in glaring relief to the audience in the leafy shadows

of the surrounding trees. The light-brown body of the naked youth, all

but hidden by the shaggy carcass of the killed ape, the red blood

streaking his smooth hide, his muscles rolling, velvety, beneath.

Behind him the black-maned lion, head flattened, tail extended, racing,

a jungle thoroughbred, across the sunlit clearing.

Ah, but this was life! With death at his heels, Tarzan thrilled with

the joy of such living as this; but would he reach the trees ahead of

the rampant death so close behind?

Gunto swung from a limb in a tree before him. Gunto was screaming

warnings and advice.

“Catch me!” cried Tarzan, and with his heavy burden leaped straight for

the big bull hanging there by his hind feet and one forepaw. And Gunto

caught them—the big ape-man and the dead weight of the slain

she-ape—caught them with one great, hairy paw and whirled them upward

until Tarzan’s fingers closed upon a near-by branch.

Beneath, Numa leaped; but Gunto, heavy and awkward as he may have

appeared, was as quick as Manu, the monkey, so that the lion’s talons

but barely grazed him, scratching a bloody streak beneath one hairy

arm.

Tarzan carried Mamka’s corpse to a high crotch, where even Sheeta, the

panther, could not get it. Numa paced angrily back and forth beneath

the tree, roaring frightfully. He had been robbed of his kill and his

revenge also. He was very savage indeed; but his despoilers were well

out of his reach, and after hurling a few taunts and missiles at him

they swung away through the trees, fiercely reviling him.

Tarzan thought much upon the little adventure of that day. He foresaw

what might happen should the great carnivora of the jungle turn their

serious attention upon the tribe of Kerchak, the great ape, but equally

he thought upon the wild scramble of the apes for safety when Numa

first charged among them. There is little humor in the jungle that is

not grim and awful. The beasts have little or no conception of humor;

but the young Englishman saw humor in many things which presented no

humorous angle to his associates.

Since earliest childhood he had been a searcher after fun, much to the

sorrow of his fellow-apes, and now he saw the humor of the frightened

panic of the apes and the baffled rage of Numa even in this grim jungle

adventure which had robbed Mamka of life, and jeopardized that of many

members of the tribe.

It was but a few weeks later that Sheeta, the panther, made a sudden

rush among the tribe and snatched a little balu from a tree where it

had been hidden while its mother sought food. Sheeta got away with his

small prize unmolested. Tarzan was very wroth. He spoke to the bulls of

the ease with which Numa and Sheeta, in a single moon, had slain two

members of the tribe.

“They will take us all for food,” he cried. “We hunt as we will through

the jungle, paying no heed to approaching enemies. Even Manu, the

monkey, does not so. He keeps two or three always watching for enemies.

Pacco, the zebra, and Wappi, the antelope, have those about the herd

who keep watch while the others feed, while we, the great Mangani, let

Numa, and Sabor, and Sheeta come when they will and carry us off to

feed their balus.

“Gr-r-rmph,” said Numgo.

“What are we to do?” asked Taug.

“We, too, should have two or three always watching for the approach of

Numa, and Sabor, and Sheeta,” replied Tarzan. “No others need we fear,

except Histah, the snake, and if we watch for the others we will see

Histah if he comes, though gliding ever so silently.”

And so it was that the great apes of the tribe of Kerchak posted

sentries thereafter, who watched upon three sides while the tribe

hunted, scattered less than had been their wont.

But Tarzan went abroad alone, for Tarzan was a man-thing and sought

amusement and adventure and such humor as the grim and terrible jungle

offers to those who know it and do not fear it—a weird humor shot with

blazing eyes and dappled with the crimson of lifeblood. While others

sought only food and love, Tarzan of the Apes sought food and joy.

One day he hovered above the palisaded village of Mbonga, the chief,

the jet cannibal of the jungle primeval. He saw, as he had seen many

times before, the witch-doctor, Rabba Kega, decked out in the head and

hide of Gorgo, the buffalo. It amused Tarzan to see a Gomangani

parading as Gorgo; but it suggested nothing in particular to him until

he chanced to see stretched against the side of Mbonga’s hut the skin

of a lion with the head still on. Then a broad grin widened the

handsome face of the savage beast-youth.

Back into the jungle he went until chance, agility, strength, and

cunning backed by his marvelous powers of perception, gave him an easy

meal. If Tarzan felt that the world owed him a living he also realized

that it was for him to collect it, nor was there ever a better

collector than this son of an English lord, who knew even less of the

ways of his forbears than he did of the forbears themselves, which was

nothing.

It was quite dark when Tarzan returned to the village of Mbonga and

took his now polished perch in the tree which overhangs the palisade

upon one side of the walled enclosure. As there was nothing in

particular to feast upon in the village there was little life in the

single street, for only an orgy of flesh and native beer could draw out

the people of Mbonga. Tonight they sat gossiping about their cooking

fires, the older members of the tribe; or, if they were young, paired

off in the shadows cast by the palm-thatched huts.

Tarzan dropped lightly into the village, and sneaking stealthily in the

concealment of the denser shadows, approached the hut of the chief,

Mbonga. Here he found that which he sought. There were warriors all

about him; but they did not know that the feared devil-god slunk

noiselessly so near them, nor did they see him possess himself of that

which he coveted and depart from their village as noiselessly as he had

come.

Later that night, as Tarzan curled himself for sleep, he lay for a long

time looking up at the burning planets and the twinkling stars and at

Goro the moon, and he smiled. He recalled how ludicrous the great bulls

had appeared in their mad scramble for safety that day when Numa had

charged among them and seized Mamka, and yet he knew them to be fierce

and courageous. It was the sudden shock of surprise that always sent

them into a panic; but of this Tarzan was not as yet fully aware. That

was something he was to learn in the near future.

He fell asleep with a broad grin upon his face.

Manu, the monkey, awoke him in the morning by dropping discarded bean

pods upon his upturned face from a branch a short distance above him.

Tarzan looked up and smiled. He had been awakened thus before many

times. He and Manu were fairly good friends, their friendship operating

upon a reciprocal basis. Sometimes Manu would come running early in the

morning to awaken Tarzan and tell him that Bara, the deer, was feeding

close at hand, or that Horta, the boar, was asleep in a mudhole hard

by, and in return Tarzan broke open the shells of the harder nuts and

fruits for Manu, or frightened away Histah, the snake, and Sheeta, the

panther.

The sun had been up for some time, and the tribe had already wandered

off in search of food. Manu indicated the direction they had taken with

a wave of his hand and a few piping notes of his squeaky little voice.

“Come, Manu,” said Tarzan, “and you will see that which shall make you

dance for joy and squeal your wrinkled little head off. Come, follow

Tarzan of the Apes.”

With that he set off in the direction Manu had indicated and above him,

chattering, scolding and squealing, skipped Manu, the monkey. Across

Tarzan’s shoulders was the thing he had stolen from the village of

Mbonga, the chief, the evening before.

The tribe was feeding in the forest beside the clearing where Gunto,

and Taug, and Tarzan had so harassed Numa and finally taken away from

him the fruit of his kill. Some of them were in the clearing itself. In

peace and content they fed, for were there not three sentries, each

watching upon a different side of the herd? Tarzan had taught them

this, and though he had been away for several days hunting alone, as he

often did, or visiting at the cabin by the sea, they had not as yet

forgotten his admonitions, and if they continued for a short time

longer to post sentries, it would become a habit of their tribal life

and thus be perpetuated indefinitely.

But Tarzan, who knew them better than they knew themselves, was

confident that they had ceased to place the watchers about them the

moment that he had left them, and now he planned not only to have a

little fun at their expense but to teach them a lesson in preparedness,

which, by the way, is even a more vital issue in the jungle than in

civilized places. That you and I exist today must be due to the

preparedness of some shaggy anthropoid of the Oligocene. Of course the

apes of Kerchak were always prepared, after their own way—Tarzan had

merely suggested a new and additional safeguard.

Gunto was posted today to the north of the clearing. He squatted in the

fork of a tree from where he might view the jungle for quite a distance

about him. It was he who first discovered the enemy. A rustling in the

undergrowth attracted his attention, and a moment later he had a

partial view of a shaggy mane and tawny yellow back. Just a glimpse it

was through the matted foliage beneath him; but it brought from Gunto’s

leathern lungs a shrill “Kreeg-ah!” which is the ape for beware, or

danger.

Instantly the tribe took up the cry until “Kreeg-ahs!” rang through the

jungle about the clearing as apes swung quickly to places of safety

among the lower branches of the trees and the great bulls hastened in

the direction of Gunto.

And then into the clearing strode Numa, the lion—majestic and mighty,

and from a deep chest issued the moan and the cough and the rumbling

roar that set stiff hairs to bristling from shaggy craniums down the

length of mighty spines.

Inside the clearing, Numa paused and on the instant there fell upon him

from the trees near by a shower of broken rock and dead limbs torn from

age-old trees. A dozen times he was hit, and then the apes ran down and

gathered other rocks, pelting him unmercifully.

Numa turned to flee, but his way was barred by a fusilade of

sharp-cornered missiles, and then, upon the edge of the clearing, great

Taug met him with a huge fragment of rock as large as a man’s head, and

down went the Lord of the Jungle beneath the stunning blow.

With shrieks and roars and loud barkings the great apes of the tribe of

Kerchak rushed upon the fallen lion. Sticks and stones and yellow fangs

menaced the still form. In another moment, before he could regain

consciousness, Numa would be battered and torn until only a bloody mass

of broken bones and matted hair remained of what had once been the most

dreaded of jungle creatures.

But even as the sticks and stones were raised above him and the great

fangs bared to tear him, there descended like a plummet from the trees

above a diminutive figure with long, white whiskers and a wrinkled

face. Square upon the body of Numa it alighted and there it danced and

screamed and shrieked out its challenge against the bulls of Kerchak.

For an instant they paused, paralyzed by the wonder of the thing. It

was Manu, the monkey, Manu, the little coward, and here he was daring

the ferocity of the great Mangani, hopping about upon the carcass of

Numa, the lion, and crying out that they must not strike it again.

And when the bulls paused, Manu reached down and seized a tawny ear.

With all his little might he tugged upon the heavy head until slowly it

turned back, revealing the tousled, black head and clean-cut profile of

Tarzan of the Apes.

Some of the older apes were for finishing what they had commenced; but

Taug, sullen, mighty Taug, sprang quickly to the ape-man’s side and

straddling the unconscious form warned back those who would have struck

his childhood playmate. And Teeka, his mate, came too, taking her place

with bared fangs at Taug’s side. Others followed their example, until

at last Tarzan was surrounded by a ring of hairy champions who would

permit no enemy to approach him.

It was a surprised and chastened Tarzan who opened his eyes to

consciousness a few minutes later. He looked about him at the

surrounding apes and slowly there returned to him a realization of what

had occurred.

Gradually a broad grin illuminated his features. His bruises were many

and they hurt; but the good that had come from his adventure was worth

all that it had cost. He had learned, for instance, that the apes of

Kerchak had heeded his teaching, and he had learned that he had good

friends among the sullen beasts whom he had thought without sentiment.

He had discovered that Manu, the monkey—even little, cowardly Manu—had

risked his life in his defense.

It made Tarzan very glad to know these things; but at the other lesson

he had been taught he reddened. He had always been a joker, the only

joker in the grim and terrible company; but now as he lay there half

dead from his hurts, he almost swore a solemn oath forever to forego

practical joking—almost; but not quite.