12
La Seeks Vengeance
Swinging back through the jungle in a wide circle the ape-man came tothe river at another point, drank and took to the trees again and whilehe hunted, all oblivious of his past and careless of his future, therecame through the dark jungles and the open, parklike places and acrossthe wide meadows, where grazed the countless herbivora of themysterious continent, a weird and terrible caravan in search of him.There were fifty frightful men with hairy bodies and gnarled andcrooked legs. They were armed with knives and great bludgeons and attheir head marched an almost naked woman, beautiful beyond compare. Itwas La of Opar, High Priestess of the Flaming God, and fifty of herhorrid priests searching for the purloiner of the sacred sacrificialknife.
Never before had La passed beyond the crumbling outer walls of Opar;but never before had need been so insistent. The sacred knife wasgone! Handed down through countless ages it had come to her as aheritage and an insignia of her religious office and regal authorityfrom some long-dead progenitor of lost and forgotten Atlantis. Theloss of the crown jewels or the Great Seal of England could havebrought no greater consternation to a British king than did thepilfering of the sacred knife bring to La, the Oparian, Queen and HighPriestess of the degraded remnants of the oldest civilization uponearth. When Atlantis, with all her mighty cities and her cultivatedfields and her great commerce and culture and riches sank into the sealong ages since, she took with her all but a handful of her colonistsworking the vast gold mines of Central Africa. From these and theirdegraded slaves and a later intermixture of the blood of theanthropoids sprung the gnarled men of Opar; but by some queer freak offate, aided by natural selection, the old Atlantean strain had remainedpure and undegraded in the females descended from a single princess ofthe royal house of Atlantis who had been in Opar at the time of thegreat catastrophe. Such was La.
Burning with white-hot anger was the High Priestess, her heart aseething, molten mass of hatred for Tarzan of the Apes. The zeal ofthe religious fanatic whose altar has been desecrated was triplyenhanced by the rage of a woman scorned. Twice had she thrown herheart at the feet of the godlike ape-man and twice had she beenrepulsed. La knew that she was beautiful--and she was beautiful, notby the standards of prehistoric Atlantis alone, but by those of moderntimes was La physically a creature of perfection. Before Tarzan camethat first time to Opar, La had never seen a human male other than thegrotesque and knotted men of her clan. With one of these she must matesooner or later that the direct line of high priestesses might not bebroken, unless Fate should bring other men to Opar. Before Tarzan cameupon his first visit, La had had no thought that such men as heexisted, for she knew only her hideous little priests and the bulls ofthe tribe of great anthropoids that had dwelt from time immemorial inand about Opar, until they had come to be looked upon almost as equalsby the Oparians. Among the legends of Opar were tales of godlike menof the olden time and of black men who had come more recently; butthese latter had been enemies who killed and robbed. And, too, theselegends always held forth the hope that some day that namelesscontinent from which their race had sprung, would rise once more out ofthe sea and with slaves at the long sweeps would send her carven,gold-picked galleys forth to succor the long-exiled colonists.
The coming of Tarzan had aroused within La's breast the wild hope thatat last the fulfillment of this ancient prophecy was at hand; but morestrongly still had it aroused the hot fires of love in a heart thatnever otherwise would have known the meaning of that all-consumingpassion, for such a wondrous creature as La could never have felt lovefor any of the repulsive priests of Opar. Custom, duty and religiouszeal might have commanded the union; but there could have been no loveon La's part. She had grown to young womanhood a cold and heartlesscreature, daughter of a thousand other cold, heartless, beautiful womenwho had never known love. And so when love came to her it liberatedall the pent passions of a thousand generations, transforming La into apulsing, throbbing volcano of desire, and with desire thwarted thisgreat force of love and gentleness and sacrifice was transmuted by itsown fires into one of hatred and revenge.
It was in a state of mind superinduced by these conditions that La ledforth her jabbering company to retrieve the sacred emblem of her highoffice and wreak vengeance upon the author of her wrongs. To Werpershe gave little thought. The fact that the knife had been in his handwhen it departed from Opar brought down no thoughts of vengeance uponhis head. Of course, he should be slain when captured; but his deathwould give La no pleasure--she looked for that in the contemplateddeath agonies of Tarzan. He should be tortured. His should be a slowand frightful death. His punishment should be adequate to theimmensity of his crime. He had wrested the sacred knife from La; hehad lain sacrilegious hands upon the High Priestess of the Flaming God;he had desecrated the altar and the temple. For these things he shoulddie; but he had scorned the love of La, the woman, and for this heshould die horribly with great anguish.
The march of La and her priests was not without its adventures. Unusedwere these to the ways of the jungle, since seldom did any ventureforth from behind Opar's crumbling walls, yet their very numbersprotected them and so they came without fatalities far along the trailof Tarzan and Werper. Three great apes accompanied them and to thesewas delegated the business of tracking the quarry, a feat beyond thesenses of the Oparians. La commanded. She arranged the order ofmarch, she selected the camps, she set the hour for halting and thehour for resuming and though she was inexperienced in such matters, hernative intelligence was so far above that of the men or the apes thatshe did better than they could have done. She was a hard taskmaster,too, for she looked down with loathing and contempt upon the misshapencreatures amongst which cruel Fate had thrown her and to some extentvented upon them her dissatisfaction and her thwarted love. She madethem build her a strong protection and shelter each night and keep agreat fire burning before it from dusk to dawn. When she tired ofwalking they were forced to carry her upon an improvised litter, nordid one dare to question her authority or her right to such services.In fact they did not question either. To them she was a goddess andeach loved her and each hoped that he would be chosen as her mate, sothey slaved for her and bore the stinging lash of her displeasure andthe habitually haughty disdain of her manner without a murmur.
For many days they marched, the apes following the trail easily andgoing a little distance ahead of the body of the caravan that theymight warn the others of impending danger. It was during a noondayhalt while all were lying resting after a tiresome march that one ofthe apes rose suddenly and sniffed the breeze. In a low guttural hecautioned the others to silence and a moment later was swinging quietlyup wind into the jungle. La and the priests gathered silentlytogether, the hideous little men fingering their knives and bludgeons,and awaited the return of the shaggy anthropoid.
Nor had they long to wait before they saw him emerge from a leafythicket and approach them. Straight to La he came and in the languageof the great apes which was also the language of decadent Opar headdressed her.
"The great Tarmangani lies asleep there," he said, pointing in thedirection from which he had just come. "Come and we can kill him."
"Do not kill him," commanded La in cold tones. "Bring the greatTarmangani to me alive and unhurt. The vengeance is La's. Go; butmake no sound!" and she waved her hands to include all her followers.
Cautiously the weird party crept through the jungle in the wake of thegreat ape until at last he halted them with a raised hand and pointedupward and a little ahead. There they saw the giant form of theape-man stretched along a low bough and even in sleep one hand graspeda stout limb and one strong, brown leg reached out and overlappedanother. At ease lay Tarzan of the Apes, sleeping heavily upon a fullstomach and dreaming of Numa, the lion, and Horta, the boar, and othercreatures of the jungle. No intimation of danger assailed the dormantfaculties of the ape-man--he saw no crouching hairy figures upon theground beneath him nor the three apes that swung quietly into t
he treebeside him.
The first intimation of danger that came to Tarzan was the impact ofthree bodies as the three apes leaped upon him and hurled him to theground, where he alighted half stunned beneath their combined weightand was immediately set upon by the fifty hairy men or as many of themas could swarm upon his person. Instantly the ape-man became thecenter of a whirling, striking, biting maelstrom of horror. He foughtnobly but the odds against him were too great. Slowly they overcamehim though there was scarce one of them that did not feel the weight ofhis mighty fist or the rending of his fangs.