Chapter XI
"King of the Apes"
It was not yet dark when he reached the tribe, though he stopped toexhume and devour the remains of the wild boar he had cached thepreceding day, and again to take Kulonga's bow and arrows from the treetop in which he had hidden them.
It was a well-laden Tarzan who dropped from the branches into the midstof the tribe of Kerchak.
With swelling chest he narrated the glories of his adventure andexhibited the spoils of conquest.
Kerchak grunted and turned away, for he was jealous of this strangemember of his band. In his little evil brain he sought for some excuseto wreak his hatred upon Tarzan.
The next day Tarzan was practicing with his bow and arrows at the firstgleam of dawn. At first he lost nearly every bolt he shot, but finallyhe learned to guide the little shafts with fair accuracy, and ere amonth had passed he was no mean shot; but his proficiency had cost himnearly his entire supply of arrows.
The tribe continued to find the hunting good in the vicinity of thebeach, and so Tarzan of the Apes varied his archery practice withfurther investigation of his father's choice though little store ofbooks.
It was during this period that the young English lord found hidden inthe back of one of the cupboards in the cabin a small metal box. Thekey was in the lock, and a few moments of investigation andexperimentation were rewarded with the successful opening of thereceptacle.
In it he found a faded photograph of a smooth faced young man, a goldenlocket studded with diamonds, linked to a small gold chain, a fewletters and a small book.
Tarzan examined these all minutely.
The photograph he liked most of all, for the eyes were smiling, and theface was open and frank. It was his father.
The locket, too, took his fancy, and he placed the chain about his neckin imitation of the ornamentation he had seen to be so common among theblack men he had visited. The brilliant stones gleamed strangelyagainst his smooth, brown hide.
The letters he could scarcely decipher for he had learned little ornothing of script, so he put them back in the box with the photographand turned his attention to the book.
This was almost entirely filled with fine script, but while the littlebugs were all familiar to him, their arrangement and the combinationsin which they occurred were strange, and entirely incomprehensible.
Tarzan had long since learned the use of the dictionary, but much tohis sorrow and perplexity it proved of no avail to him in thisemergency. Not a word of all that was writ in the book could he find,and so he put it back in the metal box, but with a determination towork out the mysteries of it later on.
Little did he know that this book held between its covers the key tohis origin--the answer to the strange riddle of his strange life. Itwas the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke--kept in French, as hadalways been his custom.
Tarzan replaced the box in the cupboard, but always thereafter hecarried the features of the strong, smiling face of his father in hisheart, and in his head a fixed determination to solve the mystery ofthe strange words in the little black book.
At present he had more important business in hand, for his supply ofarrows was exhausted, and he must needs journey to the black men'svillage and renew it.
Early the following morning he set out, and, traveling rapidly, he camebefore midday to the clearing. Once more he took up his position inthe great tree, and, as before, he saw the women in the fields and thevillage street, and the cauldron of bubbling poison directly beneathhim.
For hours he lay awaiting his opportunity to drop down unseen andgather up the arrows for which he had come; but nothing now occurred tocall the villagers away from their homes. The day wore on, and stillTarzan of the Apes crouched above the unsuspecting woman at thecauldron.
Presently the workers in the fields returned. The hunting warriorsemerged from the forest, and when all were within the palisade thegates were closed and barred.
Many cooking pots were now in evidence about the village. Before eachhut a woman presided over a boiling stew, while little cakes ofplantain, and cassava puddings were to be seen on every hand.
Suddenly there came a hail from the edge of the clearing.
Tarzan looked.
It was a party of belated hunters returning from the north, and amongthem they half led, half carried a struggling animal.
As they approached the village the gates were thrown open to admitthem, and then, as the people saw the victim of the chase, a savage cryrose to the heavens, for the quarry was a man.
As he was dragged, still resisting, into the village street, the womenand children set upon him with sticks and stones, and Tarzan of theApes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruelbrutality of his own kind.
Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey.The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to theirvictims.
Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the waysof human beings.
When he had followed Kulonga through the forest he had expected to cometo a city of strange houses on wheels, puffing clouds of black smokefrom a huge tree stuck in the roof of one of them--or to a sea coveredwith mighty floating buildings which he had learned were called,variously, ships and boats and steamers and craft.
He had been sorely disappointed with the poor little village of theblacks, hidden away in his own jungle, and with not a single house aslarge as his own cabin upon the distant beach.
He saw that these people were more wicked than his own apes, and assavage and cruel as Sabor, herself. Tarzan began to hold his own kindin low esteem.
Now they had tied their poor victim to a great post near the center ofthe village, directly before Mbonga's hut, and here they formed adancing, yelling circle of warriors about him, alive with flashingknives and menacing spears.
In a larger circle squatted the women, yelling and beating upon drums.It reminded Tarzan of the Dum-Dum, and so he knew what to expect. Hewondered if they would spring upon their meat while it was still alive.The Apes did not do such things as that.
The circle of warriors about the cringing captive drew closer andcloser to their prey as they danced in wild and savage abandon to themaddening music of the drums. Presently a spear reached out andpricked the victim. It was the signal for fifty others.
Eyes, ears, arms and legs were pierced; every inch of the poor writhingbody that did not cover a vital organ became the target of the cruellancers.
The women and children shrieked their delight.
The warriors licked their hideous lips in anticipation of the feast tocome, and vied with one another in the savagery and loathsomeness ofthe cruel indignities with which they tortured the still consciousprisoner.
Then it was that Tarzan of the Apes saw his chance. All eyes werefixed upon the thrilling spectacle at the stake. The light of day hadgiven place to the darkness of a moonless night, and only the fires inthe immediate vicinity of the orgy had been kept alight to cast arestless glow upon the restless scene.
Gently the lithe boy dropped to the soft earth at the end of thevillage street. Quickly he gathered up the arrows--all of them thistime, for he had brought a number of long fibers to bind them into abundle.
Without haste he wrapped them securely, and then, ere he turned toleave, the devil of capriciousness entered his heart. He looked aboutfor some hint of a wild prank to play upon these strange, grotesquecreatures that they might be again aware of his presence among them.
Dropping his bundle of arrows at the foot of the tree, Tarzan creptamong the shadows at the side of the street until he came to the samehut he had entered on the occasion of his first visit.
Inside all was darkness, but his groping hands soon found the objectfor which he sought, and without further delay he turned again towardthe door.
He had taken but a step, however, ere his quick ear caught the sound ofapproaching footsteps immediately without. In another instant thefigure of a woman d
arkened the entrance of the hut.
Tarzan drew back silently to the far wall, and his hand sought thelong, keen hunting knife of his father. The woman came quickly to thecenter of the hut. There she paused for an instant feeling about withher hands for the thing she sought. Evidently it was not in itsaccustomed place, for she explored ever nearer and nearer the wallwhere Tarzan stood.
So close was she now that the ape-man felt the animal warmth of hernaked body. Up went the hunting knife, and then the woman turned toone side and soon a guttural "ah" proclaimed that her search had atlast been successful.
Immediately she turned and left the hut, and as she passed through thedoorway Tarzan saw that she carried a cooking pot in her hand.
He followed closely after her, and as he reconnoitered from the shadowsof the doorway he saw that all the women of the village were hasteningto and from the various huts with pots and kettles. These they werefilling with water and placing over a number of fires near the stakewhere the dying victim now hung, an inert and bloody mass of suffering.
Choosing a moment when none seemed near, Tarzan hastened to his bundleof arrows beneath the great tree at the end of the village street. Ason the former occasion he overthrew the cauldron before leaping,sinuous and catlike, into the lower branches of the forest giant.
Silently he climbed to a great height until he found a point where hecould look through a leafy opening upon the scene beneath him.
The women were now preparing the prisoner for their cooking pots, whilethe men stood about resting after the fatigue of their mad revel.Comparative quiet reigned in the village.
Tarzan raised aloft the thing he had pilfered from the hut, and, withaim made true by years of fruit and coconut throwing, launched ittoward the group of savages.
Squarely among them it fell, striking one of the warriors full upon thehead and felling him to the ground. Then it rolled among the women andstopped beside the half-butchered thing they were preparing to feastupon.
All gazed in consternation at it for an instant, and then, with oneaccord, broke and ran for their huts.
It was a grinning human skull which looked up at them from the ground.The dropping of the thing out of the open sky was a miracle well aimedto work upon their superstitious fears.
Thus Tarzan of the Apes left them filled with terror at this newmanifestation of the presence of some unseen and unearthly evil powerwhich lurked in the forest about their village.
Later, when they discovered the overturned cauldron, and that once moretheir arrows had been pilfered, it commenced to dawn upon them thatthey had offended some great god by placing their village in this partof the jungle without propitiating him. From then on an offering offood was daily placed below the great tree from whence the arrows haddisappeared in an effort to conciliate the mighty one.
But the seed of fear was deep sown, and had he but known it, Tarzan ofthe Apes had laid the foundation for much future misery for himself andhis tribe.
That night he slept in the forest not far from the village, and earlythe next morning set out slowly on his homeward march, hunting as hetraveled. Only a few berries and an occasional grub worm rewarded hissearch, and he was half famished when, looking up from a log he hadbeen rooting beneath, he saw Sabor, the lioness, standing in the centerof the trail not twenty paces from him.
The great yellow eyes were fixed upon him with a wicked and balefulgleam, and the red tongue licked the longing lips as Sabor crouched,worming her stealthy way with belly flattened against the earth.
Tarzan did not attempt to escape. He welcomed the opportunity forwhich, in fact, he had been searching for days past, now that he wasarmed with something more than a rope of grass.
Quickly he unslung his bow and fitted a well-daubed arrow, and as Saborsprang, the tiny missile leaped to meet her in mid-air. At the sameinstant Tarzan of the Apes jumped to one side, and as the great catstruck the ground beyond him another death-tipped arrow sunk deep intoSabor's loin.
With a mighty roar the beast turned and charged once more, only to bemet with a third arrow full in one eye; but this time she was too closeto the ape-man for the latter to sidestep the onrushing body.
Tarzan of the Apes went down beneath the great body of his enemy, butwith gleaming knife drawn and striking home. For a moment they laythere, and then Tarzan realized that the inert mass lying upon him wasbeyond power ever again to injure man or ape.
With difficulty he wriggled from beneath the great weight, and as hestood erect and gazed down upon the trophy of his skill, a mighty waveof exultation swept over him.
With swelling breast, he placed a foot upon the body of his powerfulenemy, and throwing back his fine young head, roared out the awfulchallenge of the victorious bull ape.
The forest echoed to the savage and triumphant paean. Birds fellstill, and the larger animals and beasts of prey slunk stealthily away,for few there were of all the jungle who sought for trouble with thegreat anthropoids.
And in London another Lord Greystoke was speaking to HIS kind in theHouse of Lords, but none trembled at the sound of his soft voice.
Sabor proved unsavory eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hungerserved as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, andere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleepagain. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much forthis as for any other purpose that he had desired to destroy Sabor.
Deftly he removed the great pelt, for he had practiced often on smalleranimals. When the task was finished he carried his trophy to the forkof a high tree, and there, curling himself securely in a crotch, hefell into deep and dreamless slumber.
What with loss of sleep, arduous exercise, and a full belly, Tarzan ofthe Apes slept the sun around, awakening about noon of the followingday. He straightway repaired to the carcass of Sabor, but was angeredto find the bones picked clean by other hungry denizens of the jungle.
Half an hour's leisurely progress through the forest brought to sight ayoung deer, and before the little creature knew that an enemy was neara tiny arrow had lodged in its neck.
So quickly the virus worked that at the end of a dozen leaps the deerplunged headlong into the undergrowth, dead. Again did Tarzan feastwell, but this time he did not sleep.
Instead, he hastened on toward the point where he had left the tribe,and when he had found them proudly exhibited the skin of Sabor, thelioness.
"Look!" he cried, "Apes of Kerchak. See what Tarzan, the mightykiller, has done. Who else among you has ever killed one of Numa'speople? Tarzan is mightiest amongst you for Tarzan is no ape. Tarzanis--" But here he stopped, for in the language of the anthropoidsthere was no word for man, and Tarzan could only write the word inEnglish; he could not pronounce it.
The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of his wondrousprowess, and to listen to his words.
Only Kerchak hung back, nursing his hatred and his rage.
Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of theanthropoid. With a frightful roar the great beast sprang among theassemblage.
Biting, and striking with his huge hands, he killed and maimed a dozenere the balance could escape to the upper terraces of the forest.
Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of his fury, Kerchak lookedabout for the object of his greatest hatred, and there, upon a near-bylimb, he saw him sitting.
"Come down, Tarzan, great killer," cried Kerchak. "Come down and feelthe fangs of a greater! Do mighty fighters fly to the trees at thefirst approach of danger?" And then Kerchak emitted the volleyingchallenge of his kind.
Quietly Tarzan dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watchedfrom their lofty perches as Kerchak, still roaring, charged therelatively puny figure.
Nearly seven feet stood Kerchak on his short legs. His enormousshoulders were bunched and rounded with huge muscles. The back of hisshort neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond thebase of his skull, so that his head seemed like a small ball p
rotrudingfrom a huge mountain of flesh.
His back-drawn, snarling lips exposed his great fighting fangs, and hislittle, wicked, blood-shot eyes gleamed in horrid reflection of hismadness.
Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal, but his sixfeet of height and his great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequateto the ordeal which awaited them.
His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had dropped themwhile showing Sabor's hide to his fellow apes, so that he confrontedKerchak now with only his hunting knife and his superior intellect tooffset the ferocious strength of his enemy.
As his antagonist came roaring toward him, Lord Greystoke tore his longknife from its sheath, and with an answering challenge as horrid andbloodcurdling as that of the beast he faced, rushed swiftly to meet theattack. He was too shrewd to allow those long hairy arms to encirclehim, and just as their bodies were about to crash together, Tarzan ofthe Apes grasped one of the huge wrists of his assailant, and,springing lightly to one side, drove his knife to the hilt intoKerchak's body, below the heart.
Before he could wrench the blade free again, the bull's quick lunge toseize him in those awful arms had torn the weapon from Tarzan's grasp.
Kerchak aimed a terrific blow at the ape-man's head with the flat ofhis hand, a blow which, had it landed, might easily have crushed in theside of Tarzan's skull.
The man was too quick, and, ducking beneath it, himself delivered amighty one, with clenched fist, in the pit of Kerchak's stomach.
The ape was staggered, and what with the mortal wound in his side hadalmost collapsed, when, with one mighty effort he rallied for aninstant--just long enough to enable him to wrest his arm free fromTarzan's grasp and close in a terrific clinch with his wiry opponent.
Straining the ape-man close to him, his great jaws sought Tarzan'sthroat, but the young lord's sinewy fingers were at Kerchak's ownbefore the cruel fangs could close on the sleek brown skin.
Thus they struggled, the one to crush out his opponent's life withthose awful teeth, the other to close forever the windpipe beneath hisstrong grasp while he held the snarling mouth from him.
The greater strength of the ape was slowly prevailing, and the teeth ofthe straining beast were scarce an inch from Tarzan's throat when, witha shuddering tremor, the great body stiffened for an instant and thensank limply to the ground.
Kerchak was dead.
Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered him master of farmightier muscles than his own, Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot uponthe neck of his vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through theforest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.
And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.