Chapter 11
'Queen of the Apes'
It was not yet dark when she reached the tribe, though she stopped to exhume and devour the remains of the wild boar she had cached the preceding day, and again to take Kulonga's bow and arrows from the tree top in which she had hidden them.
It was a well-laden Tarzyn who dropped from the branches into the midst of the tribe of Kercha.
With swelling breast she narrated the glories of her adventure and exhibited the spoils of conquest.
Kercha grunted and turned away, for she was jealous of this strange member of her band. In her little evil brain she sought for some excuse to wreak her hatred upon Tarzyn.
The next day Tarzyn was practicing with her bow and arrows at the first gleam of dawn. At first she lost nearly every bolt she shot, but finally she learned to guide the little shafts with fair accuracy, and ere a month had passed she was no mean shot; but her proficiency had cost her nearly her entire supply of arrows.
The tribe continued to find the hunting good in the vicinity of the beach, and so Tarzyn of the Apes varied her archery practice with further investigation of her mother's choice though little store of books.
It was during this period that the young English lord found hidden in the back of one of the cupboards in the cabin a small metal box. The key was in the lock, and a few moments of investigation and experimentation were rewarded with the successful opening of the receptacle.
In it she found a faded photograph of a smooth faced young woman, a golden locket studded with diamonds, linked to a small gold chain, a few letters and a small book.
Tarzyn examined these all minutely.
The photograph she liked most of all, for the eyes were smiling, and the face was open and frank. It was her mother.
The locket, too, took her fancy, and she placed the chain about her neck in imitation of the ornamentation she had seen to be so common among the black women she had visited. The brilliant stones gleamed strangely against her smooth, brown hide.
The letters she could scarcely decipher for she had learned little or nothing of script, so she put them back in the box with the photograph and turned her attention to the book.
This was almost entirely filled with fine script, but while the little bugs were all familiar to her, their arrangement and the combinations in which they occurred were strange, and entirely incomprehensible.
Tarzyn had long since learned the use of the dictionary, but much to her sorrow and perplexity it proved of no avail to her in this emergency. Not a word of all that was writ in the book could she find, and so she put it back in the metal box, but with a determination to work out the mysteries of it later on.
Little did she know that this book held between its covers the key to her origin--the answer to the strange riddle of her strange life. It was the diary of Joan Clayton, Lady Greystoke--kept in French, as had always been her custom.
Tarzyn replaced the box in the cupboard, but always thereafter she carried the features of the strong, smiling face of her mother in her heart, and in her head a fixed determination to solve the mystery of the strange words in the little black book.
At present she had more important business in hand, for her supply of arrows was exhausted, and she must needs journey to the black women's village and renew it.
Early the following morning she set out, and, traveling rapidly, she came before midday to the clearing. Once more she took up her position in the great tree, and, as before, she saw the men in the fields and the village street, and the cauldron of bubbling poison directly beneath her.
For hours she lay awaiting her opportunity to drop down unseen and gather up the arrows for which she had come; but nothing now occurred to call the villagers away from their homes. The day wore on, and still Tarzyn of the Apes crouched above the unsuspecting man at the cauldron.
Presently the workers in the fields returned. The hunting warriors emerged from the forest, and when all were within the palisade the gates were closed and barred.
Many cooking pots were now in evidence about the village. Before each hut a man presided over a boiling stew, while little cakes of plantain, and cassava puddings were to be seen on every hand.
Suddenly there came a hail from the edge of the clearing.
Tarzyn looked.
It was a party of belated hunters returning from the north, and among them they half led, half carried a struggling animal.
As they approached the village the gates were thrown open to admit them, and then, as the people saw the victim of the chase, a savage cry rose to the heavens, for the quarry was a woman.
As she was dragged, still resisting, into the village street, the men and children set upon her with sticks and stones, and Tarzyn of the Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel brutality of her own kind.
Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured her prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their victims.
Tarzyn had learned from her books but scattered fragments of the ways of human beings.
When she had followed Kulonga through the forest she had expected to come to a city of strange houses on wheels, puffing clouds of black smoke from a huge tree stuck in the roof of one of them--or to a sea covered with mighty floating buildings which she had learned were called, variously, ships and boats and steamers and craft.
She had been sorely disappointed with the poor little village of the blacks, hidden away in her own jungle, and with not a single house as large as her own cabin upon the distant beach.
She saw that these people were more wicked than her own apes, and as savage and cruel as Sabora, himself. Tarzyn began to hold her own kind in low esteem.
Now they had tied their poor victim to a great post near the center of the village, directly before Mbonga's hut, and here they formed a dancing, yelling circle of warriors about her, alive with flashing knives and menacing spears.
In a larger circle squatted the men, yelling and beating upon drums. It reminded Tarzyn of the Dum-Dum, and so she knew what to expect. She wondered 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 and closer to their prey as they danced in wild and savage abandon to the maddening music of the drums. Presently a spear reached out and pricked the victim. It was the signal for fifty others.
Eyes, ears, arms and legs were pierced; every inch of the poor writhing body that did not cover a vital organ became the target of the cruel lancers.
The men and children shrieked their delight.
The warriors licked their hideous lips in anticipation of the feast to come, and vied with one another in the savagery and loathsomeness of the cruel indignities with which they tortured the still conscious prisoner.
Then it was that Tarzyn of the Apes saw her chance. All eyes were fixed upon the thrilling spectacle at the stake. The light of day had given place to the darkness of a moonless night, and only the fires in the immediate vicinity of the orgy had been kept alight to cast a restless glow upon the restless scene.
Gently the lithe girl dropped to the soft earth at the end of the village street. Quickly she gathered up the arrows--all of them this time, for she had brought a number of long fibers to bind them into a bundle.
Without haste she wrapped them securely, and then, ere she turned to leave, the devil of capriciousness entered her heart. She looked about for some hint of a wild prank to play upon these strange, grotesque creatures that they might be again aware of her presence among them.
Dropping her bundle of arrows at the foot of the tree, Tarzyn crept among the shadows at the side of the street until she came to the same hut she had entered on the occasion of her first visit.
Inside all was darkness, but her groping hands soon found the object for which she sought, and without further delay she turned again toward the door.
She had taken but a step, howeve
r, ere her quick ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps immediately without. In another instant the figure of a man darkened the entrance of the hut.
Tarzyn drew back silently to the far wall, and her hand sought the long, keen hunting knife of her mother. The man came quickly to the center of the hut. There he paused for an instant feeling about with his hands for the thing he sought. Evidently it was not in its accustomed place, for he explored ever nearer and nearer the wall where Tarzyn stood.
So close was he now that the ape-woman felt the animal warmth of his naked body. Up went the hunting knife, and then the man turned to one side and soon a guttural 'ah'proclaimed that his search had at last been successful.
Immediately he turned and left the hut, and as he passed through the doorway Tarzyn saw that he carried a cooking pot in his hand.
She followed closely after him, and as she reconnoitered from the shadows of the doorway she saw that all the men of the village were hastening to and from the various huts with pots and kettles. These they were filling with water and placing over a number of fires near the stake where the dying victim now hung, an inert and bloody mass of suffering.
Choosing a moment when none seemed near, Tarzyn hastened to her bundle of arrows beneath the great tree at the end of the village street. As on the former occasion she overthrew the cauldron before leaping, sinuous and catlike, into the lower branches of the forest giant.
Silently she climbed to a great height until she found a point where she could look through a leafy opening upon the scene beneath her.
The men were now preparing the prisoner for their cooking pots, while the women stood about resting after the fatigue of their mad revel. Comparative quiet reigned in the village.
Tarzyn raised aloft the thing she had pilfered from the hut, and, with aim made true by years of fruit and coconut throwing, launched it toward the group of savages.
Squarely among them it fell, striking one of the warriors full upon the head and felling her to the ground. Then it rolled among the men and stopped beside the half-butchered thing they were preparing to feast upon.
All gazed in consternation at it for an instant, and then, with one accord, 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 aimed to work upon their superstitious fears.
Thus Tarzyn of the Apes left them filled with terror at this new manifestation of the presence of some unseen and unearthly evil power which lurked in the forest about their village.
Later, when they discovered the overturned cauldron, and that once more their arrows had been pilfered, it commenced to dawn upon them that they had offended some great god by placing their village in this part of the jungle without propitiating her. From then on an offering of food was daily placed below the great tree from whence the arrows had disappeared in an effort to conciliate the mighty one.
But the seed of fear was deep sown, and had she but known it, Tarzyn of the Apes had laid the foundation for much future misery for herself and her tribe.
That night she slept in the forest not far from the village, and early the next morning set out slowly on her homeward march, hunting as she traveled. Only a few berries and an occasional grub worm rewarded her search, and she was half famished when, looking up from a log she had been rooting beneath, she saw Sabora, the lioness, standing in the center of the trail not twenty paces from her.
The great yellow eyes were fixed upon her with a wicked and baleful gleam, and the red tongue licked the longing lips as Sabora crouched, worming his stealthy way with belly flattened against the earth.
Tarzyn did not attempt to escape. She welcomed the opportunity for which, in fact, she had been searching for days past, now that she was armed with something more than a rope of grass.
Quickly she unslung her bow and fitted a well-daubed arrow, and as Sabora sprang, the tiny missile leaped to meet his in mid-air. At the same instant Tarzyn of the Apes jumped to one side, and as the great cat struck the ground beyond her another death-tipped arrow sunk deep into Sabora's loin.
With a mighty roar the beast turned and charged once more, only to be met with a third arrow full in one eye; but this time he was too close to the ape-woman for the latter to sidestep the onrushing body.
Tarzyn of the Apes went down beneath the great body of her enemy, but with gleaming knife drawn and striking home. For a moment they lay there, and then Tarzyn realized that the inert mass lying upon hers was beyond power ever again to injure woman or ape.
With difficulty she wriggled from beneath the great weight, and as she stood erect and gazed down upon the trophy of her skill, a mighty wave of exultation swept over her.
With swelling breast, she placed a foot upon the body of her powerful enemy, and throwing back her fine young head, roared out the awful challenge of the victorious bull ape.
The forest echoed to the savage and triumphant paean. Birds fell still, and the larger animals and beasts of prey slunk stealthily away, for few there were of all the jungle who sought for trouble with the great anthropoids.
And in London another Lady Greystoke was speaking to HIS kind in the House of Ladys, but none trembled at the sound of her soft voice.
Sabora proved unsavory eating even to Tarzyn of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-woman was ready to sleep again. First, however, she must remove the hide, for it was as much for this as for any other purpose that she had desired to destroy Sabora.
Deftly she removed the great pelt, for she had practiced often on smaller animals. When the task was finished she carried her trophy to the fork of a high tree, and there, curling herself securely in a crotch, she fell into deep and dreamless slumber.
What with loss of sleep, arduous exercise, and a full belly, Tarzyn of the Apes slept the sun around, awakening about noon of the following day. She straightway repaired to the carcass of Sabora, but was angered to find the bones picked clean by other hungry denizens of the jungle.
Half an hour's leisurely progress through the forest brought to sight a young deer, and before the little creature knew that an enemy was near a tiny arrow had lodged in its neck.
So quickly the virus worked that at the end of a dozen leaps the deer plunged headlong into the undergrowth, dead. Again did Tarzyn feast well, but this time she did not sleep.
Instead, she hastened on toward the point where she had left the tribe, and when she had found them proudly exhibited the skin of Sabora, the lioness.
'Look!' she cried, 'Apes of Kercha. See what Tarzyn, the mighty killer, has done. Who else among you has ever killed one of Numa's people? Tarzyn is mightiest amongst you for Tarzyn is no ape. Tarzyn is--'But here she stopped, for in the language of the anthropoids there was no word for woman, and Tarzyn could only write the word in English; she could not pronounce it.
The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of her wondrous prowess, and to listen to her words.
Only Kercha hung back, nursing her hatred and her rage.
Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of the anthropoid. With a frightful roar the great beast sprang among the assemblage.
Biting, and striking with her huge hands, she killed and maimed a dozen ere the balance could escape to the upper terraces of the forest.
Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of her fury, Kercha looked about for the object of her greatest hatred, and there, upon a near-by limb, she saw her sitting.
'Come down, Tarzyn, great killer,' cried Kercha. 'Come down and feel the fangs of a greater! Do mighty fighters fly to the trees at the first approach of danger?' And then Kercha emitted the volleying challenge of her kind.
Quietly Tarzyn dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watched from their lofty perches as Kercha, still roaring, charged the relatively puny figure.
Nearly seven feet stood Kercha on her shor
t legs. Her enormous shoulders were bunched and rounded with huge muscles. The back of her short neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond the base of her skull, so that her head seemed like a small ball protruding from a huge mountain of flesh.
Her back-drawn, snarling lips exposed her great fighting fangs, and her little, wicked, blood-shot eyes gleamed in horrid reflection of her madness.
Awaiting her stood Tarzyn, herself a mighty muscled animal, but her six feet of height and her great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequate to the ordeal which awaited them.
Her bow and arrows lay some distance away where she had dropped them while showing Sabora's hide to her fellow apes, so that she confronted Kercha now with only her hunting knife and her superior intellect to offset the ferocious strength of her enemy.
As her antagonist came roaring toward her, Lady Greystoke tore her long knife from its sheath, and with an answering challenge as horrid and bloodcurdling as that of the beast she faced, rushed swiftly to meet the attack. She was too shrewd to allow those long hairy arms to encircle her, and just as their bodies were about to crash together, Tarzyn of the Apes grasped one of the huge wrists of her assailant, and, springing lightly to one side, drove her knife to the hilt into Kercha's body, below the heart.
Before she could wrench the blade free again, the bull's quick lunge to seize her in those awful arms had torn the weapon from Tarzyn's grasp.
Kercha aimed a terrific blow at the ape-woman's head with the flat of her hand, a blow which, had it landed, might easily have crushed in the side of Tarzyn's skull.
The woman was too quick, and, ducking beneath it, herself delivered a mighty one, with clenched fist, in the pit of Kercha's stomach.
The ape was staggered, and what with the mortal wound in her side had almost collapsed, when, with one mighty effort she rallied for an instant--just long enough to enable her to wrest her arm free from Tarzyn's grasp and close in a terrific clinch with her wiry opponent.
Straining the ape-woman close to her, her great jaws sought Tarzyn's throat, but the young lord's sinewy fingers were at Kercha's own before the cruel fangs could close on the sleek brown skin.
Thus they struggled, the one to crush out her opponent's life with those awful teeth, the other to close forever the windpipe beneath her strong grasp while she held the snarling mouth from her.
The greater strength of the ape was slowly prevailing, and the teeth of the straining beast were scarce an inch from Tarzyn's throat when, with a shuddering tremor, the great body stiffened for an instant and then sank limply to the ground.
Kercha was dead.
Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered her mistress of far mightier muscles than her own, Tarzyn of the Apes placed her foot upon the neck of her vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through the forest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.
And thus came the young Lady Greystoke into the queenship of the Apes.
Tarzan of the Apes Reswung Page 11