Tarzan of the Apes Reswung

by Edna Rice Burroughs

  Chapter 12

  Woman's Reason

  There was one of the tribe of Tarzyn who questioned her authority, and that was Terkou, the daughter of Tublati, but she so feared the keen knife and the deadly arrows of her new lord that she confined the manifestation of her objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzyn knew, however, that she but waited her opportunity to wrest the kingship from her by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so she was ever on her guard against surprise.

  For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before, except that Tarzyn's greater intelligence and her ability as a hunter were the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before. Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change in rulers.

  Tarzyn led them by night to the fields of the black women, and there, warned by their chief's superior wisdom, they ate only what they required, nor ever did they destroy what they could not eat, as is the way of Manu, the monkey, and of most apes.

  So, while the blacks were wroth at the continued pilfering of their fields, they were not discouraged in their efforts to cultivate the land, as would have been the case had Tarzyn permitted her people to lay waste the plantation wantonly.

  During this period Tarzyn paid many nocturnal visits to the village, where she often renewed her supply of arrows. She soon noticed the food always standing at the foot of the tree which was her avenue into the palisade, and after a little, she commenced to eat whatever the blacks put there.

  When the awe-struck savages saw that the food disappeared overnight they were filled with consternation and dread, for it was one thing to put food out to propitiate a god or a devil, but quite another thing to have the spirit really come into the village and eat it. Such a thing was unheard of, and it clouded their superstitious minds with all manner of vague fears.

  Nor was this all. The periodic disappearance of their arrows, and the strange pranks perpetrated by unseen hands, had wrought them to such a state that life had become a veritable burden in their new home, and now it was that Mbonga and her head women began to talk of abandoning the village and seeking a site farther on in the jungle.

  Presently the black warriors began to strike farther and farther south into the heart of the forest when they went to hunt, looking for a site for a new village.

  More often was the tribe of Tarzyn disturbed by these wandering huntsmen. Now was the quiet, fierce solitude of the primeval forest broken by new, strange cries. No longer was there safety for bird or beast. Woman had come.

  Other animals passed up and down the jungle by day and by night--fierce, cruel beasts--but their weaker neighbors only fled from their immediate vicinity to return again when the danger was past.

  With woman it is different. When she comes many of the larger animals instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return; and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee woman as woman flees a pestilence.

  For a short time the tribe of Tarzyn lingered in the vicinity of the beach because their new chief hated the thought of leaving the treasured contents of the little cabin forever. But when one day a member of the tribe discovered the blacks in great numbers on the banks of a little stream that had been their watering place for generations, and in the act of clearing a space in the jungle and erecting many huts, the apes would remain no longer; and so Tarzyn led them inland for many marches to a spot as yet undefiled by the foot of a human being.

  Once every moon Tarzyn would go swinging rapidly back through the swaying branches to have a day with her books, and to replenish her supply of arrows. This latter task was becoming more and more difficult, for the blacks had taken to hiding their supply away at night in granaries and living huts.

  This necessitated watching by day on Tarzyn's part to discover where the arrows were being concealed.

  Twice had she entered huts at night while the inmates lay sleeping upon their mats, and stolen the arrows from the very sides of the warriors. But this method she realized to be too fraught with danger, and so she commenced picking up solitary hunters with her long, deadly noose, stripping them of weapons and ornaments and dropping their bodies from a high tree into the village street during the still watches of the night.

  These various escapades again so terrorized the blacks that, had it not been for the monthly respite between Tarzyn's visits, in which they had opportunity to renew hope that each fresh incursion would prove the last, they soon would have abandoned their new village.

  The blacks had not as yet come upon Tarzyn's cabin on the distant beach, but the ape-woman lived in constant dread that, while she was away with the tribe, they would discover and despoil her treasure. So it came that she spent more and more time in the vicinity of her mother's last home, and less and less with the tribe. Presently the members of her little community began to suffer on account of her neglect, for disputes and quarrels constantly arose which only the queen might settle peaceably.

  At last some of the older apes spoke to Tarzyn on the subject, and for a month thereafter she remained constantly with the tribe.

  The duties of kingship among the anthropoids are not many or arduous.

  In the afternoon comes Thaka, possibly, to complain that old Mungo has stolen her new husband. Then must Tarzyn summon all before her, and if she finds that the husband prefers his new lord she commands that matters remain as they are, or possibly that Mungo give Thaka one of her sons in exchange.

  Whatever her decision, the apes accept it as final, and return to their occupations satisfied.

  Then comes Tana, shrieking and holding tight his side from which blood is streaming. Gunto, his wife, has cruelly bitten him! And Gunto, summoned, says that Tana is lazy and will not bring her nuts and beetles, or scratch her back for her.

  So Tarzyn scolds them both and threatens Gunto with a taste of the death-bearing slivers if she abuses Tana further, and Tana, for his part, is compelled to promise better attention to his wifely duties.

  And so it goes, little family differences for the most part, which, if left unsettled would result finally in greater factional strife, and the eventual dismemberment of the tribe.

  But Tarzyn tired of it, as she found that kingship meant the curtailment of her liberty. She longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed sea--for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the never-ending wonders of the many books.

  As she had grown older, she found that she had grown away from her people. Their interests and her were far removed. They had not kept pace with her, nor could they understand aught of the many strange and wonderful dreams that passed through the active brain of their human queen. So limited was their vocabulary that Tarzyn could not even talk with them of the many new truths, and the great fields of thought that her reading had opened up before her longing eyes, or make known ambitions which stirred her soul.

  Among the tribe she no longer had friends as of old. A little child may find companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grown woman there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basis for agreeable association.

  Had Kale lived, Tarzyn would have sacrificed all else to remain near him, but now that he was dead, and the playful friends of her childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes she felt that she much preferred the peace and solitude of her cabin to the irksome duties of leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.

  The hatred and jealousy of Terkou, daughter of Tublati, did much to counteract the effect of Tarzyn's desire to renounce her kingship among the apes, for, stubborn young Englisher that she was, she could not bring herself to retreat in the face of so malignant an enemy.

  That Terkou would be chosen leader in her stead she knew full well, for time and again the ferocious brute had established her claim to physical supremacy over the few bull apes who had dared resent her savage bullying.

  Tarzyn would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to knife or arrows. So much had her great
strength and agility increased in the period following her maturity that she had come to believe that she might mistress the redoubtable Terkou in a hand to hand fight were it not for the terrible advantage the anthropoid's huge fighting fangs gave her over the poorly armed Tarzyn.

  The entire matter was taken out of Tarzyn's hands one day by force of circumstances, and her future left open to her, so that she might go or stay without any stain upon her savage escutcheon.

  It happened thus:

  The tribe was feeding quietly, spread over a considerable area, when a great screaming arose some distance east of where Tarzyn lay upon her belly beside a limpid brook, attempting to catch an elusive fish in her quick, brown hands.

  With one accord the tribe swung rapidly toward the frightened cries, and there found Terkou holding an old male by the hair and beating his unmercifully with her great hands.

  As Tarzyn approached she raised her hand aloft for Terkou to desist, for the male was not hers, but belonged to a poor old ape whose fighting days were long over, and who, therefore, could not protect her family.

  Terkou knew that it was against the laws of her kind to strike this man of another, but being a bully, she had taken advantage of the weakness of the female's wife to chastise his because he had refused to give up to her a tender young rodent he had captured.

  When Terkou saw Tarzyn approaching without her arrows, she continued to belabor the poor man in a studied effort to affront her hated chieftain.

  Tarzyn did not repeat her warning signal, but instead rushed bodily upon the waiting Terkou.

  Never had the ape-woman fought so terrible a battle since that long-gone day when Bolgani, the great queen gorilla had so horribly manhandled her ere the new-found knife had, by accident, pricked the savage heart.

  Tarzyn's knife on the present occasion but barely offset the gleaming fangs of Terkou, and what little advantage the ape had over the woman in brute strength was almost balanced by the latter's wonderful quickness and agility.

  In the sum total of their points, however, the anthropoid had a shade the better of the battle, and had there been no other personal attribute to influence the final outcome, Tarzyn of the Apes, the young Lady Greystoke, would have died as she had lived--an unknown savage beast in equatorial Africa.

  But there was that which had raised her far above her fellows of the jungle--that little spark which spells the whole vast difference between woman and brute--Reason. This it was which saved her from death beneath the iron muscles and tearing fangs of Terkou.

  Scarcely had they fought a dozen seconds ere they were rolling upon the ground, striking, tearing and rending--two great savage beasts battling to the death.

  Terkou had a dozen knife wounds on head and breast, and Tarzyn was torn and bleeding--his scalp in one place half torn from her head so that a great piece hung down over one eye, obstructing her vision.

  But so far the young Englisher had been able to keep those horrible fangs from her jugular and now, as they fought less fiercely for a moment, to regain their breath, Tarzyn formed a cunning plan. She would work her way to the other's back and, clinging there with tooth and nail, drive her knife home until Terkou was no more.

  The maneuver was accomplished more easily than she had hoped, for the stupid beast, not knowing what Tarzyn was attempting, made no particular effort to prevent the accomplishment of the design.

  But when, finally, she realized that her antagonist was fastened to her where her teeth and fists alike were useless against her, Terkou hurled herself about upon the ground so violently that Tarzyn could but cling desperately to the leaping, turning, twisting body, and ere she had struck a blow the knife was hurled from her hand by a heavy impact against the earth, and Tarzyn found herself defenseless.

  During the rollings and squirmings of the next few minutes, Tarzyn's hold was loosened a dozen times until finally an accidental circumstance of those swift and everchanging evolutions gave her a new hold with her right hand, which she realized was absolutely unassailable.

  Her arm was passed beneath Terkou's arm from behind and her hand and forearm encircled the back of Terkou's neck. It was the half-Nelson of modern wrestling which the untaught ape-woman had stumbled upon, but superior reason showed her in an instant the value of the thing she had discovered. It was the difference to her between life and death.

  And so she struggled to encompass a similar hold with the left hand, and in a few moments Terkou's bull neck was creaking beneath a full-Nelson.

  There was no more lunging about now. The two lay perfectly still upon the ground, Tarzyn upon Terkou's back. Slowly the bullet head of the ape was being forced lower and lower upon her breast.

  Tarzyn knew what the result would be. In an instant the neck would break. Then there came to Terkou's rescue the same thing that had put her in these sore straits--a woman's reasoning power.

  'If I kill her,' thought Tarzyn, 'what advantage will it be to me? Will it not rob the tribe of a great fighter? And if Terkou be dead, she will know nothing of my supremacy, while alive she will ever be an example to the other apes.'

  'KA-GODA?' hissed Tarzyn in Terkou's ear, which, in ape tongue, means, freely translated: 'Do you surrender?'

  For a moment there was no reply, and Tarzyn added a few more ounces of pressure, which elicited a horrified shriek of pain from the great beast.

  'KA-GODA?' repeated Tarzyn.

  'KA-GODA!' cried Terkou.

  'Listen,' said Tarzyn, easing up a trifle, but not releasing her hold. 'I am Tarzyn, Queen of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great.

  'You have said: 'KA-GODA' to me. All the tribe have heard. Quarrel no more with your queen or your people, for next time I shall kill you. Do you understand?'

  'HUH,' assented Terkou.

  'And you are satisfied?'

  'HUH,' said the ape.

  Tarzyn let her up, and in a few minutes all were back at their vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of their primeval forest haunts.

  But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzyn was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because she had had it in her power to kill her enemy, but had allowed her to live--unharmed.

  That afternoon as the tribe came together, as was their wont before darkness settled on the jungle, Tarzyn, her wounds washed in the waters of the stream, called the old males about her.

  'You have seen again to-day that Tarzyn of the Apes is the greatest among you,' she said.

  'HUH,' they replied with one voice, 'Tarzyn is great.'

  'Tarzyn,' she continued, 'is not an ape. She is not like her people. Her ways are not their ways, and so Tarzyn is going back to the lair of her own kind by the waters of the great lake which has no farther shore. You must choose another to rule you, for Tarzyn will not return.'

  And thus young Lady Greystoke took the first step toward the goal which she had set--the finding of other white women like herself.