When these had passed to the ownership of Rungula, Obroski could feel the hot flush beneath the heavy coat of tan he had acquired on the beach at Malibu.
"Tell him to give me something to wear," he begged.
Rungula laughed uproariously when the demand was made known to him; but he turned and called something to the women in his hut, and a moment later a little pickaninny came running out with a very dirty G string which he threw at Obroski's feet.
Shortly after, the prisoners were returned to their hut; but their ankles were not bound again, nor were Obroski's wrists. While he was removing the bonds from the wrists of his fellow prisoners a woman came with food and water for them. Thereafter they were fed with reasonable regularity.
Monotonously the days dragged. Each slow, hideous night seemed an eternity to the white prisoner. He shivered in his nakedness and sought warmth by huddling close between the bodies of two of the natives. All of them were alive with vermin.
A week passed, and then one night some warriors came and took one of the black prisoners away. Obroski and the others watched through the doorway. The man disappeared around the corner of a hut near the chief's. They never saw him again.
The tom-toms commenced their slow thrumming; the voices of men rose in a weird chant; occasionally the watchers caught a glimpse of savage dancers as their steps led them from behind the corner of a hut that hid the remainder of the scene.
Suddenly a horrid scream of agony rose above the voices of the dancers. For a half hour occasional groans punctuated the savage cries of the warriors, but at last even these ceased.
"He is gone, Bwana," whispered Kwamudi.
"Yes, thank God!" muttered the white man. "What agony he must have suffered!"
The following night warriors came and took away the second black prisoner. Obroski tried to stop his ears against the sounds of the man's passing. That night he was very cold, for there was only Kwamudi to warm him on one side.
"Tomorrow night, Bwana," said the black man, "you will sleep alone."
"And the next night?"
"There will be none, Bwana—for you."
During the cold, sleepless hours Obroski's thoughts wandered back through the past, the near past particularly. He thought of Naomi Madison, and wondered if she were grieving much over his disappearance. Something told him she was not.
Most of the other figures were pale in his thoughts—he neither liked nor disliked them; but there was one who stood out even more clearly than the memory picture of Naomi. It was Orman. His hatred of Orman rose above all his other passions—it was greater than his love for Naomi, greater than his fear of torture and death. He hugged it to his breast now and nursed it and thanked God for it, because it made him forget the lice and the cold and the things that were to happen to him on the next night or the next.
The hours dragged on; day came and went, and night came again. Obroski and Kwamudi, watching, saw warriors approaching the hut.
"They come, Bwana," said the black man. "Good-bye!"
But this time they took them both. They took them to the open space before the hut of Rungula, chief of the Bansutos, and tied them flat against the boles of two trees, facing one another.
Here Obroski watched them work upon Kwamudi. He saw tortures so fiendish, so horrible, so obscene that he feared for his reason, thinking that these visions must be the figments of a mad brain. He tried to look away, but the horror of it fascinated him. And so he saw Kwamudi die.
Afterward he saw even more disgusting sights, sights that nauseated him. He wondered when they would commence on him, and prayed that it would be soon and soon over. He tried to steel himself against fear, but he knew that he was afraid. By every means within the power of his will he sought to bolster a determination not to give them the satisfaction of knowing that he suffered when his turn came; for he had seen that they gloated over the agonies of Kwamudi.
It was almost morning when they removed the thongs that bound him to the tree and led him back to the hut. Then it became evident that they were not going to kill him—this night. It meant that his agony was to be prolonged.
In the cold of the coming dawn he huddled alone on the filthy floor of his prison, sleepless and shivering; and the lice swarmed over his body unmolested. He had plumbed the nadir of misery and hopelessness and found there a dull apathy that preserved his reason.
Finally he slept, nor did he awaken until midafternoon. He was warm then; and new life seemed to course through his veins, bringing new hope. Now he commenced to plan. He would not die as the others had died, like sheep led to the slaughter. The longer he considered his plan the more anxious he became to put it into execution, awaiting impatiently those who were to lead him to torture.
His plan did not include escape; for that he was sure was impossible, but it did include a certain measure of revenge and death without torture. Obroski's reason was tottering.
When he saw the warriors coming to get him he came out of the hut and met them, a smile upon his lips.
Then they led him away as they had led the three natives before him.
Chapter Eleven
The Last Victim
Tarzan of the Apes was ranging a district that was new to him, and with the keen alertness of the wild creature he was alive to all that was strange or unusual. Upon the range of his knowledge depended his ability to cope with the emergencies of an unaccustomed environment. Nothing was so trivial that it did not require investigation; and already, in certain matters concerning the haunts and habits of game both large and small, he knew quite as much if not more than many creatures that had been born here.
For three nights he had heard the almost continuous booming of tom-toms, faintly from afar; and during the day following the third night he had drifted slowly in his hunting in the direction from which the sounds had come.
He had seen something of the natives who inhabited this region. He had witnessed their methods of warfare against the whites who had invaded their territory. His sympathies had been neither with one side nor the other. He had seen Orman, drunk, lashing his black porters; and he had felt that whatever misfortunes overtook him he deserved them.
Tarzan did not know these Tarmangani; and so they were even less to him than the other beasts that they would have described as lower orders but which Tarzan, who knew all orders well, considered their superiors in many aspects of heart and mind.
Some passing whim, some slight incitement, might have caused him to befriend them actively, as he had often befriended Numa and Sabor and Sheeta, who were by nature his hereditary enemies. But no such whim had seized him, no such incitement had occurred; and he had seen them go upon their way and had scarcely given them a thought since the last night that he had entered their camp.
He had heard the fusillade of shots that had followed the attack of the Bansutos upon the safari; but he had been far away, and as he had already witnessed similar attacks during the preceding days Ms curiosity was not aroused; and he had not investigated.
The doings of the Bansutos interested him far more. The Tarmangani would soon be gone—either dead or departed—but the Gomangani would be here always; and he must know much about them if he were to remain in their country.
Lazily he swung through the trees in the direction of their village. He was alone now; for the great golden lion, Jad-bal-ja, was hunting elsewhere, hunting trouble, Tarzan thought with a half smile as he recalled the sleek young lioness that the great beast had followed off into the forest fastness.
It was dark before the ape-man reached the village of Rungula. The rhythm of the tom-toms blended with a low, mournful chant. A few warriors were dancing listlessly—a tentative excursion into the borderland of savage ecstasy into which they would later hurl themselves as their numbers increased with the increasing tempo of the dance.
Tarzan watched from the concealment of the foliage of a tree at the edge of the clearing that encircled the village. He was not greatly interested; the savage orgies of the blac
ks were an old story to him. Apparently there was nothing here to hold his attention, and he was about to turn away when his eyes were attracted to the figure of a man who contrasted strangely with the savage black warriors of the village.
He was entering the open space where the dancers were holding forth—a tall, bronzed, almost naked white man surrounded by a group of warriors. He was evidently a prisoner.
The ape-man's curiosity was aroused. Silently he dropped to the ground, and keeping in the dense shadows of the forest well out of the moonlight he circled to the back of the village. Here there was no life, the interest of the villagers being centered upon the activities near the chief's hut.
Cautiously but quickly Tarzan crossed the strip of moonlit ground between the forest and the palisade. The latter was built of poles sunk into the ground close together and lashed with pliant creepers. It was about ten feet high.
A few quick steps, a running jump, and Tarzan's fingers closed upon the top of the barrier. Drawing himself cautiously up, he looked over into the village. In silence he listened, sniffing the air. Satisfied, he threw a leg over the top of the palisade, and a moment later dropped lightly to the ground inside the village of Rungula, the Bansuto.
When the ground had been cleared for the village a number of trees had been left standing within the palisade to afford shelter from the equatorial sun. One of these overhung Rungula's hut, as Tarzan had noticed from the forest; and it was this tree that he chose from which to examine the white prisoner more closely.
Keeping well in the rear of the chiefs hut and moving cautiously from the shadow of one hut to that of the next, the ape-man approached his goal. Had he moved noisily the sound of his coming would have been drowned by the tomtoms and the singing; but he moved without sound, as was second nature to him.
The chance of discovery lay in the possibility that some native might not have yet left his hut to join the throng around the dancers and that such a belated one would see the strange white giant and raise an alarm. But Tarzan came to the rear of Rungula's hut unseen.
Here fortune again favored him; for while the stem of the tree he wished to enter stood in front of the hut in plain view of the entire tribe, another, smaller tree grew at the rear of the hut, and, above it, mingled its branches with its fellow.
As the ape-man moved stealthily into the trees and out upon a great branch that would hold his weight without bending, the savage scene below unfolded itself before him. The tempo of the dance had increased. Painted warriors were leaping and stamping around a small group that surrounded the prisoner, and as Tarzan's gaze fell upon the man he experienced something in the nature of a shock. It was as though his disembodied spirit hovered above and looked down upon himself, so startling was the likeness of this man to the Lord of the Jungle.
In stature, in coloring, even in the molding of his features he was a replica of Tarzan of the Apes; and Tarzan realized it instantly although it is not always that we can see our own likeness in another even when it exists.
Now indeed was the ape-man's interest aroused. He wondered who the man was and where he had come from. By the merest accident of chance he had not seen him when he had visited the camp of the picture company, and so he did not connect him with these people. His failure to do so might have been still further explained by the man's nakedness. The clothing that had been stripped from him might, had he still worn it, have served to place him definitely; but his nakedness gave him only fellowship with the beasts. Perhaps that is why Tarzan was inclined to be favorably impressed with him at first sight.
Obroski, unconscious that other eyes than those of black enemies were upon him, gazed from sullen eyes upon the scene around him. Here, at the hands of these people, his three fellow prisoners had met hideous torture and death; but Obroski was in no mind to follow docilely in their footsteps. He had a plan.
He expected to die. He could find no slenderest hope for any other outcome, but he did not intend to submit supinely to torture. He had a plan.
Rungula squatted upon a stool eyeing the scene from bloodshot eyes beneath scowling brows. Presently he shouted directions to the warriors guarding Obroski, and they led him toward the tree on the opposite side of the open space. With thongs they prepared to bind him to the bole of the tree, and then it was that the prisoner put his plan into action; the plan of a fear-maddened brain.
Seizing the warrior nearest him he raised the man above his head as though be had been but a little child and hurled him into the faces of the others, knocking several of them to the ground. He sprang forward and laid hold upon a dancing buck, and him he flung to earth so heavily that he lay still as though dead.
So sudden, so unexpected had been his attack that it left the Bansutos momentarily stunned; then Rungula leaped to his feet. "Seize him!" he cried. "But do not harm him." Rungula wished the mighty stranger to die after a manner of Rungula's own choosing, not the swift death that Obroski had hoped to win by his single-handed attack upon a thousand armed warriors.
As they closed upon him, Obroski felled them to right and left with mighty blows rendered even more terrific by the fear-maddened brain that directed them. Terror had driven him berserk.
The cries of the warriors, the screams of the women and children formed a horrid cacophony in his ears that incited him to madder outbursts of fury. The arms that reached out to seize him he seized and broke like pipe stems.
He wanted to scream and curse, yet he fought in silence. He wanted to cry out against the terror that engulfed him, but he made no sound. And so, in terror, he fought a thousand men.
But this one-sided battle could not go on for long. Slowly, by force of numbers, they closed upon him; they seized his ankles and his legs. With heavy fists he struck men unconscious with a single blow; but at last they dragged him down.
And then
Chapter Twelve
The Map
Weyley!" sighed Eyad, dolorously. "Me-thinks the sheykh hath done wrong to bring these benat with us. Now will the Nassara follow us with many guns; they will never cease until they have destroyed us and taken the benat back for themselves—I know el-Engleys."
"Ullah yelbisak berneta!" scoffed Atewy.
"Thou roundest the map; was not that enough? They would not have followed and killed us for the map, but when you take away men's women they follow and kill—yes! be they Arab, English, or Negro." Eyad spat a period.
"I will tell thee, fool, why we brought the two girls," said Atewy. "There may be no valley of diamonds, or we may not find it. Should we therefore, after much effort, return to our own country empty-handed? These girls are not ill-favored. They will bring money at several places of which I know, or it may be that the mad Nasara will pay a large ransom for their return. But in the end we shall profit if they be not harmed by us; which reminds me, Eyad, that I have seen thee cast evil eyes upon them. Wellah! If one harms them the sheykh will kill him; and if the sheykh doth not, I will."
"They will bring us nothing but trouble," insisted Eyad. "I wish that we were rid of them."
"And there is still another reason why we brought them," continued Atewy. "The map is written in the language of el-Engleys, which I can speak but cannot read; the benat will read it to me. Thus it is well to keep them."
But still Eyad grumbled. He was a dour young Bedauwy with sinister eyes and a too full lower lip. Also, he did not speak what was in his thoughts; for the truth was not in him.
Since very early in the morning the horsemen had been pushing northward with the two girls. They had found and followed an open trail, and so had suffered no delays. Near the center of the little column rode the prisoners, often side by side; for much of the way the trail had been wide. It had been a trying day for them, not alone because of the fatigue of the hard ride, but from the nervous shock that the whole misadventure had entailed since Atewy and two others had crept into their tent scarcely more than an hour after midnight, silenced them with threats of death, and, after ransacking the tent, carried them
away into the night.
All day long they had waited expectantly for signs of rescue, though realizing that they were awaiting the impossible. Men on foot could not have overtaken the horsemen, and no motor could traverse the trail they had followed without long delays for clearing trail in many places.
"I can't stand much more," said Naomi. "I'm about through."
Rhonda reined closer to her. "If you feel like falling, take hold of me," she said. "It can't last much longer today. They'll be making camp soon. It sure has been a tough ride—not much like following Ernie Vogt up Coldwater Canyon ; and I used to come home from one of those rides and think I'd done something. Whew! They must have paved this saddle with bricks."
"I don't see how you can stay so cheerful."
"Cheerful! I'm about as cheerful as a Baby Star whose option hasn't been renewed."
"Do you think they're going to kill us, Rhonda?"
"They wouldn't have bothered to bring us all this way to kill us. They're probably after a ransom."
"I hope you're right. Tom'll pay 'em anything to get us back. But suppose they're going to sell us! I've heard that they sell white girls to black sultans in Africa."
"The black sultan that gets me is goin' to be out of luck."
The sun was low in the west when the Arabs made camp that night. Sheykh Ab el-Ghrennem had no doubt but that angry and determined men were pursuing him, but he felt quite certain that now they could not overtake him.
His first thought had been to put distance between himself and the Nasara he had betrayed—now he could look into the matter of the map of which Atewy had told him, possession of which had been the principal incentive of his knavery.
Supper over, he squatted where the light of the fire fell upon the precious document; and Atewy leaning over his shoulder scanned it with him.
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