"At last," repeated the girl, "you have come back from your hunt."
"I came back immediately," replied the man, "but you had gone."
"You came back?" she asked.
"Yes, La," he replied. "I travelled far before I made a kill, but at last I found meat and brought it to you, and you were gone and the rain had obliterated your spoor and though I searched for days I could not find you."
"Had I thought that you intended to return," she said, "I should have remained there forever."
"You should have known that I would not have left you thus," replied Tarzan.
"La is sorry," she said.
"And you have not been back to Opar since?" he asked.
"Jad-bal-ja and I are on our way to Opar now," she said. "I was lost for a long time. Only recently did I find the trail to Opar, and then, too, there was the white man who was lost and sick with fever. I remained with him until the fever left him and his strength came back, because I thought that he might be a friend of Tarzan's."
"What was his name?" asked the ape-man.
"Wayne Colt," she replied.
The ape-man smiled. "Did he appreciate what you did for him?" he asked.
"Yes, he wanted to come to Opar with me and help me regain my throne."
"You liked him then, La?" he asked.
"I liked him very much," she said, "but not in the same way that I like Tarzan."
He touched her shoulder in a half caress. "La, the immutable!" he murmured, and then, with a sudden toss of his head as though he would clear his mind of sad thoughts, he turned once more toward Opar. "Come," he said, "the Queen is returning to her throne."
The unseen eyes of Opar watched the advancing column. They recognized La, and Tarzan, and the Waziri, and some there were who guessed the identity of Jad-bal-ja; and Oah was frightened, and Dooth trembled, and little Nao, who hated Oah, was almost happy, as happy as one may be who carries a broken heart in one's bosom.
Oah had ruled with a tyrant hand, and Dooth had been a weak fool, whom no one longer trusted; and there were whisperings now among the ruins, whisperings that would have frightened Oah and Dooth had they heard them, and the whisperings spread among the priestesses and the warrior priests, with the result that when Tarzan and Jad-bal- ja led the Waziri into the courtyard of the outer temple there was no one there to resist them; but instead voices called down to them from the dark arches of surrounding corridors pleading for mercy and voicing earnest assurance of their future loyalty to La.
As they made their way into the city, they heard far in the interior of the temple a sudden burst of noise. High voices were punctuated by loud screams, and then came silence; and when they came to the throne room the cause of it was apparent to them, for lying in a welter of blood were the bodies of Oah and Dooth, with those of a half dozen priests and priestesses who had remained loyal to them; and, but for these, the great throne room was empty.
Once again did La, the high priestess of the Flaming God, resume her throne as Queen of Opar.
That night Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, ate again from the golden platters of Opar, while young girls, soon to become priestesses of the Flaming God, served meats and fruits, and wines so old that no living man knew their vintage, nor in what forgotten vineyard grew the grapes that went into their making.
But in such things Tarzan found little interest, and he was glad when the new day found him at the head of his Waziri crossing the plain of Opar toward the barrier cliffs. Upon his bronzed shoulder sat Nkima, and at the ape-man's side paced the golden lion, while in column behind him marched his hundred Waziri warriors.
It was a tired and disheartened company of whites that approached their base camp after a long, monotonous and uneventful journey. Zveri and Ivitch were in the lead, followed by Zora Drinov, while a considerable distance to the rear Romero and Mori walked side by side, and such had been the order in which they had marched all these long days.
Wayne Colt was sitting in the shade of one of the shelters, and the blacks were lolling in front of another, a short distance away, as Zveri and Ivitch came into sight.
Colt rose and came forward, and it was then that Zveri spied him. "You damned traitor!" he cried. "I'll get you if it's the last thing I do on earth," and as he spoke he drew his revolver and fired point blank at the unarmed American.
His first shot grazed Colt's side without breaking the skin, but Zveri fired no second shot, for almost simultaneously with the report of his own shot another rang out behind him, and Peter Zveri, dropping his pistol and clutching at his back, staggered drunkenly upon his feet.
Ivitch wheeled about. "My God, Zora, what have you done?" he cried.
"What I have been waiting to do for twelve years," replied the girl. "What I have been waiting to do ever since I was little more than a child."
Wayne Colt had run forward and seized Zveri's gun from the ground where it had fallen, and Romero and Mori now came up at a run.
Zveri had sunk to the ground and was glaring savagely about him. "Who shot me?" he screamed. "I know. It was that damned greaser."
"It was I," said Zora Drinov.
"You!" gasped Zveri.
Suddenly she turned to Wayne Colt as though only he mattered. "You might as well know the truth," she said. "I am not a Red and never have been. This man killed my father, and my mother, and an older brother and sister. My father was—well, never mind who he was. He is avenged now." She turned fiercely upon Zveri. "I could have killed you a dozen times in the last few years," she said, "but I waited because I wanted more than your life. I wanted to help kill the hideous schemes with which you and your kind are seeking to wreck the happiness of the world."
Peter Zveri sat on the ground, staring at her, his wide eyes slowly glazing. Suddenly he coughed and a torrent of blood gushed from his mouth. Then he sank back dead.
Romero had moved close to Ivitch. Suddenly he poked the muzzle of a revolver into the Russian's ribs. "Drop your gun," he said. "I'm taking no chances on you either."
Ivitch, paling, did as he was bid. He saw his little world tottering, and he was afraid.
Across the clearing a figure stood at the edge of the jungle. It had not been there an instant before. It had appeared silently as though out of thin air. Zora Drinov was the first to perceive it. She voiced a cry of surprised recognition; and as the others turned to follow the direction of her eyes, they saw a bronzed white man, naked but for a loin cloth of leopard skin, coming toward them. He moved with the easy, majestic grace of a lion and there was much about him that suggested the king of beasts.
"Who is that?" asked Colt.
"I do not know who he is," replied Zora, "other than that he is the man who saved my life when I was lost in the jungle."
The man halted before them.
"Who are you?" demanded Wayne Colt.
"I am Tarzan of the Apes," replied the other. "I have seen and heard all that has occurred here. The plan that was fostered by this man," he nodded at the body of Zveri, "has failed and he is dead. This girl has avowed herself. She is not one of you. My people are camped a short distance away. I shall take her to them and see that she reaches civilization in safety. For the rest of you I have no sympathy. You may get out of the jungle as best you may. I have spoken."
"They are not all what you think them, my friend," said Zora.
"What do you mean?" demanded Tarzan.
"Romero and Mori have learned their lesson. They avowed themselves openly during a quarrel when our blacks deserted us."
"I heard them," said Tarzan.
She looked at him in surprise. "You heard them?" she asked.
"I have heard much that has gone on in many of your camps," replied the ape-man, "but I do not know that I may believe all that I hear."
"I think you may believe what you heard them say," Zora assured him. "I am confident that they are sincere."
"Very well," said Tarzan. "If they wish they may come with me also, but these other two will have to shift for themsel
ves."
"Not the American," said Zora.
"No? And why not?" demanded the ape-man.
"Because he is a special agent in the employ of the United States Government," replied the girl.
The entire party, including Colt, looked at her in astonishment. "How did you learn that?" demanded Colt.
"The message that you sent when you first came to camp and we were here alone was intercepted by one of Zveri's agents. Now do you understand how I know?"
"Yes," said Colt. "It is quite plain."
"That is why Zveri called you a traitor and tried to kill you."
"And how about this other?" demanded Tarzan, indicating Ivitch. "Is he, also, a sheep in wolf's clothing?"
"He is one of those paradoxes who are so numerous," replied Zora. "He is one of those Reds who is all yellow."
Tarzan turned to the blacks who had come forward and were standing, listening questioningly to a conversation they could not understand. "I know your country," he said to them in their own dialect. "It lies near the end of the railroad that runs to the Coast."
"Yes, master," said one of the blacks.
"You will take this white man with you as far as the railroad. See that he has enough to eat and is not harmed, and then tell him to get out of the country. Start now." Then he turned back to the whites. "The rest of you will follow me to my camp." And with that he turned and swung away toward the trail by which he had entered the camp. Behind him followed the four who owed to his humanity more than they could ever know, nor had they known could have guessed that his great tolerance, courage, resourcefulness and the protective instinct that had often safeguarded them sprang not from his human progenitors, but from his lifelong association with the natural beasts of the forest and the jungle, who have these instinctive qualities far more strongly developed than do the unnatural beasts of civilization, in whom the greed and lust of competition have dimmed the luster of these noble qualities where they have not eradicated them entirely.
Behind the others walked Zora Drinov and Wayne Colt, side by side.
"I thought you were dead," she said.
"And I thought that you were dead," he replied.
"And worse than that," she continued, "I thought that, whether dead or alive, I might never tell you what was in my heart."
"And I thought that a hideous gulf separated us that I could never span to ask you the question that I wanted to ask you," he answered in a low tone.
She turned toward him, her eyes filled with tears, her lips trembling. "And I thought that, alive or dead, I could never say yes to that question, if you did ask me," she replied.
A curve in the trait hid them from the sight of the others as he took her in his arms and drew her lips to his.
THE END
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
TARZAN TRIUMPHANT
BOOK 15 IN THE TARZAN SERIES
Serialized as "The Triumph Of Tarzan" in
The Blue Book Magazine, October 1931—March 1932
First Book Edition—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., September 1932
* * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1. Gathering The Threads
Chapter 2. The Land Of Midian
Chapter 3. The "Gunner"
Chapter 4. Gathering The Strands
Chapter 5. When the Lion Charged
Chapter 6. The Waters Of Chinnereth
Chapter 7. The Slave Raider
Chapter 8. The Baboons
Chapter 9. The Great Fissure
Chapter 10. In The Clutches Of The Enemy
Chapter 11. The Crucifixion
Chapter 12. Out Of The Grave
Chapter 13. The "Gunner" Walks
Chapter 14. Flight
Chapter 15. Eshbaal The Shepherd
Chapter 16. Trailing
Chapter 17. She Is Mine!
Chapter 18. A Guy And A Skirt
Chapter 19. In The Village Of Elija
Chapter 20. The Best Three Out Of Five
Chapter 21. An Awakening
Chapter 22. By A Lonely Pool
Chapter 23. Captured
Chapter 24. The Long Night
Chapter 25. The Waziri
Chapter 26. The Last Knot Is Tied
* * *
PROLOGUE
Time is the warp of the tapestry which is life. It is eternal, constant, unchanging. But the woof is gathered together from the four corners of the earth and the twenty-eight seas and out of the air and the minds of men by that master artist, Fate, as she weaves the design that is never finished.
A thread from here, a thread from there, another from out of the past that has waited years for the companion thread without which the picture must be incomplete.
But Fate is patient. She waits a hundred or a thousand years to bring together two strands of thread whose union is essential to the fabrication of her tapestry, to the composition of the design that was without beginning and is without end.
A matter of some one thousand eight hundred sixty- five years ago (scholars do not agree as to the exact year) Paul of Tarsus suffered martyrdom at Rome.
That a tragedy so remote should seriously affect the lives and destinies of an English aviatrix and an American professor of geology, neither of whom was conscious of the existence of the other at the time this narrative begins—when it does begin, which is not yet, since Paul of Tarsus is merely by way of prologue—may seem remarkable to us, but not to Fate, who has been patiently waiting these nearly two thousand years for these very events I am about to chronicle.
But there is a link between Paul and these two young people. It is Angustus the Ephesian. Angustus was a young man of moods and epilepsy, a nephew of the house of Onesiphorus. Numbered was he among the early converts to the new faith when Paul of Tarsus first visited the ancient Ionian city of Ephesus.
Inclined to fanaticism, from early childhood an epileptic, and worshipping the apostle as the representative of the Master of earth, it is not strange that news of the martyrdom of Paul should have so affected Angustus as to seriously imperil his mental balance.
Conjuring delusions of persecution, he fled Ephesus, taking ship for Alexandria; and here we might leave him, wrapped in his robe, huddled, sick and frightened, on the deck of the little vessel, were it not for the fact that at the Island of Rhodus, where the ship touched, Angustus, going ashore, acquired in some manner (whether by conversion or purchase we know not) a fair haired slave girl from some far northern barbarian tribe.
And here we bid Angustus and the days of the Caesars adieu, and not without some regrets upon my part for I can well imagine adventure, if not romance, in the flight of Angustus and the fair haired slave girl down into Africa from the storied port of Alexandria, through Memphis and Thebae into the great unknown.
* * *
1. GATHERING THE THREADS
As far as I know the first Earl of Whimsey has nothing to do with this story, and so we are not particularly interested in the fact that it was not so much the fine grade of whiskey that he manufactured that won him his earldom as the generous contribution he made to the Liberal party at the time that it was in power a number of years ago.
Being merely a simple historian and no prophet, I cannot say whether we shall see the Earl of Whimsey again or not. But if we do not find the Earl particularly interesting, I can assure you that the same may not be said of his fair daughter, Lady Barbara Collis.
The African sun, still an hour high, was hidden from the face of the earth by solid cloud banks that enveloped the loftier peaks of the mysterious, impenetrable fastnesses of the forbidding Ghenzi Mountain range that frowned perpetually upon a thousand valleys little known to man.
From far above this seeming solitude, out of the heart of the densely banked clouds, there came to whatever ears there might be to hear a strange and terrifying droning, suggesting the presence of
a preposterous Gargantuan bumblebee circling far above the jagged peaks of Ghenzi. At times it grew in volume until it attained terrifying proportions; and then gradually it diminished until it was only a suggestion of a sound, only to grow once again in volume and to again retreat.
For a long time, invisible and mysterious, it had been describing its great circles deep in the concealing vapors that hid it from the earth and hid the earth from it.
Lady Barbara Collis was worried. Her petrol was running low. At the crucial moment her compass had failed her, and she had been flying blind through the clouds looking for an opening for what now seemed an eternity of hours to her.
She had known that she must cross a lofty range of mountains, and she had kept at a considerable altitude above the clouds for this purpose; but presently they had risen to such heights that she could not surmount them; and, foolishly, rather than turn back and give up her projected non-stop flight from Cairo to the Cape, she had risked all in one effort to penetrate them.
For an hour Lady Barbara had been indulging in considerable high powered thinking, intermingled with the regret that she had not started thinking a little more heavily before she had taken off, as she had, against the explicit command of her sire. To say that she was terrified in the sense that fear bad impaired any of her faculties would not be true. However, she was a girl of keen intelligence, fully competent to understand the grave danger of her situation; and when there loomed suddenly close to the tip of her left wing a granite escarpment that was lost immediately above and below her in the all enveloping vapor, it is no reflection upon her courage that she involuntarily caught her breath in a quick gasp and simultaneously turned the nose of her ship upwards until her altimeter registered an altitude that she knew must be far higher than the loftiest peak that reared its head above any part of Africa.
Rising in a wide spiral, she was soon miles away from that terrifying menace that had seemingly leaped out of the clouds to seize her. Yet even so, her plight was still as utterly hopeless as it well could be. Her fuel was practically exhausted. To attempt to drop below the cloud banks, now that she knew positively that she was among lofty mountains, would be utter madness; and so she did the only thing that remained to her.
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