Hello,Welcome!Log In to My AccountorCreate Account

When the eyes of the black Manyuema savage fellupon the strange apparition that confronted him withmenacing knife they went wide in horror. He forgotthe gun within his hands; he even forgot to cry out--hisone thought was to escape this fearsome-looking white savage,this giant of a man upon whose massive rolling muscles andmighty chest the flickering firelight played.

But before he could turn Tarzan was upon him, and thenthe sentry thought to scream for aid, but it was too late.A great hand was upon his windpipe, and he was being borneto the earth. He battled furiously but futilely--with thegrim tenacity of a bulldog those awful fingers were clingingto his throat. Swiftly and surely life was being choked from him.His eyes bulged, his tongue protruded, his face turnedto a ghastly purplish hue--there was a convulsive tremor ofthe stiffening muscles, and the Manyuema sentry lay quite still.

The ape-man threw the body across one of his broadshoulders and, gathering up the fellow's gun, trotted silentlyup the sleeping village street toward the tree that gave himsuch easy ingress to the palisaded village. He bore the deadsentry into the midst of the leafy maze above.

First he stripped the body of cartridge belt and suchornaments as he craved, wedging it into a convenient crotchwhile his nimble fingers ran over it in search of the loothe could not plainly see in the dark. When he had finished hetook the gun that had belonged to the man, and walkedfar out upon a limb, from the end of which he could obtaina better view of the huts. Drawing a careful bead on thebeehive structure in which he knew the chief Arabs to be,he pulled the trigger. Almost instantly there was ananswering groan. Tarzan smiled. He had made another lucky hit.

Following the shot there was a moment's silence in thecamp, and then Manyuema and Arab came pouring fromthe huts like a swarm of angry hornets; but if the truth wereknown they were even more frightened than they were angry.The strain of the preceding day had wrought upon thefears of both black and white, and now this single shot inthe night conjured all manner of terrible conjectures intheir terrified minds.

When they discovered that their sentry had disappeared,their fears were in no way allayed, and as though to bolstertheir courage by warlike actions, they began to firerapidly at the barred gates of the village, although no enemywas in sight. Tarzan took advantage of the deafening roar ofthis fusillade to fire into the mob beneath him.

No one heard his shot above the din of rattling musketryin the street, but some who were standing close saw oneof their number crumple suddenly to the earth. When theyleaned over him he was dead. They were panic-stricken, andit took all the brutal authority of the Arabs to keep theManyuema from rushing helter-skelter into the jungle--anywhereto escape from this terrible village.

After a time they commenced to quiet down, and as nofurther mysterious deaths occurred among them they tookheart again. But it was a short-lived respite, for just asthey had concluded that they would not be disturbed againTarzan gave voice to a weird moan, and as the raiders lookedup in the direction from which the sound seemed to come,the ape-man, who stood swinging the dead body of the sentrygently to and fro, suddenly shot the corpse far out abovetheir heads.

With howls of alarm the throng broke in all directionsto escape this new and terrible creature who seemed to bespringing upon them. To their fear-distorted imaginations thebody of the sentry, falling with wide-sprawled arms andlegs, assumed the likeness of a great beast of prey. In theiranxiety to escape, many of the blacks scaled the palisade,while others tore down the bars from the gates and rushedmadly across the clearing toward the jungle.

For a time no one turned back toward the thing that hadfrightened them, but Tarzan knew that they would in a moment,and when they discovered that it was but the deadbody of their sentry, while they would doubtless be stillfurther terrified, he had a rather definite idea as to whatthey would do, and so he faded silently away toward thesouth, taking the moonlit upper terrace back toward thecamp of the Waziri.

Presently one of the Arabs turned and saw that the thingthat had leaped from the tree upon them lay still and quietwhere it had fallen in the center of the village street.Cautiously he crept back toward it until he saw that it wasbut a man. A moment later he was beside the figure, and inanother had recognized it as the corpse of the Manyuemawho had stood on guard at the village gate.

His companions rapidly gathered around at his call, andafter a moment's excited conversation they did preciselywhat Tarzan had reasoned they would. Raising their guns totheir shoulders, they poured volley after volley into the treefrom which the corpse had been thrown--had Tarzan remainedthere he would have been riddled by a hundred bullets.

When the Arabs and Manyuema discovered that the onlymarks of violence upon the body of their dead comradewere giant finger prints upon his swollen throat they wereagain thrown into deeper apprehension and despair.That they were not even safe within a palisaded villageat night came as a distinct shock to them. That an enemycould enter into the midst of their camp and kill theirsentry with bare hands seemed outside the bounds of reason,and so the superstitious Manyuema commenced to attributetheir ill luck to supernatural causes; nor were the Arabsable to offer any better explanation.

With at least fifty of their number flying through the blackjungle, and without the slightest knowledge of when theiruncanny foemen might resume the cold-blooded slaughterthey had commenced, it was a desperate band of cut-throatsthat waited sleeplessly for the dawn. Only on thepromise of the Arabs that they would leave the village atdaybreak, and hasten onward toward their own land, wouldthe remaining Manyuema consent to stay at the village amoment longer. Not even fear of their cruel masters wassufficient to overcome this new terror.

And so it was that when Tarzan and his warriors returnedto the attack the next morning they found the raidersprepared to march out of the village. The Manyuema wereladen with stolen ivory. As Tarzan saw it he grinned, for heknew that they would not carry it far. Then he saw somethingwhich caused him anxiety--a number of the Manyuemawere lighting torches in the remnant of the camp-fire.They were about to fire the village.

Tarzan was perched in a tall tree some hundred yards fromthe palisade. Making a trumpet of his hands, he called loudlyin the Arab tongue: "Do not fire the huts, or we shall killyou all! Do not fire the huts, or we shall kill you all!"

A dozen times he repeated it. The Manyuema hesitated,then one of them flung his torch into the campfire.The others were about to do the same when an Arab sprungupon them with a stick, beating them toward the huts.Tarzan could see that he was commanding them to fire thelittle thatched dwellings. Then he stood erect upon theswaying branch a hundred feet above the ground, and,raising one of the Arab guns to his shoulder, took careful aimand fired. With the report the Arab who was urging on hismen to burn the village fell in his tracks, and theManyuema threw away their torches and fled from the village.The last Tarzan saw of them they were racing toward the jungle,while their former masters knelt upon the ground and fired at them.

But however angry the Arabs might have been at theinsubordination of their slaves, they were at least convincedthat it would be the better part of wisdom to forego thepleasure of firing the village that had given them two suchnasty receptions. In their hearts, however, they swore toreturn again with such force as would enable them to sweepthe entire country for miles around, until no vestige ofhuman life remained.

They had looked in vain for the owner of the voicewhich had frightened off the men who had been detailedto put the torch to the huts, but not even the keenest eyeamong them had been able to locate him. They had seenthe puff of smoke from the tree following the shot thatbrought down the Arab, but, though a volley had immediatelybeen loosed into its foliage, there had been no indicationthat it had been effective.

Tarzan was too intelligent to be caught in any such trap,and so the report of his shot had scarcely died away beforethe ape-man was on the ground and racing for another treea hundred yards away. Here he again found a suitable perchfrom which he could watch the preparations of the raiders.It occurred to him that he might have considerable morefun with them, so again he called to them throughhis improvised trumpet.

"Leave the ivory!" he cried. "Leave the ivory! Dead menhave no use for ivory!"

Some of the Manyuema started to lay down their loads,but this was altogether too much for the avaricious Arabs.With loud shouts and curses they aimed their guns fullupon the bearers, threatening instant death to any whomight lay down his load. They could give up firing thevillage, but the thought of abandoning this enormousfortune in ivory was quite beyond their conception--betterdeath than that.

And so they marched out of the village of the Waziri, andon the shoulders of their slaves was the ivory ransom of ascore of kings. Toward the north they marched, back towardtheir savage settlement in the wild and unknown countrywhich lies back from the Kongo in the uttermost depthsof The Great Forest, and on either side of them traveledan invisible and relentless foe.

Under Tarzan's guidance the black Waziri warriors stationedthemselves along the trail on either side in the densest underbrush.They stood at far intervals, and, as the column passed,a single arrow or a heavy spear, well aimed, would piercea Manyuema or an Arab. Then the Waziri would melt into thedistance and run ahead to take his stand farther on.They did not strike unless success were sure and thedanger of detection almost nothing, and so the arrowsand the spears were few and far between, but so persistentand inevitable that the slow-moving column of heavy-ladenraiders was in a constant state of panic--panic atthe uncertainty of who the next would be to fall, and when.

It was with the greatest difficulty that the Arabs preventedtheir men a dozen times from throwing away their burdens andfleeing like frightened rabbits up the trail toward the north.And so the day wore on--a frightful nightmare of a day for theraiders--a day of weary but well-repaid work for the Waziri.At night the Arabs constructed a rude BOMA in a littleclearing by a river, and went into camp.

At intervals during the night a rifle would bark closeabove their heads, and one of the dozen sentries whichthey now had posted would tumble to the ground. Such acondition was insupportable, for they saw that by means ofthese hideous tactics they would be completely wiped out, oneby one, without inflicting a single death upon their enemy.But yet, with the persistent avariciousness of thewhite man, the Arabs clung to their loot, and when morningcame forced the demoralized Manyuema to take up theirburdens of death and stagger on into the jungle.

For three days the withering column kept up its frightful march.Each hour was marked by its deadly arrow or cruel spear.The nights were made hideous by the barking of the invisiblegun that made sentry duty equivalent to a death sentence.

On the morning of the fourth day the Arabs were compelledto shoot two of their blacks before they could compelthe balance to take up the hated ivory, and as they did so avoice rang out, clear and strong, from the jungle: "Todayyou die, oh, Manyuema, unless you lay down the ivory.Fall upon your cruel masters and kill them! You have guns,why do you not use them? Kill the Arabs, and we will notharm you. We will take you back to our village and feedyou, and lead you out of our country in safety and in peace.Lay down the ivory, and fall upon your masters--we willhelp you. Else you die!"

As the voice died down the raiders stood as though turnedto stone. The Arabs eyed their Manyuema slaves; the slaveslooked first at one of their fellows, and then at another--theywere but waiting for some one to take the initiative.There were some thirty Arabs left, and about one hundredand fifty blacks. All were armed--even those who wereacting as porters had their rifles slung across their backs.

The Arabs drew together. The sheik ordered the Manyuemato take up the march, and as he spoke he cocked his rifleand raised it. But at the same instant one of the blacksthrew down his load, and, snatching his rifle from his back,fired point-black at the group of Arabs. In an instant thecamp was a cursing, howling mass of demons, fighting withguns and knives and pistols. The Arabs stood together, anddefended their lives valiantly, but with the rain of leadthat poured upon them from their own slaves, and the showerof arrows and spears which now leaped from the surroundingjungle aimed solely at them, there was little questionfrom the first what the outcome would be. In ten minutesfrom the time the first porter had thrown down his load thelast of the Arabs lay dead.

When the firing had ceased Tarzan spoke again to the Manyuema:

"Take up our ivory, and return it to our village, fromwhence you stole it. We shall not harm you."

For a moment the Manyuema hesitated. They had nostomach to retrace that difficult three days' trail.They talked together in low whispers, and one turnedtoward the jungle, calling aloud to the voice that hadspoken to them from out of the foliage.

"How do we know that when you have us in your village youwill not kill us all?" he asked.

"You do not know," replied Tarzan, "other than that wehave promised not to harm you if you will return ourivory to us. But this you do know, that it lies within ourpower to kill you all if you do not return as we direct,and are we not more likely to do so if you anger us thanif you do as we bid?"

"Who are you that speaks the tongue of our Arab masters?"cried the Manyuema spokesman. "Let us see you, and thenwe shall give you our answer."

Tarzan stepped out of the jungle a dozen paces from them.

"Look!" he said. When they saw that he was white theywere filled with awe, for never had they seen a white savagebefore, and at his great muscles and giant frame they werestruck with wonder and admiration.

"You may trust me," said Tarzan. "So long as you do asI tell you, and harm none of my people, we shall do youno hurt. Will you take up our ivory and return in peace toour village, or shall we follow along your trail toward thenorth as we have followed for the past three days?"

The recollection of the horrid days that had just passedwas the thing that finally decided the Manyuema, and so,after a short conference, they took up their burdens and setoff to retrace their steps toward the village of the Waziri.At the end of the third day they marched into the village gate,and were greeted by the survivors of the recent massacre,to whom Tarzan had sent a messenger in their temporary campto the south on the day that the raiders had quitted thevillage, telling them that they might return in safety.

It took all the mastery and persuasion that Tarzan possessedto prevent the Waziri falling on the Manyuema toothand nail, and tearing them to pieces, but when he hadexplained that he had given his word that they would not bemolested if they carried the ivory back to the spot fromwhich they had stolen it, and had further impressed uponhis people that they owed their entire victory to him, theyfinally acceded to his demands, and allowed the cannibalsto rest in peace within their palisade.

That night the village warriors held a big palaver tocelebrate their victories, and to choose a new chief.Since old Waziri's death Tarzan had been directing thewarriors in battle, and the temporary command had beentacitly conceded to him. There had been no time to choosea new chief from among their own number, and, in fact,so remarkably successful had they been under the ape-man'sgeneralship that they had had no wish to delegate the supremeauthority to another for fear that what they already hadgained might be lost. They had so recently seen the resultsof running counter to this savage white man's advice in thedisastrous charge ordered by Waziri, in which he himselfhad died, that it had not been difficult for them to acceptTarzan's authority as final.

The principal warriors sat in a circle about a small fireto discuss the relative merits of whomever might be suggestedas old Waziri's successor. It was Busuli who spoke first:

"Since Waziri is dead, leaving no son, there is but oneamong us whom we know from experience is fitted to makeus a good king. There is only one who has proved that hecan successfully lead us against the guns of the white man,and bring us easy victory without the loss of a single life.There is only one, and that is the white man who has ledus for the past few days," and Busuli sprang to his feet, andwith uplifted spear and half-bent, crouching body commencedto dance slowly about Tarzan, chanting in time to his steps:"Waziri, king of the Waziri; Waziri, killer of Arabs;Waziri, king of the Waziri."

One by one the other warriors signified their acceptanceof Tarzan as their king by joining in the solemn dance.The women came and squatted about the rim of the circle,beating upon tom-toms, clapping their hands in time tothe steps of the dancers, and joining in the chant ofthe warriors. In the center of the circle sat Tarzanof the Apes--Waziri, king of the Waziri, for, like hispredecessor, he was to take the name of his tribe as his own.

Faster and faster grew the pace of the dancers, louder andlouder their wild and savage shouts. The women rose andfell in unison, shrieking now at the tops of their voices.The spears were brandishing fiercely, and as the dancers stoopeddown and beat their shields upon the hard-tramped earth ofthe village street the whole sight was as terribly primevaland savage as though it were being staged in the dim dawnof humanity, countless ages in the past.

As the excitement waxed the ape-man sprang to his feetand joined in the wild ceremony. In the center of thecircle of glittering black bodies he leaped and roared andshook his heavy spear in the same mad abandon that enthralledhis fellow savages. The last remnant of his civilization wasforgotten--he was a primitive man to the fullest now; revelingin the freedom of the fierce, wild life he loved, gloating inhis kingship among these wild blacks.

Ah, if Olga de Coude had but seen him then--could shehave recognized the well-dressed, quiet young man whosewell-bred face and irreproachable manners had so captivatedher but a few short months ago? And Jane Porter! Wouldshe have still loved this savage warrior chieftain, dancingnaked among his naked savage subjects? And D'Arnot!Could D'Arnot have believed that this was the same man hehad introduced into half a dozen of the most select clubsof Paris? What would his fellow peers in the House ofLords have said had one pointed to this dancing giant, withhis barbaric headdress and his metal ornaments, and said:"There, my lords, is John Clayton, Lord Greystoke."

And so Tarzan of the Apes came into a real kingshipamong men--slowly but surely was he following the evolutionof his ancestors, for had he not started at the very bottom?