The Return of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Chapter 19

  The City of Gold

  The very night that Tarzan of the Apes became chief of the Waziri thewoman he loved lay dying in a tiny boat two hundred miles west of himupon the Atlantic. As he danced among his naked fellow savages, thefirelight gleaming against his great, rolling muscles, thepersonification of physical perfection and strength, the woman wholoved him lay thin and emaciated in the last coma that precedes deathby thirst and starvation.

  The week following the induction of Tarzan into the kingship of theWaziri was occupied in escorting the Manyuema of the Arab raiders tothe northern boundary of Waziri in accordance with the promise whichTarzan had made them. Before he left them he exacted a pledge fromthem that they would not lead any expeditions against the Waziri in thefuture, nor was it a difficult promise to obtain. They had hadsufficient experience with the fighting tactics of the new Waziri chiefnot to have the slightest desire to accompany another predatory forcewithin the boundaries of his domain.

  Almost immediately upon his return to the village Tarzan commencedmaking preparations for leading an expedition in search of the ruinedcity of gold which old Waziri had described to him. He selected fiftyof the sturdiest warriors of his tribe, choosing only men who seemedanxious to accompany him on the arduous march, and share the dangers ofa new and hostile country.

  The fabulous wealth of the fabled city had been almost constantly inhis mind since Waziri had recounted the strange adventures of theformer expedition which had stumbled upon the vast ruins by chance.The lure of adventure may have been quite as powerful a factor inurging Tarzan of the Apes to undertake the journey as the lure of gold,but the lure of gold was there, too, for he had learned among civilizedmen something of the miracles that may be wrought by the possessor ofthe magic yellow metal. What he would do with a golden fortune in theheart of savage Africa it had not occurred to him to consider--it wouldbe enough to possess the power to work wonders, even though he neverhad an opportunity to employ it.

  So one glorious tropical morning Waziri, chief of the Waziri, set outat the head of fifty clean-limbed ebon warriors in quest of adventureand of riches. They followed the course which old Waziri had describedto Tarzan. For days they marched--up one river, across a low divide;down another river; up a third, until at the end of the twenty-fifthday they camped upon a mountainside, from the summit of which theyhoped to catch their first view of the marvelous city of treasure.

  Early the next morning they were climbing the almost perpendicularcrags which formed the last, but greatest, natural barrier between themand their destination. It was nearly noon before Tarzan, who headedthe thin line of climbing warriors, scrambled over the top of the lastcliff and stood upon the little flat table-land of the mountaintop.

  On either hand towered mighty peaks thousands of feet higher than thepass through which they were entering the forbidden valley. Behind himstretched the wooded valley across which they had marched for manydays, and at the opposite side the low range which marked the boundaryof their own country.

  But before him was the view that centered his attention. Here lay adesolate valley--a shallow, narrow valley dotted with stunted trees andcovered with many great bowlders. And on the far side of the valleylay what appeared to be a mighty city, its great walls, its loftyspires, its turrets, minarets, and domes showing red and yellow in thesunlight. Tarzan was yet too far away to note the marks of ruin--tohim it appeared a wonderful city of magnificent beauty, and inimagination he peopled its broad avenues and its huge temples with athrong of happy, active people.

  For an hour the little expedition rested upon the mountain-top, andthen Tarzan led them down into the valley below. There was no trail,but the way was less arduous than the ascent of the opposite face ofthe mountain had been. Once in the valley their progress was rapid, sothat it was still light when they halted before the towering walls ofthe ancient city.

  The outer wall was fifty feet in height where it had not fallen intoruin, but nowhere as far as they could see had more than ten or twentyfeet of the upper courses fallen away. It was still a formidabledefense. On several occasions Tarzan had thought that he discernedthings moving behind the ruined portions of the wall near to them, asthough creatures were watching them from behind the bulwarks of theancient pile. And often he felt the sensation of unseen eyes upon him,but not once could he be sure that it was more than imagination.

  That night they camped outside the city. Once, at midnight, they wereawakened by a shrill scream from beyond the great wall. It was veryhigh at first, descending gradually until it ended in a series ofdismal moans. It had a strange effect upon the blacks, almostparalyzing them with terror while it lasted, and it was an hour beforethe camp settled down to sleep once more. In the morning the effectsof it were still visible in the fearful, sidelong glances that theWaziri continually cast at the massive and forbidding structure whichloomed above them.

  It required considerable encouragement and urging on Tarzan's part toprevent the blacks from abandoning the venture on the spot andhastening back across the valley toward the cliffs they had scaled theday before. But at length, by dint of commands, and threats that hewould enter the city alone, they agreed to accompany him.

  For fifteen minutes they marched along the face of the wall before theydiscovered a means of ingress. Then they came to a narrow cleft abouttwenty inches wide. Within, a flight of concrete steps, worn hollow bycenturies of use, rose before them, to disappear at a sharp turning ofthe passage a few yards ahead.

  Into this narrow alley Tarzan made his way, turning his giant shoulderssideways that they might enter at all. Behind him trailed his blackwarriors. At the turn in the cleft the stairs ended, and the path waslevel; but it wound and twisted in a serpentine fashion, until suddenlyat a sharp angle it debouched upon a narrow court, across which loomedan inner wall equally as high as the outer. This inner wall was setwith little round towers alternating along its entire summit withpointed monoliths. In places these had fallen, and the wall wasruined, but it was in a much better state of preservation than theouter wall.

  Another narrow passage led through this wall, and at its end Tarzan andhis warriors found themselves in a broad avenue, on the opposite sideof which crumbling edifices of hewn granite loomed dark and forbidding.Upon the crumbling debris along the face of the buildings trees hadgrown, and vines wound in and out of the hollow, staring windows; butthe building directly opposite them seemed less overgrown than theothers, and in a much better state of preservation. It was a massivepile, surmounted by an enormous dome. At either side of its greatentrance stood rows of tall pillars, each capped by a huge, grotesquebird carved from the solid rock of the monoliths.

  As the ape-man and his companions stood gazing in varying degrees ofwonderment at this ancient city in the midst of savage Africa, severalof them became aware of movement within the structure at which theywere looking. Dim, shadowy shapes appeared to be moving about in thesemi-darkness of the interior. There was nothing tangible that the eyecould grasp--only an uncanny suggestion of life where it seemed thatthere should be no life, for living things seemed out of place in thisweird, dead city of the long-dead past.

  Tarzan recalled something that he had read in the library at Paris of alost race of white men that native legend described as living in theheart of Africa. He wondered if he were not looking upon the ruins ofthe civilization that this strange people had wrought amid the savagesurroundings of their strange and savage home. Could it be possiblethat even now a remnant of that lost race inhabited the ruined grandeurthat had once been their progenitor? Again he became conscious of astealthy movement within the great temple before him. "Come!" he said,to his Waziri. "Let us have a look at what lies behind those ruinedwalls."

  His men were loath to follow him, but when they saw that he was bravelyentering the frowning portal they trailed a few paces behind in ahuddled group that seemed the personification of nervous terror. Asingle shriek such as they had heard the night befor
e would have beensufficient to have sent them all racing madly for the narrow cleft thatled through the great walls to the outer world.

  As Tarzan entered the building he was distinctly aware of many eyesupon him. There was a rustling in the shadows of a near-by corridor,and he could have sworn that he saw a human hand withdrawn from anembrasure that opened above him into the domelike rotunda in which hefound himself.

  The floor of the chamber was of concrete, the walls of smooth granite,upon which strange figures of men and beasts were carved. In placestablets of yellow metal had been set in the solid masonry of the walls.

  When he approached closer to one of these tablets he saw that it was ofgold, and bore many hieroglyphics. Beyond this first chamber therewere others, and back of them the building branched out into enormouswings. Tarzan passed through several of these chambers, finding manyevidences of the fabulous wealth of the original builders. In one roomwere seven pillars of solid gold, and in another the floor itself wasof the precious metal. And all the while that he explored, his blackshuddled close together at his back, and strange shapes hovered uponeither hand and before them and behind, yet never close enough that anymight say that they were not alone.

  The strain, however, was telling upon the nerves of the Waziri. Theybegged Tarzan to return to the sunlight. They said that no good couldcome of such an expedition, for the ruins were haunted by the spiritsof the dead who had once inhabited them.

  "They are watching us, O king," whispered Busuli. "They are waitinguntil they have led us into the innermost recesses of their stronghold,and then they will fall upon us and tear us to pieces with their teeth.That is the way with spirits. My mother's uncle, who is a great witchdoctor, has told me all about it many times."

  Tarzan laughed. "Run back into the sunlight, my children," he said."I will join you when I have searched this old ruin from top to bottom,and found the gold, or found that there is none. At least we may takethe tablets from the walls, though the pillars are too heavy for us tohandle; but there should be great storerooms filled with gold--goldthat we can carry away upon our backs with ease. Run on now, out intothe fresh air where you may breathe easier."

  Some of the warriors started to obey their chief with alacrity, butBusuli and several others hesitated to leave him--hesitated betweenlove and loyalty for their king, and superstitious fear of the unknown.And then, quite unexpectedly, that occurred which decided the questionwithout the necessity for further discussion. Out of the silence ofthe ruined temple there rang, close to their ears, the same hideousshriek they had heard the previous night, and with horrified cries theblack warriors turned and fled through the empty halls of the age-oldedifice.

  Behind them stood Tarzan of the Apes where they had left him, a grimsmile upon his lips--waiting for the enemy he fully expected was aboutto pounce upon him. But again silence reigned, except for the faintsuggestion of the sound of naked feet moving stealthily in near-byplaces.

  Then Tarzan wheeled and passed on into the depths of the temple. Fromroom to room he went, until he came to one at which a rude, barred doorstill stood, and as he put his shoulder against it to push it in, againthe shriek of warning rang out almost beside him. It was evident thathe was being warned to refrain from desecrating this particular room.Or could it be that within lay the secret to the treasure stores?

  At any rate, the very fact that the strange, invisible guardians ofthis weird place had some reason for wishing him not to enter thisparticular chamber was sufficient to treble Tarzan's desire to do so,and though the shrieking was repeated continuously, he kept hisshoulder to the door until it gave before his giant strength to swingopen upon creaking wooden hinges.

  Within all was black as the tomb. There was no window to let in thefaintest ray of light, and as the corridor upon which it opened wasitself in semi-darkness, even the open door shed no relieving rayswithin. Feeling before him upon the floor with the butt of his spear,Tarzan entered the Stygian gloom. Suddenly the door behind him closed,and at the same time hands clutched him from every direction out of thedarkness.

  The ape-man fought with all the savage fury of self-preservation backedby the herculean strength that was his. But though he felt his blowsland, and his teeth sink into soft flesh, there seemed always two newhands to take the place of those that he fought off. At last theydragged him down, and slowly, very slowly, they overcame him by themere weight of their numbers. And then they bound him--his handsbehind his back and his feet trussed up to meet them. He had heard nosound except the heavy breathing of his antagonists, and the noise ofthe battle. He knew not what manner of creatures had captured him, butthat they were human seemed evident from the fact that they had boundhim.

  Presently they lifted him from the floor, and half dragging, halfpushing him, they brought him out of the black chamber through anotherdoorway into an inner courtyard of the temple. Here he saw hiscaptors. There must have been a hundred of them--short, stocky men,with great beards that covered their faces and fell upon their hairybreasts.

  The thick, matted hair upon their heads grew low over their recedingbrows, and hung about their shoulders and their backs. Their crookedlegs were short and heavy, their arms long and muscular. About theirloins they wore the skins of leopards and lions, and great necklaces ofthe claws of these same animals depended upon their breasts. Massivecirclets of virgin gold adorned their arms and legs. For weapons theycarried heavy, knotted bludgeons, and in the belts that confined theirsingle garments each had a long, wicked-looking knife.

  But the feature of them that made the most startling impression upontheir prisoner was their white skins--neither in color nor feature wasthere a trace of the negroid about them. Yet, with their recedingforeheads, wicked little close-set eyes, and yellow fangs, they werefar from prepossessing in appearance.

  During the fight within the dark chamber, and while they had beendragging Tarzan to the inner court, no word had been spoken, but nowseveral of them exchanged grunting, monosyllabic conversation in alanguage unfamiliar to the ape-man, and presently they left him lyingupon the concrete floor while they trooped off on their short legs intoanother part of the temple beyond the court.

  As Tarzan lay there upon his back he saw that the temple entirelysurrounded the little inclosure, and that on all sides its lofty wallsrose high above him. At the top a little patch of blue sky wasvisible, and, in one direction, through an embrasure, he could seefoliage, but whether it was beyond or within the temple he did not know.

  About the court, from the ground to the top of the temple, were seriesof open galleries, and now and then the captive caught glimpses ofbright eyes gleaming from beneath masses of tumbling hair, peering downupon him from above.

  The ape-man gently tested the strength of the bonds that held him, andwhile he could not be sure it seemed that they were of insufficientstrength to withstand the strain of his mighty muscles when the timecame to make a break for freedom; but he did not dare to put them tothe crucial test until darkness had fallen, or he felt that no spyingeyes were upon him.

  He had lain within the court for several hours before the first rays ofsunlight penetrated the vertical shaft; almost simultaneously he heardthe pattering of bare feet in the corridors about him, and a momentlater saw the galleries above fill with crafty faces as a score or moreentered the courtyard.

  For a moment every eye was bent upon the noonday sun, and then inunison the people in the galleries and those in the court below took upthe refrain of a low, weird chant. Presently those about Tarzan beganto dance to the cadence of their solemn song. They circled him slowly,resembling in their manner of dancing a number of clumsy, shufflingbears; but as yet they did not look at him, keeping their little eyesfixed upon the sun.

  For ten minutes or more they kept up their monotonous chant and steps,and then suddenly, and in perfect unison, they turned toward theirvictim with upraised bludgeons and emitting fearful howls, the whilethey contorted their features into the most diabolical expressions,they r
ushed upon him.

  At the same instant a female figure dashed into the midst of thebloodthirsty horde, and, with a bludgeon similar to their own, exceptthat it was wrought from gold, beat back the advancing men.