Chapter 22
The Treasure Vaults of Opar
It was quite dark before La, the high priestess, returned to theChamber of the Dead with food and drink for Tarzan. She bore no light,feeling with her hands along the crumbling walls until she gained thechamber. Through the stone grating above, a tropic moon served dimlyto illuminate the interior.
Tarzan, crouching in the shadows at the far side of the room as thefirst sound of approaching footsteps reached him, came forth to meetthe girl as he recognized that it was she.
"They are furious," were her first words. "Never before has a humansacrifice escaped the altar. Already fifty have gone forth to trackyou down. They have searched the temple--all save this single room."
"Why do they fear to come here?" he asked.
"It is the Chamber of the Dead. Here the dead return to worship. Seethis ancient altar? It is here that the dead sacrifice the living--ifthey find a victim here. That is the reason our people shun thischamber. Were one to enter he knows that the waiting dead would seizehim for their sacrifice."
"But you?" he asked.
"I am high priestess--I alone am safe from the dead. It is I who atrare intervals bring them a human sacrifice from the world above. Ialone may enter here in safety."
"Why have they not seized me?" he asked, humoring her grotesque belief.
She looked at him quizzically for a moment. Then she replied:
"It is the duty of a high priestess to instruct, tointerpret--according to the creed that others, wiser than herself, havelaid down; but there is nothing in the creed which says that she mustbelieve. The more one knows of one's religion the less onebelieves--no one living knows more of mine than I."
"Then your only fear in aiding me to escape is that your fellow mortalsmay discover your duplicity?"
"That is all--the dead are dead; they cannot harm--or help. We musttherefore depend entirely upon ourselves, and the sooner we act thebetter it will be. I had difficulty in eluding their vigilance but nowin bringing you this morsel of food. To attempt to repeat the thingdaily would be the height of folly. Come, let us see how far we may gotoward liberty before I must return."
She led him back to the chamber beneath the altar room. Here sheturned into one of the several corridors leading from it. In thedarkness Tarzan could not see which one. For ten minutes they gropedslowly along a winding passage, until at length they came to a closeddoor. Here he heard her fumbling with a key, and presently came thesound of a metal bolt grating against metal. The door swung in onscraping hinges, and they entered.
"You will be safe here until tomorrow night," she said.
Then she went out, and, closing the door, locked it behind her.
Where Tarzan stood it was dark as Erebus. Not even his trained eyescould penetrate the utter blackness. Cautiously he moved forward untilhis out-stretched hand touched a wall, then very slowly he traveledaround the four walls of the chamber.
Apparently it was about twenty feet square. The floor was of concrete,the walls of the dry masonry that marked the method of constructionabove ground. Small pieces of granite of various sizes wereingeniously laid together without mortar to construct these ancientfoundations.
The first time around the walls Tarzan thought he detected a strangephenomenon for a room with no windows but a single door. Again hecrept carefully around close to the wall. No, he could not bemistaken! He paused before the center of the wall opposite the door.For a moment he stood quite motionless, then he moved a few feet to oneside. Again he returned, only to move a few feet to the other side.
Once more he made the entire circuit of the room, feeling carefullyevery foot of the walls. Finally he stopped again before theparticular section that had aroused his curiosity. There was no doubtof it! A distinct draft of fresh air was blowing into the chamberthrough the intersection of the masonry at that particular point--andnowhere else.
Tarzan tested several pieces of the granite which made up the wall atthis spot, and finally was rewarded by finding one which lifted outreadily. It was about ten inches wide, with a face some three by sixinches showing within the chamber. One by one the ape-man lifted outsimilarly shaped stones. The wall at this point was constructedentirely, it seemed, of these almost perfect slabs. In a short time hehad removed some dozen, when he reached in to test the next layer ofmasonry. To his surprise, he felt nothing behind the masonry he hadremoved as far as his long arm could reach.
It was a matter of but a few minutes to remove enough of the wall topermit his body to pass through the aperture. Directly ahead of him hethought he discerned a faint glow--scarcely more than a lessimpenetrable darkness. Cautiously he moved forward on hands and knees,until at about fifteen feet, or the average thickness of the foundationwalls, the floor ended abruptly in a sudden drop. As far out as hecould reach he felt nothing, nor could he find the bottom of the blackabyss that yawned before him, though, clinging to the edge of thefloor, he lowered his body into the darkness to its full length.
Finally it occurred to him to look up, and there above him he sawthrough a round opening a tiny circular patch of starry sky. Feelingup along the sides of the shaft as far as he could reach, the ape-mandiscovered that so much of the wall as he could feel converged towardthe center of the shaft as it rose. This fact precluded possibility ofescape in that direction.
As he sat speculating on the nature and uses of this strange passageand its terminal shaft, the moon topped the opening above, letting aflood of soft, silvery light into the shadowy place. Instantly thenature of the shaft became apparent to Tarzan, for far below him he sawthe shimmering surface of water. He had come upon an ancient well--butwhat was the purpose of the connection between the well and the dungeonin which he had been hidden?
As the moon crossed the opening of the shaft its light flooded thewhole interior, and then Tarzan saw directly across from him anotheropening in the opposite wall. He wondered if this might not be themouth of a passage leading to possible escape. It would be worthinvestigating, at least, and this he determined to do.
Quickly returning to the wall he had demolished to explore what laybeyond it, he carried the stones into the passageway and replaced themfrom that side. The deep deposit of dust which he had noticed upon theblocks as he had first removed them from the wall had convinced himthat even if the present occupants of the ancient pile had knowledge ofthis hidden passage they had made no use of it for perhaps generations.
The wall replaced, Tarzan turned to the shaft, which was some fifteenfeet wide at this point. To leap across the intervening space was asmall matter to the ape-man, and a moment later he was proceeding alonga narrow tunnel, moving cautiously for fear of being precipitated intoanother shaft such as he had just crossed.
He had advanced some hundred feet when he came to a flight of stepsleading downward into Stygian gloom. Some twenty feet below, the levelfloor of the tunnel recommenced, and shortly afterward his progress wasstopped by a heavy wooden door which was secured by massive wooden barsupon the side of Tarzan's approach. This fact suggested to the ape-manthat he might surely be in a passageway leading to the outer world, forthe bolts, barring progress from the opposite side, tended tosubstantiate this hypothesis, unless it were merely a prison to whichit led.
Along the tops of the bars were deep layers of dust--a furtherindication that the passage had lain long unused. As he pushed themassive obstacle aside, its great hinges shrieked out in weird protestagainst this unaccustomed disturbance. For a moment Tarzan paused tolisten for any responsive note which might indicate that the unusualnight noise had alarmed the inmates of the temple; but as he heardnothing he advanced beyond the doorway.
Carefully feeling about, he found himself within a large chamber, alongthe walls of which, and down the length of the floor, were piled manytiers of metal ingots of an odd though uniform shape. To his gropinghands they felt not unlike double-headed bootjacks. The ingots werequite heavy, and but for the enormous number of th
em he would have beenpositive that they were gold; but the thought of the fabulous wealththese thousands of pounds of metal would have represented were they inreality gold, almost convinced him that they must be of some basermetal.
At the far end of the chamber he discovered another barred door, andagain the bars upon the inside renewed the hope that he was traversingan ancient and forgotten passageway to liberty. Beyond the door thepassage ran straight as a war spear, and it soon became evident to theape-man that it had already led him beyond the outer walls of thetemple. If he but knew the direction it was leading him! If towardthe west, then he must also be beyond the city's outer walls.
With increasing hopes he forged ahead as rapidly as he dared, until atthe end of half an hour he came to another flight of steps leadingupward. At the bottom this flight was of concrete, but as he ascendedhis naked feet felt a sudden change in the substance they weretreading. The steps of concrete had given place to steps of granite.Feeling with his hands, the ape-man discovered that these latter wereevidently hewed from rock, for there was no crack to indicate a joint.
For a hundred feet the steps wound spirally up, until at a suddenturning Tarzan came into a narrow cleft between two rocky walls. Abovehim shone the starry sky, and before him a steep incline replaced thesteps that had terminated at its foot. Up this pathway Tarzanhastened, and at its upper end came out upon the rough top of a hugegranite bowlder.
A mile away lay the ruined city of Opar, its domes and turrets bathedin the soft light of the equatorial moon. Tarzan dropped his eyes tothe ingot he had brought away with him. For a moment he examined it bythe moon's bright rays, then he raised his head to look out upon theancient piles of crumbling grandeur in the distance.
"Opar," he mused, "Opar, the enchanted city of a dead and forgottenpast. The city of the beauties and the beasts. City of horrors anddeath; but--city of fabulous riches." The ingot was of virgin gold.
The bowlder on which Tarzan found himself lay well out in the plainbetween the city and the distant cliffs he and his black warriors hadscaled the morning previous. To descend its rough and precipitous facewas a task of infinite labor and considerable peril even to theape-man; but at last he felt the soft soil of the valley beneath hisfeet, and without a backward glance at Opar he turned his face towardthe guardian cliffs, and at a rapid trot set off across the valley.
The sun was just rising as he gained the summit of the flat mountain atthe valley's western boundary. Far beneath him he saw smoke arisingabove the tree-tops of the forest at the base of the foothills.
"Man," he murmured. "And there were fifty who went forth to track medown. Can it be they?"
Swiftly he descended the face of the cliff, and, dropping into a narrowravine which led down to the far forest, he hastened onward in thedirection of the smoke. Striking the forest's edge about a quarter ofa mile from the point at which the slender column arose into the stillair, he took to the trees. Cautiously he approached until theresuddenly burst upon his view a rude BOMA, in the center of which,squatted about their tiny fires, sat his fifty black Waziri. He calledto them in their own tongue:
"Arise, my children, and greet thy king!"
With exclamations of surprise and fear the warriors leaped to theirfeet, scarcely knowing whether to flee or not. Then Tarzan droppedlightly from an overhanging branch into their midst. When theyrealized that it was indeed their chief in the flesh, and nomaterialized spirit, they went mad with joy.
"We were cowards, oh, Waziri," cried Busuli. "We ran away and left youto your fate; but when our panic was over we swore to return and saveyou, or at least take revenge upon your murderers. We were but nowpreparing to scale the heights once more and cross the desolate valleyto the terrible city."
"Have you seen fifty frightful men pass down from the cliffs into thisforest, my children?" asked Tarzan.
"Yes, Waziri," replied Busuli. "They passed us late yesterday, as wewere about to turn back after you. They had no woodcraft. We heardthem coming for a mile before we saw them, and as we had other businessin hand we withdrew into the forest and let them pass. They werewaddling rapidly along upon short legs, and now and then one would goupon all fours like Bolgani, the gorilla. They were indeed fiftyfrightful men, Waziri."
When Tarzan had related his adventures and told them of the yellowmetal he had found, not one demurred when he outlined a plan to returnby night and bring away what they could carry of the vast treasure; andso it was that as dusk fell across the desolate valley of Opar fiftyebon warriors trailed at a smart trot over the dry and dusty groundtoward the giant bowlder that loomed before the city.
If it had seemed a difficult task to descend the face of the bowlder,Tarzan soon found that it would be next to impossible to get his fiftywarriors to the summit. Finally the feat was accomplished by dint ofherculean efforts upon the part of the ape-man. Ten spears werefastened end to end, and with one end of this remarkable chain attachedto his waist, Tarzan at last succeeded in reaching the summit.
Once there, he drew up one of his blacks, and in this way the entireparty was finally landed in safety upon the bowlder's top. ImmediatelyTarzan led them to the treasure chamber, where to each was allotted aload of two ingots, for each about eighty pounds.
By midnight the entire party stood once more at the foot of thebowlder, but with their heavy loads it was mid-forenoon ere theyreached the summit of the cliffs. From there on the homeward journeywas slow, as these proud fighting men were unaccustomed to the dutiesof porters. But they bore their burdens uncomplainingly, and at theend of thirty days entered their own country.
Here, instead of continuing on toward the northwest and their village,Tarzan guided them almost directly west, until on the morning of thethirty-third day he bade them break camp and return to their ownvillage, leaving the gold where they had stacked it the previous night.
"And you, Waziri?" they asked.
"I shall remain here for a few days, my children," he replied. "Nowhasten back to thy wives and children."
When they had gone Tarzan gathered up two of the ingots and, springinginto a tree, ran lightly above the tangled and impenetrable mass ofundergrowth for a couple of hundred yards, to emerge suddenly upon acircular clearing about which the giants of the jungle forest toweredlike a guardian host. In the center of this natural amphitheater, wasa little flat-topped mound of hard earth.
Hundreds of times before had Tarzan been to this secluded spot, whichwas so densely surrounded by thorn bushes and tangled vines andcreepers of huge girth that not even Sheeta, the leopard, could wormhis sinuous way within, nor Tantor, with his giant strength, force thebarriers which protected the council chamber of the great apes from allbut the harmless denizens of the savage jungle.
Fifty trips Tarzan made before he had deposited all the ingots withinthe precincts of the amphitheater. Then from the hollow of an ancient,lightning-blasted tree he produced the very spade with which he haduncovered the chest of Professor Archimedes Q. Porter which he hadonce, apelike, buried in this selfsame spot. With this he dug a longtrench, into which he laid the fortune that his blacks had carried fromthe forgotten treasure vaults of the city of Opar.
That night he slept within the amphitheater, and early the next morningset out to revisit his cabin before returning to his Waziri. Findingthings as he had left them, he went forth into the jungle to hunt,intending to bring his prey to the cabin where he might feast incomfort, spending the night upon a comfortable couch.
For five miles toward the south he roamed, toward the banks of afair-sized river that flowed into the sea about six miles from hiscabin. He had gone inland about half a mile when there came suddenlyto his trained nostrils the one scent that sets the whole savage jungleaquiver--Tarzan smelled man.
The wind was blowing off the ocean, so Tarzan knew that the authors ofthe scent were west of him. Mixed with the man scent was the scent ofNuma. Man and lion. "I had better hasten," thought the ape-man, forhe had recognized the scent of whites. "
Numa may be a-hunting."
When he came through the trees to the edge of the jungle he saw a womankneeling in prayer, and before her stood a wild, primitive-lookingwhite man, his face buried in his arms. Behind the man a mangy lionwas advancing slowly toward this easy prey. The man's face wasaverted; the woman's bowed in prayer. He could not see the features ofeither.
Already Numa was about to spring. There was not a second to spare.Tarzan could not even unsling his bow and fit an arrow in time to sendone of his deadly poisoned shafts into the yellow hide. He was too faraway to reach the beast in time with his knife. There was but a singlehope--a lone alternative. And with the quickness of thought theape-man acted.
A brawny arm flew back--for the briefest fraction of an instant a hugespear poised above the giant's shoulder--and then the mighty arm shotout, and swift death tore through the intervening leaves to bury itselfin the heart of the leaping lion. Without a sound he rolled over atthe very feet of his intended victims--dead.
For a moment neither the man nor the woman moved. Then the latteropened her eyes to look with wonder upon the dead beast behind hercompanion. As that beautiful head went up Tarzan of the Apes gave agasp of incredulous astonishment. Was he mad? It could not be thewoman he loved! But, indeed, it was none other.
And the woman rose, and the man took her in his arms to kiss her, andof a sudden the ape-man saw red through a bloody mist of murder, andthe old scar upon his forehead burned scarlet against his brown hide.
There was a terrible expression upon his savage face as he fitted apoisoned shaft to his bow. An ugly light gleamed in those gray eyes ashe sighted full at the back of the unsuspecting man beneath him.
For an instant he glanced along the polished shaft, drawing thebowstring far back, that the arrow might pierce through the heart forwhich it was aimed.
But he did not release the fatal messenger. Slowly the point of thearrow drooped; the scar upon the brown forehead faded; the bowstringrelaxed; and Tarzan of the Apes, with bowed head, turned sadly into thejungle toward the village of the Waziri.
The Return of Tarzan Page 22
