4
The God of Tarzan
AMONG THE BOOKS of his dead father in the little cabin by theland-locked harbor, Tarzan of the Apes found many things to puzzle hisyoung head. By much labor and through the medium of infinite patienceas well, he had, without assistance, discovered the purpose of thelittle bugs which ran riot upon the printed pages. He had learned thatin the many combinations in which he found them they spoke in a silentlanguage, spoke in a strange tongue, spoke of wonderful things which alittle ape-boy could not by any chance fully understand, arousing hiscuriosity, stimulating his imagination and filling his soul with amighty longing for further knowledge.
A dictionary had proven itself a wonderful storehouse of information,when, after several years of tireless endeavor, he had solved themystery of its purpose and the manner of its use. He had learned tomake a species of game out of it, following up the spoor of a newthought through the mazes of the many definitions which each new wordrequired him to consult. It was like following a quarry through thejungle--it was hunting, and Tarzan of the Apes was an indefatigablehuntsman.
There were, of course, certain words which aroused his curiosity to agreater extent than others, words which, for one reason or another,excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning ofwhich was rather difficult to grasp. It was the word GOD. Tarzanfirst had been attracted to it by the fact that it was very short andthat it commenced with a larger g-bug than those about it--a male g-bugit was to Tarzan, the lower-case letters being females. Another factwhich attracted him to this word was the number of he-bugs whichfigured in its definition--Supreme Deity, Creator or Upholder of theUniverse. This must be a very important word indeed, he would have tolook into it, and he did, though it still baffled him after many monthsof thought and study.
However, Tarzan counted no time wasted which he devoted to thesestrange hunting expeditions into the game preserves of knowledge, foreach word and each definition led on and on into strange places, intonew worlds where, with increasing frequency, he met old, familiarfaces. And always he added to his store of knowledge.
But of the meaning of GOD he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he hadgrasped it--that God was a mighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani.He was not quite sure, however, since that would mean that God wasmightier than Tarzan--a point which Tarzan of the Apes, whoacknowledged no equal in the jungle, was loath to concede.
But in all the books he had there was no picture of God, though hefound much to confirm his belief that God was a great, an all-powerfulindividual. He saw pictures of places where God was worshiped; butnever any sign of God. Finally he began to wonder if God were not of adifferent form than he, and at last he determined to set out in searchof Him.
He commenced by questioning Mumga, who was very old and had seen manystrange things in her long life; but Mumga, being an ape, had a facultyfor recalling the trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a sting-bugfor an edible beetle had made more impression upon Mumga than all theinnumerable manifestations of the greatness of God which she hadwitnessed, and which, of course, she had not understood.
Numgo, overhearing Tarzan's questions, managed to wrest his attentionlong enough from the diversion of flea hunting to advance the theorythat the power which made the lightning and the rain and the thundercame from Goro, the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dumalways was danced in the light of Goro. This reasoning, thoughentirely satisfactory to Numgo and Mumga, failed fully to convinceTarzan. However, it gave him a basis for further investigation along anew line. He would investigate the moon.
That night he clambered to the loftiest pinnacle of the tallest junglegiant. The moon was full, a great, glorious, equatorial moon. Theape-man, upright upon a slender, swaying limb, raised his bronzed faceto the silver orb. Now that he had clambered to the highest pointwithin his reach, he discovered, to his surprise, that Goro was as faraway as when he viewed him from the ground. He thought that Goro wasattempting to elude him.
"Come, Goro!" he cried, "Tarzan of the Apes will not harm you!" Butstill the moon held aloof.
"Tell me," he continued, "if you be the great king who sends Ara, thelightning; who makes the great noise and the mighty winds, and sendsthe waters down upon the jungle people when the days are dark and it iscold. Tell me, Goro, are you God?"
Of course he did not pronounce God as you or I would pronounce Hisname, for Tarzan knew naught of the spoken language of his Englishforbears; but he had a name of his own invention for each of the littlebugs which constituted the alphabet. Unlike the apes he was notsatisfied merely to have a mental picture of the things he knew, hemust have a word descriptive of each. In reading he grasped a word inits entirety; but when he spoke the words he had learned from the booksof his father, he pronounced each according to the names he had giventhe various little bugs which occurred in it, usually giving the genderprefix for each.
Thus it was an imposing word which Tarzan made of GOD. The masculineprefix of the apes is BU, the feminine MU; g Tarzan had named LA, o hepronounced TU, and d was MO. So the word God evolved itself intoBULAMUTUMUMO, or, in English, he-g-she-o-she-d.
Similarly he had arrived at a strange and wonderful spelling of his ownname. Tarzan is derived from the two ape words TAR and ZAN, meaningwhite skin. It was given him by his foster mother, Kala, the greatshe-ape. When Tarzan first put it into the written language of his ownpeople he had not yet chanced upon either WHITE or SKIN in thedictionary; but in a primer he had seen the picture of a little whiteboy and so he wrote his name BUMUDE-MUTOMURO, or he-boy.
To follow Tarzan's strange system of spelling would be laborious aswell as futile, and so we shall in the future, as we have in the past,adhere to the more familiar forms of our grammar school copybooks. Itwould tire you to remember that DO meant b, TU o, and RO y, and that tosay he-boy you must prefix the ape masculine gender sound BU before theentire word and the feminine gender sound MU before each of thelower-case letters which go to make up boy--it would tire you and itwould bring me to the nineteenth hole several strokes under par.
And so Tarzan harangued the moon, and when Goro did not reply, Tarzanof the Apes waxed wroth. He swelled his giant chest and bared hisfighting fangs, and hurled into the teeth of the dead satellite thechallenge of the bull ape.
"You are not Bulamutumumo," he cried. "You are not king of the junglefolk. You are not so great as Tarzan, mighty fighter, mighty hunter.None there is so great as Tarzan. If there be a Bulamutumumo, Tarzancan kill him. Come down, Goro, great coward, and fight with Tarzan.Tarzan will kill you. I am Tarzan, the killer."
But the moon made no answer to the boasting of the ape-man, and when acloud came and obscured her face, Tarzan thought that Goro was indeedafraid, and was hiding from him, so he came down out of the trees andawoke Numgo and told him how great was Tarzan--how he had frightenedGoro out of the sky and made him tremble. Tarzan spoke of the moon asHE, for all things large or awe inspiring are male to the ape folk.
Numgo was not much impressed; but he was very sleepy, so he told Tarzanto go away and leave his betters alone.
"But where shall I find God?" insisted Tarzan. "You are very old; ifthere is a God you must have seen Him. What does He look like? Wheredoes He live?"
"I am God," replied Numgo. "Now sleep and disturb me no more."
Tarzan looked at Numgo steadily for several minutes, his shapely headsank just a trifle between his great shoulders, his square chin shotforward and his short upper lip drew back, exposing his white teeth.Then, with a low growl he leaped upon the ape and buried his fangs inthe other's hairy shoulder, clutching the great neck in his mightyfingers. Twice he shook the old ape, then he released his tooth-hold.
"Are you God?" he demanded.
"No," wailed Numgo. "I am only a poor, old ape. Leave me alone. Goask the Gomangani where God is. They are hairless like yourself andvery wise, too. They should know."
Tarzan released Numgo and tu
rned away. The suggestion that he consultthe blacks appealed to him, and though his relations with the people ofMbonga, the chief, were the antithesis of friendly, he could at leastspy upon his hated enemies and discover if they had intercourse withGod.
So it was that Tarzan set forth through the trees toward the village ofthe blacks, all excitement at the prospect of discovering the SupremeBeing, the Creator of all things. As he traveled he reviewed,mentally, his armament--the condition of his hunting knife, the numberof his arrows, the newness of the gut which strung his bow--he heftedthe war spear which had once been the pride of some black warrior ofMbonga's tribe.
If he met God, Tarzan would be prepared. One could never tell whethera grass rope, a war spear, or a poisoned arrow would be mostefficacious against an unfamiliar foe. Tarzan of the Apes was quitecontent--if God wished to fight, the ape-man had no doubt as to theoutcome of the struggle. There were many questions Tarzan wished toput to the Creator of the Universe and so he hoped that God would notprove a belligerent God; but his experience of life and the ways ofliving things had taught him that any creature with the means foroffense and defense was quite likely to provoke attack if in the propermood.
It was dark when Tarzan came to the village of Mbonga. As silently asthe silent shadows of the night he sought his accustomed place amongthe branches of the great tree which overhung the palisade. Below him,in the village street, he saw men and women. The men were hideouslypainted--more hideously than usual. Among them moved a weird andgrotesque figure, a tall figure that went upon the two legs of a manand yet had the head of a buffalo. A tail dangled to his ankles behindhim, and in one hand he carried a zebra's tail while the other clutcheda bunch of small arrows.
Tarzan was electrified. Could it be that chance had given him thusearly an opportunity to look upon God? Surely this thing was neitherman nor beast, so what could it be then other than the Creator of theUniverse! The ape-man watched the every move of the strange creature.He saw the black men and women fall back at its approach as though theystood in terror of its mysterious powers.
Presently he discovered that the deity was speaking and that alllistened in silence to his words. Tarzan was sure that none other thanGod could inspire such awe in the hearts of the Gomangani, or stoptheir mouths so effectually without recourse to arrows or spears.Tarzan had come to look with contempt upon the blacks, principallybecause of their garrulity. The small apes talked a great deal and ranaway from an enemy. The big, old bulls of Kerchak talked but littleand fought upon the slightest provocation. Numa, the lion, was notgiven to loquacity, yet of all the jungle folk there were few whofought more often than he.
Tarzan witnessed strange things that night, none of which heunderstood, and, perhaps because they were strange, he thought thatthey must have to do with the God he could not understand. He sawthree youths receive their first war spears in a weird ceremony whichthe grotesque witch-doctor strove successfully to render uncanny andawesome.
Hugely interested, he watched the slashing of the three brown arms andthe exchange of blood with Mbonga, the chief, in the rites of theceremony of blood brotherhood. He saw the zebra's tail dipped into acaldron of water above which the witch-doctor had made magical passesthe while he danced and leaped about it, and he saw the breasts andforeheads of each of the three novitiates sprinkled with the charmedliquid. Could the ape-man have known the purpose of this act, that itwas intended to render the recipient invulnerable to the attacks of hisenemies and fearless in the face of any danger, he would doubtless haveleaped into the village street and appropriated the zebra's tail and aportion of the contents of the caldron.
But he did not know, and so he only wondered, not alone at what he sawbut at the strange sensations which played up and down his naked spine,sensations induced, doubtless, by the same hypnotic influence whichheld the black spectators in tense awe upon the verge of a hystericupheaval.
The longer Tarzan watched, the more convinced he became that his eyeswere upon God, and with the conviction came determination to have wordwith the deity. With Tarzan of the Apes, to think was to act.
The people of Mbonga were keyed to the highest pitch of hystericalexcitement. They needed little to release the accumulated pressure ofstatic nerve force which the terrorizing mummery of the witch-doctorhad induced.
A lion roared, suddenly and loud, close without the palisade. Theblacks started nervously, dropping into utter silence as they listenedfor a repetition of that all-too-familiar and always terrorizing voice.Even the witch-doctor paused in the midst of an intricate step,remaining momentarily rigid and statuesque as he plumbed his cunningmind for a suggestion as how best he might take advantage of thecondition of his audience and the timely interruption.
Already the evening had been vastly profitable to him. There would bethree goats for the initiation of the three youths into full-fledgedwarriorship, and besides these he had received several gifts of grainand beads, together with a piece of copper wire from admiring andterrified members of his audience.
Numa's roar still reverberated along taut nerves when a woman's laugh,shrill and piercing, shattered the silence of the village. It was thismoment that Tarzan chose to drop lightly from his tree into the villagestreet. Fearless among his blood enemies he stood, taller by a fullhead than many of Mbonga's warriors, straight as their straightestarrow, muscled like Numa, the lion.
For a moment Tarzan stood looking straight at the witch-doctor. Everyeye was upon him, yet no one had moved--a paralysis of terror heldthem, to be broken a moment later as the ape-man, with a toss of head,stepped straight toward the hideous figure beneath the buffalo head.
Then the nerves of the blacks could stand no more. For months theterror of the strange, white, jungle god had been upon them. Theirarrows had been stolen from the very center of the village; theirwarriors had been silently slain upon the jungle trails and their deadbodies dropped mysteriously and by night into the village street asfrom the heavens above.
One or two there were who had glimpsed the strange figure of the newdemon and it was from their oft-repeated descriptions that the entirevillage now recognized Tarzan as the author of many of their ills.Upon another occasion and by daylight, the warriors would doubtlesshave leaped to attack him, but at night, and this night of all others,when they were wrought to such a pitch of nervous dread by the uncannyartistry of their witch-doctor, they were helpless with terror. As oneman they turned and fled, scattering for their huts, as Tarzanadvanced. For a moment one and one only held his ground. It was thewitch-doctor. More than half self-hypnotized into a belief in his owncharlatanry he faced this new demon who threatened to undermine hisancient and lucrative profession.
"Are you God?" asked Tarzan.
The witch-doctor, having no idea of the meaning of the other's words,danced a few strange steps, leaped high in the air, turning completelyaround and alighting in a stooping posture with feet far outspread andhead thrust out toward the ape-man. Thus he remained for an instantbefore he uttered a loud "Boo!" which was evidently intended tofrighten Tarzan away; but in reality had no such effect.
Tarzan did not pause. He had set out to approach and examine God andnothing upon earth might now stay his feet. Seeing that his antics hadno potency with the visitor, the witch-doctor tried some new medicine.Spitting upon the zebra's tail, which he still clutched in one hand, hemade circles above it with the arrows in the other hand, meanwhilebacking cautiously away from Tarzan and speaking confidentially to thebushy end of the tail.
This medicine must be short medicine, however, for the creature, god ordemon, was steadily closing up the distance which had separated them.The circles therefore were few and rapid, and when they were completed,the witch-doctor struck an attitude which was intended to be aweinspiring and waving the zebra's tail before him, drew an imaginaryline between himself and Tarzan.
"Beyond this line you cannot pass, for my medicine is strong medicine,"he cried. "Stop, or you will fall dead as your foot touches this spot.M
y mother was a voodoo, my father was a snake; I live upon lions'hearts and the entrails of the panther; I eat young babies forbreakfast and the demons of the jungle are my slaves. I am the mostpowerful witch-doctor in the world; I fear nothing, for I cannot die.I--" But he got no further; instead he turned and fled as Tarzan of theApes crossed the magical dead line and still lived.
As the witch-doctor ran, Tarzan almost lost his temper. This was noway for God to act, at least not in accordance with the conceptionTarzan had come to have of God.
"Come back!" he cried. "Come back, God, I will not harm you." But thewitch-doctor was in full retreat by this time, stepping high as heleaped over cooking pots and the smoldering embers of small fires thathad burned before the huts of villagers. Straight for his own hut ranthe witch-doctor, terror-spurred to unwonted speed; but futile was hiseffort--the ape-man bore down upon him with the speed of Bara, the deer.
Just at the entrance to his hut the witch-doctor was overhauled. Aheavy hand fell upon his shoulder to drag him back. It seized upon aportion of the buffalo hide, dragging the disguise from him. It was anaked black man that Tarzan saw dodge into the darkness of the hut'sinterior.
So this was what he had thought was God! Tarzan's lip curled in anangry snarl as he leaped into the hut after the terror-strickenwitch-doctor. In the blackness within he found the man huddled at thefar side and dragged him forth into the comparative lightness of themoonlit night.
The witch-doctor bit and scratched in an attempt to escape; but a fewcuffs across the head brought him to a better realization of thefutility of resistance. Beneath the moon Tarzan held the cringingfigure upon its shaking feet.
"So you are God!" he cried. "If you be God, then Tarzan is greaterthan God," and so the ape-man thought. "I am Tarzan," he shouted intothe ear of the black. "In all the jungle, or above it, or upon therunning waters, or the sleeping waters, or upon the big water, or thelittle water, there is none so great as Tarzan. Tarzan is greater thanthe Mangani; he is greater than the Gomangani. With his own hands hehas slain Numa, the lion, and Sheeta, the panther; there is none sogreat as Tarzan. Tarzan is greater than God. See!" and with a suddenwrench he twisted the black's neck until the fellow shrieked in painand then slumped to the earth in a swoon.
Placing his foot upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor, the ape-manraised his face to the moon and uttered the long, shrill scream of thevictorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra's tailfrom the nerveless fingers of the unconscious man and without abackward glance retraced his footsteps across the village.
From several hut doorways frightened eyes watched him. Mbonga, thechief, was one of those who had seen what passed before the hut of thewitch-doctor. Mbonga was greatly concerned. Wise old patriarch that hewas, he never had more than half believed in witch-doctors, at leastnot since greater wisdom had come with age; but as a chief he was wellconvinced of the power of the witch-doctor as an arm of government, andoften it was that Mbonga used the superstitious fears of his people tohis own ends through the medium of the medicine-man.
Mbonga and the witch-doctor had worked together and divided the spoils,and now the "face" of the witch-doctor would be lost forever if any sawwhat Mbonga had seen; nor would this generation again have as muchfaith in any future witch-doctor.
Mbonga must do something to counteract the evil influence of the forestdemon's victory over the witch-doctor. He raised his heavy spear andcrept silently from his hut in the wake of the retreating ape-man. Downthe village street walked Tarzan, as unconcerned and as deliberate asthough only the friendly apes of Kerchak surrounded him instead of avillage full of armed enemies.
Seeming only was the indifference of Tarzan, for alert and watchful wasevery well-trained sense. Mbonga, wily stalker of keen-eared junglecreatures, moved now in utter silence. Not even Bara, the deer, withhis great ears could have guessed from any sound that Mbonga was near;but the black was not stalking Bara; he was stalking man, and so hesought only to avoid noise.
Closer and closer to the slowly moving ape-man he came. Now he raisedhis war spear, throwing his spear-hand far back above his rightshoulder. Once and for all would Mbonga, the chief, rid himself andhis people of the menace of this terrifying enemy. He would make nopoor cast; he would take pains, and he would hurl his weapon with suchgreat force as would finish the demon forever.
But Mbonga, sure as he thought himself, erred in his calculations. Hemight believe that he was stalking a man--he did not know, however,that it was a man with the delicate sense perception of the lowerorders. Tarzan, when he had turned his back upon his enemies, hadnoted what Mbonga never would have thought of considering in thehunting of man--the wind. It was blowing in the same direction thatTarzan was proceeding, carrying to his delicate nostrils the odorswhich arose behind him. Thus it was that Tarzan knew that he was beingfollowed, for even among the many stenches of an African village, theape-man's uncanny faculty was equal to the task of differentiating onestench from another and locating with remarkable precision the sourcefrom whence it came.
He knew that a man was following him and coming closer, and hisjudgment warned him of the purpose of the stalker. When Mbonga,therefore, came within spear range of the ape-man, the latter suddenlywheeled upon him, so suddenly that the poised spear was shot a fractionof a second before Mbonga had intended. It went a trifle high andTarzan stooped to let it pass over his head; then he sprang toward thechief. But Mbonga did not wait to receive him. Instead, he turned andfled for the dark doorway of the nearest hut, calling as he went forhis warriors to fall upon the stranger and slay him.
Well indeed might Mbonga scream for help, for Tarzan, young andfleet-footed, covered the distance between them in great leaps, at thespeed of a charging lion. He was growling, too, not at all unlike Numahimself. Mbonga heard and his blood ran cold. He could feel the woolstiffen upon his pate and a prickly chill run up his spine, as thoughDeath had come and run his cold finger along Mbonga's back.
Others heard, too, and saw, from the darkness of their huts--boldwarriors, hideously painted, grasping heavy war spears in nervelessfingers. Against Numa, the lion, they would have charged fearlessly.Against many times their own number of black warriors would they haveraced to the protection of their chief; but this weird jungle demonfilled them with terror. There was nothing human in the bestial growlsthat rumbled up from his deep chest; there was nothing human in thebared fangs, or the catlike leaps.
Mbonga's warriors were terrified--too terrified to leave the seemingsecurity of their huts while they watched the beast-man spring fullupon the back of their old chieftain.
Mbonga went down with a scream of terror. He was too frightened evento attempt to defend himself. He just lay beneath his antagonist in aparalysis of fear, screaming at the top of his lungs. Tarzan half roseand kneeled above the black. He turned Mbonga over and looked him inthe face, exposing the man's throat, then he drew his long, keen knife,the knife that John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, had brought from Englandmany years before. He raised it close above Mbonga's neck. The oldblack whimpered with terror. He pleaded for his life in a tongue whichTarzan could not understand.
For the first time the ape-man had a close view of the chief. He sawan old man, a very old man with scrawny neck and wrinkled face--adried, parchment-like face which resembled some of the little monkeysTarzan knew so well. He saw the terror in the man's eyes--never beforehad Tarzan seen such terror in the eyes of any animal, or such apiteous appeal for mercy upon the face of any creature.
Something stayed the ape-man's hand for an instant. He wondered why itwas that he hesitated to make the kill; never before had he thusdelayed. The old man seemed to wither and shrink to a bag of punybones beneath his eyes. So weak and helpless and terror-stricken heappeared that the ape-man was filled with a great contempt; but anothersensation also claimed him--something new to Tarzan of the Apes inrelation to an enemy. It was pity--pity for a poor, frightened, oldman.
Tarzan rose and turn
ed away, leaving Mbonga, the chief, unharmed.
With head held high the ape-man walked through the village, swunghimself into the branches of the tree which overhung the palisade anddisappeared from the sight of the villagers.
All the way back to the stamping ground of the apes, Tarzan sought foran explanation of the strange power which had stayed his hand andprevented him from slaying Mbonga. It was as though someone greaterthan he had commanded him to spare the life of the old man. Tarzancould not understand, for he could conceive of nothing, or no one, withthe authority to dictate to him what he should do, or what he shouldrefrain from doing.
It was late when Tarzan sought a swaying couch among the trees beneathwhich slept the apes of Kerchak, and he was still absorbed in thesolution of his strange problem when he fell asleep.
The sun was well up in the heavens when he awoke. The apes were astirin search of food. Tarzan watched them lazily from above as theyscratched in the rotting loam for bugs and beetles and grubworms, orsought among the branches of the trees for eggs and young birds, orluscious caterpillars.
An orchid, dangling close beside his head, opened slowly, unfolding itsdelicate petals to the warmth and light of the sun which but recentlyhad penetrated to its shady retreat. A thousand times had Tarzan ofthe Apes witnessed the beauteous miracle; but now it aroused a keenerinterest, for the ape-man was just commencing to ask himself questionsabout all the myriad wonders which heretofore he had but taken forgranted.
What made the flower open? What made it grow from a tiny bud to afull-blown bloom? Why was it at all? Why was he? Where did Numa, thelion, come from? Who planted the first tree? How did Goro get way upinto the darkness of the night sky to cast his welcome light upon thefearsome nocturnal jungle? And the sun! Did the sun merely happen there?
Why were all the peoples of the jungle not trees? Why were the treesnot something else? Why was Tarzan different from Taug, and Taugdifferent from Bara, the deer, and Bara different from Sheeta, thepanther, and why was not Sheeta like Buto, the rhinoceros? Where andhow, anyway, did they all come from--the trees, the flowers, theinsects, the countless creatures of the jungle?
Quite unexpectedly an idea popped into Tarzan's head. In following outthe many ramifications of the dictionary definition of GOD he had comeupon the word CREATE--"to cause to come into existence; to form out ofnothing."
Tarzan almost had arrived at something tangible when a distant wailstartled him from his preoccupation into sensibility of the present andthe real. The wail came from the jungle at some little distance fromTarzan's swaying couch. It was the wail of a tiny balu. Tarzanrecognized it at once as the voice of Gazan, Teeka's baby. They hadcalled it Gazan because its soft, baby hair had been unusually red, andGAZAN in the language of the great apes, means red skin.
The wail was immediately followed by a real scream of terror from thesmall lungs. Tarzan was electrified into instant action. Like anarrow from a bow he shot through the trees in the direction of thesound. Ahead of him he heard the savage snarling of an adult she-ape.It was Teeka to the rescue. The danger must be very real. Tarzancould tell that by the note of rage mingled with fear in the voice ofthe she.
Running along bending limbs, swinging from one tree to another, theape-man raced through the middle terraces toward the sounds which nowhad risen in volume to deafening proportions. From all directions theapes of Kerchak were hurrying in response to the appeal in the tones ofthe balu and its mother, and as they came, their roars reverberatedthrough the forest.
But Tarzan, swifter than his heavy fellows, distanced them all. It washe who was first upon the scene. What he saw sent a cold chill throughhis giant frame, for the enemy was the most hated and loathed of allthe jungle creatures.
Twined in a great tree was Histah, the snake--huge, ponderous,slimy--and in the folds of its deadly embrace was Teeka's little balu,Gazan. Nothing in the jungle inspired within the breast of Tarzan sonear a semblance to fear as did the hideous Histah. The apes, too,loathed the terrifying reptile and feared him even more than they didSheeta, the panther, or Numa, the lion. Of all their enemies there wasnone they gave a wider berth than they gave Histah, the snake.
Tarzan knew that Teeka was peculiarly fearful of this silent, repulsivefoe, and as the scene broke upon his vision, it was the action of Teekawhich filled him with the greatest wonder, for at the moment that hesaw her, the she-ape leaped upon the glistening body of the snake, andas the mighty folds encircled her as well as her offspring, she made noeffort to escape, but instead grasped the writhing body in a futileeffort to tear it from her screaming balu.
Tarzan knew all too well how deep-rooted was Teeka's terror of Histah.He scarce could believe the testimony of his own eyes then, when theytold him that she had voluntarily rushed into that deadly embrace. Norwas Teeka's innate dread of the monster much greater than Tarzan's own.Never, willingly, had he touched a snake. Why, he could not say, forhe would admit fear of nothing; nor was it fear, but rather an inherentrepulsion bequeathed to him by many generations of civilized ancestors,and back of them, perhaps, by countless myriads of such as Teeka, inthe breasts of each of which had lurked the same nameless terror of theslimy reptile.
Yet Tarzan did not hesitate more than had Teeka, but leaped upon Histahwith all the speed and impetuosity that he would have shown had he beenspringing upon Bara, the deer, to make a kill for food. Thus beset thesnake writhed and twisted horribly; but not for an instant did it looseits hold upon any of its intended victims, for it had included theape-man in its cold embrace the minute that he had fallen upon it.
Still clinging to the tree, the mighty reptile held the three as thoughthey had been without weight, the while it sought to crush the lifefrom them. Tarzan had drawn his knife and this he now plunged rapidlyinto the body of the enemy; but the encircling folds promised to saphis life before he had inflicted a death wound upon the snake. Yet onhe fought, nor once did he seek to escape the horrid death thatconfronted him--his sole aim was to slay Histah and thus free Teeka andher balu.
The great, wide-gaping jaws of the snake turned and hovered above him.The elastic maw, which could accommodate a rabbit or a horned buck withequal facility, yawned for him; but Histah, in turning his attentionupon the ape-man, brought his head within reach of Tarzan's blade.Instantly a brown hand leaped forth and seized the mottled neck, andanother drove the heavy hunting knife to the hilt into the little brain.
Convulsively Histah shuddered and relaxed, tensed and relaxed again,whipping and striking with his great body; but no longer sentient orsensible. Histah was dead, but in his death throes he might easilydispatch a dozen apes or men.
Quickly Tarzan seized Teeka and dragged her from the loosened embrace,dropping her to the ground beneath, then he extricated the balu andtossed it to its mother. Still Histah whipped about, clinging to theape-man; but after a dozen efforts Tarzan succeeded in wriggling freeand leaping to the ground out of range of the mighty battering of thedying snake.
A circle of apes surrounded the scene of the battle; but the momentthat Tarzan broke safely from the enemy they turned silently away toresume their interrupted feeding, and Teeka turned with them,apparently forgetful of all but her balu and the fact that when theinterruption had occurred she just had discovered an ingeniously hiddennest containing three perfectly good eggs.
Tarzan, equally indifferent to a battle that was over, merely cast aparting glance at the still writhing body of Histah and wandered offtoward the little pool which served to water the tribe at this point.Strangely, he did not give the victory cry over the vanquished Histah.Why, he could not have told you, other than that to him Histah was notan animal. He differed in some peculiar way from the other denizens ofthe jungle. Tarzan only knew that he hated him.
At the pool Tarzan drank his fill and lay stretched upon the soft grassbeneath the shade of a tree. His mind reverted to the battle withHistah, the snake. It seemed strange to him that Teeka should haveplaced herself within the folds of the horrid mo
nster. Why had shedone it? Why, indeed, had he? Teeka did not belong to him, nor didTeeka's balu. They were both Taug's. Why then had he done this thing?Histah was not food for him when he was dead. There seemed to Tarzan,now that he gave the matter thought, no reason in the world why heshould have done the thing he did, and presently it occurred to himthat he had acted almost involuntarily, just as he had acted when hehad released the old Gomangani the previous evening.
What made him do such things? Somebody more powerful than he must forcehim to act at times. "All-powerful," thought Tarzan. "The little bugssay that God is all-powerful. It must be that God made me do thesethings, for I never did them by myself. It was God who made Teeka rushupon Histah. Teeka would never go near Histah of her own volition. Itwas God who held my knife from the throat of the old Gomangani. Godaccomplishes strange things for he is 'all-powerful.' I cannot see Him;but I know that it must be God who does these things. No Mangani, noGomangani, no Tarmangani could do them."
And the flowers--who made them grow? Ah, now it was all explained--theflowers, the trees, the moon, the sun, himself, every living creaturein the jungle--they were all made by God out of nothing.
And what was God? What did God look like? Of that he had no conception;but he was sure that everything that was good came from God. His goodact in refraining from slaying the poor, defenseless old Gomangani;Teeka's love that had hurled her into the embrace of death; his ownloyalty to Teeka which had jeopardized his life that she might live.The flowers and the trees were good and beautiful. God had made them.He made the other creatures, too, that each might have food upon whichto live. He had made Sheeta, the panther, with his beautiful coat; andNuma, the lion, with his noble head and his shaggy mane. He had madeBara, the deer, lovely and graceful.
Yes, Tarzan had found God, and he spent the whole day in attributing toHim all of the good and beautiful things of nature; but there was onething which troubled him. He could not quite reconcile it to hisconception of his new-found God.
Who made Histah, the snake?
Jungle Tales of Tarzan Page 4
