Chapter VII
When Blood Told
Tarzan of the Apes was disgusted. He had had the German spy, BerthaKircher, in his power and had left her unscathed. It is true that hehad slain Hauptmann Fritz Schneider, that Underlieutenant von Gosshad died at his hands, and that he had otherwise wreaked vengeanceupon the men of the German company who had murdered, pillaged, andraped at Tarzan's bungalow in the Waziri country. There was stillanother officer to be accounted for, but him he could not find.It was Lieutenant Obergatz he still sought, though vainly, for atlast he learned that the man had been sent upon some special mission,whether in Africa or back to Europe Tarzan's informant either didnot know or would not divulge.
But the fact that he had permitted sentiment to stay his hand whenhe might so easily have put Bertha Kircher out of the way in thehotel at Wilhelmstal that night rankled in the ape-man's bosom.He was shamed by his weakness, and when he had handed the papershe had given him to the British chief of staff, even thoughthe information it contained permitted the British to frustrate aGerman flank attack, he was still much dissatisfied with himself.And possibly the root of this dissatisfaction lay in the fact thathe realized that were he again to have the same opportunity hewould still find it as impossible to slay a woman as it had beenin Wilhelmstal that night.
Tarzan blamed this weakness, as he considered it, upon his associationwith the effeminizing influences of civilization, for in the bottomof his savage heart he held in contempt both civilization and itsrepresentatives--the men and women of the civilized countries ofthe world. Always was he comparing their weaknesses, their vices,their hypocrisies, and their little vanities with the open,primitive ways of his ferocious jungle mates, and all the whilethere battled in that same big heart with these forces another mightyforce--Tarzan's love and loyalty for his friends of the civilizedworld.
The ape-man, reared as he had been by savage beasts amid savagebeasts, was slow to make friends. Acquaintances he numbered by thehundreds; but of friends he had few. These few he would have diedfor as, doubtless, they would have died for him; but there werenone of these fighting with the British forces in East Africa, andso, sickened and disgusted by the sight of man waging his crueland inhuman warfare, Tarzan determined to heed the insistent callof the remote jungle of his youth, for the Germans were now on therun and the war in East Africa was so nearly over that he realizedthat his further services would be of negligible value.
Never regularly sworn into the service of the King, he was underno obligation to remain now that the moral obligation had beenremoved, and so it was that he disappeared from the British campas mysteriously as he had appeared a few months before.
More than once had Tarzan reverted to the primitive only to returnagain to civilization through love for his mate; but now that shewas gone he felt that this time he had definitely departed foreverfrom the haunts of man, and that he should live and die a beastamong beasts even as he had been from infancy to maturity.
Between him and his destination lay a trackless wilderness of untouchedprimeval savagery where, doubtless in many spots, his would be thefirst human foot to touch the virgin turf. Nor did this prospectdismay the Tarmangani--rather was it an urge and an inducement, forrich in his veins flowed that noble strain of blood that has mademost of the earth's surface habitable for man.
The question of food and water that would have risen paramount inthe mind of an ordinary man contemplating such an excursion gaveTarzan little concern. The wilderness was his natural habitatand woodcraft as inherent to him as breathing. Like other jungleanimals he could scent water from a great distance and, where youor I might die of thirst, the ape-man would unerringly select theexact spot at which to dig and find water.
For several days Tarzan traversed a country rich in gameand watercourses. He moved slowly, hunting and fishing, or againfraternizing or quarreling with the other savage denizens ofthe jungle. Now it was little Manu, the monkey, who chattered andscolded at the mighty Tarmangani and in the next breath warned himthat Histah, the snake, lay coiled in the long grass just ahead.Of Manu Tarzan inquired concerning the great apes--the Mangani--andwas told that few inhabited this part of the jungle, and that eventhese were hunting farther to the north this season of the year.
"But there is Bolgani," said Manu. "Would you like to see Bolgani?"
Manu's tone was sneering, and Tarzan knew that it was because littleManu thought all creatures feared mighty Bolgani, the gorilla.Tarzan arched his great chest and struck it with a clinched fist."I am Tarzan," he cried. "While Tarzan was yet a balu he slew aBolgani. Tarzan seeks the Mangani, who are his brothers, but Bolganihe does not seek, so let Bolgani keep from the path of Tarzan."
Little Manu, the monkey, was much impressed, for the way of thejungle is to boast and to believe. It was then that he condescendedto tell Tarzan more of the Mangani.
"They go there and there and there," he said, making a wide sweepwith a brown hand first toward the north, then west, and then southagain. "For there," and he pointed due west, "is much hunting; butbetween lies a great place where there is no food and no water,so they must go that way," and again he swung his hand through thehalf-circle that explained to Tarzan the great detour the apes madeto come to their hunting ground to the west.
That was all right for the Mangani, who are lazy and do not care tomove rapidly; but for Tarzan the straight road would be the best.He would cross the dry country and come to the good hunting in a thirdof the time that it would take to go far to the north and circleback again. And so it was that he continued on toward the west, andcrossing a range of low mountains came in sight of a broad plateau,rock strewn and desolate. Far in the distance he saw another rangeof mountains beyond which he felt must lie the hunting ground ofthe Mangani. There he would join them and remain for a while beforecontinuing on toward the coast and the little cabin that his fatherhad built beside the land-locked harbor at the jungle's edge.
Tarzan was full of plans. He would rebuild and enlarge the cabinof his birth, constructing storage houses where he would make theapes lay away food when it was plenty against the times that werelean--a thing no ape ever had dreamed of doing. And the tribe wouldremain always in the locality and he would be king again as he hadin the past. He would try to teach them some of the better thingsthat he had learned from man, yet knowing the ape-mind as onlyTarzan could, he feared that his labors would be for naught.
The ape-man found the country he was crossing rough in the extreme,the roughest he ever had encountered. The plateau was cut by frequentcanyons the passage of which often entailed hours of wearing effort.The vegetation was sparse and of a faded brown color that lent tothe whole landscape a most depressing aspect. Great rocks were strewnin every direction as far as the eye could see, lying partiallyembedded in an impalpable dust that rose in clouds about him atevery step. The sun beat down mercilessly out of a cloudless sky.
For a day Tarzan toiled across this now hateful land and at thegoing down of the sun the distant mountains to the west seemed nonearer than at morn. Never a sign of living thing had the ape-manseen, other than Ska, that bird of ill omen, that had followed himtirelessly since he had entered this parched waste.
No littlest beetle that he might eat had given evidence that lifeof any sort existed here, and it was a hungry and thirsty Tarzan wholay down to rest in the evening. He decided now to push on duringthe cool of the night, for he realized that even mighty Tarzan hadhis limitations and that where there was no food one could not eatand where there was no water the greatest woodcraft in the worldcould find none. It was a totally new experience to Tarzan to findso barren and terrible a country in his beloved Africa. Even theSahara had its oases; but this frightful world gave no indicationof containing a square foot of hospitable ground.
However, he had no misgivings but that he would fare forth intothe wonder country of which little Manu had told him, though itwas certain that he would do it with a dry skin and an empty belly.And so he fought on until daylight, when he again felt the ne
edof rest. He was at the edge of another of those terrible canyons,the eighth he had crossed, whose precipitous sides would have taxedto the uttermost the strength of an untired man well fortified byfood and water, and for the first time, as he looked down into theabyss and then at the opposite side that he must scale, misgivingsbegan to assail his mind.
He did not fear death--with the memory of his murdered mate stillfresh in his mind he almost courted it, yet strong within himwas that primal instinct of self-preservation--the battling forceof life that would keep him an active contender against the GreatReaper until, fighting to the very last, he should be overcome bya superior power.
A shadow swung slowly across the ground beside him, and lookingup, the ape-man saw Ska, the vulture, wheeling a wide circle abovehim. The grim and persistent harbinger of evil aroused the manto renewed determination. He arose and approached the edge of thecanyon, and then, wheeling, with his face turned upward toward thecircling bird of prey, he bellowed forth the challenge of the bullape.
"I am Tarzan," he shouted, "Lord of the Jungle. Tarzan of the Apesis not for Ska, eater of carrion. Go back to the lair of Dangoand feed off the leavings of the hyenas, for Tarzan will leave nobones for Ska to pick in this empty wilderness of death."
But before he reached the bottom of the canyon he again was forcedto the realization that his great strength was waning, and when hedropped exhausted at the foot of the cliff and saw before him theopposite wall that must be scaled, he bared his fighting fangs andgrowled. For an hour he lay resting in the cool shade at the footof the cliff. All about him reigned utter silence--the silence ofthe tomb. No fluttering birds, no humming insects, no scurryingreptiles relieved the deathlike stillness. This indeed was thevalley of death. He felt the depressing influence of the horribleplace settling down upon him; but he staggered to his feet, shakinghimself like a great lion, for was he not still Tarzan, mightyTarzan of the Apes? Yes, and Tarzan the mighty he would be untilthe last throb of that savage heart!
As he crossed the floor of the canyon he saw something lying closeto the base of the side wall he was approaching--something thatstood out in startling contrast to all the surroundings and yetseemed so much a part and parcel of the somber scene as to suggestan actor amid the settings of a well-appointed stage, and, as thoughto carry out the allegory, the pitiless rays of flaming Kudu toppedthe eastern cliff, picking out the thing lying at the foot of thewestern wall like a giant spotlight.
And as Tarzan came nearer he saw the bleached skull and bones ofa human being about which were remnants of clothing and articlesof equipment that, as he examined them, filled the ape-man withcuriosity to such an extent that for a time he forgot his ownpredicament in contemplation of the remarkable story suggested bythese mute evidences of a tragedy of a time long past.
The bones were in a fair state of preservation and indicated bytheir intactness that the flesh had probably been picked from themby vultures as none was broken; but the pieces of equipment boreout the suggestion of their great age. In this protected spot wherethere were no frosts and evidently but little rainfall, the bonesmight have lain for ages without disintegrating, for there werehere no other forces to scatter or disturb them.
Near the skeleton lay a helmet of hammered brass and a corrodedbreastplate of steel while at one side was a long, straight swordin its scabbard and an ancient harquebus. The bones were those ofa large man--a man of wondrous strength and vitality Tarzan knewhe must have been to have penetrated thus far through the dangersof Africa with such a ponderous yet at the same time futile armament.
The ape-man felt a sense of deep admiration for this namelessadventurer of a bygone day. What a brute of a man he must have beenand what a glorious tale of battle and kaleidoscopic vicissitudesof fortune must once have been locked within that whitened skull!Tarzan stooped to examine the shreds of clothing that still layabout the bones. Every particle of leather had disappeared, doubtlesseaten by Ska. No boots remained, if the man had worn boots, butthere were several buckles scattered about suggesting that a greatpart of his trappings had been of leather, while just beneath thebones of one hand lay a metal cylinder about eight inches long andtwo inches in diameter. As Tarzan picked it up he saw that it hadbeen heavily lacquered and had withstood the slight ravages oftime so well as to be in as perfect a state of preservation todayas it had been when its owner dropped into his last, long sleepperhaps centuries ago.
As he examined it he discovered that one end was closed witha friction cover which a little twisting force soon loosened andremoved, revealing within a roll of parchment which the ape-manremoved and opened, disclosing a number of age-yellowed sheetsclosely written upon in a fine hand in a language which he guessedto be Spanish but which he could not decipher. Upon the last sheetwas a roughly drawn map with numerous reference points marked uponit, all unintelligible to Tarzan, who, after a brief examinationof the papers, returned them to their metal case, replaced the topand was about to toss the little cylinder to the ground beside themute remains of its former possessor when some whim of curiosityunsatisfied prompted him to slip it into the quiver with his arrows,though as he did so it was with the grim thought that possiblycenturies hence it might again come to the sight of man beside hisown bleached bones.
And then, with a parting glance at the ancient skeleton, he turnedto the task of ascending the western wall of the canyon. Slowlyand with many rests he dragged his weakening body upwards. Again andagain he slipped back from sheer exhaustion and would have fallento the floor of the canyon but for merest chance. How long it tookhim to scale that frightful wall he could not have told, and whenat last he dragged himself over the top it was to lie weak andgasping, too spent to rise or even to move a few inches fartherfrom the perilous edge of the chasm.
At last he arose, very slowly and with evident effort gaining hisknees first and then staggering to his feet, yet his indomitablewill was evidenced by a sudden straightening of his shoulders anda determined shake of his head as he lurched forward on unsteadylegs to take up his valiant fight for survival. Ahead he scannedthe rough landscape for sign of another canyon which he knew wouldspell inevitable doom. The western hills rose closer now thoughweirdly unreal as they seemed to dance in the sunlight as thoughmocking him with their nearness at the moment that exhaustion wasabout to render them forever unattainable.
Beyond them he knew must be the fertile hunting grounds of which Manuhad told. Even if no canyon intervened, his chances of surmountingeven low hills seemed remote should he have the fortune to reachtheir base; but with another canyon hope was dead. Above them Skastill circled, and it seemed to the ape-man that the ill-omenedbird hovered ever lower and lower as though reading in that failinggait the nearing of the end, and through cracked lips Tarzan growledout his defiance.
Mile after mile Tarzan of the Apes put slowly behind him, borne upby sheer force of will where a lesser man would have lain down todie and rest forever tired muscles whose every move was an agony ofeffort; but at last his progress became practically mechanical--hestaggered on with a dazed mind that reacted numbly to a singleurge--on, on, on! The hills were now but a dim, ill-defined blurahead. Sometimes he forgot that they were hills, and again hewondered vaguely why he must go on forever through all this tortureendeavoring to overtake them--the fleeing, elusive hills. Presentlyhe began to hate them and there formed within his half-deliriousbrain the hallucination that the hills were German hills, that theyhad slain someone dear to him, whom he could never quite recall,and that he was pursuing to slay them.
This idea, growing, appeared to give him strength--a new andrevivifying purpose--so that for a time he no longer staggered; butwent forward steadily with head erect. Once he stumbled and fell,and when he tried to rise he found that he could not--that hisstrength was so far gone that he could only crawl forward on hishands and knees for a few yards and then sink down again to rest.
It was during one of these frequent periods of utter exhaustionthat he heard the flap of dismal wings close above him. With hisrema
ining strength he turned himself over on his back to see Skawheel quickly upward. With the sight Tarzan's mind cleared for awhile.
"Is the end so near as that?" he thought. "Does Ska know that I amso near gone that he dares come down and perch upon my carcass?"And even then a grim smile touched those swollen lips as into thesavage mind came a sudden thought--the cunning of the wild beastat bay. Closing his eyes he threw a forearm across them to protectthem from Ska's powerful beak and then he lay very still and waited.
It was restful lying there, for the sun was now obscured by cloudsand Tarzan was very tired. He feared that he might sleep and somethingtold him that if he did he would never awaken, and so he concentratedall his remaining powers upon the one thought of remaining awake.Not a muscle moved--to Ska, circling above, it became evident thatthe end had come--that at last he should be rewarded for his longvigil.
Circling slowly he dropped closer and closer to the dying man. Whydid not Tarzan move? Had he indeed been overcome by the sleep ofexhaustion, or was Ska right--had death at last claimed that mightybody? Was that great, savage heart stilled forever? It is unthinkable.
Ska, filled with suspicions, circled warily. Twice he almost alightedupon the great, naked breast only to wheel suddenly away; but thethird time his talons touched the brown skin. It was as though thecontact closed an electric circuit that instantaneously vitalizedthe quiet clod that had lain motionless so long. A brown hand sweptdownward from the brown forehead and before Ska could raise a wingin flight he was in the clutches of his intended victim.
Ska fought, but he was no match for even a dying Tarzan, anda moment later the ape-man's teeth closed upon the carrion-eater.The flesh was coarse and tough and gave off an unpleasant odor anda worse taste; but it was food and the blood was drink and Tarzanonly an ape at heart and a dying ape into the bargain--dying ofstarvation and thirst.
Even mentally weakened as he was the ape-man was still masterof his appetite and so he ate but sparingly, saving the rest, andthen, feeling that he now could do so safely, he turned upon hisside and slept.
Rain, beating heavily upon his body, awakened him and sitting up hecupped his hands and caught the precious drops which he transferredto his parched throat. Only a little he got at a time; but thatwas best. The few mouthfuls of Ska that he had eaten, together withthe blood and rain water and the sleep had refreshed him greatlyand put new strength into his tired muscles.
Now he could see the hills again and they were close and, thoughthere was no sun, the world looked bright and cheerful, for Tarzanknew that he was saved. The bird that would have devoured him, andthe providential rain, had saved him at the very moment that deathseemed inevitable.
Again partaking of a few mouthfuls of the unsavory flesh of Ska,the vulture, the ape-man arose with something of his old forceand set out with steady gait toward the hills of promise risingalluringly ahead. Darkness fell before he reached them; but hekept on until he felt the steeply rising ground that proclaimedhis arrival at the base of the hills proper, and then he lay downand waited until morning should reveal the easiest passage to theland beyond. The rain had ceased, but the sky still was overcastso that even his keen eyes could not penetrate the darkness fartherthan a few feet. And there he slept, after eating again of whatremained of Ska, until the morning sun awakened him with a newsense of strength and well-being.
And so at last he came through the hills out of the valley of deathinto a land of park-like beauty, rich in game. Below him lay a deepvalley through the center of which dense jungle vegetation markedthe course of a river beyond which a primeval forest extendedfor miles to terminate at last at the foot of lofty, snow-cappedmountains. It was a land that Tarzan never had looked upon before,nor was it likely that the foot of another white man ever hadtouched it unless, possibly, in some long-gone day the adventurerwhose skeleton he had found bleaching in the canyon had traversedit.
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