Tarzan of the Apes

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Chapter XII

  Man's Reason

  There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, andthat was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife andthe deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation ofhis objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzanknew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingshipfrom him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on hisguard against surprise.

  For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before,except that Tarzan's greater intelligence and his ability as a hunterwere the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before.Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change inrulers.

  Tarzan led them by night to the fields of the black men, and there,warned by their chief's superior wisdom, they ate only what theyrequired, nor ever did they destroy what they could not eat, as is theway of Manu, the monkey, and of most apes.

  So, while the blacks were wroth at the continued pilfering of theirfields, they were not discouraged in their efforts to cultivate theland, as would have been the case had Tarzan permitted his people tolay waste the plantation wantonly.

  During this period Tarzan paid many nocturnal visits to the village,where he often renewed his supply of arrows. He soon noticed the foodalways standing at the foot of the tree which was his avenue into thepalisade, and after a little, he commenced to eat whatever the blacksput there.

  When the awe-struck savages saw that the food disappeared overnightthey were filled with consternation and dread, for it was one thing toput food out to propitiate a god or a devil, but quite another thing tohave the spirit really come into the village and eat it. Such a thingwas unheard of, and it clouded their superstitious minds with allmanner of vague fears.

  Nor was this all. The periodic disappearance of their arrows, and thestrange pranks perpetrated by unseen hands, had wrought them to such astate that life had become a veritable burden in their new home, andnow it was that Mbonga and his head men began to talk of abandoning thevillage and seeking a site farther on in the jungle.

  Presently the black warriors began to strike farther and farther southinto the heart of the forest when they went to hunt, looking for a sitefor a new village.

  More often was the tribe of Tarzan disturbed by these wanderinghuntsmen. Now was the quiet, fierce solitude of the primeval forestbroken by new, strange cries. No longer was there safety for bird orbeast. Man had come.

  Other animals passed up and down the jungle by day and bynight--fierce, cruel beasts--but their weaker neighbors only fled fromtheir immediate vicinity to return again when the danger was past.

  With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animalsinstinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return;and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee manas man flees a pestilence.

  For a short time the tribe of Tarzan lingered in the vicinity of thebeach because their new chief hated the thought of leaving thetreasured contents of the little cabin forever. But when one day amember of the tribe discovered the blacks in great numbers on the banksof a little stream that had been their watering place for generations,and in the act of clearing a space in the jungle and erecting manyhuts, the apes would remain no longer; and so Tarzan led them inlandfor many marches to a spot as yet undefiled by the foot of a humanbeing.

  Once every moon Tarzan would go swinging rapidly back through theswaying branches to have a day with his books, and to replenish hissupply of arrows. This latter task was becoming more and moredifficult, for the blacks had taken to hiding their supply away atnight in granaries and living huts.

  This necessitated watching by day on Tarzan's part to discover wherethe arrows were being concealed.

  Twice had he entered huts at night while the inmates lay sleeping upontheir mats, and stolen the arrows from the very sides of the warriors.But this method he realized to be too fraught with danger, and so hecommenced picking up solitary hunters with his long, deadly noose,stripping them of weapons and ornaments and dropping their bodies froma high tree into the village street during the still watches of thenight.

  These various escapades again so terrorized the blacks that, had it notbeen for the monthly respite between Tarzan's visits, in which they hadopportunity to renew hope that each fresh incursion would prove thelast, they soon would have abandoned their new village.

  The blacks had not as yet come upon Tarzan's cabin on the distantbeach, but the ape-man lived in constant dread that, while he was awaywith the tribe, they would discover and despoil his treasure. So itcame that he spent more and more time in the vicinity of his father'slast home, and less and less with the tribe. Presently the members ofhis little community began to suffer on account of his neglect, fordisputes and quarrels constantly arose which only the king might settlepeaceably.

  At last some of the older apes spoke to Tarzan on the subject, and fora month thereafter he remained constantly with the tribe.

  The duties of kingship among the anthropoids are not many or arduous.

  In the afternoon comes Thaka, possibly, to complain that old Mungo hasstolen his new wife. Then must Tarzan summon all before him, and if hefinds that the wife prefers her new lord he commands that mattersremain as they are, or possibly that Mungo give Thaka one of hisdaughters in exchange.

  Whatever his decision, the apes accept it as final, and return to theiroccupations satisfied.

  Then comes Tana, shrieking and holding tight her side from which bloodis streaming. Gunto, her husband, has cruelly bitten her! And Gunto,summoned, says that Tana is lazy and will not bring him nuts andbeetles, or scratch his back for him.

  So Tarzan scolds them both and threatens Gunto with a taste of thedeath-bearing slivers if he abuses Tana further, and Tana, for herpart, is compelled to promise better attention to her wifely duties.

  And so it goes, little family differences for the most part, which, ifleft unsettled would result finally in greater factional strife, andthe eventual dismemberment of the tribe.

  But Tarzan tired of it, as he found that kingship meant the curtailmentof his liberty. He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissedsea--for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for thenever-ending wonders of the many books.

  As he had grown older, he found that he had grown away from his people.Their interests and his were far removed. They had not kept pace withhim, nor could they understand aught of the many strange and wonderfuldreams that passed through the active brain of their human king. Solimited was their vocabulary that Tarzan could not even talk with themof the many new truths, and the great fields of thought that hisreading had opened up before his longing eyes, or make known ambitionswhich stirred his soul.

  Among the tribe he no longer had friends as of old. A little child mayfind companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grownman there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basisfor agreeable association.

  Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain nearher, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of hischildhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he muchpreferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties ofleadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.

  The hatred and jealousy of Terkoz, son of Tublat, did much tocounteract the effect of Tarzan's desire to renounce his kingship amongthe apes, for, stubborn young Englishman that he was, he could notbring himself to retreat in the face of so malignant an enemy.

  That Terkoz would be chosen leader in his stead he knew full well, fortime and again the ferocious brute had established his claim tophysical supremacy over the few bull apes who had dared resent hissavage bullying.

  Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse toknife or arrows. So much had his great strength and agility increasedin the period following his maturity that he had come to believe thathe might master the redoubtable Terkoz in
a hand to hand fight were itnot for the terrible advantage the anthropoid's huge fighting fangsgave him over the poorly armed Tarzan.

  The entire matter was taken out of Tarzan's hands one day by force ofcircumstances, and his future left open to him, so that he might go orstay without any stain upon his savage escutcheon.

  It happened thus:

  The tribe was feeding quietly, spread over a considerable area, when agreat screaming arose some distance east of where Tarzan lay upon hisbelly beside a limpid brook, attempting to catch an elusive fish in hisquick, brown hands.

  With one accord the tribe swung rapidly toward the frightened cries,and there found Terkoz holding an old female by the hair and beatingher unmercifully with his great hands.

  As Tarzan approached he raised his hand aloft for Terkoz to desist, forthe female was not his, but belonged to a poor old ape whose fightingdays were long over, and who, therefore, could not protect his family.

  Terkoz knew that it was against the laws of his kind to strike thiswoman of another, but being a bully, he had taken advantage of theweakness of the female's husband to chastise her because she hadrefused to give up to him a tender young rodent she had captured.

  When Terkoz saw Tarzan approaching without his arrows, he continued tobelabor the poor woman in a studied effort to affront his hatedchieftain.

  Tarzan did not repeat his warning signal, but instead rushed bodilyupon the waiting Terkoz.

  Never had the ape-man fought so terrible a battle since that long-goneday when Bolgani, the great king gorilla had so horribly manhandled himere the new-found knife had, by accident, pricked the savage heart.

  Tarzan's knife on the present occasion but barely offset the gleamingfangs of Terkoz, and what little advantage the ape had over the man inbrute strength was almost balanced by the latter's wonderful quicknessand agility.

  In the sum total of their points, however, the anthropoid had a shadethe better of the battle, and had there been no other personalattribute to influence the final outcome, Tarzan of the Apes, the youngLord Greystoke, would have died as he had lived--an unknown savagebeast in equatorial Africa.

  But there was that which had raised him far above his fellows of thejungle--that little spark which spells the whole vast differencebetween man and brute--Reason. This it was which saved him from deathbeneath the iron muscles and tearing fangs of Terkoz.

  Scarcely had they fought a dozen seconds ere they were rolling upon theground, striking, tearing and rending--two great savage beasts battlingto the death.

  Terkoz had a dozen knife wounds on head and breast, and Tarzan was tornand bleeding--his scalp in one place half torn from his head so that agreat piece hung down over one eye, obstructing his vision.

  But so far the young Englishman had been able to keep those horriblefangs from his jugular and now, as they fought less fiercely for amoment, to regain their breath, Tarzan formed a cunning plan. He wouldwork his way to the other's back and, clinging there with tooth andnail, drive his knife home until Terkoz was no more.

  The maneuver was accomplished more easily than he had hoped, for thestupid beast, not knowing what Tarzan was attempting, made noparticular effort to prevent the accomplishment of the design.

  But when, finally, he realized that his antagonist was fastened to himwhere his teeth and fists alike were useless against him, Terkoz hurledhimself about upon the ground so violently that Tarzan could but clingdesperately to the leaping, turning, twisting body, and ere he hadstruck a blow the knife was hurled from his hand by a heavy impactagainst the earth, and Tarzan found himself defenseless.

  During the rollings and squirmings of the next few minutes, Tarzan'shold was loosened a dozen times until finally an accidentalcircumstance of those swift and everchanging evolutions gave him a newhold with his right hand, which he realized was absolutely unassailable.

  His arm was passed beneath Terkoz's arm from behind and his hand andforearm encircled the back of Terkoz's neck. It was the half-Nelson ofmodern wrestling which the untaught ape-man had stumbled upon, butsuperior reason showed him in an instant the value of the thing he haddiscovered. It was the difference to him between life and death.

  And so he struggled to encompass a similar hold with the left hand, andin a few moments Terkoz's bull neck was creaking beneath a full-Nelson.

  There was no more lunging about now. The two lay perfectly still uponthe ground, Tarzan upon Terkoz's back. Slowly the bullet head of theape was being forced lower and lower upon his chest.

  Tarzan knew what the result would be. In an instant the neck wouldbreak. Then there came to Terkoz's rescue the same thing that had puthim in these sore straits--a man's reasoning power.

  "If I kill him," thought Tarzan, "what advantage will it be to me?Will it not rob the tribe of a great fighter? And if Terkoz be dead,he will know nothing of my supremacy, while alive he will ever be anexample to the other apes."

  "KA-GODA?" hissed Tarzan in Terkoz's ear, which, in ape tongue, means,freely translated: "Do you surrender?"

  For a moment there was no reply, and Tarzan added a few more ounces ofpressure, which elicited a horrified shriek of pain from the greatbeast.

  "KA-GODA?" repeated Tarzan.

  "KA-GODA!" cried Terkoz.

  "Listen," said Tarzan, easing up a trifle, but not releasing his hold."I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In allthe jungle there is none so great.

  "You have said: 'KA-GODA' to me. All the tribe have heard. Quarrelno more with your king or your people, for next time I shall kill you.Do you understand?"

  "HUH," assented Terkoz.

  "And you are satisfied?"

  "HUH," said the ape.

  Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at theirvocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility oftheir primeval forest haunts.

  But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzanwas a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he hadhad it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him tolive--unharmed.

  That afternoon as the tribe came together, as was their wont beforedarkness settled on the jungle, Tarzan, his wounds washed in the watersof the stream, called the old males about him.

  "You have seen again to-day that Tarzan of the Apes is the greatestamong you," he said.

  "HUH," they replied with one voice, "Tarzan is great."

  "Tarzan," he continued, "is not an ape. He is not like his people.His ways are not their ways, and so Tarzan is going back to the lair ofhis own kind by the waters of the great lake which has no farthershore. You must choose another to rule you, for Tarzan will notreturn."

  And thus young Lord Greystoke took the first step toward the goal whichhe had set--the finding of other white men like himself.