"The memory of her mother never dies," said Thome. "You have been a faithful servitor, Lal Taask. Perhaps I should tell you the story; then you will understand."
"Your servant listens."
"Magra's mother was the only woman I ever loved. The inexorable laws of caste rendered her unobtainable by me. I am a mongrel. She was the daughter of a maharaja. I was trusted in the service of her father; and when the princess married an Englishman, I was sent to England with her in her entourage. While her husband was hunting big game in Africa, he stumbled upon Ashair. For three years he was a prisoner there, undergoing cruelties and torture. At last he managed to escape, and returned home only to die as a result of his experiences. But he brought the story of The Father of Diamonds, and exacted from his wife a promise that she would organize an expedition to return to Ashair and punish those who had treated him so cruelly. The Father of Diamonds was to be the incentive to obtain volunteers; but the map he made became lost, and nothing was ever done. Then the princess died, leaving Magra, who was then ten years old, in my care; for the old maharaja was dead, and his successor would have nothing to do with the daughter of the Englishman. I have always had it in my mind to look for Ashair, and two years ago I made the first attempt. It was then that I learned that Brian Gregory was on a similar quest. He reached Ashair and made a map, though he never actually entered the city. On his second venture, I followed him; but got lost. I met the remnants of his safari coming out. He had disappeared. They refused to give me the map; so I swore to obtain it, and here I am with the map."
"How did you know he made a map?" asked Lal Taask.
"Our safaris met for one night, after his first trip in. I just happened to see him making the map. It is the one I have, or, rather, a copy of it that he sent home in a letter.
"Because Magra's father died because of The Father of Diamonds, a share of it belongs to her; and there is another reason. I am not yet an old man. I see in Magra the reincarnation of the woman I loved. Do you understand, Lal Taask?"
"Yes, master."
Atan Thome sighed. "Perhaps I dream foolish dreams. We shall see, but now we must move on. Come, Mbuli, get the boys going!"
The natives had been whispering among themselves while Thome and Taask talked, now Mbuli came to Atan Thome.
"My people will go no farther, bwana," he said.
"What!" exclaimed Thome. "You must be crazy. I hired you to go to Ashair."
"In Bonga, Ashair was a long way off; and the spirits of my people were brave. Now Bonga is a long way off and Ashair is near. Now they remember that Tuen-Baka is taboo, and they are afraid."
"You are headman," snapped Thome. "You make them come."
"No can do," insisted Mbuli.
"We'll camp here by the river tonight," said Thome. "I'll talk with them. They may feel braver tomorrow. They certainly can't quit on me now."
"Very well, bwana; tomorrow they may feel braver. It would be well to camp here tonight."
Atan Thome and Lal Taask slept well that night, lulled by the soothing murmuring of the river; and Atan Thome dreamed of The Father of Diamonds and Magra. Lal Taask thought that he dreamed when the silence of the night was broken by a sepulchral voice speaking in a strange tongue, but it was no dream.
The sun was high when Atan Thome awoke. He called his boy, but there was no response; then he called again, loudly, peremptorily. He listened. The camp was strangely silent. Rising, he went to the front of the tent and parted the flaps. Except for his tent and Lal Taask's, the camp was deserted. He crossed to Taask's tent and awakened him.
"What is the matter, master?" asked Lal Taask.
"The dogs have deserted us," exclaimed Thome.
Taask leaped to his feet and came out of his tent. "By Allah! They have taken all our provisions and equipment with them. They have left us to die. We must hurry after them. They can't be very far away."
"We shall do nothing of the sort," said Thome. "We're going on!" There was a strange light hi his eyes that Lal Taask had never seen there before. "Do you think I have gone through what I have gone through to turn back now because a few cowardly natives are afraid?"
"But, master, we cannot go on alone, just we two," begged Lal Taask.
"Silence!" commanded Thome. "We go on to Ashair—to the Forbidden City and The Father of Diamonds. The Father of Diamonds!" He broke into wild laughter. "Magra shall wear the finest diamonds in the world. We shall be rich, rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice—she and I—the richest people in the world! I, Atan Thome, the mongrel, shall put the maharajas of India to shame. I shall strew the streets of Paris with gold. I —" He stopped suddenly and pressed a palm to his forehead. "Come!" he said presently in his normal tone. "We'll follow the river up to Ashair."
In silence, Lal Taask followed his master along a narrow trail that paralleled the river. The ground was rough and broken by gullies and ravines, the trail was fault across rocky, barren ground. Near noon they reached the mouth of a narrow gorge with precipitous cliffs on either side, cliffs that towered high above them, dwarfing the two men to Lilliputian proportions. Through the gorge flowed the river, placidly.
"Siva! What a place!" exclaimed Lal Taask. "We can go no farther."
"It is the trail to Ashair," said Thorne, pointing. "See it winding along the face of the cliff?"
"That, a trail!" exclaimed Taask. "It is only a scratch that a mountain goat couldn't find footing on."
"Nevertheless, it is the trail that we follow," said Thorne.
"Master, it is madness!" cried Lal Taask. "Let us turn back. All the diamonds in the world are not worth the risk. Before we have gone a hundred yards we shall have fallen into the river and drowned."
"Shut up!" snapped Thorne, "and follow me."
Clinging precariously to a narrow foot path scratched in the face of the towering cliff, the two men inched their way along the rocky wall. Below them flowed the silent river that rose somewhere in the mystery that lay ahead. A single mis-step would cast them into it. Lal Taask dared not look down. Facing the wall, with arms outspread searching for handholds that were not there, trembling so that he feared his knees would give beneath him and hurl him to death, he followed his master, sweat gushing from every pore.
"We'll never make it," he panted.
"Shut up and come along!" snapped Thorne. "If I fall, you may turn back."
"Oh, master, I couldn't even do that. No one could turn around on this hideous trail."
"Then keep coming and quit making such a fuss. You make me nervous."
"And to think you take such risks for a diamond! If it were as big as a house and I had it now, I'd give it to be back in Lahore."
"You are a coward, Lal Taask," snapped Thorne.
"I am, master; but it is better to be a live coward than a dead fool."
For two hours the men moved slowly along the narrow foot path until both were on the verge of exhaustion, and even Thorne was beginning to regret his temerity; then, as he turned a jutting shoulder in the cliff, he saw a little wooded canyon that broke the face of the mighty escarpment and ran gently down to the river. Down into this canyon the trail led. When they reached it, they threw themselves upon the ground in total exhaustion; and lay there until almost dark.
Finally they aroused themselves and built a fire, for with the coming of night a chill settled upon the canyon. All day they had been without food; and they were famished, but there was nothing for them to eat, and they had to content themselves by filling their bellies with water at the river. For warmth, they huddled close to their little fire.
"Master, this is an evil place," said Lal Taask. "I have a feeling that we are being watched."
"It is the evil within you speaking, fool," growled Thorne.
"Allah! Master, look!" faltered Taask. "What is it?" He pointed into the blackness among the trees; and then a sepulchral voice spoke in a strange tongue, and Lal Taask faulted.
CHAPTER 11
Ungo, the king ape, was hunting with his
tribe. They were nervous and irritable, for it was the period of the Dum-Dum; and as yet they had found no victim for the sacrificial dance. Suddenly the shaggy king raised his head and sniffed the air. He growled his disapproval of the evidence that Usha, the wind, brought to his nostrils. The other apes looked at him questioningly.
"Gomangani, tarmangani," he said. "They come," then he led his people into the underbrush and hid close to the trail.
The little band of men and women who formed the Gregory "safari" followed the plain trail left by Atan Thome's safari, while Tarzan hunted for meat far afield.
"Tarzan must have had difficulty in locating game," said d'Arnot. "I haven't heard his kill-call yet."
"He's marvelous," said Magra. "We'd have starved to death if it hadn't been for him—even with a hunter along."
"Well, you can't shoot game where there ain't none," growled Wolff.
"Tarzan never comes back empty handed," said Magra; "and he hasn't any gun, either."
"The other monkeys find food, too," sneered Wolff; "but who wants to be a monkey?"
Ungo was watching them now, as they came in sight along the trail. His close-set, bloodshot eyes blazed with anger; and then suddenly and without warning he charged, and his whole tribe followed him. The little band fell back in dismay. D'Arnot whipped out his pistol and fired; and an ape fell, screaming; then the others were among them, and he could not fire again without endangering his companions. Wolff ran. Lavac and Gregory were both knocked down and bitten. For a few moments all was confusion, so that afterward no one could recall just what happened. The apes were among them and gone again; and when they went, Ungo carried Magra off under one great hairy arm.
Magra struggled to escape until she was exhausted, but the powerful beast that carried her paid little attention to her struggles. Once, annoyed, he cuffed her, almost knocking her insensible; then she ceased, waiting and hoping for some opportunity to escape. She wondered to what awful fate she was being dragged. So man-like was the huge creature, she shuddered as she contemplated what might befall her.
Half carrying her, half dragging her through the woods, with his huge fellows lumbering behind, Ungo, the king ape, bore the girl to a small, natural clearing, a primitive arena where, from time immemorial, the great apes had held their sacrificial dance. There he threw her roughly to the ground, and two females squatted beside her to see that she did not escape.
Back on the trail, the little party, overwhelmed by the tragedy of this misadventure, stood debating what they had best do.
"We could follow them," said d'Arnot; "but we haven't a chance of overtaking them, and if we did, what could we do against them, even though we are armed?"
"But we can't just stand here and do nothing," cried Helen.
"I'll tell you," said d'Arnot. "I'll take Wolff's rifle and follow them. I may be able to pick off enough of them to frighten the others away if I come up with them after they halt; then, when Tarzan returns, send him after me."
"Here's Tarzan now," said Helen, as the ape-man came trotting along the trail with the carcass of his kill across his shoulder.
Tarzan found a very disorganized party as he joined them. They were all excited and trying to talk at the same time.
"We never saw them 'til they jumped us," said Lavac.
"They were as big as gorillas," added Helen.
"They were gorillas," put in Wolff.
"They were not gorillas," contradicted d'Arnot; "and anyway, you didn't wait to see what they were."
"The biggest one carried Magra off under his arm," said Gregory.
"They took Magra?" Tarzan looked concerned. "Why didn't you say so in the first place? Which way did they go?"
D'Arnot pointed in the direction in which the apes had made off.
"Keep on this trail until you find a good place to camp," said Tarzan; then he was gone.
As the moon rose slowly over the arena where Magra lay beside a primitive earthen drum upon which three old apes beat with sticks, several of the great shaggy bulls commenced to dance around her. Menacing her with heavy sticks, the bulls leaped and whirled as they circled the frightened girl. Magra had no knowledge of the significance of these rites. She only guessed that she was to die.
The Lord of the Jungle followed the trail of the great apes through the darkness of the forest as unerringly as though he were following a well marked spoor by daylight, followed it by the scent of the anthropoids that clung to the grasses and the foliage of the underbrush, tainting the air with the effluvia of the great bodies. He knew that he should come upon them eventually, but would he be in time?
As the moon rose, the throbbing of the earthen drum directed him toward the arena of the Dum-Dum; so that he could take to the trees and move more swiftly in a direct line. It told him, too, the nature of the danger that threatened Magra. He knew that she still lived, for the drum would be stilled only after her death, when the apes would be fighting over her body and tearing it to pieces. He knew, because he had leaped and danced in the moonlight at many a Dum- Dum when Sheeta, the panther, or Wappi, the antelope, was the sacrificial victim.
The moon was almost at zenith as he neared the arena. When it hung at zenith would be the moment of the kill; and in the arena, the shaggy bulls danced in simulation of the hunt. Magra lay as they had thrown her, exhausted, hopeless, resigned to death, knowing that nothing could save her now.
Goro, the moon, hung upon the verge of the fateful moment, when a tarmangani, naked but for a G string, dropped from an overhanging tree into the arena. With growls and mutterings of rage, the bulls turned upon the intruder who dared thus sacrilegiously to invade the sanctity of their holy of holies. The king ape, crouching, led them.
"I am Ungo," he said. "I kill!"
Tarzan, too, crouched and growled as he advanced to meet the king ape. "I am Tarzan of the Apes," he said in the language of the first-men, the only language he had known for the first twenty years of his life. "I am Tarzan of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. I kill!"
One word of the ape-man's challenge Magra had understood—"Tarzan." Astounded, she opened her eyes to see the king ape and Tarzan circling one another, each looking for an opening. What a brave but what a futile gesture the man was making in her defense! He was giving his life for her, and uselessly. What chance had he against the huge, primordial beast?
Suddenly, Tarzan reached out and seized the ape's wrist; then, turning quickly, he hurled the great creature over his shoulder heavily to the ground; but instantly Ungo was on his feet again. Growling and roaring horribly, he charged. This time he would overwhelm the puny man-thing with his great weight, crush him in those mighty arms.
Magra trembled for the man, and she blanched as she saw him meet the charge with growls equally as bestial as those of the ape. Could this growling, snarling beast be the quiet, resourceful man she had come to love? Was he, after all, but a primitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Spellbound and horrified, she watched.
Swift as Ara, the lightning, is Tarzan; as agile as Sheeta, the panther. Dodging, and ducking beneath Ungo's great flailing arms, he leaped upon the hairy back and locked a full Nelson on the raging ape. As he applied the pressure of his mighty thews, the ape screamed in agony.
"Kreegah!" shouted Tarzan, bearing down a little harder. "Surrender!"
The members of the Gregory party sat around their camp fire listening to the throbbing of the distant drum and waiting in nervous expectancy, for what, they did not know.
"It is the Dum-Dum of the great apes, I think," said d'Arnot. "Tarzan has told me about them. When the full moon hangs at zenith, the bulls kill a victim. It is, perhaps, a rite older than the human race, the tiny germ from which all religious observances have sprung."
"And Tarzan has seen this rite performed?" asked Helen.
"He was raised by the great apes," explained d'Arnot, "and he has danced the dance of death in many a Dum-Dum."
"He has helped to kill men and women and tear them to pieces?" demanded H
elen.
"No, no!" cried d'Arnot. "The apes rarely secure a human victim. They did so only once while Tarzan ranged with them, and he saved that one. The victim they prefer is their greatest enemy, the panther."
"And you think the drums are for Magra?" asked Lavac.
"Yes," said d'Arnot, "I fear so."
"I wish I'd gone after her myself," said Wolff. "That guy didn't have no gun."
"He may not have had a gun," said d'Arnot, "but at least he went in the right direction." Wolff lapsed into moody silence. "We all had a chance to do something when the ape first took her," continued d'Arnot; "but, frankly, I was too stunned to think."
"It all happened so quickly," said Gregory. "It was over before I really knew what had happened."
"Listen!" exclaimed d'Arnot. "The drums have stopped."
He looked up at the moon. "The moon is at zenith," he said. "Tarzan must have been too late."
"Them gorillas would pull him apart," said Wolff. "If it wasn't for Magra, I'd say good riddance."
"Shut up!" snapped Gregory. "Without Tarzan, we're lost."
As they talked, Tarzan and Ungo battled in the arena; and Magra watched in fearful astonishment. She could scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the great ape helpless in the hands of the man. Ungo was screaming in pain. Slowly, relentlessly, his neck was being broken. At last he could stand it no longer, and bellowed, "Kreegah!" which means "I surrender;" and Tarzan released him and sprang to his feet.
"Tarzan is king!" he cried, facing the other bulls.
He stood there, waiting; but no young bull came forward to dispute the right of kingship with him. They had seen what he had done to Ungo, and they were afraid. Thus, by grace of a custom ages old, Tarzan became king of the tribe.
Magra did not understand. She was still terrified. Springing to her feet, she ran to Tarzan and threw her arms about him, pressing close. "I am afraid," she said. "Now they will kill us both."
Tarzan shook his head. "No," he said; "they will not kill us. They will do whatever I tell them to do, for now I am their king."
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