In A-lur the fortunes of the city had been tossed from hand to hand.
The party of Ko-tan's loyal warriors that Tarzan had led to the
rendezvous at the entrance to the secret passage below the palace gates
had met with disaster. Their first rush had been met with soft words
from the priests. They had been exhorted to defend the faith of their
fathers from blasphemers. Ja-don was painted to them as a defiler of
temples, and the wrath of Jad-ben-Otho was prophesied for those who
embraced his cause. The priests insisted that Lu-don's only wish was to
prevent the seizure of the throne by Ja-don until a new king could be
chosen according to the laws of the Ho-don.
The result was that many of the palace warriors joined their fellows of
the city, and when the priests saw that those whom they could influence
outnumbered those who remained loyal to the palace, they caused the
former to fall upon the latter with the result that many were killed
and only a handful succeeded in reaching the safety of the palace
gates, which they quickly barred.
The priests led their own forces through the secret passageway into the
temple, while some of the loyal ones sought out Ja-don and told him all
that had happened. The fight in the banquet hall had spread over a
considerable portion of the palace grounds and had at last resulted in
the temporary defeat of those who had opposed Ja-don. This force,
counseled by under priests sent for the purpose by Lu-don, had
withdrawn within the temple grounds so that now the issue was plainly
marked as between Ja-don on the one side and Lu-don on the other.
The former had been told of all that had occurred in the apartments of
O-lo-a to whose safety he had attended at the first opportunity and he
had also learned of Tarzan's part in leading his men to the gathering
of Lu-don's warriors.
These things had naturally increased the old warrior's former
inclinations of friendliness toward the ape-man, and now he regretted
that the other had departed from the city.
The testimony of O-lo-a and Pan-at-lee was such as to strengthen
whatever belief in the godliness of the stranger Ja-don and others of
the warriors had previously entertained, until presently there appeared
a strong tendency upon the part of this palace faction to make the
Dor-ul-otho an issue of their original quarrel with Lu-don. Whether
this occurred as the natural sequence to repeated narrations of the
ape-man's exploits, which lost nothing by repetition, in conjunction
with Lu-don's enmity toward him, or whether it was the shrewd design of
some wily old warrior such as Ja-don, who realized the value of adding
a religious cause to their temporal one, it were difficult to
determine; but the fact remained that Ja-don's followers developed
bitter hatred for the followers of Lu-don because of the high priest's
antagonism to Tarzan.
Unfortunately however Tarzan was not there to inspire the followers of
Ja-don with the holy zeal that might have quickly settled the dispute
in the old chieftain's favor. Instead, he was miles away and because
their repeated prayers for his presence were unanswered, the weaker
spirits among them commenced to suspect that their cause did not have
divine favor. There was also another and a potent cause for defection
from the ranks of Ja-don. It emanated from the city where the friends
and relatives of the palace warriors, who were largely also the friends
and relatives of Lu-don's forces, found the means, urged on by the
priesthood, to circulate throughout the palace pernicious propaganda
aimed at Ja-don's cause.
The result was that Lu-don's power increased while that of Ja-don
waned. Then followed a sortie from the temple which resulted in the
defeat of the palace forces, and though they were able to withdraw in
decent order withdraw they did, leaving the palace to Lu-don, who was
now virtually ruler of Pal-ul-don.
Ja-don, taking with him the princess, her women, and their slaves,
including Pan-at-lee, as well as the women and children of his faithful
followers, retreated not only from the palace but from the city of
A-lur as well and fell back upon his own city of Ja-lur. Here he
remained, recruiting his forces from the surrounding villages of the
north which, being far removed from the influence of the priesthood of
A-lur, were enthusiastic partisans in any cause that the old chieftain
espoused, since for years he had been revered as their friend and
protector.
And while these events were transpiring in the north, Tarzan-jad-guru
lay in the lion pit at Tu-lur while messengers passed back and forth
between Mo-sar and Lu-don as the two dickered for the throne of
Pal-ul-don. Mo-sar was cunning enough to guess that should an open
breach occur between himself and the high priest he might use his
prisoner to his own advantage, for he had heard whisperings among even
his own people that suggested that there were those who were more than
a trifle inclined to belief in the divinity of the stranger and that he
might indeed be the Dor-ul-Otho. Lu-don wanted Tarzan himself. He
wanted to sacrifice him upon the eastern altar with his own hands
before a multitude of people, since he was not without evidence that
his own standing and authority had been lessened by the claims of the
bold and heroic figure of the stranger.
The method that the high priest of Tu-lur had employed to trap Tarzan
had left the ape-man in possession of his weapons though there seemed
little likelihood of their being of any service to him. He also had his
pouch, in which were the various odds and ends which are the natural
accumulation of all receptacles from a gold meshbag to an attic. There
were bits of obsidian and choice feathers for arrows, some pieces of
flint and a couple of steel, an old knife, a heavy bone needle, and
strips of dried gut. Nothing very useful to you or me, perhaps; but
nothing useless to the savage life of the ape-man.
When Tarzan realized the trick that had been so neatly played upon him
he had awaited expectantly the coming of the lion, for though the scent
of JA was old he was sure that sooner or later they would let one of
the beasts in upon him. His first consideration was a thorough
exploration of his prison. He had noticed the hide-covered windows and
these he immediately uncovered, letting in the light, and revealing the
fact that though the chamber was far below the level of the temple
courts it was yet many feet above the base of the hill from which the
temple was hewn. The windows were so closely barred that he could not
see over the edge of the thick wall in which they were cut to determine
what lay close in below him. At a little distance were the blue waters
of Jad-in-lul and beyond, the verdure-clad farther shore, and beyond
that the mountains. It was a beautiful picture upon which he looked--a
picture of peace and harmony and quiet. Nor anywhere a slightest
suggestion of the savage men and beasts that claimed this lovely
landscape as their own. What a paradise! And some day civilized man
would come and--spoil it! Ruthless axes would raze that age-old wood;
black, sticky smoke would rise from ugly chimneys against that azure
sky; grimy little boats with wheels behind or upon either side would
churn the mud from the bottom of Jad-in-lul, turning its blue waters to
a dirty brown; hideous piers would project into the lake from squalid
buildings of corrugated iron, doubtless, for of such are the pioneer
cities of the world.
But would civilized man come? Tarzan hoped not. For countless
generations civilization had ramped about the globe; it had dispatched
its emissaries to the North Pole and the South; it had circled
Pal-ul-don once, perhaps many times, but it had never touched her. God
grant that it never would. Perhaps He was saving this little spot to be
always just as He had made it, for the scratching of the Ho-don and the
Waz-don upon His rocks had not altered the fair face of Nature.
Through the windows came sufficient light to reveal the whole interior
to Tarzan. The room was fairly large and there was a door at each
end--a large door for men and a smaller one for lions. Both were closed
with heavy masses of stone that had been lowered in grooves running to
the floor. The two windows were small and closely barred with the first
iron that Tarzan had seen in Pal-ul-don. The bars were let into holes
in the casing, and the whole so strongly and neatly contrived that
escape seemed impossible. Yet within a few minutes of his incarceration
Tarzan had commenced to undertake his escape. The old knife in his
pouch was brought into requisition and slowly the ape-man began to
scrape and chip away the stone from about the bars of one of the
windows. It was slow work but Tarzan had the patience of absolute
health.
Each day food and water were brought him and slipped quickly beneath
the smaller door which was raised just sufficiently to allow the stone
receptacles to pass in. The prisoner began to believe that he was being
preserved for something beside lions. However that was immaterial. If
they would but hold off for a few more days they might select what fate
they would--he would not be there when they arrived to announce it.
And then one day came Pan-sat, Lu-don's chief tool, to the city of
Tu-lur. He came ostensibly with a fair message for Mo-sar from the high
priest at A-lur. Lu-don had decided that Mo-sar should be king and he
invited Mo-sar to come at once to A-lur and then Pan-sat, having
delivered the message, asked that he might go to the temple of Tu-lur
and pray, and there he sought the high priest of Tu-lur to whom was the
true message that Lu-don had sent. The two were closeted alone in a
little chamber and Pan-sat whispered into the ear of the high priest.
"Mo-sar wishes to be king," he said, "and Lu-don wishes to be king.
Mo-sar wishes to retain the stranger who claims to be the Dor-ul-Otho
and Lu-don wishes to kill him, and now," he leaned even closer to the
ear of the high priest of Tu-lur, "if you would be high priest at A-lur
it is within your power."
Pan-sat ceased speaking and waited for the other's reply. The high
priest was visibly affected. To be high priest at A-lur! That was
almost as good as being king of all Pal-ul-don, for great were the
powers of him who conducted the sacrifices upon the altars of A-lur.
"How?" whispered the high priest. "How may I become high priest at
A-lur?"
Again Pan-sat leaned close: "By killing the one and bringing the other
to A-lur," replied he. Then he rose and departed knowing that the other
had swallowed the bait and could be depended upon to do whatever was
required to win him the great prize.
Nor was Pan-sat mistaken other than in one trivial consideration. This
high priest would indeed commit murder and treason to attain the high
office at A-lur; but he had misunderstood which of his victims was to
be killed and which to be delivered to Lu-don. Pan-sat, knowing himself
all the details of the plannings of Lu-don, had made the quite natural
error of assuming that the other was perfectly aware that only by
publicly sacrificing the false Dor-ul-Otho could the high priest at
A-lur bolster his waning power and that the assassination of Mo-sar,
the pretender, would remove from Lu-don's camp the only obstacle to his
combining the offices of high priest and king. The high priest at
Tu-lur thought that he had been commissioned to kill Tarzan and bring
Mo-sar to A-lur. He also thought that when he had done these things he
would be made high priest at A-lur; but he did not know that already
the priest had been selected who was to murder him within the hour that
he arrived at A-lur, nor did he know that a secret grave had been
prepared for him in the floor of a subterranean chamber in the very
temple he dreamed of controlling.
And so when he should have been arranging the assassination of his
chief he was leading a dozen heavily bribed warriors through the dark
corridors beneath the temple to slay Tarzan in the lion pit. Night had
fallen. A single torch guided the footsteps of the murderers as they
crept stealthily upon their evil way, for they knew that they were
doing the thing that their chief did not want done and their guilty
consciences warned them to stealth.
In the dark of his cell the ape-man worked at his seemingly endless
chipping and scraping. His keen ears detected the coming of footsteps
along the corridor without--footsteps that approached the larger door.
Always before had they come to the smaller door--the footsteps of a
single slave who brought his food. This time there were many more than
one and their coming at this time of night carried a sinister
suggestion. Tarzan continued to work at his scraping and chipping. He
heard them stop beyond the door. All was silence broken only by the
scrape, scrape, scrape of the ape-man's tireless blade.
Those without heard it and listening sought to explain it. They
whispered in low tones making their plans. Two would raise the door
quickly and the others would rush in and hurl their clubs at the
prisoner. They would take no chances, for the stories that had
circulated in A-lur had been brought to Tu-lur--stories of the great
strength and wonderful prowess of Tarzan-jad-guru that caused the sweat
to stand upon the brows of the warriors, though it was cool in the damp
corridor and they were twelve to one.
And then the high priest gave the signal--the door shot upward and ten
warriors leaped into the chamber with poised clubs. Three of the heavy
weapons flew across the room toward a darker shadow that lay in the
shadow of the opposite wall, then the flare of the torch in the
priest's hand lighted the interior and they saw that the thing at which
they had flung their clubs was a pile of skins torn from the windows
and that except for themselves the chamber was vacant.
One of them hastened to a window. All but a single bar was gone and to
this was tied one end of a braided rope fashioned from strips cut from
the leather window hangings.
To the ordinary dangers of Jane Clayton's existence was now added the
menace of Obergatz' knowledge of her whereabouts. The lion and the
panther had given her less cause for anxiety than did the return of the
unscrupulous Hun, whom she had always distrusted and feared, and whose
repulsiveness was now immeasurably augmented by his unkempt and filthy
appearance, his strange and mirthless laughter, and his unnatural
demeanor. She feared him now with a new fear as though he had suddenly
become the personification of some nameless horror. The wholesome,
outdoor life that she had been leading had strengthened and rebuilt her
nervous system yet it seemed to her as she thought of him that if this
man should ever touch her she should scream, and, possibly, even faint.
Again and again during the day following their unexpected meeting the
woman reproached herself for not having killed him as she would JA or
JATO or any other predatory beast that menaced her existence or her
safety. There was no attempt at self-justification for these sinister
reflections--they needed no justification. The standards by which the
acts of such as you or I may be judged could not apply to hers. We have
recourse to the protection of friends and relatives and the civil
soldiery that upholds the majesty of the law and which may be invoked
to protect the righteous weak against the unrighteous strong; but Jane
Clayton comprised within herself not only the righteous weak but all
the various agencies for the protection of the weak. To her, then,
Lieutenant Erich Obergatz presented no different problem than did JA,
the lion, other than that she considered the former the more dangerous
animal. And so she determined that should he ignore her warning there
would be no temporizing upon the occasion of their next meeting--the
same swift spear that would meet JA's advances would meet his.
That night her snug little nest perched high in the great tree seemed
less the sanctuary that it had before. What might resist the sanguinary
intentions of a prowling panther would prove no great barrier to man,
and influenced by this thought she slept less well than before. The
slightest noise that broke the monotonous hum of the nocturnal jungle
startled her into alert wakefulness to lie with straining ears in an
attempt to classify the origin of the disturbance, and once she was
awakened thus by a sound that seemed to come from something moving in
her own tree. She listened intently--scarce breathing. Yes, there it
was again. A scuffing of something soft against the hard bark of the
tree. The woman reached out in the darkness and grasped her spear. Now
she felt a slight sagging of one of the limbs that supported her
shelter as though the thing, whatever it was, was slowly raising its
weight to the branch. It came nearer. Now she thought that she could
detect its breathing. It was at the door. She could hear it fumbling
with the frail barrier. What could it be? It made no sound by which she
might identify it. She raised herself upon her hands and knees and
crept stealthily the little distance to the doorway, her spear clutched
tightly in her hand. Whatever the thing was, it was evidently
attempting to gain entrance without awakening her. It was just beyond
the pitiful little contraption of slender boughs that she had bound
together with grasses and called a door--only a few inches lay between
the thing and her. Rising to her knees she reached out with her left
hand and felt until she found a place where a crooked branch had left
an opening a couple of inches wide near the center of the barrier. Into
this she inserted the point of her spear. The thing must have heard her
move within for suddenly it abandoned its efforts for stealth and tore
angrily at the obstacle. At the same moment Jane thrust her spear
forward with all her strength. She felt it enter flesh. There was a
scream and a curse from without, followed by the crashing of a body
through limbs and foliage. Her spear was almost dragged from her grasp,
but she held to it until it broke free from the thing it had pierced.
It was Obergatz; the curse had told her that. From below came no
further sound. Had she, then, killed him? She prayed so--with all her
heart she prayed it. To be freed from the menace of this loathsome
creature were relief indeed. During all the balance of the night she
lay there awake, listening. Below her, she imagined, she could see the
dead man with his hideous face bathed in the cold light of the
moon--lying there upon his back staring up at her.
She prayed that JA might come and drag it away, but all during the
remainder of the night she heard never another sound above the drowsy
hum of the jungle. She was glad that he was dead, but she dreaded the
gruesome ordeal that awaited her on the morrow, for she must bury the
thing that had been Erich Obergatz and live on there above the shallow
grave of the man she had slain.
She reproached herself for her weakness, repeating over and over that
she had killed in self-defense, that her act was justified; but she was
still a woman of today, and strong upon her were the iron mandates of
the social order from which she had sprung, its interdictions and its
superstitions.
At last came the tardy dawn. Slowly the sun topped the distant
mountains beyond Jad-in-lul. And yet she hesitated to loosen the
fastenings of her door and look out upon the thing below. But it must
be done. She steeled herself and untied the rawhide thong that secured
the barrier. She looked down and only the grass and the flowers looked
up at her. She came from her shelter and examined the ground upon the
opposite side of the tree--there was no dead man there, nor anywhere as
far as she could see. Slowly she descended, keeping a wary eye and an
alert ear ready for the first intimation of danger.
At the foot of the tree was a pool of blood and a little trail of
crimson drops upon the grass, leading away parallel with the shore of
Jad-ben-lul. Then she had not slain him! She was vaguely aware of a
peculiar, double sensation of relief and regret. Now she would be
always in doubt. He might return; but at least she would not have to
live above his grave.
She thought some of following the bloody spoor on the chance that he
might have crawled away to die later, but she gave up the idea for fear
that she might find him dead nearby, or, worse yet badly wounded. What
then could she do? She could not finish him with her spear--no, she
knew that she could not do that, nor could she bring him back and nurse
him, nor could she leave him there to die of hunger or of thirst, or to
become the prey of some prowling beast. It were better then not to
search for him for fear that she might find him.
That day was one of nervous starting to every sudden sound. The day
before she would have said that her nerves were of iron; but not today.
She knew now the shock that she had suffered and that this was the
reaction. Tomorrow it might be different, but something told her that
never again would her little shelter and the patch of forest and jungle
that she called her own be the same. There would hang over them always
the menace of this man. No longer would she pass restful nights of
deep slumber. The peace of her little world was shattered forever.
That night she made her door doubly secure with additional thongs of
rawhide cut from the pelt of the buck she had slain the day that she
met Obergatz. She was very tired for she had lost much sleep the night
before; but for a long time she lay with wide-open eyes staring into
the darkness. What saw she there? Visions that brought tears to those
brave and beautiful eyes--visions of a rambling bungalow that had been
home to her and that was no more, destroyed by the same cruel force
that haunted her even now in this remote, uncharted corner of the
earth; visions of a strong man whose protecting arm would never press
her close again; visions of a tall, straight son who looked at her
adoringly out of brave, smiling eyes that were like his father's.
Always the vision of the crude simple bungalow rather than of the
stately halls that had been as much a part of her life as the other.
But he had loved the bungalow and the broad, free acres best and so she
had come to love them best, too.
At last she slept, the sleep of utter exhaustion. How long it lasted
she did not know; but suddenly she was wide awake and once again she
heard the scuffing of a body against the bark of her tree and again the
limb bent to a heavy weight. He had returned! She went cold, trembling
as with ague. Was it he, or, O God! had she killed him then and was
this--? She tried to drive the horrid thought from her mind, for this
way, she knew, lay madness.
And once again she crept to the door, for the thing was outside just as
it had been last night. Her hands trembled as she placed the point of
her weapon to the opening. She wondered if it would scream as it fell.
21