On the Road To Opar
It was two weeks later that John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, riding in
from a tour of inspection of his vast African estate, glimpsed the head
of a column of men crossing the plain that lay between his bungalow and
the forest to the north and west.
He reined in his horse and watched the little party as it emerged from
a concealing swale. His keen eyes caught the reflection of the sun upon
the white helmet of a mounted man, and with the conviction that a
wandering European hunter was seeking his hospitality, he wheeled his
mount and rode slowly forward to meet the newcomer.
A half hour later he was mounting the steps leading to the veranda of
his bungalow, and introducing M. Jules Frecoult to Lady Greystoke.
“I was completely lost,” M. Frecoult was explaining. “My head man had
never before been in this part of the country and the guides who were
to have accompanied me from the last village we passed knew even less
of the country than we. They finally deserted us two days since. I am
very fortunate indeed to have stumbled so providentially upon succor. I
do not know what I should have done, had I not found you.”
It was decided that Frecoult and his party should remain several days,
or until they were thoroughly rested, when Lord Greystoke would furnish
guides to lead them safely back into country with which Frecoult’s head
man was supposedly familiar.
In his guise of a French gentleman of leisure, Werper found little
difficulty in deceiving his host and in ingratiating himself with both
Tarzan and Jane Clayton; but the longer he remained the less hopeful he
became of an easy accomplishment of his designs.
Lady Greystoke never rode alone at any great distance from the
bungalow, and the savage loyalty of the ferocious Waziri warriors who
formed a great part of Tarzan’s followers seemed to preclude the
possibility of a successful attempt at forcible abduction, or of the
bribery of the Waziri themselves.
A week passed, and Werper was no nearer the fulfillment of his plan, in
so far as he could judge, than upon the day of his arrival, but at that
very moment something occurred which gave him renewed hope and set his
mind upon an even greater reward than a woman’s ransom.
A runner had arrived at the bungalow with the weekly mail, and Lord
Greystoke had spent the afternoon in his study reading and answering
letters. At dinner he seemed distraught, and early in the evening he
excused himself and retired, Lady Greystoke following him very soon
after. Werper, sitting upon the veranda, could hear their voices in
earnest discussion, and having realized that something of unusual
moment was afoot, he quietly rose from his chair, and keeping well in
the shadow of the shrubbery growing profusely about the bungalow, made
his silent way to a point beneath the window of the room in which his
host and hostess slept.
Here he listened, and not without result, for almost the first words he
overheard filled him with excitement. Lady Greystoke was speaking as
Werper came within hearing.
“I always feared for the stability of the company,” she was saying;
“but it seems incredible that they should have failed for so enormous a
sum—unless there has been some dishonest manipulation.”
“That is what I suspect,” replied Tarzan; “but whatever the cause, the
fact remains that I have lost everything, and there is nothing for it
but to return to Opar and get more.”
“Oh, John,” cried Lady Greystoke, and Werper could feel the shudder
through her voice, “is there no other way? I cannot bear to think of
you returning to that frightful city. I would rather live in poverty
always than to have you risk the hideous dangers of Opar.”
“You need have no fear,” replied Tarzan, laughing. “I am pretty well
able to take care of myself, and were I not, the Waziri who will
accompany me will see that no harm befalls me.”
“They ran away from Opar once, and left you to your fate,” she reminded
him.
“They will not do it again,” he answered. “They were very much ashamed
of themselves, and were coming back when I met them.”
“But there must be some other way,” insisted the woman.
“There is no other way half so easy to obtain another fortune, as to go
to the treasure vaults of Opar and bring it away,” he replied. “I shall
be very careful, Jane, and the chances are that the inhabitants of Opar
will never know that I have been there again and despoiled them of
another portion of the treasure, the very existence of which they are
as ignorant of as they would be of its value.”
The finality in his tone seemed to assure Lady Greystoke that further
argument was futile, and so she abandoned the subject.
Werper remained, listening, for a short time, and then, confident that
he had overheard all that was necessary and fearing discovery, returned
to the veranda, where he smoked numerous cigarets in rapid succession
before retiring.
The following morning at breakfast, Werper announced his intention of
making an early departure, and asked Tarzan’s permission to hunt big
game in the Waziri country on his way out—permission which Lord
Greystoke readily granted.
The Belgian consumed two days in completing his preparations, but
finally got away with his safari, accompanied by a single Waziri guide
whom Lord Greystoke had loaned him. The party made but a single short
march when Werper simulated illness, and announced his intention of
remaining where he was until he had fully recovered. As they had gone
but a short distance from the Greystoke bungalow, Werper dismissed the
Waziri guide, telling the warrior that he would send for him when he
was able to proceed. The Waziri gone, the Belgian summoned one of
Achmet Zek’s trusted blacks to his tent, and dispatched him to watch
for the departure of Tarzan, returning immediately to advise Werper of
the event and the direction taken by the Englishman.
The Belgian did not have long to wait, for the following day his
emissary returned with word that Tarzan and a party of fifty Waziri
warriors had set out toward the southeast early in the morning.
Werper called his head man to him, after writing a long letter to
Achmet Zek. This letter he handed to the head man.
“Send a runner at once to Achmet Zek with this,” he instructed the head
man. “Remain here in camp awaiting further instructions from him or
from me. If any come from the bungalow of the Englishman, tell them
that I am very ill within my tent and can see no one. Now, give me six
porters and six askaris—the strongest and bravest of the safari—and I
will march after the Englishman and discover where his gold is hidden.”
And so it was that as Tarzan, stripped to the loin cloth and armed
after the primitive fashion he best loved, led his loyal Waziri toward
the dead city of Opar, Werper, the renegade, haunted his trail through
the long, hot days, and camped close behind him by night.
And as they marched, Achmet Zek rode with his entire following
southward toward the Greystoke farm.
To Tarzan of the Apes the expedition was in the nature of a holiday
outing. His civilization was at best but an outward veneer which he
gladly peeled off with his uncomfortable European clothes whenever any
reasonable pretext presented itself. It was a woman’s love which kept
Tarzan even to the semblance of civilization—a condition for which
familiarity had bred contempt. He hated the shams and the hypocrisies
of it and with the clear vision of an unspoiled mind he had penetrated
to the rotten core of the heart of the thing—the cowardly greed for
peace and ease and the safe-guarding of property rights. That the fine
things of life—art, music and literature—had thriven upon such
enervating ideals he strenuously denied, insisting, rather, that they
had endured in spite of civilization.
“Show me the fat, opulent coward,” he was wont to say, “who ever
originated a beautiful ideal. In the clash of arms, in the battle for
survival, amid hunger and death and danger, in the face of God as
manifested in the display of Nature’s most terrific forces, is born all
that is finest and best in the human heart and mind.”
And so Tarzan always came back to Nature in the spirit of a lover
keeping a long deferred tryst after a period behind prison walls. His
Waziri, at marrow, were more civilized than he. They cooked their meat
before they ate it and they shunned many articles of food as unclean
that Tarzan had eaten with gusto all his life and so insidious is the
virus of hypocrisy that even the stalwart ape-man hesitated to give
rein to his natural longings before them. He ate burnt flesh when he
would have preferred it raw and unspoiled, and he brought down game
with arrow or spear when he would far rather have leaped upon it from
ambush and sunk his strong teeth in its jugular; but at last the call
of the milk of the savage mother that had suckled him in infancy rose
to an insistent demand—he craved the hot blood of a fresh kill and his
muscles yearned to pit themselves against the savage jungle in the
battle for existence that had been his sole birthright for the first
twenty years of his life.