Prophecy and Fulfillment
Then Tarzan turned his attention to the man. He had not slain Numa to
save the Negro—he had merely done it in revenge upon the lion; but now
that he saw the old man lying helpless and dying before him something
akin to pity touched his savage heart. In his youth he would have slain
the witch-doctor without the slightest compunction; but civilization
had had its softening effect upon him even as it does upon the nations
and races which it touches, though it had not yet gone far enough with
Tarzan to render him either cowardly or effeminate. He saw an old man
suffering and dying, and he stooped and felt of his wounds and stanched
the flow of blood.
“Who are you?” asked the old man in a trembling voice.
“I am Tarzan—Tarzan of the Apes,” replied the ape-man and not without a
greater touch of pride than he would have said, “I am John Clayton,
Lord Greystoke.”
The witch-doctor shook convulsively and closed his eyes. When he opened
them again there was in them a resignation to whatever horrible fate
awaited him at the hands of this feared demon of the woods. “Why do you
not kill me?” he asked.
“Why should I kill you?” inquired Tarzan. “You have not harmed me, and
anyway you are already dying. Numa, the lion, has killed you.”
“You would not kill me?” Surprise and incredulity were in the tones of
the quavering old voice.
“I would save you if I could,” replied Tarzan, “but that cannot be
done. Why did you think I would kill you?”
For a moment the old man was silent. When he spoke it was evidently
after some little effort to muster his courage. “I knew you of old,” he
said, “when you ranged the jungle in the country of Mbonga, the chief.
I was already a witch-doctor when you slew Kulonga and the others, and
when you robbed our huts and our poison pot. At first I did not
remember you; but at last I did—the white-skinned ape that lived with
the hairy apes and made life miserable in the village of Mbonga, the
chief—the forest god—the Munango-Keewati for whom we set food outside
our gates and who came and ate it. Tell me before I die—are you man or
devil?”
Tarzan laughed. “I am a man,” he said.
The old fellow sighed and shook his head. “You have tried to save me
from Simba,” he said. “For that I shall reward you. I am a great
witch-doctor. Listen to me, white man! I see bad days ahead of you. It
is writ in my own blood which I have smeared upon my palm. A god
greater even than you will rise up and strike you down. Turn back,
Munango-Keewati! Turn back before it is too late. Danger lies ahead of
you and danger lurks behind; but greater is the danger before. I see—”
He paused and drew a long, gasping breath. Then he crumpled into a
little, wrinkled heap and died. Tarzan wondered what else he had seen.
It was very late when the ape-man re-entered the boma and lay down
among his black warriors. None had seen him go and none saw him return.
He thought about the warning of the old witch-doctor before he fell
asleep and he thought of it again after he awoke; but he did not turn
back for he was unafraid, though had he known what lay in store for one
he loved most in all the world he would have flown through the trees to
her side and allowed the gold of Opar to remain forever hidden in its
forgotten storehouse.
Behind him that morning another white man pondered something he had
heard during the night and very nearly did he give up his project and
turn back upon his trail. It was Werper, the murderer, who in the still
of the night had heard far away upon the trail ahead of him a sound
that had filled his cowardly soul with terror—a sound such as he never
before had heard in all his life, nor dreamed that such a frightful
thing could emanate from the lungs of a God-created creature. He had
heard the victory cry of the bull ape as Tarzan had screamed it forth
into the face of Goro, the moon, and he had trembled then and hidden
his face; and now in the broad light of a new day he trembled again as
he recalled it, and would have turned back from the nameless danger the
echo of that frightful sound seemed to portend, had he not stood in
even greater fear of Achmet Zek, his master.
And so Tarzan of the Apes forged steadily ahead toward Opar’s ruined
ramparts and behind him slunk Werper, jackal-like, and only God knew
what lay in store for each.
At the edge of the desolate valley, overlooking the golden domes and
minarets of Opar, Tarzan halted. By night he would go alone to the
treasure vault, reconnoitering, for he had determined that caution
should mark his every move upon this expedition.
With the coming of night he set forth, and Werper, who had scaled the
cliffs alone behind the ape-man’s party, and hidden through the day
among the rough boulders of the mountain top, slunk stealthily after
him. The boulder-strewn plain between the valley’s edge and the mighty
granite kopje, outside the city’s walls, where lay the entrance to the
passage-way leading to the treasure vault, gave the Belgian ample cover
as he followed Tarzan toward Opar.
He saw the giant ape-man swing himself nimbly up the face of the great
rock. Werper, clawing fearfully during the perilous ascent, sweating in
terror, almost palsied by fear, but spurred on by avarice, following
upward, until at last he stood upon the summit of the rocky hill.
Tarzan was nowhere in sight. For a time Werper hid behind one of the
lesser boulders that were scattered over the top of the hill, but,
seeing or hearing nothing of the Englishman, he crept from his place of
concealment to undertake a systematic search of his surroundings, in
the hope that he might discover the location of the treasure in ample
time to make his escape before Tarzan returned, for it was the
Belgian’s desire merely to locate the gold, that, after Tarzan had
departed, he might come in safety with his followers and carry away as
much as he could transport.
He found the narrow cleft leading downward into the heart of the kopje
along well-worn, granite steps. He advanced quite to the dark mouth of
the tunnel into which the runway disappeared; but here he halted,
fearing to enter, lest he meet Tarzan returning.
The ape-man, far ahead of him, groped his way along the rocky passage,
until he came to the ancient wooden door. A moment later he stood
within the treasure chamber, where, ages since, long-dead hands had
ranged the lofty rows of precious ingots for the rulers of that great
continent which now lies submerged beneath the waters of the Atlantic.
No sound broke the stillness of the subterranean vault. There was no
evidence that another had discovered the forgotten wealth since last
the ape-man had visited its hiding place.
Satisfied, Tarzan turned and retraced his steps toward the summit of
the kopje. Werper, from the concealment of a jutting, granite shoulder,
watched him pass up from the shadows of the stairway and advance toward
the edge of the hill which faced the rim of the valley where the Waziri
awaited the signal of their master. Then Werper, slipping stealthily
from his hiding place, dropped into the somber darkness of the entrance
and disappeared.
Tarzan, halting upon the kopje’s edge, raised his voice in the
thunderous roar of a lion. Twice, at regular intervals, he repeated the
call, standing in attentive silence for several minutes after the
echoes of the third call had died away. And then, from far across the
valley, faintly, came an answering roar—once, twice, thrice. Basuli,
the Waziri chieftain, had heard and replied.
Tarzan again made his way toward the treasure vault, knowing that in a
few hours his blacks would be with him, ready to bear away another
fortune in the strangely shaped, golden ingots of Opar. In the meantime
he would carry as much of the precious metal to the summit of the kopje
as he could.
Six trips he made in the five hours before Basuli reached the kopje,
and at the end of that time he had transported forty-eight ingots to
the edge of the great boulder, carrying upon each trip a load which
might well have staggered two ordinary men, yet his giant frame showed
no evidence of fatigue, as he helped to raise his ebon warriors to the
hill top with the rope that had been brought for the purpose.
Six times he had returned to the treasure chamber, and six times
Werper, the Belgian, had cowered in the black shadows at the far end of
the long vault. Once again came the ape-man, and this time there came
with him fifty fighting men, turning porters for love of the only
creature in the world who might command of their fierce and haughty
natures such menial service. Fifty-two more ingots passed out of the
vaults, making the total of one hundred which Tarzan intended taking
away with him.
As the last of the Waziri filed from the chamber, Tarzan turned back
for a last glimpse of the fabulous wealth upon which his two inroads
had made no appreciable impression. Before he extinguished the single
candle he had brought with him for the purpose, and the flickering
light of which had cast the first alleviating rays into the
impenetrable darkness of the buried chamber, that it had known for the
countless ages since it had lain forgotten of man, Tarzan’s mind
reverted to that first occasion upon which he had entered the treasure
vault, coming upon it by chance as he fled from the pits beneath the
temple, where he had been hidden by La, the High Priestess of the Sun
Worshipers.
He recalled the scene within the temple when he had lain stretched upon
the sacrificial altar, while La, with high-raised dagger, stood above
him, and the rows of priests and priestesses awaited, in the ecstatic
hysteria of fanaticism, the first gush of their victim’s warm blood,
that they might fill their golden goblets and drink to the glory of
their Flaming God.
The brutal and bloody interruption by Tha, the mad priest, passed
vividly before the ape-man’s recollective eyes, the flight of the
votaries before the insane blood lust of the hideous creature, the
brutal attack upon La, and his own part of the grim tragedy when he had
battled with the infuriated Oparian and left him dead at the feet of
the priestess he would have profaned.
This and much more passed through Tarzan’s memory as he stood gazing at
the long tiers of dull-yellow metal. He wondered if La still ruled the
temples of the ruined city whose crumbling walls rose upon the very
foundations about him. Had she finally been forced into a union with
one of her grotesque priests? It seemed a hideous fate, indeed, for one
so beautiful. With a shake of his head, Tarzan stepped to the
flickering candle, extinguished its feeble rays and turned toward the
exit.
Behind him the spy waited for him to be gone. He had learned the secret
for which he had come, and now he could return at his leisure to his
waiting followers, bring them to the treasure vault and carry away all
the gold that they could stagger under.
The Waziri had reached the outer end of the tunnel, and were winding
upward toward the fresh air and the welcome starlight of the kopje’s
summit, before Tarzan shook off the detaining hand of reverie and
started slowly after them.
Once again, and, he thought, for the last time, he closed the massive
door of the treasure room. In the darkness behind him Werper rose and
stretched his cramped muscles. He stretched forth a hand and lovingly
caressed a golden ingot on the nearest tier. He raised it from its
immemorial resting place and weighed it in his hands. He clutched it to
his bosom in an ecstasy of avarice.
Tarzan dreamed of the happy homecoming which lay before him, of dear
arms about his neck, and a soft cheek pressed to his; but there rose to
dispel that dream the memory of the old witch-doctor and his warning.
And then, in the span of a few brief seconds, the hopes of both these
men were shattered. The one forgot even his greed in the panic of
terror—the other was plunged into total forgetfulness of the past by a
jagged fragment of rock which gashed a deep cut upon his head.