The End of Bukawai
When Tarzan of the Apes was still but a boy he had learned, among other
things, to fashion pliant ropes of fibrous jungle grass. Strong and
tough were the ropes of Tarzan, the little Tarmangani. Tublat, his
foster father, would have told you this much and more. Had you tempted
him with a handful of fat caterpillars he even might have sufficiently
unbended to narrate to you a few stories of the many indignities which
Tarzan had heaped upon him by means of his hated rope; but then Tublat
always worked himself into such a frightful rage when he devoted any
considerable thought either to the rope or to Tarzan, that it might not
have proved comfortable for you to have remained close enough to him to
hear what he had to say.
So often had that snakelike noose settled unexpectedly over Tublat’s
head, so often had he been jerked ridiculously and painfully from his
feet when he was least looking for such an occurrence, that there is
little wonder he found scant space in his savage heart for love of his
white-skinned foster child, or the inventions thereof. There had been
other times, too, when Tublat had swung helplessly in midair, the noose
tightening about his neck, death staring him in the face, and little
Tarzan dancing upon a near-by limb, taunting him and making unseemly
grimaces.
Then there had been another occasion in which the rope had figured
prominently—an occasion, and the only one connected with the rope,
which Tublat recalled with pleasure. Tarzan, as active in brain as he
was in body, was always inventing new ways in which to play. It was
through the medium of play that he learned much during his childhood.
This day he learned something, and that he did not lose his life in the
learning of it, was a matter of great surprise to Tarzan, and the fly
in the ointment, to Tublat.
The man-child had, in throwing his noose at a playmate in a tree above
him, caught a projecting branch instead. When he tried to shake it
loose it but drew the tighter. Then Tarzan started to climb the rope to
remove it from the branch. When he was part way up a frolicsome
playmate seized that part of the rope which lay upon the ground and ran
off with it as far as he could go. When Tarzan screamed at him to
desist, the young ape released the rope a little and then drew it tight
again. The result was to impart a swinging motion to Tarzan’s body
which the ape-boy suddenly realized was a new and pleasurable form of
play. He urged the ape to continue until Tarzan was swinging to and fro
as far as the short length of rope would permit, but the distance was
not great enough, and, too, he was not far enough above the ground to
give the necessary thrills which add so greatly to the pastimes of the
young.
So he clambered to the branch where the noose was caught and after
removing it carried the rope far aloft and out upon a long and powerful
branch. Here he again made it fast, and taking the loose end in his
hand, clambered quickly down among the branches as far as the rope
would permit him to go; then he swung out upon the end of it, his
lithe, young body turning and twisting—a human bob upon a pendulum of
grass—thirty feet above the ground.
Ah, how delectable! This was indeed a new play of the first magnitude.
Tarzan was entranced. Soon he discovered that by wriggling his body in
just the right way at the proper time he could diminish or accelerate
his oscillation, and, being a boy, he chose, naturally, to accelerate.
Presently he was swinging far and wide, while below him, the apes of
the tribe of Kerchak looked on in mild amaze.
Had it been you or I swinging there at the end of that grass rope, the
thing which presently happened would not have happened, for we could
not have hung on so long as to have made it possible; but Tarzan was
quite as much at home swinging by his hands as he was standing upon his
feet, or, at least, almost. At any rate he felt no fatigue long after
the time that an ordinary mortal would have been numb with the strain
of the physical exertion. And this was his undoing.
Tublat was watching him as were others of the tribe. Of all the
creatures of the wild, there was none Tublat so cordially hated as he
did this hideous, hairless, white-skinned, caricature of an ape. But
for Tarzan’s nimbleness, and the zealous watchfulness of savage Kala’s
mother love, Tublat would long since have rid himself of this stain
upon his family escutcheon. So long had it been since Tarzan became a
member of the tribe, that Tublat had forgotten the circumstances
surrounding the entrance of the jungle waif into his family, with the
result that he now imagined that Tarzan was his own offspring, adding
greatly to his chagrin.
Wide and far swung Tarzan of the Apes, until at last, as he reached the
highest point of the arc the rope, which rapidly had frayed on the
rough bark of the tree limb, parted suddenly. The watching apes saw the
smooth, brown body shoot outward and down, plummet-like. Tublat leaped
high in the air, emitting what in a human being would have been an
exclamation of delight. This would be the end of Tarzan and most of
Tublat’s troubles. From now on he could lead his life in peace and
security.
Tarzan fell quite forty feet, alighting on his back in a thick bush.
Kala was the first to reach his side—ferocious, hideous, loving Kala.
She had seen the life crushed from her own balu in just such a fall
years before. Was she to lose this one too in the same way? Tarzan was
lying quite still when she found him, embedded deeply in the bush. It
took Kala several minutes to disentangle him and drag him forth; but he
was not killed. He was not even badly injured. The bush had broken the
force of the fall. A cut upon the back of his head showed where he had
struck the tough stem of the shrub and explained his unconsciousness.
In a few minutes he was as active as ever. Tublat was furious. In his
rage he snapped at a fellow-ape without first discovering the identity
of his victim, and was badly mauled for his ill temper, having chosen
to vent his spite upon a husky and belligerent young bull in the full
prime of his vigor.
But Tarzan had learned something new. He had learned that continued
friction would wear through the strands of his rope, though it was many
years before this knowledge did more for him than merely to keep him
from swinging too long at a time, or too far above the ground at the
end of his rope.
The day came, however, when the very thing that had once all but killed
him proved the means of saving his life.
He was no longer a child, but a mighty jungle male. There was none now
to watch over him, solicitously, nor did he need such. Kala was dead.
Dead, too, was Tublat, and though with Kala passed the one creature
that ever really had loved him, there were still many who hated him
after Tublat departed unto the arms of his fathers. It was not that he
was more cruel or more savage than they that they hated him, for though
he was both cruel and savage as were the beasts, his fellows, yet too
was he often tender, which they never were. No, the thing which brought
Tarzan most into disrepute with those who did not like him, was the
possession and practice of a characteristic which they had not and
could not understand—the human sense of humor. In Tarzan it was a
trifle broad, perhaps, manifesting itself in rough and painful
practical jokes upon his friends and cruel baiting of his enemies.
But to neither of these did he owe the enmity of Bukawai, the
witch-doctor, who dwelt in the cave between the two hills far to the
north of the village of Mbonga, the chief. Bukawai was jealous of
Tarzan, and Bukawai it was who came near proving the undoing of the
ape-man. For months Bukawai had nursed his hatred while revenge seemed
remote indeed, since Tarzan of the Apes frequented another part of the
jungle, miles away from the lair of Bukawai. Only once had the black
witch-doctor seen the devil-god, as he was most often called among the
blacks, and upon that occasion Tarzan had robbed him of a fat fee, at
the same time putting the lie in the mouth of Bukawai, and making his
medicine seem poor medicine. All this Bukawai never could forgive,
though it seemed unlikely that the opportunity would come to be
revenged.
Yet it did come, and quite unexpectedly. Tarzan was hunting far to the
north. He had wandered away from the tribe, as he did more and more
often as he approached maturity, to hunt alone for a few days. As a
child he had enjoyed romping and playing with the young apes, his
companions; but now these play-fellows of his had grown to surly,
lowering bulls, or to touchy, suspicious mothers, jealously guarding
helpless balus. So Tarzan found in his own man-mind a greater and a
truer companionship than any or all of the apes of Kerchak could afford
him.
This day, as Tarzan hunted, the sky slowly became overcast. Torn
clouds, whipped to ragged streamers, fled low above the tree tops. They
reminded Tarzan of frightened antelope fleeing the charge of a hungry
lion. But though the light clouds raced so swiftly, the jungle was
motionless. Not a leaf quivered and the silence was a great, dead
weight—insupportable. Even the insects seemed stilled by apprehension
of some frightful thing impending, and the larger things were
soundless. Such a forest, such a jungle might have stood there in the
beginning of that unthinkably far-gone age before God peopled the world
with life, when there were no sounds because there were no ears to
hear.
And over all lay a sickly, pallid ocher light through which the
scourged clouds raced. Tarzan had seen all these conditions many times
before, yet he never could escape a strange feeling at each recurrence
of them. He knew no fear, but in the face of Nature’s manifestations of
her cruel, immeasurable powers, he felt very small—very small and very
lonely.
Now he heard a low moaning, far away. “The lions seek their prey,” he
murmured to himself, looking up once again at the swift-flying clouds.
The moaning rose to a great volume of sound. “They come!” said Tarzan
of the Apes, and sought the shelter of a thickly foliaged tree. Quite
suddenly the trees bent their tops simultaneously as though God had
stretched a hand from the heavens and pressed His flat palm down upon
the world. “They pass!” whispered Tarzan. “The lions pass.” Then came a
vivid flash of lightning, followed by deafening thunder. “The lions
have sprung,” cried Tarzan, “and now they roar above the bodies of
their kills.”
The trees were waving wildly in all directions now, a perfectly
demoniacal wind threshed the jungle pitilessly. In the midst of it the
rain came—not as it comes upon us of the northlands, but in a sudden,
choking, blinding deluge. “The blood of the kill,” thought Tarzan,
huddling himself closer to the bole of the great tree beneath which he
stood.
He was close to the edge of the jungle, and at a little distance he had
seen two hills before the storm broke; but now he could see nothing. It
amused him to look out into the beating rain, searching for the two
hills and imagining that the torrents from above had washed them away,
yet he knew that presently the rain would cease, the sun come out again
and all be as it was before, except where a few branches had fallen and
here and there some old and rotted patriarch had crashed back to enrich
the soil upon which he had fatted for, maybe, centuries. All about him
branches and leaves filled the air or fell to earth, torn away by the
strength of the tornado and the weight of the water upon them. A gaunt
corpse toppled and fell a few yards away; but Tarzan was protected from
all these dangers by the wide-spreading branches of the sturdy young
giant beneath which his jungle craft had guided him. Here there was but
a single danger, and that a remote one. Yet it came. Without warning
the tree above him was riven by lightning, and when the rain ceased and
the sun came out Tarzan lay stretched as he had fallen, upon his face
amidst the wreckage of the jungle giant that should have shielded him.
Bukawai came to the entrance of his cave after the rain and the storm
had passed and looked out upon the scene. From his one eye Bukawai
could see; but had he had a dozen eyes he could have found no beauty in
the fresh sweetness of the revivified jungle, for to such things, in
the chemistry of temperament, his brain failed to react; nor, even had
he had a nose, which he had not for years, could he have found
enjoyment or sweetness in the clean-washed air.
At either side of the leper stood his sole and constant companions, the
two hyenas, sniffing the air. Presently one of them uttered a low growl
and with flattened head started, sneaking and wary, toward the jungle.
The other followed. Bukawai, his curiosity aroused, trailed after them,
in his hand a heavy knob-stick.
The hyenas halted a few yards from the prostrate Tarzan, sniffing and
growling. Then came Bukawai, and at first he could not believe the
witness of his own eyes; but when he did and saw that it was indeed the
devil-god his rage knew no bounds, for he thought him dead and himself
cheated of the revenge he had so long dreamed upon.
The hyenas approached the ape-man with bared fangs. Bukawai, with an
inarticulate scream, rushed upon them, striking cruel and heavy blows
with his knob-stick, for there might still be life in the apparently
lifeless form. The beasts, snapping and snarling, half turned upon
their master and their tormentor, but long fear still held them from
his putrid throat. They slunk away a few yards and squatted upon their
haunches, hatred and baffled hunger gleaming from their savage eyes.
Bukawai stooped and placed his ear above the ape-man’s heart. It still
beat. As well as his sloughed features could register pleasure they did
so; but it was not a pretty sight. At the ape-man’s side lay his long,
grass rope. Quickly Bukawai bound the limp arms behind his prisoner’s
back, then he raised him to one of his shoulders, for, though Bukawai
was old and diseased, he was still a strong man. The hyenas fell in
behind as the witch-doctor set off toward the cave, and through the
long black corridors they followed as Bukawai bore his victim into the
bowels of the hills. Through subterranean chambers, connected by
winding passageways, Bukawai staggered with his load. At a sudden
turning of the corridor, daylight flooded them and Bukawai stepped out
into a small, circular basin in the hill, apparently the crater of an
ancient volcano, one of those which never reached the dignity of a
mountain and are little more than lava-rimmed pits close to the
earth’s surface.
Steep walls rimmed the cavity. The only exit was through the passageway
by which Bukawai had entered. A few stunted trees grew upon the rocky
floor. A hundred feet above could be seen the ragged lips of this cold,
dead mouth of hell.
Bukawai propped Tarzan against a tree and bound him there with his own
grass rope, leaving his hands free but securing the knots in such a way
that the ape-man could not reach them. The hyenas slunk to and fro,
growling. Bukawai hated them and they hated him. He knew that they but
waited for the time when he should be helpless, or when their hatred
should rise to such a height as to submerge their cringing fear of him.
In his own heart was not a little fear of these repulsive creatures,
and because of that fear, Bukawai always kept the beasts well fed,
often hunting for them when their own forages for food failed, but ever
was he cruel to them with the cruelty of a little brain, diseased,
bestial, primitive.
He had had them since they were puppies. They had known no other life
than that with him, and though they went abroad to hunt, always they
returned. Of late Bukawai had come to believe that they returned not so
much from habit as from a fiendish patience which would submit to every
indignity and pain rather than forego the final vengeance, and Bukawai
needed but little imagination to picture what that vengeance would be.
Today he would see for himself what his end would be; but another
should impersonate Bukawai.
When he had trussed Tarzan securely, Bukawai went back into the
corridor, driving the hyenas ahead of him, and pulling across the
opening a lattice of laced branches, which shut the pit from the cave
during the night that Bukawai might sleep in security, for then the
hyenas were penned in the crater that they might not sneak upon a
sleeping Bukawai in the darkness.
Bukawai returned to the outer cave mouth, filled a vessel with water at
the spring which rose in the little cañon close at hand and returned
toward the pit. The hyenas stood before the lattice looking hungrily
toward Tarzan. They had been fed in this manner before.
With his water, the witch-doctor approached Tarzan and threw a portion
of the contents of the vessel in the ape-man’s face. There was
fluttering of the eyelids, and at the second application Tarzan opened
his eyes and looked about.
“Devil-god,” cried Bukawai, “I am the great witch-doctor. My medicine
is strong. Yours is weak. If it is not, why do you stay tied here like
a goat that is bait for lions?”
Tarzan understood nothing the witch-doctor said, therefore he did not
reply, but only stared straight at Bukawai with cold and level gaze.
The hyenas crept up behind him. He heard them growl; but he did not
even turn his head. He was a beast with a man’s brain. The beast in him
refused to show fear in the face of a death which the man-mind already
admitted to be inevitable.
Bukawai, not yet ready to give his victim to the beasts, rushed upon
the hyenas with his knob-stick. There was a short scrimmage in which
the brutes came off second best, as they always did. Tarzan watched it.
He saw and realized the hatred which existed between the two animals
and the hideous semblance of a man.
With the hyenas subdued, Bukawai returned to the baiting of Tarzan; but
finding that the ape-man understood nothing he said, the witch-doctor
finally desisted. Then he withdrew into the corridor and pulled the
latticework barrier across the opening. He went back into the cave and
got a sleeping mat, which he brought to the opening, that he might lie
down and watch the spectacle of his revenge in comfort.
The hyenas were sneaking furtively around the ape-man. Tarzan strained
at his bonds for a moment, but soon realized that the rope he had
braided to hold Numa, the lion, would hold him quite as successfully.
He did not wish to die; but he could look death in the face now as he
had many times before without a quaver.
As he pulled upon the rope he felt it rub against the small tree about
which it was passed. Like a flash of the cinematograph upon the screen,
a picture was flashed before his mind’s eye from the storehouse of his
memory. He saw a lithe, boyish figure swinging high above the ground at
the end of a rope. He saw many apes watching from below, and then he
saw the rope part and the boy hurtle downward toward the ground. Tarzan
smiled. Immediately he commenced to draw the rope rapidly back and
forth across the tree trunk.
The hyenas, gaining courage, came closer. They sniffed at his legs; but
when he struck at them with his free arms they slunk off. He knew that
with the growth of hunger they would attack. Coolly, methodically,
without haste, Tarzan drew the rope back and forth against the rough
trunk of the small tree.
In the entrance to the cavern Bukawai fell asleep. He thought it would
be some time before the beasts gained sufficient courage or hunger to
attack the captive. Their growls and the cries of the victim would
awaken him. In the meantime he might as well rest, and he did.
Thus the day wore on, for the hyenas were not famished, and the rope
with which Tarzan was bound was a stronger one than that of his
boyhood, which had parted so quickly to the chafing of the rough tree
bark. Yet, all the while hunger was growing upon the beasts and the
strands of the grass rope were wearing thinner and thinner. Bukawai
slept.
It was late afternoon before one of the beasts, irritated by the
gnawing of appetite, made a quick, growling dash at the ape-man. The
noise awoke Bukawai. He sat up quickly and watched what went on within
the crater. He saw the hungry hyena charge the man, leaping for the
unprotected throat. He saw Tarzan reach out and seize the growling
animal, and then he saw the second beast spring for the devil-god’s
shoulder. There was a mighty heave of the great, smooth-skinned body.
Rounded muscles shot into great, tensed piles beneath the brown
hide—the ape-man surged forward with all his weight and all his great
strength—the bonds parted, and the three were rolling upon the floor of
the crater snarling, snapping, and rending.
Bukawai leaped to his feet. Could it be that the devil-god was to
prevail against his servants? Impossible! The creature was unarmed, and
he was down with two hyenas on top of him; but Bukawai did not know
Tarzan.
The ape-man fastened his fingers upon the throat of one of the hyenas
and rose to one knee, though the other beast tore at him frantically in
an effort to pull him down. With a single hand Tarzan held the one, and
with the other hand he reached forth and pulled toward him the second
beast.
And then Bukawai, seeing the battle going against his forces, rushed
forward from the cavern brandishing his knob-stick. Tarzan saw him
coming, and rising now to both feet, a hyena in each hand, he hurled
one of the foaming beasts straight at the witch-doctor’s head. Down
went the two in a snarling, biting heap. Tarzan tossed the second hyena
across the crater, while the first gnawed at the rotting face of its
master; but this did not suit the ape-man. With a kick he sent the
beast howling after its companion, and springing to the side of the
prostrate witch-doctor, dragged him to his feet.
Bukawai, still conscious, saw death, immediate and terrible, in the
cold eyes of his captor, so he turned upon Tarzan with teeth and nails.
The ape-man shuddered at the proximity of that raw face to his. The
hyenas had had enough and disappeared through the small aperture
leading into the cave. Tarzan had little difficulty in overpowering and
binding Bukawai. Then he led him to the very tree to which he had been
bound; but in binding Bukawai, Tarzan saw to it that escape after the
same fashion that he had escaped would be out of the question; then he
left him.
As he passed through the winding corridors and the subterranean
apartments, Tarzan saw nothing of the hyenas.
“They will return,” he said to himself.
In the crater between the towering walls Bukawai, cold with terror,
trembled as with ague.
“They will return!” he cried, his voice rising to a fright-filled
shriek.
And they did.