The City of Gold
The very night that Tarzan of the Apes became chief of the Waziri the
woman he loved lay dying in a tiny boat two hundred miles west of him
upon the Atlantic. As he danced among his naked fellow savages, the
firelight gleaming against his great, rolling muscles, the
personification of physical perfection and strength, the woman who
loved him lay thin and emaciated in the last coma that precedes death
by thirst and starvation.
The week following the induction of Tarzan into the kingship of the
Waziri was occupied in escorting the Manyuema of the Arab raiders to
the northern boundary of Waziri in accordance with the promise which
Tarzan had made them. Before he left them he exacted a pledge from them
that they would not lead any expeditions against the Waziri in the
future, nor was it a difficult promise to obtain. They had had
sufficient experience with the fighting tactics of the new Waziri chief
not to have the slightest desire to accompany another predatory force
within the boundaries of his domain.
Almost immediately upon his return to the village Tarzan commenced
making preparations for leading an expedition in search of the ruined
city of gold which old Waziri had described to him. He selected fifty
of the sturdiest warriors of his tribe, choosing only men who seemed
anxious to accompany him on the arduous march, and share the dangers of
a new and hostile country.
The fabulous wealth of the fabled city had been almost constantly in
his mind since Waziri had recounted the strange adventures of the
former expedition which had stumbled upon the vast ruins by chance. The
lure of adventure may have been quite as powerful a factor in urging
Tarzan of the Apes to undertake the journey as the lure of gold, but
the lure of gold was there, too, for he had learned among civilized men
something of the miracles that may be wrought by the possessor of the
magic yellow metal. What he would do with a golden fortune in the heart
of savage Africa it had not occurred to him to consider—it would be
enough to possess the power to work wonders, even though he never had
an opportunity to employ it.
So one glorious tropical morning Waziri, chief of the Waziri, set out
at the head of fifty clean-limbed ebon warriors in quest of adventure
and of riches. They followed the course which old Waziri had described
to Tarzan. For days they marched—up one river, across a low divide;
down another river; up a third, until at the end of the twenty-fifth
day they camped upon a mountainside, from the summit of which they
hoped to catch their first view of the marvelous city of treasure.
Early the next morning they were climbing the almost perpendicular
crags which formed the last, but greatest, natural barrier between them
and their destination. It was nearly noon before Tarzan, who headed the
thin line of climbing warriors, scrambled over the top of the last
cliff and stood upon the little flat table-land of the mountaintop.
On either hand towered mighty peaks thousands of feet higher than the
pass through which they were entering the forbidden valley. Behind him
stretched the wooded valley across which they had marched for many
days, and at the opposite side the low range which marked the boundary
of their own country.
But before him was the view that centered his attention. Here lay a
desolate valley—a shallow, narrow valley dotted with stunted trees and
covered with many great bowlders. And on the far side of the valley lay
what appeared to be a mighty city, its great walls, its lofty spires,
its turrets, minarets, and domes showing red and yellow in the
sunlight. Tarzan was yet too far away to note the marks of ruin—to him
it appeared a wonderful city of magnificent beauty, and in imagination
he peopled its broad avenues and its huge temples with a throng of
happy, active people.
For an hour the little expedition rested upon the mountain-top, and
then Tarzan led them down into the valley below. There was no trail,
but the way was less arduous than the ascent of the opposite face of
the mountain had been. Once in the valley their progress was rapid, so
that it was still light when they halted before the towering walls of
the ancient city.
The outer wall was fifty feet in height where it had not fallen into
ruin, but nowhere as far as they could see had more than ten or twenty
feet of the upper courses fallen away. It was still a formidable
defense. On several occasions Tarzan had thought that he discerned
things moving behind the ruined portions of the wall near to them, as
though creatures were watching them from behind the bulwarks of the
ancient pile. And often he felt the sensation of unseen eyes upon him,
but not once could he be sure that it was more than imagination.
That night they camped outside the city. Once, at midnight, they were
awakened by a shrill scream from beyond the great wall. It was very
high at first, descending gradually until it ended in a series of
dismal moans. It had a strange effect upon the blacks, almost
paralyzing them with terror while it lasted, and it was an hour before
the camp settled down to sleep once more. In the morning the effects of
it were still visible in the fearful, sidelong glances that the Waziri
continually cast at the massive and forbidding structure which loomed
above them.
It required considerable encouragement and urging on Tarzan’s part to
prevent the blacks from abandoning the venture on the spot and
hastening back across the valley toward the cliffs they had scaled the
day before. But at length, by dint of commands, and threats that he
would enter the city alone, they agreed to accompany him.
For fifteen minutes they marched along the face of the wall before they
discovered a means of ingress. Then they came to a narrow cleft about
twenty inches wide. Within, a flight of concrete steps, worn hollow by
centuries of use, rose before them, to disappear at a sharp turning of
the passage a few yards ahead.
Into this narrow alley Tarzan made his way, turning his giant shoulders
sideways that they might enter at all. Behind him trailed his black
warriors. At the turn in the cleft the stairs ended, and the path was
level; but it wound and twisted in a serpentine fashion, until suddenly
at a sharp angle it debouched upon a narrow court, across which loomed
an inner wall equally as high as the outer. This inner wall was set
with little round towers alternating along its entire summit with
pointed monoliths. In places these had fallen, and the wall was ruined,
but it was in a much better state of preservation than the outer wall.
Another narrow passage led through this wall, and at its end Tarzan and
his warriors found themselves in a broad avenue, on the opposite side
of which crumbling edifices of hewn granite loomed dark and forbidding.
Upon the crumbling debris along the face of the buildings trees had
grown, and vines wound in and out of the hollow, staring windows; but
the building directly opposite them seemed less overgrown than the
others, and in a much better state of preservation. It was a massive
pile, surmounted by an enormous dome. At either side of its great
entrance stood rows of tall pillars, each capped by a huge, grotesque
bird carved from the solid rock of the monoliths.
As the ape-man and his companions stood gazing in varying degrees of
wonderment at this ancient city in the midst of savage Africa, several
of them became aware of movement within the structure at which they
were looking. Dim, shadowy shapes appeared to be moving about in the
semi-darkness of the interior. There was nothing tangible that the eye
could grasp—only an uncanny suggestion of life where it seemed that
there should be no life, for living things seemed out of place in this
weird, dead city of the long-dead past.
Tarzan recalled something that he had read in the library at Paris of a
lost race of white men that native legend described as living in the
heart of Africa. He wondered if he were not looking upon the ruins of
the civilization that this strange people had wrought amid the savage
surroundings of their strange and savage home. Could it be possible
that even now a remnant of that lost race inhabited the ruined grandeur
that had once been their progenitor? Again he became conscious of a
stealthy movement within the great temple before him. “Come!” he said,
to his Waziri. “Let us have a look at what lies behind those ruined
walls.”
His men were loath to follow him, but when they saw that he was bravely
entering the frowning portal they trailed a few paces behind in a
huddled group that seemed the personification of nervous terror. A
single shriek such as they had heard the night before would have been
sufficient to have sent them all racing madly for the narrow cleft that
led through the great walls to the outer world.
As Tarzan entered the building he was distinctly aware of many eyes
upon him. There was a rustling in the shadows of a near-by corridor,
and he could have sworn that he saw a human hand withdrawn from an
embrasure that opened above him into the domelike rotunda in which he
found himself.
The floor of the chamber was of concrete, the walls of smooth granite,
upon which strange figures of men and beasts were carved. In places
tablets of yellow metal had been set in the solid masonry of the walls.
When he approached closer to one of these tablets he saw that it was of
gold, and bore many hieroglyphics. Beyond this first chamber there were
others, and back of them the building branched out into enormous wings.
Tarzan passed through several of these chambers, finding many evidences
of the fabulous wealth of the original builders. In one room were seven
pillars of solid gold, and in another the floor itself was of the
precious metal. And all the while that he explored, his blacks huddled
close together at his back, and strange shapes hovered upon either hand
and before them and behind, yet never close enough that any might say
that they were not alone.
The strain, however, was telling upon the nerves of the Waziri. They
begged Tarzan to return to the sunlight. They said that no good could
come of such an expedition, for the ruins were haunted by the spirits
of the dead who had once inhabited them.
“They are watching us, O king,” whispered Busuli. “They are waiting
until they have led us into the innermost recesses of their stronghold,
and then they will fall upon us and tear us to pieces with their teeth.
That is the way with spirits. My mother’s uncle, who is a great witch
doctor, has told me all about it many times.”
Tarzan laughed. “Run back into the sunlight, my children,” he said. “I
will join you when I have searched this old ruin from top to bottom,
and found the gold, or found that there is none. At least we may take
the tablets from the walls, though the pillars are too heavy for us to
handle; but there should be great storerooms filled with gold—gold that
we can carry away upon our backs with ease. Run on now, out into the
fresh air where you may breathe easier.”
Some of the warriors started to obey their chief with alacrity, but
Busuli and several others hesitated to leave him—hesitated between love
and loyalty for their king, and superstitious fear of the unknown. And
then, quite unexpectedly, that occurred which decided the question
without the necessity for further discussion. Out of the silence of the
ruined temple there rang, close to their ears, the same hideous shriek
they had heard the previous night, and with horrified cries the black
warriors turned and fled through the empty halls of the age-old
edifice.
Behind them stood Tarzan of the Apes where they had left him, a grim
smile upon his lips—waiting for the enemy he fully expected was about
to pounce upon him. But again silence reigned, except for the faint
suggestion of the sound of naked feet moving stealthily in near-by
places.
Then Tarzan wheeled and passed on into the depths of the temple. From
room to room he went, until he came to one at which a rude, barred door
still stood, and as he put his shoulder against it to push it in, again
the shriek of warning rang out almost beside him. It was evident that
he was being warned to refrain from desecrating this particular room.
Or could it be that within lay the secret to the treasure stores?
At any rate, the very fact that the strange, invisible guardians of
this weird place had some reason for wishing him not to enter this
particular chamber was sufficient to treble Tarzan’s desire to do so,
and though the shrieking was repeated continuously, he kept his
shoulder to the door until it gave before his giant strength to swing
open upon creaking wooden hinges.
Within all was black as the tomb. There was no window to let in the
faintest ray of light, and as the corridor upon which it opened was
itself in semi-darkness, even the open door shed no relieving rays
within. Feeling before him upon the floor with the butt of his spear,
Tarzan entered the Stygian gloom. Suddenly the door behind him closed,
and at the same time hands clutched him from every direction out of the
darkness.
The ape-man fought with all the savage fury of self-preservation backed
by the herculean strength that was his. But though he felt his blows
land, and his teeth sink into soft flesh, there seemed always two new
hands to take the place of those that he fought off. At last they
dragged him down, and slowly, very slowly, they overcame him by the
mere weight of their numbers. And then they bound him—his hands behind
his back and his feet trussed up to meet them. He had heard no sound
except the heavy breathing of his antagonists, and the noise of the
battle. He knew not what manner of creatures had captured him, but that
they were human seemed evident from the fact that they had bound him.
Presently they lifted him from the floor, and half dragging, half
pushing him, they brought him out of the black chamber through another
doorway into an inner courtyard of the temple. Here he saw his captors.
There must have been a hundred of them—short, stocky men, with great
beards that covered their faces and fell upon their hairy breasts.
The thick, matted hair upon their heads grew low over their receding
brows, and hung about their shoulders and their backs. Their crooked
legs were short and heavy, their arms long and muscular. About their
loins they wore the skins of leopards and lions, and great necklaces of
the claws of these same animals depended upon their breasts. Massive
circlets of virgin gold adorned their arms and legs. For weapons they
carried heavy, knotted bludgeons, and in the belts that confined their
single garments each had a long, wicked-looking knife.
But the feature of them that made the most startling impression upon
their prisoner was their white skins—neither in color nor feature was
there a trace of the negroid about them. Yet, with their receding
foreheads, wicked little close-set eyes, and yellow fangs, they were
far from prepossessing in appearance.
During the fight within the dark chamber, and while they had been
dragging Tarzan to the inner court, no word had been spoken, but now
several of them exchanged grunting, monosyllabic conversation in a
language unfamiliar to the ape-man, and presently they left him lying
upon the concrete floor while they trooped off on their short legs into
another part of the temple beyond the court.
As Tarzan lay there upon his back he saw that the temple entirely
surrounded the little inclosure, and that on all sides its lofty walls
rose high above him. At the top a little patch of blue sky was visible,
and, in one direction, through an embrasure, he could see foliage, but
whether it was beyond or within the temple he did not know.
About the court, from the ground to the top of the temple, were series
of open galleries, and now and then the captive caught glimpses of
bright eyes gleaming from beneath masses of tumbling hair, peering down
upon him from above.
The ape-man gently tested the strength of the bonds that held him, and
while he could not be sure it seemed that they were of insufficient
strength to withstand the strain of his mighty muscles when the time
came to make a break for freedom; but he did not dare to put them to
the crucial test until darkness had fallen, or he felt that no spying
eyes were upon him.
He had lain within the court for several hours before the first rays of
sunlight penetrated the vertical shaft; almost simultaneously he heard
the pattering of bare feet in the corridors about him, and a moment
later saw the galleries above fill with crafty faces as a score or more
entered the courtyard.
For a moment every eye was bent upon the noonday sun, and then in
unison the people in the galleries and those in the court below took up
the refrain of a low, weird chant. Presently those about Tarzan began
to dance to the cadence of their solemn song. They circled him slowly,
resembling in their manner of dancing a number of clumsy, shuffling
bears; but as yet they did not look at him, keeping their little eyes
fixed upon the sun.
For ten minutes or more they kept up their monotonous chant and steps,
and then suddenly, and in perfect unison, they turned toward their
victim with upraised bludgeons and emitting fearful howls, the while
they contorted their features into the most diabolical expressions,
they rushed upon him.
At the same instant a female figure dashed into the midst of the
bloodthirsty horde, and, with a bludgeon similar to their own, except
that it was wrought from gold, beat back the advancing men.