La
For a moment Tarzan thought that by some strange freak of fate a
miracle had saved him, but when he realized the ease with which the
girl had, single-handed, beaten off twenty gorilla-like males, and an
instant later, as he saw them again take up their dance about him while
she addressed them in a singsong monotone, which bore every evidence of
rote, he came to the conclusion that it was all but a part of the
ceremony of which he was the central figure.
After a moment or two the girl drew a knife from her girdle, and,
leaning over Tarzan, cut the bonds from his legs. Then, as the men
stopped their dance, and approached, she motioned to him to rise.
Placing the rope that had been about his legs around his neck, she led
him across the courtyard, the men following in twos.
Through winding corridors she led, farther and farther into the remoter
precincts of the temple, until they came to a great chamber in the
center of which stood an altar. Then it was that Tarzan translated the
strange ceremony that had preceded his introduction into this holy of
holies.
He had fallen into the hands of descendants of the ancient sun
worshippers. His seeming rescue by a votaress of the high priestess of
the sun had been but a part of the mimicry of their heathen
ceremony—the sun looking down upon him through the opening at the top
of the court had claimed him as his own, and the priestess had come
from the inner temple to save him from the polluting hands of
worldlings—to save him as a human offering to their flaming deity.
And had he needed further assurance as to the correctness of his theory
he had only to cast his eyes upon the brownish-red stains that caked
the stone altar and covered the floor in its immediate vicinity, or to
the human skulls which grinned from countless niches in the towering
walls.
The priestess led the victim to the altar steps. Again the galleries
above filled with watchers, while from an arched doorway at the east
end of the chamber a procession of females filed slowly into the room.
They wore, like the men, only skins of wild animals caught about their
waists with rawhide belts or chains of gold; but the black masses of
their hair were incrusted with golden headgear composed of many
circular and oval pieces of gold ingeniously held together to form a
metal cap from which depended at each side of the head, long strings of
oval pieces falling to the waist.
The females were more symmetrically proportioned than the males, their
features were much more perfect, the shapes of their heads and their
large, soft, black eyes denoting far greater intelligence and humanity
than was possessed by their lords and masters.
Each priestess bore two golden cups, and as they formed in line along
one side of the altar the men formed opposite them, advancing and
taking each a cup from the female opposite. Then the chant began once
more, and presently from a dark passageway beyond the altar another
female emerged from the cavernous depths beneath the chamber.
The high priestess, thought Tarzan. She was a young woman with a rather
intelligent and shapely face. Her ornaments were similar to those worn
by her votaries, but much more elaborate, many being set with diamonds.
Her bare arms and legs were almost concealed by the massive, bejeweled
ornaments which covered them, while her single leopard skin was
supported by a close-fitting girdle of golden rings set in strange
designs with innumerable small diamonds. In the girdle she carried a
long, jeweled knife, and in her hand a slender wand in lieu of a
bludgeon.
As she advanced to the opposite side of the altar she halted, and the
chanting ceased. The priests and priestesses knelt before her, while
with wand extended above them she recited a long and tiresome prayer.
Her voice was soft and musical—Tarzan could scarce realize that its
possessor in a moment more would be transformed by the fanatical
ecstasy of religious zeal into a wild-eyed and bloodthirsty
executioner, who, with dripping knife, would be the first to drink her
victim’s red, warm blood from the little golden cup that stood upon the
altar.
As she finished her prayer she let her eyes rest for the first time
upon Tarzan. With every indication of considerable curiosity she
examined him from head to foot. Then she addressed him, and when she
had finished stood waiting, as though she expected a reply.
“I do not understand your language,” said Tarzan. “Possibly we may
speak together in another tongue?” But she could not understand him,
though he tried French, English, Arab, Waziri, and, as a last resort,
the mongrel tongue of the West Coast.
She shook her head, and it seemed that there was a note of weariness in
her voice as she motioned to the priests to continue with the rites.
These now circled in a repetition of their idiotic dance, which was
terminated finally at a command from the priestess, who had stood
throughout, still looking intently upon Tarzan.
At her signal the priests rushed upon the ape-man, and, lifting him
bodily, laid him upon his back across the altar, his head hanging over
one edge, his legs over the opposite. Then they and the priestesses
formed in two lines, with their little golden cups in readiness to
capture a share of the victim’s lifeblood after the sacrificial knife
had accomplished its work.
In the line of priests an altercation arose as to who should have first
place. A burly brute with all the refined intelligence of a gorilla
stamped upon his bestial face was attempting to push a smaller man to
second place, but the smaller one appealed to the high priestess, who
in a cold peremptory voice sent the larger to the extreme end of the
line. Tarzan could hear him growling and rumbling as he went slowly to
the inferior station.
Then the priestess, standing above him, began reciting what Tarzan took
to be an invocation, the while she slowly raised her thin, sharp knife
aloft. It seemed ages to the ape-man before her arm ceased its upward
progress and the knife halted high above his unprotected breast.
Then it started downward, slowly at first, but as the incantation
increased in rapidity, with greater speed. At the end of the line
Tarzan could still hear the grumbling of the disgruntled priest. The
man’s voice rose louder and louder. A priestess near him spoke in sharp
tones of rebuke. The knife was quite near to Tarzan’s breast now, but
it halted for an instant as the high priestess raised her eyes to shoot
her swift displeasure at the instigator of this sacrilegious
interruption.
There was a sudden commotion in the direction of the disputants, and
Tarzan rolled his head in their direction in time to see the burly
brute of a priest leap upon the woman opposite him, dashing out her
brains with a single blow of his heavy cudgel. Then that happened which
Tarzan had witnessed a hundred times before among the wild denizens of
his own savage jungle. He had seen the thing fall upon Kerchak, and
Tublat, and Terkoz; upon a dozen of the other mighty bull apes of his
tribe; and upon Tantor, the elephant; there was scarce any of the males
of the forest that did not at times fall prey to it. The priest went
mad, and with his heavy bludgeon ran amuck among his fellows.
His screams of rage were frightful as he dashed hither and thither,
dealing terrific blows with his giant weapon, or sinking his yellow
fangs into the flesh of some luckless victim. And during it the
priestess stood with poised knife above Tarzan, her eyes fixed in
horror upon the maniacal thing that was dealing out death and
destruction to her votaries.
Presently the room was emptied except for the dead and dying on the
floor, the victim upon the altar, the high priestess, and the madman.
As the cunning eyes of the latter fell upon the woman they lighted with
a new and sudden lust. Slowly he crept toward her, and now he spoke;
but this time there fell upon Tarzan’s surprised ears a language he
could understand; the last one that he would ever have thought of
employing in attempting to converse with human beings—the low guttural
barking of the tribe of great anthropoids—his own mother tongue. And
the woman answered the man in the same language.
He was threatening—she attempting to reason with him, for it was quite
evident that she saw that he was past her authority. The brute was
quite close now—creeping with clawlike hands extended toward her around
the end of the altar. Tarzan strained at the bonds which held his arms
pinioned behind him. The woman did not see—she had forgotten her prey
in the horror of the danger that threatened herself. As the brute
leaped past Tarzan to clutch his victim, the ape-man gave one
superhuman wrench at the thongs that held him. The effort sent him
rolling from the altar to the stone floor on the opposite side from
that on which the priestess stood; but as he sprang to his feet the
thongs dropped from his freed arms, and at the same time he realized
that he was alone in the inner temple—the high priestess and the mad
priest had disappeared.
And then a muffled scream came from the cavernous mouth of the dark
hole beyond the sacrificial altar through which the priestess had
entered the temple. Without even a thought for his own safety, or the
possibility for escape which this rapid series of fortuitous
circumstances had thrust upon him, Tarzan of the Apes answered the call
of the woman in danger. With a little bound he was at the gaping
entrance to the subterranean chamber, and a moment later was running
down a flight of age-old concrete steps that led he knew not where.
The faint light that filtered in from above showed him a large,
low-ceiled vault from which several doorways led off into inky
darkness, but there was no need to thread an unknown way, for there
before him lay the objects of his search—the mad brute had the girl
upon the floor, and gorilla-like fingers were clutching frantically at
her throat as she struggled to escape the fury of the awful thing upon
her.
As Tarzan’s heavy hand fell upon his shoulder the priest dropped his
victim, and turned upon her would-be rescuer. With foam-flecked lips
and bared fangs the mad sun-worshiper battled with the tenfold power of
the maniac. In the blood lust of his fury the creature had undergone a
sudden reversion to type, which left him a wild beast, forgetful of the
dagger that projected from his belt—thinking only of nature’s weapons
with which his brute prototype had battled.
But if he could use his teeth and hands to advantage, he found one even
better versed in the school of savage warfare to which he had reverted,
for Tarzan of the Apes closed with him, and they fell to the floor
tearing and rending at one another like two bull apes; while the
primitive priestess stood flattened against the wall, watching with
wide, fear-fascinated eyes the growling, snapping beasts at her feet.
At last she saw the stranger close one mighty hand upon the throat of
his antagonist, and as he forced the bruteman’s head far back rain blow
after blow upon the upturned face. A moment later he threw the still
thing from him, and, arising, shook himself like a lion. He placed a
foot upon the carcass before him, and raised his head to give the
victory cry of his kind, but as his eyes fell upon the opening above
him leading into the temple of human sacrifice he thought better of his
intended act.
The girl, who had been half paralyzed by fear as the two men fought,
had just commenced to give thought to her probable fate now that,
though released from the clutches of a madman, she had fallen into the
hands of one whom but a moment before she had been upon the point of
killing. She looked about for some means of escape. The black mouth of
a diverging corridor was near at hand, but as she turned to dart into
it the ape-man’s eyes fell upon her, and with a quick leap he was at
her side, and a restraining hand was laid upon her arm.
“Wait!” said Tarzan of the Apes, in the language of the tribe of
Kerchak.
The girl looked at him in astonishment.
“Who are you,” she whispered, “who speaks the language of the first
man?”
“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” he answered in the vernacular of the
anthropoids.
“What do you want of me?” she continued. “For what purpose did you save
me from Tha?”
“I could not see a woman murdered?” It was a half question that
answered her.
“But what do you intend to do with me now?” she continued.
“Nothing,” he replied, “but you can do something for me—you can lead me
out of this place to freedom.” He made the suggestion without the
slightest thought that she would accede. He felt quite sure that the
sacrifice would go on from the point where it had been interrupted if
the high priestess had her way, though he was equally positive that
they would find Tarzan of the Apes unbound and with a long dagger in
his hand a much less tractable victim than Tarzan disarmed and bound.
The girl stood looking at him for a long moment before she spoke.
“You are a very wonderful man,” she said. “You are such a man as I have
seen in my daydreams ever since I was a little girl. You are such a man
as I imagine the forbears of my people must have been—the great race of
people who built this mighty city in the heart of a savage world that
they might wrest from the bowels of the earth the fabulous wealth for
which they had sacrificed their far-distant civilization.
“I cannot understand why you came to my rescue in the first place, and
now I cannot understand why, having me within your power, you do not
wish to be revenged upon me for having sentenced you to death—for
having almost put you to death with my own hand.”
“I presume,” replied the ape-man, “that you but followed the teachings
of your religion. I cannot blame YOU for that, no matter what I may
think of your creed. But who are you—what people have I fallen among?”
“I am La, high priestess of the Temple of the Sun, in the city of Opar.
We are descendants of a people who came to this savage world more than
ten thousand years ago in search of gold. Their cities stretched from a
great sea under the rising sun to a great sea into which the sun
descends at night to cool his flaming brow. They were very rich and
very powerful, but they lived only a few months of the year in their
magnificent palaces here; the rest of the time they spent in their
native land, far, far to the north.
“Many ships went back and forth between this new world and the old.
During the rainy season there were but few of the inhabitants remained
here, only those who superintended the working of the mines by the
black slaves, and the merchants who had to stay to supply their wants,
and the soldiers who guarded the cities and the mines.
“It was at one of these times that the great calamity occurred. When
the time came for the teeming thousands to return none came. For weeks
the people waited. Then they sent out a great galley to learn why no
one came from the mother country, but though they sailed about for many
months, they were unable to find any trace of the mighty land that had
for countless ages borne their ancient civilization—it had sunk into
the sea.
“From that day dated the downfall of my people. Disheartened and
unhappy, they soon became a prey to the black hordes of the north and
the black hordes of the south. One by one the cities were deserted or
overcome. The last remnant was finally forced to take shelter within
this mighty mountain fortress. Slowly we have dwindled in power, in
civilization, in intellect, in numbers, until now we are no more than a
small tribe of savage apes.
“In fact, the apes live with us, and have for many ages. We call them
the first men—we speak their language quite as much as we do our own;
only in the rituals of the temple do we make any attempt to retain our
mother tongue. In time it will be forgotten, and we will speak only the
language of the apes; in time we will no longer banish those of our
people who mate with apes, and so in time we shall descend to the very
beasts from which ages ago our progenitors may have sprung.”
“But why are you more human than the others?” asked the man.
“For some reason the women have not reverted to savagery so rapidly as
the men. It may be because only the lower types of men remained here at
the time of the great catastrophe, while the temples were filled with
the noblest daughters of the race. My strain has remained clearer than
the rest because for countless ages my foremothers were high
priestesses—the sacred office descends from mother to daughter. Our
husbands are chosen for us from the noblest in the land. The most
perfect man, mentally and physically, is selected to be the husband of
the high priestess.”
“From what I saw of the gentlemen above,” said Tarzan, with a grin,
“there should be little trouble in choosing from among them.”
The girl looked at him quizzically for a moment.
“Do not be sacrilegious,” she said. “They are very holy men—they are
priests.”
“Then there are others who are better to look upon?” he asked.
“The others are all more ugly than the priests,” she replied.
Tarzan shuddered at her fate, for even in the dim light of the vault he
was impressed by her beauty.
“But how about myself?” he asked suddenly. “Are you going to lead me to
liberty?”
“You have been chosen by The Flaming God as his own,” she answered
solemnly. “Not even I have the power to save you—should they find you
again. But I do not intend that they shall find you. You risked your
life to save mine. I may do no less for you. It will be no easy
matter—it may require days; but in the end I think that I can lead you
beyond the walls. Come, they will look here for me presently, and if
they find us together we shall both be lost—they would kill me did they
think that I had proved false to my god.”
“You must not take the risk, then,” he said quickly. “I will return to
the temple, and if I can fight my way to freedom there will be no
suspicion thrown upon you.”
But she would not have it so, and finally persuaded him to follow her,
saying that they had already remained in the vault too long to prevent
suspicion from falling upon her even if they returned to the temple.
“I will hide you, and then return alone,” she said, “telling them that
I was long unconscious after you killed Tha, and that I do not know
whither you escaped.”
And so she led him through winding corridors of gloom, until finally
they came to a small chamber into which a little light filtered through
a stone grating in the ceiling.
“This is the Chamber of the Dead,” she said. “None will think of
searching here for you—they would not dare. I will return after it is
dark. By that time I may have found a plan to effect your escape.”
She was gone, and Tarzan of the Apes was left alone in the Chamber of
the Dead, beneath the long-dead city of Opar.