THE SHAFT OF DEATH
AS the huge, man-like gorilla entered the compound the warriors closed
the gate, and fell back respectfully as he advanced to the center of the
village where he stood for a moment, looking about.
“Where are the shes and the balus?” he asked, tersely. “Call them.”
The women and the children must have heard the command, but they did not
emerge from their hiding places. The warriors moved about uneasily,
evidently torn by the conflicting emotions of fear of the creature who
had issued the order, and reluctance to fulfil his commands.
“Call them,” he repeated, “or go and fetch them.” But at last one of the
warriors mustered the courage to address him.
“This village has already furnished one woman within the moon,” he said.
“It is the turn of another village.”
“Silence!” roared the gorilla-man, advancing threateningly toward him.
“You are a rash Gomangani to threaten the will of a Bolgani—I speak
with the voice of Numa, the Emperor; obey or die.”
Trembling, the black turned and called the women and children, but none
responded to his summons. The Bolgani gestured impatiently.
“Go and fetch them,” he demanded. And the blacks, cringing, moved
sullenly across the compound toward the hiding places of their women and
children. Presently they returned, dragging them with them, by the arms
sometimes, but usually by the hair. Although they had seemed loath to
give them up, they showed no gentleness toward them, nor any indication
of affection. Their attitude toward them, however, was presently
explained to Tarzan by the next words of the warrior who had spoken
previously.
“Great Bolgani,” he said, addressing the gorilla-man, “if Numa takes
always from this village, there will soon be not enough women for the
warriors here, and there will be too few children, and in a little time
there will be none of us left.”
“What of that?” growled the gorilla-man. “There are already too many
Gomangani in the world. For what other purpose were you created than to
serve Numa, the Emperor, and his chosen people, the Bolgani?” As he
spoke he was examining the women and children, pinching their flesh and
pounding upon their chests and backs. Presently he returned to a
comparatively young woman, straddling whose hip was a small child.
“This one will do,” he said, snatching the child from its mother and
hurling it roughly across the compound, where it lay against the face of
the palisade, moaning pitifully, and perchance broken and dying. The
poor, stupid mother, apparently more beast than human, stood for a
moment trembling in dumb anguish, and then she started to rush forward
to her child. But the gorilla-man seized her with one of his great hands
and hurled her to the ground. Simultaneously there arose from the silent
foliage above them the fierce and terrible scream of the challenging
bull ape. In terror the simple blacks cast affrighted glances upward,
while the gorilla-man raised his hideous face in snarling anger toward
the author of the bestial cry.
Swaying upon a leafy bough they beheld such a creature as none of them
had ever looked upon before—a white man, a Tarmangani, with hide as
hairless as the body of Histah, the snake. In the instant that they
looked they saw the spear hand of the stranger drive forward, and the
shaft, speeding with the swiftness of thought, bury itself in the breast
of the Bolgani. With a single scream of rage and pain, the gorilla-man
crumbled to the earth, where he struggled spasmodically for a moment and
then lay still, in death.
The ape-man held no great love for the Gomangani as a race, but inherent
in his English brain and heart was the spirit of fair play, which
prompted him to spontaneous espousal of the cause of the weak. On the
other hand Bolgani was his hereditary enemy. His first battle had been
with Bolgani, and his first kill.
The poor blacks were still standing in stupefied wonderment when he
dropped from the tree to the ground among them. They stepped back in
terror, and simultaneously they raised their spears menacingly against
him.
“I am a friend,” he said. “I am Tarzan of the Apes. Lower your spears.”
And then he turned and withdrew his own weapon from the carcass of
Bolgani. “Who is this creature, that may come into your village and slay
your balus and steal your shes? Who is he, that you dare not drive your
spears through him?”
“He is one of the great Bolgani,” said the warrior, who seemed to be
spokesman, and the leader in the village. “He is one of the chosen
people of Numa, the Emperor, and when Numa learns that he has been
killed in our village, we shall all die for what you have done.”
“Who is Numa?” demanded the ape-man, to whom Numa, in the language of
the great apes, meant only lion.
“Numa is the Emperor,” replied the black, “who lives with the Bolgani in
the Palace of Diamonds.”
He did not express himself in just these words, for the meager language
of the great apes, even though amplified by the higher intelligence and
greater development of the Oparians, is still primitive in the extreme.
What he had really said was more nearly “Numa, the king of kings, who
lives in the king’s hut of glittering stones,” which carried to the
ape-man’s mind the faithful impression of the fact. Numa, evidently, was
the name adopted by the king of the Bolgani, and the title _emperor_,
indicated merely his preeminence among the chiefs.
The instant that Bolgani had fallen the bereaved mother rushed forward
and gathered her injured infant into her arms. She squatted now against
the palisade, cuddling it to her breast, and crooning softly to pacify
its cries, which Tarzan suddenly discovered were more the result of
fright than injury. At first the mother had been frightened when he had
attempted to examine the child, drawing away and baring her fighting
fangs, much after the manner of a wild beast. But presently there had
seemed to come to her dull brain a realization that this creature had
saved her from Bolgani, that he had permitted her to recover her infant
and that he was making no effort to harm either of them. Convinced at
last that the child was only bruised, Tarzan turned again toward the
warriors, who were talking together in an excited little group a few
paces away. As they saw him advancing, they spread into a semi-circle
and stood facing him.
“The Bolgani will send and slay us all,” they said, “when they learn
what has happened in our village, unless we can take to them the
creature that cast the spear. Therefore, Tarmangani, you shall go with
us to the Palace of Diamonds, and there we shall give you over to the
Bolgani and perhaps Numa will forgive us.”
The ape-man smiled. What kind of creature did the simple blacks think
him, to believe that he would permit himself to be easily led into the
avenging hands of Numa, the Emperor of the Bolgani. Although he was
fully aware of the risk that he had taken in entering the village, he
knew too that because he was Tarzan of the Apes there was a greater
chance that he would be able to escape than that they could hold him. He
had faced savage spearmen before and knew precisely what to expect in
the event of hostilities. He preferred, however, to make peace with
these people, for it had been in his mind to find some means of
questioning them the moment that he had discovered their village hidden
away in this wild forest.
“Wait,” he said, therefore. “Would you betray a friend who enters your
village to protect you from an enemy?”
“We will not slay you, Tarmangani. We will take you to the Bolgani for
Numa, the Emperor.”
“But that would amount to the same thing,” returned Tarzan, “for you
well know that Numa, the Emperor, will have me slain.”
“That we cannot help,” replied the spokesman. “If we could save you we
would, but when the Bolgani discover what has happened in our village,
it is we who must suffer, unless, perhaps, they are satisfied to punish
you instead.”
“But why need they know that the Bolgani has been slain in your
village?” asked Tarzan.
“Will they not see his body next time they come?” asked the spokesman.
“Not if you remove his body,” replied Tarzan.
The blacks scratched their heads. Into their dull, ignorant minds had
crept no such suggestion of a solution of their problem. What the
stranger said was true. None but they and he knew that Bolgani had been
slain within their palisade. To remove the body, then, would be to
remove all suspicion from their village. But where were they to take it?
They put the question to Tarzan.
“I will dispose of him for you,” replied the Tarmangani. “Answer my
questions truthfully and I will promise to take him away and dispose of
him in such a manner that no one will know how he died, or where.”
“What are your questions?” asked the spokesman.
“I am a stranger in your country. I am lost here,” replied the ape-man.
“And I would find a way out of the valley in that direction.” And he
pointed toward the southeast.
The black shook his head. “There may be a way out of the valley in that
direction,” he said, “but what lies beyond no man knows, nor do I know
whether there be a way out or whether there be anything beyond. It is
said that all is fire beyond the mountain, and no one dares to go and
see. As for myself, I have never been far from my village—at most only
a day’s march to hunt for game for the Bolgani, and to gather fruit and
nuts and plantains for them. If there is a way out I do not know, nor
would any man dare take it if there were.”
“Does no one ever leave the valley?” asked Tarzan.
“I know not what others do,” replied the spokesman, “but those of this
village never leave the valley.”
“What lies in that direction?” asked Tarzan, pointing toward Opar.
“I do not know,” replied the black, “only that sometimes the Bolgani
come from that way, bringing with them strange creatures; little men
with white skins and much hair, with short, crooked legs and long arms,
and sometimes white shes, who do not look at all like the strange little
Tarmangani. But where they get them I do not know, nor do they ever tell
us. Are these all the questions that you wish to ask?”
“Yes, that is all,” replied Tarzan, seeing that he could gain no
information whatsoever from these ignorant villagers. Realizing that he
must find his own way out of the valley, and knowing that he could do so
much more quickly and safely if he was alone, he decided to sound the
blacks in relation to a plan that had entered his mind.
“If I take the Bolgani away, so that the others will not know that he
was slain in your village, will you treat me as a friend?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the spokesman.
“Then,” said Tarzan, “will you keep here for me my white she until I
return again to your village? You can hide her in one of your huts if a
Bolgani comes, and no one need ever know that she is among you. What do
you say?”
The blacks looked around. “We do not see her,” said the spokesman.
“Where is she?”
“If you will promise to protect her and hide her, I will bring her
here,” replied the ape-man.
“I will not harm her,” said the head man, “but I do not know about the
others.”
Tarzan turned toward the others who were clustered about, listening. “I
am going to bring my mate into your village,” he said, “and you are
going to hide her, and feed her, and protect her until I return. I shall
take away the body of Bolgani, so that no suspicion shall fall upon you,
and when I come back I shall expect to find my mate safe and unharmed.”
He had thought it best to describe La as his mate, since thus they might
understand that she was under his protection, and if they felt either
gratitude or fear toward him, La would be safer. Raising his face toward
the tree where she was hidden, he called to La to descend, and a moment
later she clambered down to the lower branches of one of the trees in
the compound and dropped into Tarzan’s arms.
“This is she,” he said to the assembled blacks, “guard her well and hide
her from the Bolgani. If, upon my return, I find that any harm has
befallen her, I shall take word to the Bolgani that it was you who did
this,” and he pointed to the corpse of the gorilla-man.
La turned appealingly toward him, fear showing in her eyes. “You are not
going to leave me here?” she asked.
“Temporarily only,” replied Tarzan. “These poor people are afraid that
if the death of this creature is traced to their village they shall all
suffer the wrath of his fellows, and so I have promised that I will
remove the evidence in such a way as to direct suspicion elsewhere. If
they are sufficiently high in the scale of evolution to harbor
sentiments of gratitude, which I doubt, they will feel obligated to me
for having slain this beast, as well as for preventing suspicion falling
upon them. For these reasons they should protect you, but to make
assurance doubly sure I have appealed also to their fear of the
Bolgani—a characteristic which I know they possess. I am sure that you
will be as safe here as with me until I return, otherwise I would not
leave you. But alone I can travel much faster, and while I am gone I
intend to find a way out of this valley, then I shall return for you and
together we may make our escape easily, or at least with greater
assurance of success than were we to blunder slowly about together.”
“You will come back?” she asked, a note of fear, longing, and appeal in
her voice.
“I will come back,” he replied, and then turning to the blacks: “Clear
out one of these huts for my mate, and see that she is not molested, and
that she is furnished with food and water. And remember what I said,
upon her safety your lives depend.”
Stooping, Tarzan lifted the dead gorilla-man to his shoulder, and the
simple blacks marveled at his prowess. Of great physical strength
themselves, there was not one of them but would have staggered under the
weight of Bolgani, yet this strange Tarmangani walked easily beneath his
burden, and when they had opened the gate in the palisade he trotted
down the jungle trail as though he carried nothing but his own frame. A
moment later he disappeared at a turn and was swallowed by the forest.
La turned to the blacks: “Prepare my hut,” she said, for she was very
tired and longed to rest. They eyed her askance and whispered among
themselves. It was evident to her that there was a difference of opinion
among them, and presently from snatches of conversation which she
overheard she realized that while some of the blacks were in favor of
obeying Tarzan’s injunctions implicitly, there were others who objected
strenuously and who wished to rid their village of her, lest she be
discovered there by the Bolgani, and the villagers be punished
accordingly.
“It would be better,” she heard one of the blacks say, “to turn her over
to the Bolgani at once and tell them that we saw her mate slay the
messenger of Numa. We will say that we tried to capture the Tarmangani
but that he escaped, and that we were only able to seize his mate. Thus
will we win the favor of Numa, and perhaps then he will not take so many
of our women and children.”
“But the Tarmangani is great,” replied one of the others. “He is more
powerful even than Bolgani. He would make a terrible enemy, and, as the
chances are that the Bolgani would not believe us we should then have
not only them but the Tarmangani to fear.”
“You are right,” cried La, “the Tarmangani is great. Far better will it
be for you to have him for friend than enemy. Single-handed he grapples
with Numa, the lion, and slays him. You saw with what ease he lifted the
body of the mighty Bolgani to his shoulder. You saw him trot lightly
down the jungle trail beneath his burden. With equal ease will he carry
the corpse through the trees of the forest, far above the ground. In all
the world there is no other like him, no other like Tarzan of the Apes.
If you are wise, Gomangani, you will have Tarzan for a friend.”
The blacks listened to her, their dull faces revealing nothing of what
was passing in their stupid brains. For a few moments they stood thus in
silence, the hulking, ignorant blacks upon one side, the slender,
beautiful white woman upon the other. Then La spoke.
“Go,” she cried imperiously, “and prepare my hut.” It was the High
Priestess of the Flaming God; La, the queen of Opar, addressing slaves.
Her regal mien, her commanding tones, wrought an instant change in the
villagers, and La knew then that Tarzan was right in his assumption that
they could be moved only through fear, for now they turned quickly,
cowering like whipped dogs, and hastened to a nearby hut, which they
quickly prepared for her, fetching fresh leaves and grasses for its
floor, and fruit and nuts and plantains for her meal.
When all was ready, La clambered up the rope and through the circular
opening in the floor of the hanging hut, which she found large and airy,
and now reasonably clean. She drew the rope up after her and threw
herself upon the soft bed they had prepared for her, and soon the gentle
swaying of the swinging hut, the soft murmur of the leaves above her,
the voices of the birds and insects combined with her own physical
exhaustion to lull her into deep slumber.