THE SPOOR OF REVENGE
AS Tarzan of the Apes, adapting his speed to that of Jad-bal-ja, made
his comparatively slow way toward home, he reviewed with varying
emotions the experiences of the past week. While he had been
unsuccessful in raiding the treasure vaults of Opar, the sack of
diamonds which he carried compensated several-fold for this miscarriage
of his plans. His only concern now was for the safety of his Waziri,
and, perhaps, a troublesome desire to seek out the whites who had
drugged him and mete out to them the punishment they deserved. In view,
however, of his greater desire to return home he decided to make no
effort at apprehending them for the time being at least.
Hunting together, feeding together, and sleeping together, the man and
the great lion trod the savage jungle trails toward home. Yesterday they
shared the meat of Bara, the deer, today they feasted upon the carcass
of Horta, the boar, and between them there was little chance that either
would go hungry.
They had come within a day’s march of the bungalow when Tarzan
discovered the spoor of a considerable body of warriors. As some men
devour the latest stock-market quotations as though their very existence
depended upon an accurate knowledge of them, so Tarzan of the Apes
devoured every scrap of information that the jungle held for him, for,
in truth, an accurate knowledge of all that this information could
impart to him had been during his lifetime a _sine qua non_ to his
existence. So now he carefully examined the spoor that lay before him,
several days old though it was and partially obliterated by the passage
of beasts since it had been made, but yet legible enough to the keen
eyes and nostrils of the ape-man. His partial indifference suddenly gave
way to keen interest, for among the footprints of the great warriors he
saw now and again the smaller one of a white woman—a loved footprint
that he knew as well as you know your mother’s face.
“The Waziri returned and told her that I was missing,” he soliloquized,
“and now she has set out with them to search for me.” He turned to the
lion. “Well, Jad-bal-ja, once again we turn away from home—but no,
where she is is home.”
The direction that the trail led rather mystified Tarzan of the Apes, as
it was not along the direct route toward Opar, but in a rather more
southerly direction. On the sixth day his keen ears caught the sound of
approaching men, and presently there was wafted to his nostrils the
spoor of blacks. Sending Jad-bal-ja into a thicket to hide, Tarzan took
to the trees and moved rapidly in the direction of the approaching
negroes. As the distance between them lessened the scent became
stronger, until, even before he saw them, Tarzan knew that they were
Waziri, but the one effluvium that would have filled his soul with
happiness was lacking.
It was a surprised Usula who, at the head of the sad and dejected
Waziri, came at the turning of the trail suddenly face to face with his
master.
“Tarzan of the Apes!” cried Usula. “Is it indeed you?”
“It is none other,” replied the ape-man, “but where is Lady Greystoke?”
“Ah, master, how can we tell you!” cried Usula.
“You do not mean—” cried Tarzan. “It cannot be. Nothing could happen to
her while she was guarded by my Waziri!”
The warriors hung their heads in shame and sorrow. “We offer our lives
for hers,” said Usula, simply. He threw down his spear and shield and,
stretching his arms wide apart, bared his great breast to Tarzan.
“Strike, Bwana,” he said.
The ape-man turned away with bowed head. Presently he looked at Usula
again. “Tell me how it happened,” he said, “and forget your foolish
speech as I have forgotten the suggestion which prompted it.”
Briefly Usula narrated the events which had led up to the death of Jane,
and when he was done Tarzan of the Apes spoke but three words, voicing a
question which was typical of him.
“Where is Luvini?” he asked.
“Ah, that we do not know,” replied Usula.
“But I shall know,” said Tarzan of the Apes. “Go upon your way, my
children, back to your huts, and your women and your children, and when
next you see Tarzan of the Apes you will know that Luvini is dead.”
They begged permission to accompany him, but he would not listen to
them.
“You are needed at home at this time of year,” he said. “Already have
you been gone too long from the herds and fields. Return, then, and
carry word to Korak, but tell him that it is my wish that he, too,
remains at home—if I fail, then may he come and take up my unfinished
work if he wishes to do so.” As he ceased speaking he turned back in the
direction from which he had come, and whistled once a single, low,
long-drawn note, and a moment later Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion, bounded
into view along the jungle trail.
“The golden lion!” cried Usula. “When he escaped from Keewazi it was to
search for his beloved Bwana.”
Tarzan nodded. “He followed many marches to a strange country until he
found me,” he said, and then he bid the Waziri good-bye and bent his
steps once more away from home in search of Luvini and revenge.
John Peebles, wedged in the crotch of a large tree, greeted the coming
dawn with weary eyes. Near him was Dick Throck, similarly braced in
another crotch, while Kraski, more intelligent and therefore possessing
more inventive genius, had rigged a small platform of branches across
two parallel boughs, upon which he lay in comparative comfort. Ten feet
above him Bluber swung, half exhausted and wholly terrified, to a
smaller branch, supported in something that approximated safety by a
fork of the branch to which he clung.
“Gord,” groaned Peebles, “hi’ll let the bloody lions ’ave me before
hi’ll spend another such a night as this, an’ ’ere we are, ’n that’s
that!”
“And blime, too,” said Throck, “hi sleeps on the ground hafter this,
lions or no lions.”
“If the combined intelligence of the three of you was equal to that of a
walrus,” remarked Kraski, “we might have slept in comparative safety and
comfort last night on the ground.”
“Hey there, Bluber, _Mister_ Kraski is spikin’ to yer,” called Peebles
in fine sarcasm, accenting the Mister.
“_Oi! Oi!_ I don’t care vot nobody says,” moaned Bluber.
“’E wants us to build a ’ouse for ’im hevery night,” continued Peebles,
“while ’e stands abaht and tells us bloomin’ well ’ow to do it, and ’im,
bein’ a fine gentleman, don’t do no work.”
“Why should I do any work with my hands when you two big beasts haven’t
got anything else to work with?” asked Kraski. “You would all have
starved by this time if I hadn’t found food for you. And you’ll be lion
meat in the end, or die of exhaustion if you don’t listen to me—not
that it would be much loss.”
The others paid no attention to his last sally. As a matter of fact they
had all been quarreling so much for such a long time that they really
paid little attention to one another. With the exception of Peebles and
Throck they all hated one another cordially, and only clung together
because they were afraid to separate. Slowly Peebles lowered his bulk to
the ground. Throck followed him, and then came Kraski, and then,
finally, Bluber, who stood for a moment in silence, looking down at his
disreputable clothing.
“_Mein Gott!_” he exclaimed at last. “Look at me! Dis suit, vot it cost
me tventy guineas, look at it. Ruined. Ruined. It vouldn’t bring vun
penny in der pound.”
“The hell with your clothes!” exclaimed Kraski. “Here we are, lost, half
starved, constantly menaced by wild animals, and maybe, for all we know,
by cannibals, with Flora missing in the jungle, and you can stand there
and talk about your ’tventy guinea’ suit. You make me tired, Bluber. But
come on, we might as well be moving.”
“Which way?” asked Throck.
“Why, to the west, of course,” replied Kraski. “The coast is there, and
there is nothing else for us to do but try to reach it.”
“We can’t reach it by goin’ east,” roared Peebles, “an’ ’ere we are, ’n
that’s that.”
“Who said we could?” demanded Kraski.
“Well, we was travelin’ east all day yesterday,” said Peebles. “I knew
all the time that there was somethin’ wrong, and I just got it figured
out.”
Throck looked at his partner in stupid surprise. “What do you mean?” he
growled. “What makes you think we was travelin’ east?”
“It’s easy enough,” replied Peebles, “and I can prove it to you. Because
this party here knows so much more than the rest of us we’ve been
travelin’ straight toward the interior ever since the niggers deserted
us.” He nodded toward the Russian, who stood with his hands on his hips,
eyeing the other quizzically.
“If you think I’m taking you in the wrong direction, Peebles,” said
Kraski, “you just turn around and go the other way; but I’m going to
keep on the way we’ve been going, which is the right way.”
“It ain’t the right way,” retorted Peebles, “and I’ll show yer. Listen
here. When you travel west the sun is at your left side, isn’t it—that
is, all durin’ the middle of the day. Well, ever since we’ve been
travelin’ without the niggers the sun has been on our right. I thought
all the time there was somethin’ wrong, but I could never figure it out
until just now. It’s plain as the face on your nose. We’ve been
travelin’ due east right along.”
“Blime,” cried Throck, “that we have, due east, and this blighter thinks
as ’ow ’e knows it all.”
“_Oi!_” groaned Bluber, “und ve got to valk it all back again yet, once
more?”
Kraski laughed and turned away to resume the march in the direction he
had chosen. “You fellows go on your own way if you want to,” he said,
“and while you’re traveling, just ponder the fact that you’re south of
the equator and that therefore the sun is always in the north, which,
however, doesn’t change its old-fashioned habit of setting in the west.”
Bluber was the first to grasp the truth of Kraski’s statement. “Come on,
boys,” he said, “Carl vas right,” and he turned and followed the
Russian.
Peebles stood scratching his head, entirely baffled by the puzzling
problem, which Throck, also, was pondering deeply. Presently the latter
turned after Bluber and Kraski. “Come on, John,” he said to Peebles, “hi
don’t hunderstand it, but hi guess they’re right. They are headin’ right
toward where the sun set last night, and that sure must be west.”
His theory tottering, Peebles followed Throck, though he remained
unconvinced.
The four men, hungry and footsore, had dragged their weary way along the
jungle trail toward the west for several hours in vain search for game.
Unschooled in jungle craft they blundered on. There might have been on
every hand fierce carnivore or savage warriors, but so dull are the
perceptive faculties of civilized man, the most blatant foe might have
stalked them unperceived.
And so it was that shortly after noon, as they were crossing a small
clearing, the zip of an arrow that barely missed Bluber’s head, brought
them to a sudden, terrified halt. With a shrill scream of terror the Jew
crumpled to the ground. Kraski threw his rifle to his shoulder and
fired.
“There!” he cried, “behind those bushes,” and then another arrow, from
another direction, pierced his forearm. Peebles and Throck, beefy and
cumbersome, got into action with less celerity than the Russian, but,
like him, they showed no indication of fear.
“Down,” cried Kraski, suiting the action to the word. “Lie down and let
them have it.”
Scarcely had the three men dropped among the long grass when a score of
pigmy hunters came into the open, and a volley of arrows whizzed above
the prone men, while from a nearby tree two steel-gray eyes looked down
upon the ambush.
Bluber lay upon his belly with his face buried in his arms, his useless
rifle lying at his side, but Kraski, Peebles, and Throck, fighting for
their lives, pumped lead into the band of yelling pigmies.
Kraski and Peebles each dropped a native with his rifle and then the foe
withdrew into the concealing safety of the surrounding jungle. For a
moment there was a cessation of hostilities. Utter silence reigned, and
then a voice broke the quiet from the verdure of a nearby forest giant.
“Do not fire until I tell you to,” it said, in English, “and I will save
you.”
Bluber raised his head. “Come qvick! Come qvick!” he cried, “ve vill not
shoot. Safe me, safe me, und I giff you five pounds.”
From the tree from which the voice had issued there came a single, low,
long-drawn, whistled note, and then silence for a time.
The pigmies, momentarily surprised by the mysterious voice emanating
from the foliage of a tree, ceased their activities, but presently,
hearing nothing to arouse their fear, they emerged from the cover of the
bushes and launched another volley of arrows toward the four men lying
among the grasses in the clearing. Simultaneously the figure of a giant
white leaped from the lower branches of a patriarch of the jungle, as a
great black-maned lion sprang from the thicket below.
“_Oi!_” shrieked Bluber, and again buried his face in his arms.
For an instant the pigmies stood terrified, and then their leader cried:
“It is Tarzan!” and turned and fled into the jungle.
“Yes, it is Tarzan—Tarzan of the Apes,” cried Lord Greystoke. “It is
Tarzan and the golden lion,” but he spoke in the dialect of the pigmies,
and the whites understood no word of what he said. Then he turned to
them. “The Gomangani have gone,” he said; “get up.”
The four men crawled to their feet. “Who are you, and what are you doing
here?” demanded Tarzan of the Apes. “But I do not need to ask who you
are. You are the men who drugged me, and left me helpless in your camp,
a prey to the first passing lion or savage native.”
Bluber stumbled forward, rubbing his palms together and cringing and
smiling. “_Oi! Oi!_ Mr. Tarzan, ve did not know you. Neffer vould ve did
vat ve done, had ve known it vas Tarzan of the Apes. Safe me! Ten
pounds—tventy pounds—anyt’ing. Name your own price. Safe me, und it is
yours.”
Tarzan ignored the Jew and turned toward the others. “I am looking for
one of your men,” he said; “a black named Luvini. He killed my wife.
Where is he?”
“We know nothing of that,” said Kraski. “Luvini betrayed us and deserted
us. Your wife and another white woman were in our camp at the time. None
of us knows what became of them. They were behind us when we took our
post to defend the camp from our men and the slaves of the Arabs. Your
Waziri were there. After the enemy had withdrawn we found that the two
women had disappeared. We do not know what became of them. We are
looking for them now.”
“My Waziri told me as much,” said Tarzan, “but have you seen aught of
Luvini since?”
“No, we have not,” replied Kraski.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Tarzan.
“We came with Mr. Bluber on a scientific expedition,” replied the
Russian. “We have had a great deal of trouble. Our head-men, askari, and
porters have mutinied and deserted. We are absolutely alone and
helpless.”
“_Oi! Oi!_” cried Bluber. “Safe us! Safe us! But keep dot lion avay. He
makes me nerfous.”
“He will not hurt you—unless I tell him to,” said Tarzan.
“Den please don’t tell him to,” cried Bluber.
“Where do you want to go?” asked Tarzan.
“We are trying to get back to the coast,” replied Kraski, “and from
there to London.”
“Come with me,” said Tarzan, “possibly I can help you. You do not
deserve it, but I cannot see white men perish here in the jungle.”
They followed him toward the west, and that night they made camp beside
a small jungle stream.
It was difficult for the four Londoners to accustom themselves to the
presence of the great lion, and Bluber was in a state of palpable
terror.
As they squatted around the fire after the evening meal, which Tarzan
had provided, Kraski suggested that they set to and build some sort of a
shelter against the wild beasts.
“It will not be necessary,” said Tarzan. “Jad-bal-ja will guard you. He
will sleep here beside Tarzan of the Apes, and what one of us does not
hear the other will.”
Bluber sighed. “_Mein Gott!_” he cried. “I should giff ten pounds for
vun night’s sleep.”
“You may have it tonight for less than that,” replied Tarzan, “for
nothing shall befall you while Jad-bal-ja and I are here.”
“Vell, den I t’ink I say good night,” said the Jew, and moving a few
paces away from the fire he curled up and was soon asleep. Throck and
Peebles followed suit, and shortly after Kraski, too.
As the Russian lay, half dozing, his eyes partially open, he saw the
ape-man rise from the squatting position he had maintained before the
fire, and turn toward a nearby tree. As he did so something fell from
beneath his loin cloth—a little sack made of hides—a little sack,
bulging with its contents.
Kraski, thoroughly awakened now, watched it as the ape-man moved off a
short distance, accompanied by Jad-bal-ja, and lay down to sleep.
The great lion curled beside the prostrate man, and presently the
Russian was assured that both slept. Immediately he commenced crawling,
stealthily and slowly toward the little package lying beside the fire.
With each forward move that he made he paused and looked at the
recumbent figures of the two ferocious beasts before him, but both slept
on peacefully. At last the Russian could reach out and grasp the sack,
and drawing it toward him he stuffed it quickly inside his shirt. Then
he turned and crawled slowly and carefully back to his place beyond the
fire. There, lying with his head upon one arm as though in profound
slumber, he felt carefully of the sack with the fingers of his left
hand.
“They feel like pebbles,” he muttered to himself, “and doubtless that is
what they are, for the barbaric ornamentation of this savage barbarian
who is a peer of England. It does not seem possible that this wild beast
has sat in the House of Lords.”
Noiselessly Kraski undid the knot which held the mouth of the sack
closed, and a moment later he let a portion of the contents trickle
forth into his open palm.
“My God!” he cried, “diamonds!”
Greedily he poured them all out and gloated over them—great
scintillating stones of the first water—five pounds of pure, white
diamonds, representing so fabulous a fortune that the very contemplation
of it staggered the Russian.
“My God!” he repeated, “the wealth of Crœsus in my own hand.”
Quickly he gathered up the stones and replaced them in the sack, always
with one eye upon Tarzan and Jad-bal-ja; but neither stirred, and
presently he had returned them all to the pouch and slipped the package
inside his shirt.
“Tomorrow,” he muttered, “tomorrow—would to God that I had the nerve to
attempt it tonight.”
In the middle of the following morning Tarzan, with the four Londoners,
approached a good sized, stockaded village, containing many huts. He was
received not only graciously, but with the deference due an emperor.
The whites were awed by the attitude of the black chief and his warriors
as Tarzan was conducted into their presence.
After the usual ceremony had been gone through, Tarzan turned and waved
his hand toward the four Europeans. “These are my friends,” he said to
the black chief, “and they wish to reach the coast in safety. Send with
them, then, sufficient warriors to feed and guard them during the
journey. It is I, Tarzan of the Apes, who requests this favor.”
“Tarzan of the Apes, the great chief, Lord of the Jungle, has but to
command,” replied the black.
“Good!” exclaimed Tarzan, “feed them well and treat them well. I have
other business to attend to and may not remain.”
“Their bellies shall be filled, and they shall reach the coast
unscathed,” replied the chief.
Without a word of farewell, without even a sign that he realized their
existence, Tarzan of the Apes passed from the sight of the four
Europeans, while at his heels paced Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion.
[Illustration: Hunting together, the man and the great lion trod the
paths toward home]