The palace guard gave way before the multitude of faithful that
battered at the doors of the king's house at the behest of their god.
The god was pleased. He wished to punish Henry, but he had never
before quite dared to assault the palace. Now he was victorious; and
in victory one is often generous, especially to him who made victory
possible.
Previously he had fully intended to break his promise to Tarzan and
revenge himself for the affront that had been put upon his godhood, but
now he was determined to set both the man and the girl free.
Tarzan cared nothing for the political aspects of the night's
adventure. He thought only of Rhonda. "We must find the girl," he said
to the gorilla god the moment that they had gained entrance to the
palace. "Where could she be?"
"She is probably with the other women. Come with me--they are upstairs."
At the top of the stairs stood Howard and Suffolk to do the bidding
of their king; but when they saw their god ascending toward them and
the lower hall and the stairs behind him filled with his followers and
recalled that the king had fled, they experienced a change of heart.
They received God on bended knee and assured him that they had driven
Henry out of the palace and were just on their way downstairs to fall
tooth and nail upon God's enemies; and God knew that they lied, for
it was he himself who had implanted the minds of men in their gorilla
skulls.
"Where is the hairless she?" demanded the gorilla god.
"Henry took her with him," replied Suffolk.
"Where did he go?"
"I do not know. He ran to the end of the corridor and disappeared."
"Some one must know," snapped Tarzan.
"Perhaps Catherine of Aragon knows," suggested Howard.
"Where is she?" demanded the ape-man.
They led the way to the door of the harem. Suffolk swung the door open.
"My Lord God!" he announced.
The shes, nervous and frightened, had been expecting to be dragged to
their death by the mob. When they saw the gorilla god they fell on
their faces before him.
"Have mercy, My Lord God!" cried Catherine of Aragon. "I am your
faithful servant."
"Then tell me where Henry is," demanded the god.
"He fled with the hairless she," replied the old queen.
"Where?"
The rage of a jealous female showed Catherine of Aragon how to have her
revenge. "Come with me," she said.
They followed her down the corridor to the room at the end and into
the closet there. Then she lifted the trap door. "This shaft leads to
a tunnel that runs under the city to the bank of the river beyond the
wall--he and that hairless thing went this way."
The keen scent of the ape-man detected the delicate aroma of the
white girl. He knew that the king gorilla had carried her into this
dark hole. Perhaps they were down there now, the king hiding from his
enemies until it would be safe for him to return; or perhaps there
was a tunnel running beyond the city as the old she had said, and the
gorilla had carried his captive off to some fastness in the mountains
surrounding the valley.
But in any event the ape-man must go on now alone--he could trust none
of the creatures about him to aid him in the pursuit and capture of
one of their own kind. He had already removed his rope from around the
neck of the gorilla god; now it lay coiled across one shoulder; at his
hip swung his hunting knife. Tarzan of the Apes was prepared for any
emergency.
Without a word, he swung down the pole into the black abyss below. The
gorilla god breathed a sigh of relief when he had departed.
Following the scent spoor of those he sought, Tarzan traversed the
tunnel that led from the bottom of the shaft to the river bank. He
pushed the great stone away from the entrance and stepped out into
the night. He stood erect, listening and sniffing the air. A scarcely
perceptible air current was moving up toward the head of the valley.
It bore no suspicion of the scent he had been following. All that
this indicated was that his quarry was not directly south of him. The
gorilla king might have gone to the east or the west or the north; but
the river flowed deep and swift on the east, and only the north and
west were left.
Tarzan bent close to the ground. Partly by scent, partly by touch he
found the trail leading toward the north; or, more accurately, toward
the northeast between the river and the cliffs. He moved off upon it;
but the necessity for stopping often to verify the trail delayed him,
so that he did not move quite as rapidly as the beast he pursued.
He was delayed again at the crossing of the river, for he passed the
place at which the trail turned sharply to the right into the stream.
He had to retrace his steps, searching carefully until he found it
again. Had the wind been right, had the gorilla been moving directly
upwind, Tarzan could have trailed him at a run.
The enforced delays caused no irritation or nervousness such as they
would have in an ordinary man, for the patience of the hunting beast is
infinite. Tarzan knew that eventually he would overhaul his quarry, and
that while they were on the move the girl was comparatively safe.
Dawn broke as he crossed the river. Far ahead he heard the roaring
of a hunting lion, and presently with it were mingled the snarls and
screams of another beast--a gorilla. And the ape-man knew that Numa
had attacked one of the great apes. He guessed that it was the gorilla
king. But what of the girl? He heard no human voice mingling its
screams with that of the anthropoid. He broke into a run.
Presently, from a little rise of rolling ground, he saw Numa crouching
upon his kill. It was light enough now for him to see that the lion was
feeding upon the body of a gorilla. The girl was nowhere in sight.
Tarzan made a detour to avoid the feeding carnivore. He had no
intention of risking an encounter with the king of beasts--an encounter
that would certainly delay him and possibly end in death.
He passed at a considerable distance upwind from the lion; and when the
beast caught his scent it turned its head in his direction and growled,
but it did not rise from its kill.
Beyond the lion, near the edge of the wood, Tarzan picked up the trail
of the girl again. He followed it across the second river. It turned
south here, upwind; and now he was below her and could follow her scent
spoor easily. At a trot he pressed on.
Now other scent spoor impinged upon his nostrils, mingling with those
of the girl. They were strange scents--a mixture of mangani and
tarmangani, of great ape and white man, of male and of female.
Tarzan increased his gait. That strange instinct that he shared with
the other beasts of the forest warned him that danger lay ahead--danger
for the girl and perhaps for himself. He moved swiftly and silently
through the fringe of forest that bordered the river.
The strange scents became stronger in his nostrils. A babel of angry
voices arose in the distance ahead. He was nearing them. He took to
the trees now, to his native element; and he felt at once the sense
of security and power that the trees always imparted to him. Here,
as nowhere else quite in the same measure, was he indeed lord of the
jungle.
Now he heard the angry, raging voice of a female. It was almost human,
yet the beast notes predominated; and he could recognize words spoken
in the language of the great apes. Tarzan was mystified.
He was almost upon them now, and a moment later he looked down upon a
strange scene. There were a score of monstrous creatures--part human,
part gorilla. And there was a naked white man just disappearing among
the trees with the girl he sought across one shoulder. Pursing them
was a white girl with golden hair streaming behind her. She was as
naked as the other beasts gibbering and screaming in her wake.
The man bearing Rhonda Terry ran swiftly, gaining upon the golden
haired devil behind him. They both out-stripped the other creatures
that had started in pursuit, and presently these desisted and gave up
the chase.
Tarzan, swinging through the trees, gained slowly on the strange pair;
and so engrossed were they in the business of escape and pursuit that
they did not glance up and discover him.
Now the ape-man caught up with the running girl and passed her. Her
burst of speed had taken toll of her strength, and she was slowing
down. The man had gained on her, too; and now considerable distance
separated them.
Through the trees ahead of him Tarzan saw a stretch of open ground,
beyond which rose rocky cliffs; then the forest ended. Swinging down to
earth, he continued the pursuit; but he had lost a little distance now,
and though he started to gain gradually on the fleeing man, he realized
that the other would reach the cliffs ahead of him. He could hear the
pursuing girl panting a short distance behind him.
Since he had first seen the naked man and woman and the grotesque
monsters that they had left behind in the forest, Tarzan had recalled
the story that the gorilla god had told him of the mutants that had
escaped destruction and formed a tribe upon this side of the valley.
These, then, were the terrible fruits of the old biologist's profane
experiment--children of the unnatural union of nature and science.
It was only the passing consciousness of a fact to which the ape-man
now had no time to give thought. His every faculty was bent upon the
effort of the moment--the overtaking of the man who carried Rhonda
Terry. Tarzan marvelled at the man's speed burdened as he was by the
weight of his captive.
The cliffs were only a short distance ahead of him now. At their
base were piled a tumbled mass of fragments that had fallen from
above during times past. The cliffs themselves presented a series of
irregular, broken ledges; and their face was pitted with the mouths of
innumerable caves.
As the man reached the rubble at the foot of the cliffs, he leaped from
rock to rock like a human chamois; and after him came the ape-man, but
slower; for he was unaccustomed to such terrain--and behind him, the
savage she.
Clambering from ledge to ledge the creature bore Rhonda Terry aloft;
and Tarzan followed, and the golden haired girl came after. Far up the
cliff face the man pushed Rhonda roughly into a cave mouth and turned
to face his pursuer.
Tarzan of the Apes turned abruptly to the right then and ran along a
narrow ascending ledge with the intention of gaining the ledge upon
which the other stood without having to ascend directly into the face
of his antagonist. The man guessed his purpose and started along his
own ledge to circumvent him. Below them the girl was clambering upward.
"Go back!" shouted the man in the language of the great apes. "Go back!
I kill!"
"Rhonda!" called the ape-man.
The girl crawled from the cave out onto the ledge. "Stanley!" she cried
in astonishment.
"Climb up the cliff," Tarzan directed. "You can follow the ledges up.
I can keep him occupied until you get to the top. Then go south toward
the lower end of the valley."
"I'll try," she replied and started to climb from ledge to ledge.
The girl ascending from below saw her and shouted to the man.
"Kreeg-ah!" she screamed. "The she is escaping!"
Now the man turned away from Tarzan and started in pursuit of Rhonda;
and the ape-man, instead of following directly after him, clambered to
a higher ledge, moving diagonally in the direction of the American girl.
Rhonda, spurred on by terror, was climbing much more rapidly than
she herself could have conceived possible. The narrow ledges, the
precarious footing would have appalled her at any other time; but now
she ignored all danger and thought only of reaching the summit of the
cliff before the strange white man overtook her.
And so it was that by a combination of her speed and Tarzan's strategy
the ape-man was able to head off her pursuer before he overtook her.
When the man realized that he had been intercepted he turned upon
Tarzan with a savage, snarling growl, his handsome face transformed
into that of a wild beast.
The ledge was narrow. It was obvious to Tarzan that the two could not
do battle upon it without falling; and while at this point there was
another ledge only a few feet below, it could only momentarily stay
their descent--while they fought they must roll from ledge to ledge
until one or both of them were badly injured or killed.
A quick glance showed him that the wild-girl was ascending toward
them. Below and beyond her appeared a number of the grotesque hybrids
that had again taken up the chase. Even if the ape-man were the one to
survive the duel, all these creatures might easily be upon him before
it was concluded.
Reason dictated that he should attempt to avoid so useless an encounter
in which he would presumably lose his life either in victory or defeat.
These observations and deductions registered upon his brain with the
speed of a camera shutter flashing one exposure rapidly after another.
Then the decision was taken from him--the man-beast charged. With a
bestial roar he charged.
The girl, ascending, screamed savage encouragement; the horrid mutants
gibbered and shrieked. Above them all, Rhonda turned at the savage
sounds and looked down. With parted lips, her hand pressed to her
heart, she watched with dismay and horror.
Crouching, Tarzan met the charge. The man-beast fought without
science but with great strength and ferocity. Whatever thin veneer of
civilization his contacts with men had imparted to the ape-man vanished
now. Here was a beast meeting a beast.
A low growl rumbled from the throat of the lord of the jungle,
snarling-muscles drew back his lip to expose strong, white teeth, the
primitive weapons of the first man.
Like charging bulls they came together, and like mad panthers each
sought the other's throat. Locked in feral embrace they swayed a moment
upon the ledge; then they toppled over the brink.
At that moment Rhonda Terry surrendered the last vestige of hope. She
had ascended the cliff to a point beyond which she could discover no
foothold for further progress. The man whom she believed to be Stanley
Obroski, whose newly discovered valor had become the sole support of
whatever hope of escape she might have entertained, was already as good
as dead; for if the fall did not kill him the creatures swarming up
the cliff toward him would. Yet self-pity was submerged in the grief
she felt for the fate of the man. Her original feeling of contempt
for him had changed to one of admiration, and this had grown into an
emotion that she could scarcely have analyzed herself. It was something
stronger than friendship; perhaps it was love. She did not want to see
him die; yet, fascinated, her eyes clung to the scene below.
But Tarzan had no mind to die now. In ferocity, in strength, he was
equal to his antagonist; in courage and intellect, he was his superior.
It was by his own intelligent effort that the two had so quickly
plunged from the ledge to another a few feet below; and as he had
directed the fall, so he directed the manner of their alighting. The
man-beast was underneath; Tarzan was on top.
The former struck upon the back of his head, as Tarzan had intended
that he should; and one of the ape-man's knees was at his stomach; so
not only was he stunned into insensibility, but the wind was knocked
out of him. He would not fight again for some considerable time.
Scarcely had they struck the lower ledge than Tarzan was upon his feet.
He saw the monsters scrambling quickly toward him; he saw the wild-girl
already reaching out to clutch him, and in the instant his plan was
formed.
The girl was on the ledge below, reaching for one of his ankles to
drag him down. He stooped quickly and seized her by the hair; then he
swung her, shrieking and screaming, to his shoulder.
She kicked and scratched and tried to bite him; but he held her until
he had carried her to a higher ledge; then he threw her down and made
his rope fast about her body. She fought viciously, but her strength
was no match for that of the ape-man.
The creatures scaling the cliff were almost upon them by the time that
Tarzan had made the rope secure; then he ran nimbly upward from ledge
to ledge dragging the girl after him; and in this way he was out of her
reach, and she could not hinder him.
The highest ledge, that from which Rhonda watched wide-eyed the
changing scenes of the drama being enacted below her, was quite the
widest of all. Opening on to it was the mouth of a cave. Above it the
cliff rose, unscalable, to the summit.
To this ledge Tarzan dragged the now strangely silent wild-girl; and
here he and Rhonda were cornered, their backs against a wall, with no
avenue of escape in any direction.
The girl clambered the last few feet to the ledge; and when she stood
erect, facing Tarzan, she no longer fought. The savage snarl had left
her face. She smiled into the eyes of the ape-man, and she was very
beautiful; but the man's attention was now upon the snarling pack, the
leaders of which were mounting rapidly toward this last ledge.
"Go back," shouted Tarzan, "or I kill your she!"
This was the plan that he had conceived to hold them off, using the
girl as a hostage. It was a good plan; but, like many another good
plan, it failed to function properly.
"They will not stop," said the girl. "They do not care if you kill
me. You have taken me. I belong to you. They will kill us all and eat
us--if they can. Throw rocks down on them; drive them back; then I will
show you how we can get away from them."
Following her own advice, she picked up a bit of loose rock and hurled
it at the nearest of the creatures. It struck him on the head, and he
tumbled backward to a lower ledge. The girl laughed and screamed taunts
and insults at her former companions.
Tarzan, realizing the efficacy of this mode of defense, gathered
fragments of rock and threw them at the approaching monsters; then
Rhonda joined in the barrage, and the three rained down a hail of
missiles that drove their enemies to the shelter of the caves below.
"They won't eat us for a while," laughed the girl.
"You eat human flesh?" asked Tarzan.
"Not Malb'yat nor I," she replied; "but they do--they eat anything."
"Who is Malb'yat?"
"My he--you fought with him and took me from him. Now I am yours. I
will fight for you. No one else shall have you!" She turned upon Rhonda
with a snarl, and would have attacked her had not Tarzan seized her.
"Leave her alone," he warned.
"You shall have no other she but me," said the wild-girl.
"She is not mine," explained the ape-man; "you must not harm her."
The girl continued to scowl at Rhonda, but she quit her efforts to
reach her. "I shall watch," she said. "What is her name?"
"Rhonda."
"And what is yours?" she demanded.
"You may call me Stanley," said Tarzan. He was amused, but not at all
disconcerted, by the strange turn events had taken. He realized that
their only chance of escape might be through this strange, beautiful,
little savage, and he could not afford to antagonize her.
"Stanley," she repeated, stumbling a little over the strange word. "My
name is Balza."
Tarzan thought that it fitted her well, for in the language of the
great apes it meant golden girl. Ape names are always descriptive. His
own meant white skin. Malb'yat was yellow head.
Balza stooped quickly and picked up a rock which she hurled at a head
that had been cautiously poked from a cave mouth below them. She scored
another hit and laughed gaily.
"We will keep them away until night," she said; "then we will go. They
will not follow us at night. They are afraid of the dark. If we went
now they would follow us, and there are so many of them that we should
all be killed."
The girl interested Tarzan. Remembering what the gorilla god had told
him of these mutants, he had assumed that her perfect human body was
dominated by the brain of a gorilla; but he had not failed to note that
she had repeated the name he had given her--something no gorilla could
have done.
"Do you speak English?" he asked in that language.
She looked at him in surprise. "Yes," she replied; "but I didn't
imagine that you did."
"Where did you learn it?" he asked.
"In London--before they drove me out."
"Why did they drive you out?"
"Because I was not like them. My mother kept me hidden for years, but
at last they found me out. They would have killed me had I remained."
"And Malb'yat is like you?"
"No, Malb'yat is like the others. He cannot learn a single English
word. I like you much better. I hope that you killed Malb'yat."
"I didn't, though," said the ape-man. "I see him moving on the ledge
down there where he has been lying."
The girl looked; then she picked up a rock and flung it at the
unfortunate Malb'yat. It missed him, and he crawled to shelter. "If he
gets me back he'll beat me," she remarked.
"I should think he'd kill you," said Tarzan.
"No--there is no one else like me. The others are ugly--I am beautiful.
No, he will never kill me, but the shes would all like to." She laughed
gaily. "I suppose this one would like to kill me." She nodded toward
Rhonda.
The American girl had been a surprised and interested listener to that
part of the conversation that had been carried on in English, but she
had not spoken.
"I do not want to kill you," she said. "There is no reason why we
should not be friends."
Balza looked at her in surprise; then she studied her carefully.
"Is she speaking the truth?" she asked Tarzan.