Beasts at Bay
Slowly Tarzan unfolded the note the sailor had thrust into his hand,
and read it. At first it made little impression on his sorrow-numbed
senses, but finally the full purport of the hideous plot of revenge
unfolded itself before his imagination.
“This will explain to you” [the note read] “the exact nature of my
intentions relative to your offspring and to you.
“You were born an ape. You lived naked in the jungles—to your own we
have returned you; but your son shall rise a step above his sire. It is
the immutable law of evolution.
“The father was a beast, but the son shall be a man—he shall take the
next ascending step in the scale of progress. He shall be no naked
beast of the jungle, but shall wear a loin-cloth and copper anklets,
and, perchance, a ring in his nose, for he is to be reared by men—a
tribe of savage cannibals.
“I might have killed you, but that would have curtailed the full
measure of the punishment you have earned at my hands.
“Dead, you could not have suffered in the knowledge of your son’s
plight; but living and in a place from which you may not escape to seek
or succour your child, you shall suffer worse than death for all the
years of your life in contemplation of the horrors of your son’s
existence.
“This, then, is to be a part of your punishment for having dared to pit
yourself against
N. R.
“P.S.—The balance of your punishment has to do with what shall
presently befall your wife—that I shall leave to your imagination.”
As he finished reading, a slight sound behind him brought him back with
a start to the world of present realities.
Instantly his senses awoke, and he was again Tarzan of the Apes.
As he wheeled about, it was a beast at bay, vibrant with the instinct
of self-preservation, that faced a huge bull-ape that was already
charging down upon him.
The two years that had elapsed since Tarzan had come out of the savage
forest with his rescued mate had witnessed slight diminution of the
mighty powers that had made him the invincible lord of the jungle. His
great estates in Uziri had claimed much of his time and attention, and
there he had found ample field for the practical use and retention of
his almost superhuman powers; but naked and unarmed to do battle with
the shaggy, bull-necked beast that now confronted him was a test that
the ape-man would scarce have welcomed at any period of his wild
existence.
But there was no alternative other than to meet the rage-maddened
creature with the weapons with which nature had endowed him.
Over the bull’s shoulder Tarzan could see now the heads and shoulders
of perhaps a dozen more of these mighty fore-runners of primitive man.
He knew, however, that there was little chance that they would attack
him, since it is not within the reasoning powers of the anthropoid to
be able to weigh or appreciate the value of concentrated action against
an enemy—otherwise they would long since have become the dominant
creatures of their haunts, so tremendous a power of destruction lies in
their mighty thews and savage fangs.
With a low snarl the beast now hurled himself at Tarzan, but the
ape-man had found, among other things in the haunts of civilized man,
certain methods of scientific warfare that are unknown to the jungle
folk.
Whereas, a few years since, he would have met the brute rush with brute
force, he now sidestepped his antagonist’s headlong charge, and as the
brute hurtled past him swung a mighty right to the pit of the ape’s
stomach.
With a howl of mingled rage and anguish the great anthropoid bent
double and sank to the ground, though almost instantly he was again
struggling to his feet.
Before he could regain them, however, his white-skinned foe had wheeled
and pounced upon him, and in the act there dropped from the shoulders
of the English lord the last shred of his superficial mantle of
civilization.
Once again he was the jungle beast revelling in bloody conflict with
his kind. Once again he was Tarzan, son of Kala the she-ape.
His strong, white teeth sank into the hairy throat of his enemy as he
sought the pulsing jugular.
Powerful fingers held the mighty fangs from his own flesh, or clenched
and beat with the power of a steam-hammer upon the snarling,
foam-flecked face of his adversary.
In a circle about them the balance of the tribe of apes stood watching
and enjoying the struggle. They muttered low gutturals of approval as
bits of white hide or hairy bloodstained skin were torn from one
contestant or the other. But they were silent in amazement and
expectation when they saw the mighty white ape wriggle upon the back of
their king, and, with steel muscles tensed beneath the armpits of his
antagonist, bear down mightily with his open palms upon the back of the
thick bullneck, so that the king ape could but shriek in agony and
flounder helplessly about upon the thick mat of jungle grass.
As Tarzan had overcome the huge Terkoz that time years before when he
had been about to set out upon his quest for human beings of his own
kind and colour, so now he overcame this other great ape with the same
wrestling hold upon which he had stumbled by accident during that other
combat. The little audience of fierce anthropoids heard the creaking of
their king’s neck mingling with his agonized shrieks and hideous
roaring.
Then there came a sudden crack, like the breaking of a stout limb
before the fury of the wind. The bullet-head crumpled forward upon its
flaccid neck against the great hairy chest—the roaring and the
shrieking ceased.
The little pig-eyes of the onlookers wandered from the still form of
their leader to that of the white ape that was rising to its feet
beside the vanquished, then back to their king as though in wonder that
he did not arise and slay this presumptuous stranger.
They saw the new-comer place a foot upon the neck of the quiet figure
at his feet and, throwing back his head, give vent to the wild, uncanny
challenge of the bull-ape that has made a kill. Then they knew that
their king was dead.
Across the jungle rolled the horrid notes of the victory cry. The
little monkeys in the tree-tops ceased their chattering. The
harsh-voiced, brilliant-plumed birds were still. From afar came the
answering wail of a leopard and the deep roar of a lion.
It was the old Tarzan who turned questioning eyes upon the little knot
of apes before him. It was the old Tarzan who shook his head as though
to toss back a heavy mane that had fallen before his face—an old habit
dating from the days that his great shock of thick, black hair had
fallen about his shoulders, and often tumbled before his eyes when it
had meant life or death to him to have his vision unobstructed.
The ape-man knew that he might expect an immediate attack on the part
of that particular surviving bull-ape who felt himself best fitted to
contend for the kingship of the tribe. Among his own apes he knew that
it was not unusual for an entire stranger to enter a community and,
after having dispatched the king, assume the leadership of the tribe
himself, together with the fallen monarch’s mates.
On the other hand, if he made no attempt to follow them, they might
move slowly away from him, later to fight among themselves for the
supremacy. That he could be king of them, if he so chose, he was
confident; but he was not sure he cared to assume the sometimes irksome
duties of that position, for he could see no particular advantage to be
gained thereby.
One of the younger apes, a huge, splendidly muscled brute, was edging
threateningly closer to the ape-man. Through his bared fighting fangs
there issued a low, sullen growl.
Tarzan watched his every move, standing rigid as a statue. To have
fallen back a step would have been to precipitate an immediate charge;
to have rushed forward to meet the other might have had the same
result, or it might have put the bellicose one to flight—it all
depended upon the young bull’s stock of courage.
To stand perfectly still, waiting, was the middle course. In this event
the bull would, according to custom, approach quite close to the object
of his attention, growling hideously and baring slavering fangs. Slowly
he would circle about the other, as though with a chip upon his
shoulder; and this he did, even as Tarzan had foreseen.
It might be a bluff royal, or, on the other hand, so unstable is the
mind of an ape, a passing impulse might hurl the hairy mass, tearing
and rending, upon the man without an instant’s warning.
As the brute circled him Tarzan turned slowly, keeping his eyes ever
upon the eyes of his antagonist. He had appraised the young bull as one
who had never quite felt equal to the task of overthrowing his former
king, but who one day would have done so. Tarzan saw that the beast was
of wondrous proportions, standing over seven feet upon his short, bowed
legs.
His great, hairy arms reached almost to the ground even when he stood
erect, and his fighting fangs, now quite close to Tarzan’s face, were
exceptionally long and sharp. Like the others of his tribe, he differed
in several minor essentials from the apes of Tarzan’s boyhood.
At first the ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at sight of the
shaggy bodies of the anthropoids—a hope that by some strange freak of
fate he had been again returned to his own tribe; but a closer
inspection had convinced him that these were another species.
As the threatening bull continued his stiff and jerky circling of the
ape-man, much after the manner that you have noted among dogs when a
strange canine comes among them, it occurred to Tarzan to discover if
the language of his own tribe was identical with that of this other
family, and so he addressed the brute in the language of the tribe of
Kerchak.
“Who are you,” he asked, “who threatens Tarzan of the Apes?”
The hairy brute looked his surprise.
“I am Akut,” replied the other in the same simple, primal tongue which
is so low in the scale of spoken languages that, as Tarzan had
surmised, it was identical with that of the tribe in which the first
twenty years of his life had been spent.
“I am Akut,” said the ape. “Molak is dead. I am king. Go away or I
shall kill you!”
“You saw how easily I killed Molak,” replied Tarzan. “So I could kill
you if I cared to be king. But Tarzan of the Apes would not be king of
the tribe of Akut. All he wishes is to live in peace in this country.
Let us be friends. Tarzan of the Apes can help you, and you can help
Tarzan of the Apes.”
“You cannot kill Akut,” replied the other. “None is so great as Akut.
Had you not killed Molak, Akut would have done so, for Akut was ready
to be king.”
For answer the ape-man hurled himself upon the great brute who during
the conversation had slightly relaxed his vigilance.
In the twinkling of an eye the man had seized the wrist of the great
ape, and before the other could grapple with him had whirled him about
and leaped upon his broad back.
Down they went together, but so well had Tarzan’s plan worked out that
before ever they touched the ground he had gained the same hold upon
Akut that had broken Molak’s neck.
Slowly he brought the pressure to bear, and then as in days gone by he
had given Kerchak the chance to surrender and live, so now he gave to
Akut—in whom he saw a possible ally of great strength and resource—the
option of living in amity with him or dying as he had just seen his
savage and heretofore invincible king die.
“Ka-Goda?” whispered Tarzan to the ape beneath him.
It was the same question that he had whispered to Kerchak, and in the
language of the apes it means, broadly, “Do you surrender?”
Akut thought of the creaking sound he had heard just before Molak’s
thick neck had snapped, and he shuddered.
He hated to give up the kingship, though, so again he struggled to free
himself; but a sudden torturing pressure upon his vertebra brought an
agonized “ka-goda!” from his lips.
Tarzan relaxed his grip a trifle.
“You may still be king, Akut,” he said. “Tarzan told you that he did
not wish to be king. If any question your right, Tarzan of the Apes
will help you in your battles.”
The ape-man rose, and Akut came slowly to his feet. Shaking his bullet
head and growling angrily, he waddled toward his tribe, looking first
at one and then at another of the larger bulls who might be expected to
challenge his leadership.
But none did so; instead, they drew away as he approached, and
presently the whole pack moved off into the jungle, and Tarzan was left
alone once more upon the beach.
The ape-man was sore from the wounds that Molak had inflicted upon him,
but he was inured to physical suffering and endured it with the calm
and fortitude of the wild beasts that had taught him to lead the jungle
life after the manner of all those that are born to it.
His first need, he realized, was for weapons of offence and defence,
for his encounter with the apes, and the distant notes of the savage
voices of Numa the lion, and Sheeta, the panther, warned him that his
was to be no life of indolent ease and security.
It was but a return to the old existence of constant bloodshed and
danger—to the hunting and the being hunted. Grim beasts would stalk
him, as they had stalked him in the past, and never would there be a
moment, by savage day or by cruel night, that he might not have instant
need of such crude weapons as he could fashion from the materials at
hand.
Upon the shore he found an out-cropping of brittle, igneous rock. By
dint of much labour he managed to chip off a narrow sliver some twelve
inches long by a quarter of an inch thick. One edge was quite thin for
a few inches near the tip. It was the rudiment of a knife.
With it he went into the jungle, searching until he found a fallen tree
of a certain species of hardwood with which he was familiar. From this
he cut a small straight branch, which he pointed at one end.
Then he scooped a small, round hole in the surface of the prostrate
trunk. Into this he crumbled a few bits of dry bark, minutely shredded,
after which he inserted the tip of his pointed stick, and, sitting
astride the bole of the tree, spun the slender rod rapidly between his
palms.
After a time a thin smoke rose from the little mass of tinder, and a
moment later the whole broke into flame. Heaping some larger twigs and
sticks upon the tiny fire, Tarzan soon had quite a respectable blaze
roaring in the enlarging cavity of the dead tree.
Into this he thrust the blade of his stone knife, and as it became
superheated he would withdraw it, touching a spot near the thin edge
with a drop of moisture. Beneath the wetted area a little flake of the
glassy material would crack and scale away.
Thus, very slowly, the ape-man commenced the tedious operation of
putting a thin edge upon his primitive hunting-knife.
He did not attempt to accomplish the feat all in one sitting. At first
he was content to achieve a cutting edge of a couple of inches, with
which he cut a long, pliable bow, a handle for his knife, a stout
cudgel, and a goodly supply of arrows.
These he cached in a tall tree beside a little stream, and here also he
constructed a platform with a roof of palm-leaves above it.
When all these things had been finished it was growing dusk, and Tarzan
felt a strong desire to eat.
He had noted during the brief incursion he had made into the forest
that a short distance up-stream from his tree there was a much-used
watering place, where, from the trampled mud of either bank, it was
evident beasts of all sorts and in great numbers came to drink. To this
spot the hungry ape-man made his silent way.
Through the upper terrace of the tree-tops he swung with the grace and
ease of a monkey. But for the heavy burden upon his heart he would have
been happy in this return to the old free life of his boyhood.
Yet even with that burden he fell into the little habits and manners of
his early life that were in reality more a part of him than the thin
veneer of civilization that the past three years of his association
with the white men of the outer world had spread lightly over him—a
veneer that only hid the crudities of the beast that Tarzan of the Apes
had been.
Could his fellow-peers of the House of Lords have seen him then they
would have held up their noble hands in holy horror.
Silently he crouched in the lower branches of a great forest giant that
overhung the trail, his keen eyes and sensitive ears strained into the
distant jungle, from which he knew his dinner would presently emerge.
Nor had he long to wait.
Scarce had he settled himself to a comfortable position, his lithe,
muscular legs drawn well up beneath him as the panther draws his
hindquarters in preparation for the spring, than Bara, the deer, came
daintily down to drink.
But more than Bara was coming. Behind the graceful buck came another
which the deer could neither see nor scent, but whose movements were
apparent to Tarzan of the Apes because of the elevated position of the
ape-man’s ambush.
He knew not yet exactly the nature of the thing that moved so
stealthily through the jungle a few hundred yards behind the deer; but
he was convinced that it was some great beast of prey stalking Bara for
the selfsame purpose as that which prompted him to await the fleet
animal. Numa, perhaps, or Sheeta, the panther.
In any event, Tarzan could see his repast slipping from his grasp
unless Bara moved more rapidly toward the ford than at present.
Even as these thoughts passed through his mind some noise of the
stalker in his rear must have come to the buck, for with a sudden start
he paused for an instant, trembling, in his tracks, and then with a
swift bound dashed straight for the river and Tarzan. It was his
intention to flee through the shallow ford and escape upon the opposite
side of the river.
Not a hundred yards behind him came Numa.
Tarzan could see him quite plainly now. Below the ape-man Bara was
about to pass. Could he do it? But even as he asked himself the
question the hungry man launched himself from his perch full upon the
back of the startled buck.
In another instant Numa would be upon them both, so if the ape-man were
to dine that night, or ever again, he must act quickly.
Scarcely had he touched the sleek hide of the deer with a momentum that
sent the animal to its knees than he had grasped a horn in either hand,
and with a single quick wrench twisted the animal’s neck completely
round, until he felt the vertebrae snap beneath his grip.
The lion was roaring in rage close behind him as he swung the deer
across his shoulder, and, grasping a foreleg between his strong teeth,
leaped for the nearest of the lower branches that swung above his head.
With both hands he grasped the limb, and, at the instant that Numa
sprang, drew himself and his prey out of reach of the animal’s cruel
talons.
There was a thud below him as the baffled cat fell back to earth, and
then Tarzan of the Apes, drawing his dinner farther up to the safety of
a higher limb, looked down with grinning face into the gleaming yellow
eyes of the other wild beast that glared up at him from beneath, and
with taunting insults flaunted the tender carcass of his kill in the
face of him whom he had cheated of it.
With his crude stone knife he cut a juicy steak from the hindquarters,
and while the great lion paced, growling, back and forth below him,
Lord Greystoke filled his savage belly, nor ever in the choicest of his
exclusive London clubs had a meal tasted more palatable.
The warm blood of his kill smeared his hands and face and filled his
nostrils with the scent that the savage carnivora love best.
And when he had finished he left the balance of the carcass in a high
fork of the tree where he had dined, and with Numa trailing below him,
still keen for revenge, he made his way back to his tree-top shelter,
where he slept until the sun was high the following morning.