regard or dislike for Zveri, she had failed, but if such was the fact
she was too wise to pursue the subject further. She realized that she
was dealing with a man from whom she would get little information that
he did not wish her to have; but on the other hand a man who might
easily wrest information from others, for he was that type which
seemed to invite confidences, suggesting as he did, in his attitude,
his speech and his manner a sterling uprightness of character that
could not conceivably abuse a trust. She rather liked this upstanding
young American, and the more she saw of him the more difficult she
found it to believe that he had turned traitor to his family, his
friends and his country. However, she knew that many honorable men
had sacrificed everything to a conviction and, perhaps, he was one of
these. She hoped that this was the explanation.
Their conversation drifted to various subjects--to their lives and
experiences in their native lands--to the happenings that had befallen
them since they had entered Africa, and, finally, to the experiences of
the day. And while they talked, Tarzan of the Apes returned to the tree
above them, but this time he did not come alone.
"I wonder if we shall ever know," she said, "who killed Jafar."
"It is a mystery that is not lessened by the fact that none of the
askaris could recognize the type of arrow with which he was slain,
though that, of course, might be accounted for by the fact that none of
them are of this district."
"It has considerably shaken the nerves of the men," said Zora, "and I
sincerely hope that nothing similar occurs again. I have found that
it does not take much to upset these natives, and while most of them
are brave in the face of known dangers, they are apt to be entirely
demoralized by anything bordering on the supernatural."
"I think they felt better when they got the Hindu planted under
ground," said Colt, "though some of them were not at all sure that he
might not return anyway."
"There is not much chance of that," rejoined the girl, laughing.
She had scarcely ceased speaking when the branches above them rustled,
and a heavy body plunged downward to the table top between them,
crushing the flimsy piece of furniture to earth.
The two sprang to their feet, Colt whipping out his revolver and the
girl stifling a cry as she stepped back. Colt felt the hairs rise upon
his head and goose flesh form upon his arms and back, for there between
them lay the dead body of Raghunath Jafar upon its back, the dead eyes
rolled backward staring up into the night.
IV
INTO THE LION'S DEN
Nkima was angry. He had been awakened from the depth of a sound sleep,
which was bad enough, but now his master had set out upon such foolish
errands through the darkness of the night that, mingled with Nkima's
scoldings were the whimperings of fear, for in every shadow he saw
Sheeta, the panther, lurking and in each gnarled limb of the forest
the likeness of Histah, the snake. While Tarzan had remained in the
vicinity of the camp, Nkima had not been particularly perturbed, and
when he had returned to the tree with his burden the little Manu was
sure that he was going to remain there for the rest of the night; but
instead he had departed immediately and now was swinging through the
black forest with an evident fixity of purpose that boded ill for
either rest or safety for little Nkima during the remainder of the
night.
Whereas Zveri and his party had started slowly along winding jungle
trails, Tarzan moved almost in an air line through the jungle toward
his destination, which was the same as that of Zveri. The result was
that before Zveri reached the almost perpendicular crag which formed
the last and greatest natural barrier to the forbidden valley of Opar,
Tarzan and Nkima had disappeared beyond the summit and were crossing
the desolate valley, upon the far side of which loomed the great walls
and lofty spires and turrets of ancient Opar. In the bright light
of the African sun, domes and minarets shone red and gold above the
city; and once again the ape-man experienced the same feeling that had
impressed him upon the occasion, now years gone, when his eyes had
first alighted upon the splendid panorama of mystery that had unfolded
before them.
No evidence of ruin was apparent at this great distance. Once again, in
imagination, he beheld a city of magnificent beauty, its streets and
temples thronged with people; and once again his mind toyed with the
mystery of the city's origin, when back somewhere in the dim vista of
antiquity a race of rich and powerful people had conceived and built
this enduring monument to a vanished civilization. It was possible to
conceive that Opar might have existed when a glorious civilization
flourished upon the great continent of Atlantis, which, sinking beneath
the waves of the ocean, left this lost colony to death and decay.
That its few inhabitants were direct descendants of its once powerful
builders seemed not unlikely in view of the rites and ceremonies of
the ancient religion which they practiced, as well as by the fact that
by scarcely any other hypothesis could the presence of a white-skinned
people be accounted for in this remote and inaccessible African
fastness.
The peculiar laws of heredity, which seemed operative in Opar as in no
other portion of the world, suggested an origin differing materially
from that of other men; for it is a peculiar fact that the men of Opar
bear little or no resemblance to the females of their kind. The former
are short, heavy set, hairy, almost ape-like in their conformation
and appearance, while the women are slender, smooth skinned and often
beautiful. There were certain physical and mental attributes of the men
that had suggested to Tarzan the possibility that at some time in the
past the colonists had, either by choice or necessity, interbred with
the great apes of the district; and he also was aware that owing to the
scarcity of victims for the human sacrifice which their rigid worship
demanded that it was common practice among them to use for this purpose
either males or females who deviated considerably from the standard
time had established for each sex, with the result that through the
laws of natural selection an overwhelming majority of the males would
be grotesque and the females normal and beautiful.
It was with such reveries that the mind of the ape-man was occupied as
he crossed the desolate valley of Opar, which lay shimmering in the
bright sunlight that was relieved only by the shade of an occasional
gnarled and stunted tree. Ahead of him and to his right was the
small rocky hillock, upon the summit of which was located the outer
entrance to the treasure vaults of Opar. But with this he was not now
interested, his sole object being to fore-warn La of the approach of
the invaders that she might prepare her defense.
It had been long since Tarzan had visited Opar; but upon that
last occasion, when he had restored La to her loyal people and
re-established her supremacy following the defeat of the forces of
Cadj, the high priest, and the death of the latter beneath the fangs
and talons of Jad-bal-ja, he had carried away with him for the first
time a conviction of the friendliness of all of the people of Opar. He
had for years known that La was secretly his friend, but her savage,
grotesque retainers always heretofore had feared and hated him; and so
it was now that he approached Opar as one might approach any citadel of
one's friends, without stealth and without any doubt but that he would
be received in friendship.
Nkima, however, was not so sure. The gloomy ruins terrified him. He
scolded and pleaded, but all to no avail; and at last terror overcame
his love and loyalty so that, as they were approaching the outer wall,
which loomed high above them, he leaped from his master's shoulder and
scampered away from the ruins that confronted him, for deep in his
little heart was an abiding fear of strange and unfamiliar places, that
not even his confidence in Tarzan could overcome.
Nkima's keen eyes had noted the rocky hillock which they had passed
a short time before, and to the summit of this he scampered as a
comparatively safe haven from which to await the return of his master
from Opar.
As Tarzan approached the narrow fissure which alone gave entrance
through the massive outer walls of Opar, he was conscious, as he had
been years before on the occasion of his first approach to the city, of
unseen eyes upon him, and at any moment he expected to hear a greeting
when the watchers recognized him.
Without hesitation, however, and with no apprehensiveness, Tarzan
entered the narrow cleft and descended a flight of concrete steps that
led to the winding passage through the thick outer wall. The narrow
court, beyond which loomed the inner wall, was silent and deserted; nor
was the silence broken as he crossed it to another narrow passage which
led through it; at the end of this he came to a broad avenue, upon the
opposite side of which stood the crumbling ruins of the great temple of
Opar.
In silence and solitude he entered the frowning portal, flanked by its
rows of stately pillars, from the capitals of which grotesque birds
glared down upon him as they had stared through all the countless
ages since forgotten hands had carved them from the solid rock of the
monoliths. On through the temple toward the inner courtyard, where he
knew the activities of the city were carried on, Tarzan made his way
in silence. Perhaps another man would have given notice of his coming,
voicing a greeting to apprise them of his approach; but Tarzan of the
Apes in many respects is less man than beast. He goes the silent way
of most beasts, wasting no breath in useless mouthing. He had not
sought to approach Opar stealthily, and he knew that he had not arrived
unseen. Why a greeting was delayed he did not know, unless it was that,
after carrying word of his coming to La, they were waiting for her
instructions.
Through the main corridor Tarzan made his way, noting again the tablets
of gold with their ancient and long undeciphered hieroglyphics. Through
the chamber of the seven golden pillars he passed and across the golden
floor of an adjoining room, and still only silence and emptiness,
yet with vague suggestions of figures moving in the galleries that
overlooked the apartment through which he was passing; and then at
last he came to a heavy door beyond which he was sure he would find
either priests or priestesses of this great temple of the Flaming God.
Fearlessly he pushed it open and stepped across the threshold, and
in the same instant a knotted club descended heavily upon his head,
felling him senseless to the floor.
Instantly he was surrounded by a score of gnarled and knotted men;
their matted beards fell low upon their hairy chests as they rolled
forward upon their short, crooked legs. They chattered in low, growling
gutturals as they bound their victim's wrists and ankles with stout
thongs, and then they lifted him and carried him along other corridors
and through the crumbling glories of magnificent apartments to a great
tiled room, at one end of which a young woman sat upon a massive
throne, resting upon a dais a few feet above the level of the floor.
Standing beside the girl upon the throne was another of the gnarled and
knotted men. Upon his arms and legs were bands of gold and about his
throat many necklaces. Upon the floor beneath these two was a gathering
of men and women--the priests and priestesses of the Flaming God of
Opar.
Tarzan's captors carried their victim to the foot of the throne and
tossed his body upon the tile floor. Almost simultaneously the ape-man
regained consciousness and, opening his eyes, looked about him.
"Is it he?" demanded the girl upon the throne.
One of Tarzan's captors saw that he had regained consciousness and with
the help of others dragged him roughly to his feet.
"It is he, Oah," exclaimed the man at her side.
An expression of venomous hatred convulsed the face of the woman. "God
has been good to His high priestess," she said. "I have prayed for this
day to come as I prayed for the other, and as the other came so has
this."
Tarzan looked quickly from the woman to the man at her side. "What is
the meaning of this, Dooth?" he demanded. "Where is La? Where is your
high priestess?"
The girl rose angrily from her throne. "Know, man of the outer world,
that I am high priestess. I, Oah, am high priestess of the Flaming God."
Tarzan ignored her. "Where is La?" he demanded again of Dooth.
Oah flew into a frenzy of rage. "She is dead!" she screamed, advancing
to the edge of the dais as though to leap upon Tarzan, the jeweled
handle of her sacrificial knife gleaming in the sunlight, which poured
through a great aperture where a portion of the ancient roof of the
throne room had fallen in. "She is dead!" she repeated. "Dead as you
will be when next we honor the Flaming God with the life blood of a
man. La was weak. She loved you, and thus she betrayed her God, who had
chosen you for sacrifice. But Oah is strong--strong with the hate she
has nursed in her breast since Tarzan and La stole the throne of Opar
from her. Take him away!" she screamed to his captors, "and let me not
see him again until I behold him bound to the altar in the court of
sacrifice."
They cut the bonds now that secured Tarzan's ankles so that he might
walk; but even though his wrists were tied behind him it was evident
that they still held him in great fear, for they put ropes about his
neck and his arms and led him as man might lead a lion. Down into the
familiar darkness of the pits of Opar they led him, lighting the way
with torches; and when finally they had brought him to the dungeon in
which he was to be confined it was some time before they could muster
sufficient courage to cut the bonds that held his wrists, and even then
they did not do so until they had again bound his ankles securely so
that they might escape from the chamber and bolt the door before he
could release his feet and pursue them. Thus greatly had the prowess of
Tarzan impressed itself upon the brains of the crooked priests of Opar.
Tarzan had been in the dungeons of Opar before and, before, he had
escaped; and so he set to work immediately seeking for a means of
escape from his present predicament, for he knew that the chances were
that Oah would not long delay the moment for which she had prayed--the
instant when she should plunge the gleaming sacrificial knife into his
breast. Quickly removing the thongs from his ankles, Tarzan groped his
way carefully along the walls of his cell until he had made a complete
circuit of it; then, similarly, he examined the floor. He discovered
that he was in a rectangular chamber about ten feet long and eight wide
and that by standing upon his tiptoes he could just reach the ceiling.
The only opening was the door through which he had entered, in which an
aperture, protected by iron bars, gave the cell its only ventilation
but, as it opened upon a dark corridor, admitted no light. Tarzan
examined the bolts and the hinges of the door, but they were, as he
had conjectured, too substantial to be forced; and then, for the first
time, he saw that a priest sat on guard in the corridor without, thus
putting a definite end to any thoughts of surreptitious escape.
For three days and nights priests relieved each other at intervals; but
upon the morning of the fourth day Tarzan discovered that the corridor
was empty, and once again he turned his attention actively to thoughts
of escape.
It had so happened that at the time of Tarzan's capture his hunting
knife had been hidden by the tail of the leopard skin that formed his
loin cloth; and in their excitement, the ignorant, half-human priests
of Opar had overlooked it when they took his other weapons away from
him. Doubly thankful was Tarzan for this good fortune, since, for
sentimental reasons, he cherished the hunting knife of his long dead
sire--the knife that had started him upon the upward path to ascendancy
over the beasts of the jungle that day, long gone, when, more by
accident than intent, he had plunged it into the heart of Bolgani, the
gorilla. But for more practical reasons it was, indeed, a gift from
the gods, since it afforded him not only a weapon of defense, but an
instrument wherewith he might seek to make good his escape.
Years before had Tarzan of the Apes escaped from the pits of Opar,
and so he well knew the construction of their massive walls. Granite
blocks of various sizes, hand hewn to fit with perfection, were laid
in courses without mortar, the one wall that he had passed through
having been fifteen feet in thickness. Fortune had favored him upon
that occasion in that he had been placed in a cell which, unknown to
the present inhabitants of Opar, had a secret entrance, the opening of
which was closed by a single layer of loosely laid courses that the
ape-man had been able to remove without great effort.
Naturally he sought for a similar condition in the cell in which he now
found himself, but his search was not crowned with success. No single
stone could be budged from its place, anchored as each was by the
tremendous weight of the temple walls they supported; and so, perforce,
he turned his attention toward the door.
He knew that there were few locks in Opar since the present degraded
inhabitants of the city had not developed sufficient ingenuity either
to repair old ones or construct new. Those locks that he had seen were
ponderous affairs opened by huge keys and were, he guessed, of an
antiquity that reached back to the days of Atlantis; but, for the most
part, heavy bolts and bars secured such doors as might be fastened at
all, and he guessed that it was such a crude contrivance that barred
his way to freedom.
Groping his way to the door, he examined the small opening that let in
air. It was about shoulder high and perhaps ten inches square and was
equipped with four vertical iron bars half an inch square, set an inch
and a half apart--too close to permit him to insert his hands between
them, but this fact did not entirely discourage the ape-man. Perhaps
there was another way.
His steel thewed fingers closed upon the center of one of the bars.
With his left hand he clung to another, and bracing one knee high
against the door he slowly flexed his right elbow. Rolling like plastic
steel, the muscles of his forearm and his biceps swelled, until
gradually the bar bent inward toward him. The ape-man smiled as he took
a new grip upon the iron bar. Then he surged backward with all his
weight and all the strength of that mighty arm, and the bar bent to a
wide U as he wrenched it from its sockets. He tried to insert his arm
through the new opening, but it still was too small. A moment later
another bar was torn away, and now, his arm through the aperture to its
full length, he groped for the bar or bolts that held him prisoner.
At the fullest extent to which he could reach his finger-tips downward
against the door, he just touched the top of the bar, which was a
timber about three inches in thickness. Its other dimensions, however,
he was unable to ascertain, or whether it would release by raising one
end or must be drawn back through keepers. It was most tantalizing!
To have freedom almost within one's grasp and yet to be denied it was
maddening.
Withdrawing his arm from the aperture, he removed his hunting knife
from his scabbard and, again reaching outward, pressed the point of
the blade into the wood of the bar. At first he tried lifting the bar
by this means, but his knife point only pulled out of the wood. Next,
he attempted to move the bar backward in a horizontal plane, and in
this he was successful. Though the distance that he moved it in one
effort was small, he was satisfied, for he knew that patience would
win its reward. Never more than a quarter of an inch, sometimes only a
sixteenth of an inch at a time, Tarzan slowly worked the bar backward.
He worked methodically and carefully, never hurrying, never affected by
nervous anxiety, although he never knew at what moment a savage warrior
priest of Opar might make his rounds; and at last his efforts were
rewarded, and the door swung upon its hinges.
Stepping quickly out, Tarzan shot the bar behind him and, knowing no
other avenue of escape, turned back up the corridor along which his
captors had conducted him to his prison cell. Faintly in the distance
he discerned a lessening darkness, and toward this he moved upon silent
feet. As the light increased slightly, he saw that the corridor was
about ten feet wide and that at irregular intervals it was pierced by
doors, all of which were closed and secured by bolts or bars.
A hundred yards from the cell in which he had been incarcerated he
crossed a transversed corridor, and here he paused an instant to
investigate with palpitating nostrils and keen eyes and ears. In
neither direction could he discern any light, but faint sounds came
to his ears indicating that life existed somewhere behind the doors
along this corridor, and his nostrils were assailed by a medley of
scents--the sweet aroma of incense, the odor of human bodies and the
acrid scent of carnivores; but there was nothing there to attract his
further investigation, so he continued on his way along the corridor
toward the rapidly increasing light ahead.
He had advanced but a short distance when his keen ears detected the
sound of approaching footsteps. Here was no place to risk discovery.
Slowly he fell back toward the transverse corridor, seeking to take
concealment there until the danger had passed; but it was already
closer than he had imagined, and an instant later half a dozen priests
of Opar turned into the corridor from one just ahead of him. They saw
him instantly and halted, peering through the gloom.
"It is the ape-man," said one. "He has escaped," and with their knotted
cudgels and their wicked knives they advanced upon him.
That they came slowly evidenced the respect in which they held his
prowess, but still they came; and Tarzan fell back, for even he, armed
only with a knife, was no match for six of these savage half-men with
their heavy cudgels. As he retreated, a plan formed quickly in his
alert mind, and when he reached the transverse corridor he backed
slowly into it. Knowing that now that he was hidden from them they
would come very slowly, fearing that he might be lying in wait for
them, he turned and ran swiftly along the corridor. He passed several
doors, not because he was looking for any door in particular, but
because he knew that the more difficult it was for them to find him the
greater his chances of eluding them; but at last he paused before one
secured by a huge wooden bar. Quickly he raised it, opened the door and
stepped within just as the leader of the priests came into view at the
intersection of the corridor.
The instant that Tarzan stepped into the dark and gloomy chamber
beyond he knew that he had made a fatal blunder. Strong in his
nostrils was the acrid scent of Numa, the lion; the silence of the
pit was shattered by a savage roar; in the dark background he saw two
yellow-green eyes flaming with hate, and then the lion charged.
V
BEFORE THE WALLS OF OPAR
Peter Zveri established his camp on the edge of the forest at the foot
of the barrier cliff that guards the desolate valley of Opar. Here
he left his porters and a few askaris as guards and then, with his
fighting men, guided by Kitembo, commenced the arduous climb to the
summit.
None of them had ever come this way before, not even Kitembo, though
he had known the exact location of Opar from one who had seen it; and
so when the first view of the distant city broke upon them they were
filled with awe, and vague questionings arose in the primitive minds of
the black men.
It was a silent party that filed across the dusty plain toward Opar;
nor were the blacks the only members of the expedition to be assailed
with doubt, for in their black tents on distant deserts that Arabs had
imbibed with the milk of their mothers the fear of jân and ghrôl and
had heard, too, of the fabled city of Nimmr, which it was not well for
men to approach. With such thoughts and forebodings were the minds of
the men filled as they approached the towering ruins of the ancient
Atlantean city.