Kitembo looked fearfully in the direction from which the sound had
come. "Let us get away from here," he said.
Again the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed, and as the
torrential rain deluged them, the party staggered on in the direction
of the barrier cliffs of Opar.
* * * * *
Cold and wet, La of Opar crouched beneath a great tree that only
partially protected her almost naked body from the fury of the storm,
and in the dense underbrush a few yards from her a tawny carnivore lay
with unblinking eyes fixed steadily upon her.
The storm, titanic in its brief fury, passed on, leaving the deep
worn trail a tiny torrent of muddy water; and La, thoroughly chilled,
hastened onward in an effort to woo new warmth to her chilled body.
She knew that trails must lead somewhere, and in her heart she hoped
that this one would lead to the country of Tarzan. If she could live
there, seeing him occasionally, she would be content. Even knowing
that he was near her would be better than nothing. Of course she had
no conception of the immensity of the world she trod. A knowledge of
even the extent of the forest that surrounded her would have appalled
her. In her imagination she visualized a small world, dotted with the
remains of ruined cities like Opar, in which dwelt creatures like those
she had known; gnarled and knotted men like the priests of Opar, white
men like Tarzan, black men such as she had seen, and great shaggy
gorillas like Bolgani, who had ruled in the Valley of the Palace of
Diamonds.
And thinking these thoughts, she came at last to a clearing into which
the unbroken rays of the warm sun poured without interruption. Near
the center of the clearing was a small boulder; and toward this she
made her way with the intention of basking in the warm rays of the
sun until she should be thoroughly dried and warmed, for the dripping
foliage of the forest had kept her wet and cold even after the rain had
ceased.
As she seated herself she saw a movement at the edge of the clearing
ahead of her, and an instant later a great leopard bounded into view.
The beast paused at sight of the woman, evidently as much surprised
as she; and then, apparently realizing the defenselessness of this
unexpected prey, the creature crouched and with twitching tail slowly
wormed itself forward.
La rose and drew from her girdle the knife that she had taken from
Darus. She knew that flight was futile. In a few bounds the great beast
could overtake her, and even had there been a tree that she could have
reached before she was overtaken, it would have proven no sanctuary
from a leopard. Defense, too, she knew to be futile, but surrender
without battle was not within the fiber of La of Opar.
The metal discs, elaborately wrought by the hands of some long-dead
goldsmith of ancient Opar, rose and fell above her firm breasts as
her heart beat, perhaps a bit more rapidly, beneath them. On came the
leopard. She knew that in an instant he would charge; and then of a
sudden he rose to his feet, his back arched, his mouth grinning in a
fearful snarl; and simultaneously a tawny streak whizzed by her from
behind, and she saw a great lion leap upon her would-be destroyer.
At the last instant, but too late, the leopard had turned to flee; and
the lion seized him by the back of the neck, and with his jaws and
one great paw he twisted the head back until the spine snapped. Then,
almost contemptuously, he cast the body from him and turned toward the
girl.
In an instant La realized what had happened. The lion had been stalking
her, and seeing another about to seize his prey, he had leaped to
battle in its defense. She had been saved, but only to fall victim
immediately to another and more terrible beast.
The lion stood looking at her. She wondered why he did not charge and
claim his prey. She did not know that within that little brain the
scent of the woman had aroused the memory of another day, when Tarzan
had lain bound upon the sacrificial altar of Opar with Jad-bal-ja, the
golden lion, standing guard above him. A woman had come--this same
woman--and Tarzan, his master, had told him not to harm her, and she
had approached and cut the bonds that secured him.
This Jad-bal-ja remembered, and he remembered, too, that he was not to
harm this woman; and if he was not to harm her, then nothing must harm
her. For this reason he had killed Sheeta, the leopard.
But all this, La of Opar did not know, for she had not recognized
Jad-bal-ja. She merely wondered how much longer it would be; and when
the lion came closer she steeled herself, for still she meant to fight;
yet there was something in his attitude that she could not understand.
He was not charging; he was merely walking toward her, and when he was
a couple of yards from her he half turned away and lay down and yawned.
For what seemed an eternity to the girl she stood there watching him.
He paid no attention to her. Could it be that, sure of his prey and not
yet hungry, he merely waited until he was quite ready to make his kill?
The idea was horrible, and even La's iron nerves commenced to weaken
beneath the strain.
She knew that she could not escape, and so better instant death than
this suspense. She determined, therefore, to end the matter quickly and
to discover once and for all whether the lion considered her already
his prey or would permit her to depart. Gathering all the forces of
self-control that she possessed, she placed the point of her dagger to
her heart and walked boldly past the lion. Should he attack her, she
would end the agony instantly by plunging the blade into her heart.
Jad-bal-ja did not move, but with lazy, half-closed eyes he watched the
woman cross the clearing and disappear beyond the turn of the trail
that wound its way back into the jungle.
All that day La moved on with grim determination, looking always for
a ruined city like Opar, astonished by the immensity of the forest,
appalled by its loneliness. Surely, she thought, she must soon come to
the country of Tarzan. She found fruits and tubers to allay her hunger,
and as the trail descended a valley in which a river ran, she did not
want for water. But night came again, and still no sight of man or
city. Once again she crept into a tree to sleep, but this time there
was no Tarzan of the Apes to fashion a couch for her or to watch over
her safety.
* * * * *
After Tarzan had slain the boar, he cut off the hind quarters and
started back to the tree in which he had left La. The storm made
his progress much slower than it otherwise would have been, but
notwithstanding this he realized long before he reached his destination
that his hunting had taken him much farther afield than he had imagined.
When at last he reached the tree and found that La was not there, he
was slightly disconcerted, but thinking that perhaps she had descended
to stretch her limbs after the storm, he called her name aloud several
times. Receiving no answer, he became genuinely apprehensive for her
safety and, dropping to the ground, sought some sign of her spoor. It
so happened that beneath the tree her footprints were still visible,
not having been entirely obliterated by the rain. He saw that they led
back in the direction of Opar, so that, although he lost them when they
reached the trail, in which water still was running, he was none the
less confident that he knew her intended destination; and so he set off
in the direction of the barrier cliff.
It was not difficult for him to account for her absence and for the
fact that she was returning to Opar, and he reproached himself for his
thoughtlessness in having left her for so long a time without first
telling her of his purpose. He guessed, rightly, that she had imagined
herself deserted and had turned back to the only home she knew, to the
only place in the world where La of Opar might hope to find friends;
but that she would find them even there Tarzan doubted, and he was
determined that she must not go back until she could do so with a force
of warriors sufficiently great to insure the overthrow of her enemies.
It had been Tarzan's plan first to thwart the scheme of the party whose
camp he had discovered in his dominion and then to return with La to
the country of his Waziri, where he would gather a sufficient body of
those redoubtable warriors to insure the safety and success of La's
return to Opar. Never communicative, he had neglected to explain his
purposes to La; and this he now regretted, since he was quite certain
that had he done so she would not have felt it necessary to have
attempted to return alone to Opar.
But he was not much concerned with the outcome since he was confident
that he could overtake her long before she reached the city; and,
enured as he was to the dangers of the forest and the jungle, he
minimized their importance, as we do those which confront us daily in
the ordinary course of our seemingly humdrum existence, where death
threatens us quite as constantly as it does the denizens of the jungle.
At any moment expecting to catch sight of her whom he sought, Tarzan
traversed the back trail to the foot of the rocky escarpment that
guards the plain of Opar; and now he commenced to have his doubts, for
it did not seem possible that La could have covered so great a distance
in so short a time. He scaled the cliff and came out upon the summit of
the flat mountain that overlooked distant Opar. Here only a light rain
had fallen, the storm having followed the course of the valley below,
and plain in the trail were the footprints of himself and La where they
had passed down from Opar the night before; but nowhere was there any
sign of spoor to indicate that the girl had returned, nor, as he looked
out across the valley, was there any moving thing in sight.
What had become of her? Where could she have gone? In the great forest
that spread below him there were countless trails. Somewhere below, her
spoor must be plain in the freshly-wet earth, but he realized that
even for him it might prove a long and difficult task to pick it up
again.
As he turned back rather sorrowfully to descend the barrier cliff, his
attention was attracted by a movement at the edge of the forest below.
Dropping to his belly behind a low bush, Tarzan watched the spot to
which his attention had been attracted; and as he did so the head of a
column of men debouched from the forest and moved toward the foot of
the cliff.
Tarzan had known nothing of what had transpired upon the occasion of
Zveri's first expedition to Opar, which had occurred while he had been
incarcerated in the cell beneath the city. The apparent mysterious
disappearance of the party that he had known to have been marching on
Opar had mystified him; but here it was again, and where it had been in
the meantime was of no moment.
Tarzan wished that he had his bow and arrow, which the Oparians had
taken from him and which he had not had an opportunity to replace since
he had escaped. But if he did not have them, there were other ways of
annoying the invaders. From his position he watched them approach the
cliff and commence the ascent.
Tarzan selected a large boulder, many of which were strewn about the
flat top of the mountain, and when the leaders of the party were about
half way to the summit and the others were strung out below them, the
ape-man pushed the rock over the edge of the cliff just above them. In
its descent it just grazed Zveri, struck a protuberance beyond him,
bounded over Colt's head, and carried two of Kitembo's warriors to
death at the base of the escarpment.
The ascent stopped instantly. Several of the blacks who had accompanied
the first expedition started a hasty retreat; and utter disorganization
and rout faced the expedition, whose nerves had become more and more
sensitive the nearer that they approached Opar.
"Stop the damn cowards!" shouted Zveri to Dorsky and Ivitch, who were
bringing up the rear. "Who will volunteer to go over the top and
investigate?"
"I'll go," said Romero.
"And I'll go with him," offered Colt.
"Who else?" demanded Zveri; but no one else volunteered, and already
the Mexican and the American were climbing upward.
"Cover our advance with a few rifles," Colt shouted back to Zveri.
"That ought to keep them away from the edge."
Zveri issued instructions to several of the askaris who had not joined
in the retreat; and when their rifles commenced popping, it put new
heart into those who had started to flee, and presently Dorsky and
Ivitch had rallied the men and the ascent was resumed.
Perfectly well aware that he might not stop the advance single-handed,
Tarzan had withdrawn quickly along the edge of the cliff to a spot
where tumbled masses of granite offered concealment and where he knew
that there existed a precipitous trail to the bottom of the cliff. Here
he could remain and watch, or, if necessary, make a hasty retreat. He
saw Romero and Colt reach the summit and immediately recognized the
latter as the man he had seen in the base camp of the invaders. He had
previously been impressed by the appearance of the young American, and
now he acknowledged his unquestioned bravery and that of his companion
in leading a party over the summit of the cliff in the face of an
unknown danger.
Romero and Colt looked quickly about them, but there was no enemy in
sight, and this word they passed back to the ascending company.
From his point of vantage Tarzan watched the expedition surmount the
summit of the cliff and start on its march toward Opar. He believed
that they could never find the treasure vaults; and now that La was not
in the city, he was not concerned with the fate of those who had turned
against her. Upon the bare and inhospitable Oparian plain, or in the
city itself, they could accomplish little in furthering the objects
of the expedition he had overheard Zora Drinov explaining to Colt. He
knew that eventually they must return to their base camp, and in the
meantime he would prosecute his search for La; and so as Zveri led his
expedition once again toward Opar, Tarzan of the Apes slipped over the
edge of the barrier cliff and descended swiftly to the forest below.
Just inside the forest and upon the bank of the river was an admirable
camp site; and having noticed that the expedition was accompanied by no
porters, Tarzan naturally assumed that they had established a temporary
camp within striking distance of the city, and it occurred to him that
in this camp he might find La a prisoner.
As he had expected, he found the camp located upon the spot where,
upon other occasions, he had camped with his Waziri warriors. An old
thorn boma that had encircled it for years had been repaired by the
newcomers, and within it a number of rude shelters had been erected,
while in the center stood the tents of the white men. Porters were
dozing in the shade of the trees; a single askari made a pretense of
standing guard, while his fellows lolled at their ease, their rifles at
their sides; but nowhere could he see La of Opar.
He moved down wind from the camp, hoping to catch her scent spoor if
she was a prisoner there, but so strong was the smell of smoke and
the body odors of the blacks that he could not be sure but that these
drowned La's scent. He decided, therefore, to wait until darkness
had fallen when he might make a more careful investigation, and he
was further prompted to this decision by the sight of weapons, which
he sorely needed. All of the warriors were armed with rifles, but
some, clinging through force of ancient habit to the weapons of their
ancestors, carried also bows and arrows, and in addition there were
many spears.
As a few mouthfuls of the raw flesh of Horta had constituted the
only food that had passed Tarzan's lips for almost two days, he was
ravenously hungry. With the discovery that La had disappeared, he had
cached the hind quarter of the boar in the tree in which they had
spent the night and set out upon his fruitless search for her; so now,
while he waited for darkness, he hunted again, and this time Bara, the
antelope, fell a victim to his prowess, nor did he leave the carcass
of his kill until he had satisfied his hunger. Then he lay up in a
nearby tree and slept.
* * * * *
The anger of Abu Batn against Zveri was rooted deeply in his inherent
racial antipathy for Europeans and their religion, and its growth
was stimulated by the aspersions which the Russian had cast upon the
courage of the Aarab and his followers.
"Dog of a Nasrâny!" ejaculated the sheykh. "He called us cowards, we
Bedaùwy, and he left us here like old men and boys to guard the camp
and the woman."
"He is but an instrument of Allah," said one of the Aarabs, "in the
great cause that will rid Africa of all Nasrâny."
"Wellah-billah!" ejaculated Abu Batn. "What proof have we that these
people will do as they promise? I would rather have my freedom on the
desert and what wealth I can gather by myself than to lie longer in the
same camp with these Nasrâny pigs."
"There is no good in them," muttered another.
"I have looked upon their woman," said the sheykh, "and I find her
good. I know a city where she would bring many pieces of gold."
"In the trunk of the chief Nasrâny there are many pieces of gold and
silver," said one of the men. "His boy told that to a Galla, who
repeated it to me."
"The plunder of the camp is rich besides," suggested a swarthy warrior.
"If we do this thing, perhaps the great cause will be lost," suggested
he who had first answered the sheykh.
"It is the cause of the Nasrâny," said Abu Batn, "and it is only for
profit. Is not the huge pig always reminding us of the money, and the
women, and the power that we shall have when we have thrown out the
English? Man is moved only by his greed. Let us take our profits in
advance and be gone."
Wamala was preparing the evening meal for his mistress. "Before, you
were left with the brown bwana," he said, "and he was no good; nor do I
like any better the sheykh Abu Batn. He is no good. I wish that Bwana
Colt were here."
"So do I," said Zora. "It seems to me that the Aarabs have been sullen
and surly ever since the expedition returned from Opar."
"They have sat all day in the tent of their chief talking together,"
said Wamala, "and often Abu Batn looked at you."
"That is your imagination, Wamala," replied the girl. "He would not
dare to harm me."
"Who would have thought that the brown bwana would have dared to?"
Wamala reminded her.
"Hush, Wamala, the first thing you know you will have me frightened,"
said Zora, and then suddenly, "Look, Wamala! Who is that?"
The black boy turned his eyes in the direction toward which his
mistress was looking. At the edge of the camp stood a figure that might
have wrung an exclamation of surprise from a Stoic. A beautiful woman
stood there regarding them intently. She had halted just at the edge
of camp--an almost naked woman whose gorgeous beauty was her first
and most striking characteristic. Two golden discs covered her firm
breasts, and a narrow stomacher of gold and precious stones encircled
her hips, supporting in front and behind a broad strip of soft leather,
studded with gold and jewels, which formed the pattern of a pedestal on
the summit of which was seated a grotesque bird. Her feet were shod in
sandals that were covered with mud, as were her shapely legs upward to
above her knees. A mass of wavy hair, shot with golden bronze lights
by the rays of the setting sun, half surrounded an oval face, and from
beneath narrow penciled brows fearless gray eyes regarded them.
Some of the Aarabs had caught sight of her, too, and they were coming
forward now toward her. She looked quickly from Zora and Wamala toward
the others. Then the European girl arose quickly and approached her
that she might reach her before the Aarabs did; and as she came near
the stranger with outstretched hands, Zora smiled. La of Opar came
quickly to meet her as though sensing in the smile of the other an
index to the friendly intent of this stranger.
"Who are you," asked Zora, "and what are you doing here alone in the
jungle?"
La shook her head and replied in a language that Zora did not
understand.
Zora Drinov was an accomplished linguist but she exhausted every
language in her repertoire, including a few phrases from various Bantu
dialects, and still found no means of communicating with the stranger,
whose beautiful face and figure but added to the interest of the
tantalizing enigma she presented to pique the curiosity of the Russian
girl.
The Aarabs addressed her in their own tongue and Wamala in the dialect
of his tribe, but all to no avail. Then Zora put an arm about her and
led her toward her tent; and there, by means of signs, La of Opar
indicated that she would bathe. Wamala was directed to prepare a tub
in Zora's tent, and by the time supper was prepared the stranger
reappeared, washed and refreshed.
As Zora Drinov seated herself opposite her strange guest, she was
impressed with the belief that never before had she looked upon so
beautiful a woman, and she marvelled that one who must have felt so
utterly out of place in her surroundings should still retain a poise
that suggested the majestic bearing of a queen rather than of a
stranger ill at ease.
By signs and gestures, Zora sought to converse with her guest until
even the regal La found herself laughing; and then La tried it too
until Zora knew that her guest had been threatened with clubs and
knives and driven from her home, that she had walked a long way, that
either a lion or a leopard had attacked her and that she was very tired.
When supper was over, Wamala prepared another cot for La in the tent
with Zora, for something in the faces of the Aarabs had made the
European girl fear for the safety of her beautiful guest.
"You must sleep outside the tent door tonight, Wamala," she said. "Here
is an extra pistol."
In his goat hair beyt Abu Batn, the sheykh, talked long into the night
with the principal men of his tribe. "The new one," he said, "will
bring a price such as has never been paid before."
* * * * *
Tarzan awoke and glanced upward through the foliage at the stars. He
saw that the night was half gone, and he arose and stretched himself.
He ate again sparingly of the flesh of Bara and slipped silently into
the shadows of the night.
The camp at the foot of the barrier cliff slept. A single askari kept
guard and tended the beast fire. From a tree at the edge of the camp
two eyes watched him, and when he was looking away a figure dropped
silently into the shadows. Behind the huts of the porters it crept,
pausing occasionally to test the air with dilated nostrils. It came at
last, among the shadows, to the tents of the Europeans, and one by one
it ripped a hole in each rear wall and entered. It was Tarzan searching
for La, but he did not find her and, disappointed, he turned to another
matter.
Making a half circuit of the camp, moving sometimes only inch by inch
as he wormed himself along on his belly, lest the askari upon guard
might see him, he made his way to the shelters of the other askaris,
and there he selected a bow and arrows, and a stout spear, but even yet
he was not done.
For a long time he crouched waiting--waiting until the askari by the
fire should turn in a certain direction.
Presently the sentry arose and threw some dry wood upon the fire,
after which he walked toward the shelter of his fellows to awaken the
man who was to relieve him. It was this moment for which Tarzan had
been waiting. The path of the askari brought him close to where Tarzan
lay in hiding. The man approached and passed, and in the same instant
Tarzan leaped to his feet and sprang upon the unsuspecting black. A
strong arm encircled the fellow from behind and swung him to a broad,
bronzed shoulder. As Tarzan had anticipated, a scream of terror burst
from the man's lips, awakening his fellows; and then he was borne
swiftly through the shadows of the camp away from the beast fire as,
with his prey struggling futilely in his grasp, the ape-man leaped the
thorn boma and disappeared into the black jungle beyond.
So sudden and violent was the attack, so complete the man's surprise,
that he had loosened his grasp upon his rifle in an effort to clutch
his antagonist as he was thrown lightly to the shoulder of his captor.