wrists."
"Dango! Dango!" shouted Nkima. "Little Nkima is afraid of Dango."
"If you come now," said Tarzan, "it will be safe; but if you wait too
long, Dango will kill Tarzan; and then to whom may little Nkima go for
protection?"
"Nkima comes," shouted the little monkey, and dropping quickly through
the trees, he leaped to Tarzan's shoulder.
The hyaena bared his fangs and laughed his horrid laugh. Tarzan spoke.
"Quick, the thongs, Nkima," urged Tarzan; and the little monkey, his
fingers trembling with terror, went to work upon the leather thongs at
Tarzan's wrists.
Dango, his ugly head lowered, made a sudden rush; and from the deep
lungs of the ape-man came a thunderous roar that might have done credit
to Numa himself. With a yelp of terror the cowardly Dango turned
and fled to the extremity of the glade, where he stood bristling and
growling.
"Hurry, Nkima," said Tarzan. "Dango will come again. Maybe once, maybe
twice, maybe many times before he closes on me; but in the end he will
realize that I am helpless, and then he will not stop or turn back."
"Little Nkima's fingers are sick," said the Manu. "They are weak and
they tremble. They will not untie the knot."
"Nkima has sharp teeth," Tarzan reminded him. "Why waste your time with
sick fingers over knots that they cannot untie? Let your sharp teeth do
the work."
Instantly Nkima commenced to gnaw upon the strands. Silent perforce
because his mouth was otherwise occupied, Nkima strove diligently and
without interruption.
Dango, in the meantime, made two short rushes, each time coming a
little closer, but each time turning back before the menace of the
ape-man's roars and savage growls, which by now had aroused the jungle.
Above them, in the tree tops, the monkeys chattered, scolded and
screamed, and in the distance the voice of Numa rolled like far
thunder, while from the river came the squealing and trumpeting of
Tantor.
Little Nkima was gnawing frantically at the bonds, when Dango charged
again, evidently convinced by this time that the great Tarmangani was
helpless, for now, with a growl, he rushed in and closed upon the man.
With a sudden surge of the great muscles of his arms that sent little
Nkima sprawling, Tarzan sought to tear his hands free that he might
defend himself against the savage death that menaced him in those
slavering jaws; and the thongs, almost parted by Nkima's sharp teeth,
gave to the terrific strain of the ape-man's efforts.
As Dango leaped for the bronzed throat, Tarzan's hand shot forward
and seized the beast by the neck, but the impact of the heavy body
carried him backward to the ground. Dango twisted, struggled and clawed
in a vain effort to free himself from the death grip of the ape-man,
but those steel fingers closed relentlessly upon his throat, until,
gasping for breath, the great brute sank helplessly upon the body of
its intended victim.
Until death was assured, Tarzan did not relinquish his grasp; but when
at last there could be no doubt, he hurled the carcass from him and,
sitting up, fell quickly to the thongs that secured his ankles.
During the brief battle, Nkima had taken refuge among the topmost
branches of a lofty tree, where he leaped about, screaming frantically
at the battling beasts beneath him. Not until he was quite sure
that Dango was dead did he descend. Warily he approached the body,
lest, perchance, he had been mistaken; but again convinced by closer
scrutiny, he leaped upon it and struck it viciously, again and again,
and then he stood upon it shrieking his defiance at the world with all
the assurance and bravado of one who has overcome a dangerous enemy.
Tantor, startled by the help cry of his friend, had turned back from
the river without taking water. Trees bent beneath his mad rush as,
ignoring winding trails, he struck straight through the jungle toward
the little glade in answer to the call of the ape-man; and now,
infuriated by the sounds of battle, he came charging into view, a
titanic engine of rage and vengeance.
Tantor's eyesight is none too good, and it seemed that in his mad
charge he must trample the ape-man, who lay directly in his path; but
when Tarzan spoke to him the great beast came to a sudden stop at his
side and, pivoting, wheeled about in his tracks, his ears forward,
his trunk raised, trumpeting a savage warning as he searched for the
creature that had been menacing his friend.
"Quiet, Tantor; it was Dango. He is dead," said the ape-man. As the
eyes of the elephant finally located the carcass of the hyaena he
charged and trampled it, as he had trampled Dorsky, to a bloody pulp;
as Nkima fled, shrieking, to the trees.
His ankles freed of their bonds, Tarzan was upon his feet; and, when
Tantor had vented his rage upon the body of Dango, he called the
elephant to him. Tantor came then quietly to his side and stood with
his trunk touching the ape-man's body, his rage quieted and his nerves
soothed by the reassuring calm of the ape-man.
And now Nkima came, making an agile leap from a swaying bough to the
back of Tantor and then to the shoulder of Tarzan, where, with his
little arms about the ape-man's neck, he pressed his cheek close
against the bronzed cheek of the great Tarmangani, who was his master
and his god.
Thus the three friends stood in the silent communion that only beasts
know, as the shadows lengthened and the sun set behind the forest.
XVI
"TURN BACK!"
The privations that Wayne Colt had endured had weakened him far more
than he had realized, so that before his returning strength could bring
renewed powers of resistance, he was stricken with fever.
The high priestess of the Flaming God, versed in the lore of ancient
Opar, was conversant with the medicinal properties of many roots and
herbs and, as well, with the mystic powers of incantation that drove
demons from the bodies of the sick. By day she gathered and brewed, and
at night she sat at the feet of her patient, intoning weird prayers,
the origin of which reached back through countless ages to vanished
temples, above which now rolled the waters of a mighty sea; and while
she wrought with every artifice at her command to drive out the demon
of sickness that possessed this man of an alien world, Jad-bal-ja, the
golden lion, hunted for all three, and though at times he made his kill
at a distance he never failed to carry the carcass of his prey back to
the hidden lair where the woman nursed the man.
Days of burning fever, days of delirium, shot with periods of
rationality, dragged their slow length. Often Colt's mind was confused
by a jumble of bizarre impressions, in which La might be Zora Drinov
one moment, a ministering angel from heaven the next, and then a Red
Cross nurse; but in whatever guise he found her it seemed always a
pleasant one, and when she was absent, as she was sometimes forced to
be, he was depressed and unhappy.
When, upon her knees at his feet, she prayed to the rising sun, or to
the sun at zenith, or to the setting sun, as was her wont, or when she
chanted strange, weird songs in an unknown tongue, accompanying them
with the mysterious gestures that were a part of the ritual, he was
sure that the fever was worse and that he had become delirious again.
And so the days dragged on, and while Colt lay helpless, Zveri marched
toward Italian Somaliland; and Tarzan, recovered from the shock of
his wound, followed the plain trail of the expedition, and from his
shoulder little Nkima scolded and chattered through the day.
Behind him Tarzan had left a handful of terrified blacks in the camp of
the conspirators. They had been lolling in the shade, following their
breakfast, a week after the killing of Dorsky and the escape of his
captive. Fear of the ape-man at liberty, that had so terrified them at
first, no longer concerned them greatly. Psychologically akin to the
brutes of the forest, they happily soon forgot their terrors; nor did
they harass their minds by anticipating those which might assail them
in the future, as it is the silly custom of civilized man to do.
And so it was this morning that a sight which burst suddenly upon their
astonished eyes found them entirely unprepared. They heard no noise, so
silently go the beasts of the jungle, however large or heavy they may
be; yet suddenly, in the clearing at the edge of the camp, appeared a
great elephant, and upon his head sat the recent captive, whom they had
been told was Tarzan of the Apes, and upon the man's shoulder perched a
little monkey. With exclamations of terror, the blacks leaped to their
feet and dashed into the jungle upon the opposite side of the camp.
Tarzan leaped lightly to the ground and entered Dorsky's tent. He
had returned for a definite purpose; and his effort was crowned with
success, for in the tent of the Russian he found his rope and his
knife, which had been taken away from him at the time of his capture.
For bow and arrows and a spear he had only to look to the shelters of
the blacks; and, having found what he wanted, he departed as silently
as he had come.
Now the time had arrived when Tarzan must set out rapidly upon the
trail of his enemy, leaving Tantor to the peaceful paths that he loved
best.
"I go, Tantor," he said. "Search out the forest where the young trees
have the tenderest bark and watch well against the men-things, for they
alone in all the world are the enemies of all living creatures." He was
off through the forest then, with little Nkima clinging tightly to his
bronzed neck.
Plain lay the winding trail of Zveri's army before the eyes of the
ape-man, but he had no need to follow any trail. Long weeks before,
as he had kept vigil above their camp, he had heard the principals
discussing their plans; and so he knew their objectives, and he knew,
too, how rapidly they could march and, therefore, about where he might
hope to overtake them. Unhampered by files of porters sweating under
heavy loads, earth-bound to no winding trails, Tarzan was able to
travel many times faster than the expedition. He saw their trail only
when his own chanced to cross it as he laid a straight course for a
point far in advance of the sweating column.
When he overtook the expedition night had fallen, and the tired men
were in camp. They had eaten and were happy and many of the men were
singing. To one who did not know the truth it might have appeared
to be a military camp of French Colonial Troops; for there was a
military precision about the arrangement of the fires, the temporary
shelters, and the officer's tents that would not have been undertaken
by a hunting or scientific expedition, and, in addition, there were
the uniformed sentries pacing their beats. All this was the work of
Miguel Romero, to whose superior knowledge of military matters Zveri
had been forced to defer in all matters of this nature, though with no
diminution of the hatred which each felt for the other.
From his tree Tarzan watched the scene below, attempting to estimate as
closely as possible the number of armed men that formed the fighting
force of the expedition, while Nkima, bent upon some mysterious
mission, swung nimbly through the trees toward the east. The ape-man
realized that Zveri had recruited a force that might constitute a
definite menace to the peace of Africa, since among its numbers
were represented many large and warlike tribes, who might easily be
persuaded to follow this mad leader were success to crown his initial
engagement. It was, however, to prevent this very thing that Tarzan of
the Apes had interested himself in the activities of Peter Zveri; and
here, before him, was another opportunity to undermine the Russian's
dream of empire while it was still only a dream and might be dissipated
by trivial means; by the grim and terrible jungle methods of which
Tarzan of the Apes was a past-master.
Tarzan fitted an arrow to his bow. Slowly his right hand drew back the
feathered end of the shaft until the point rested almost upon his left
thumb. His manner was marked by easy, effortless grace. He did not
appear to be taking conscious aim; and yet when he released the shaft,
it buried itself in the fleshy part of a sentry's leg precisely as
Tarzan of the Apes had intended that it should.
With a yell of surprise and pain the black collapsed upon the ground,
more frightened, however, than hurt; and as his fellows gathered around
him, Tarzan of the Apes melted away into the shadows of the jungle
night.
Attracted by the cry of the wounded man, Zveri, Romero, and the
other leaders of the expedition hastened from their tents and joined
the throng of excited blacks that surrounded the victim of Tarzan's
campaign of terrorism.
"Who shot you?" demanded Zveri when he saw the arrow protruding from
the sentry's leg.
"I do not know," replied the man.
"Have you an enemy in camp who might want to kill you?" asked Zveri.
"Even if he had," said Romero, "he couldn't have shot him with an arrow
because no bows or arrows were brought with the expedition."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Zveri.
"So it must have been some one outside camp," declared Romero.
With difficulty and to the accompaniment of the screams of their
victim, Ivitch and Romero cut the arrow from the sentry's leg, while
Zveri and Kitembo discussed various conjectures as to the exact portent
of the affair.
"We have evidently run into hostile natives," said Zveri.
Kitembo shrugged non-committally. "Let me see the arrow," he said to
Romero. "Perhaps that will tell us something."
As the Mexican handed the missile to the black chief, the latter
carried it close to a camp fire and examined it closely, while the
white men gathered about him waiting for his findings.
At last Kitembo straightened up. The expression upon his face was
serious, and when he spoke his voice trembled slightly. "This is bad,"
he said, shaking his bullet head.
"What do you mean?" demanded Zveri.
"This arrow bears the mark of a warrior who was left behind in our base
camp," replied the chief.
"That is impossible," cried Zveri.
Kitembo shrugged. "I know it," he said, "but it is true."
"With an arrow out of the air the Hindu was slain," suggested a black
headman, standing near Kitembo.
"Shut up, you fool," snapped Romero, "or you'll have the whole camp in
a blue funk."
"That's right," said Zveri. "We must hush this thing up." He turned to
the headman. "You and Kitembo," he commanded, "must not repeat this to
your men. Let us keep it to ourselves."
Both Kitembo and the headman agreed to guard the secret, but within
half an hour every man in camp knew that the sentry had been shot with
an arrow that had been left behind in the base camp, and immediately
their minds were prepared for other things that lay ahead of them upon
the long trail.
The effect of the incident upon the minds of the black soldiers was
apparent during the following day's march. They were quieter and more
thoughtful, and there was much low voiced conversation among them; but
if they had given signs of nervousness during the day, it was nothing
as compared with their state of mind after darkness fell upon their
camp that night. The sentries evidenced their terror plainly by their
listening attitudes and nervous attention to the sounds that came out
of the blackness surrounding the camp. Most of them were brave men who
would have faced a visible enemy with courage, but to a man they were
convinced that they were confronted by the supernatural, against which
they knew that neither rifle nor bravery might avail. They felt that
ghostly eyes were watching them, and the result was as demoralizing as
would an actual attack have been; in fact, far more so.
Yet they need not have concerned themselves so greatly, as the cause
of all their superstitious apprehension was moving rapidly through the
jungle, miles away from them, and every instant the distance between
him and them was increasing.
Another force, that might have caused them even greater anxiety had
they been aware of it, lay still further away upon the trail that they
must traverse to reach their destination.
Around tiny cooking fires squatted a hundred black warriors, whose
white plumes nodded and trembled as they moved. Sentries guarded them;
sentries who were unafraid, since these men had little fear of ghosts
or demons. They wore their amulets in leather pouches that swung from
cords about their necks and they prayed to strange gods, but deep in
their hearts lay a growing contempt for both. They had learned from
experience and from the advice of a wise leader to look for victory
more to themselves and their weapons than to their god.
They were a cheerful, happy company, veterans of many an expedition
and, like all veterans, took advantage of every opportunity for
rest and relaxation, the value of both of which is enhanced by the
maintenance of a cheerful frame of mind; and so there was much laughing
and joking among them, and often both the cause and butt of this was a
little monkey, now teasing, now caressing, and in return being himself
teased or caressed. That there was a bond of deep affection between
him and these clean-limbed black giants was constantly apparent. When
they pulled his tail they never pulled it very hard, and when he turned
upon them in apparent fury, his sharp teeth closing upon their fingers
or arms, it was noticeable that he never drew blood. Their play was
rough, for they were all rough and primitive creatures; but it was all
playing, and it was based upon a foundation of mutual affection.
These men had just finished their evening meal, when a figure,
materializing as though out of thin air, dropped silently into their
midst from the branches of a tree which overhung their camp.
Instantly a hundred warriors sprang to arms, and then, as quickly, they
relaxed, as with shouts of "Bwana! Bwana!" they ran toward the bronzed
giant standing silently in their midst.
As to an emperor or a god they went upon their knees before him,
and those that were nearest him touched his hands and his feet in
reverence; for to the Waziri Tarzan of the Apes, who was their king,
was yet something more and of their own volition they worshipped him as
their living god.
But if the warriors were glad to see him, little Nkima was frantic with
joy. He scrambled quickly over the bodies of the kneeling blacks and
leaped to Tarzan's shoulder, where he clung about his neck, jabbering
excitedly.
"You have done well, my children," said the ape-man, "and little Nkima
has done well. He bore my message to you, and I find you ready where I
had planned that you should be."
"We have kept always a day's march ahead of the strangers, Bwana,"
replied Muviro, "camping well off the trail that they might not
discover our fresh camp sites and become suspicious."
"They do not suspect your presence," said Tarzan. "I listened above
their camp last night, and they said nothing that would indicate that
they dreamed that another party was preceding them along the trail."
"Where the dirt of the trail was soft a warrior, who marched at the
rear of the column, brushed away the freshness of our spoor with a
leafy bough," explained Muviro.
"Tomorrow we shall wait here for them," said the ape-man, "and tonight
you shall listen to Tarzan while he explains the plans that you will
follow."
As Zveri's column took up the march upon the following morning, after a
night of rest that had passed without incident, the spirits of all had
risen to an appreciable degree. The blacks had not forgotten the grim
warning that had sped out of the night surrounding their previous camp,
but they were of a race whose spirits soon rebound from depression.
The leaders of the expedition were encouraged by the knowledge that
over a third of the distance to their goal had been covered. For
various reasons they were anxious to complete this part of the plan.
Zveri believed that upon its successful conclusion hinged his whole
dream of empire. Ivitch, a natural born trouble-maker, was happy in the
thought that the success of the expedition would cause untold annoyance
to millions of people and perhaps, also, by the dream of his return to
Russia as a hero; perhaps a wealthy hero.
Romero and Mori wanted to have it over for entirely different reasons.
They were thoroughly disgusted with the Russian. They had lost all
confidence in the sincerity of Zveri, who, filled as he was with
his own importance and his delusions of future grandeur, talked too
much, with the result that he had convinced Romero that he and all
his kind were frauds, bent upon accomplishing their selfish ends with
the assistance of their silly dupes and at the expense of the peace
and prosperity of the world. It had not been difficult for Romero to
convince Mori of the truth of his deductions, and now, thoroughly
disillusioned, the two men continued on with the expedition because
they believed that they could not successfully accomplish their
intended desertion until the party was once more settled in the base
camp.
The march had continued uninterruptedly for about an hour after camp
had been broken, when one of Kitembo's black scouts, leading the
column, halted suddenly in his tracks.
"Look!" he said to Kitembo, who was just behind him.
The chief stepped to the warrior's side; and there, before him in the
trail, sticking upright in the earth, was an arrow.
"It is a warning," said the warrior.
Gingerly, Kitembo plucked the arrow from the earth and examined it.
He would have been glad to have kept the knowledge of his discovery
to himself, although not a little shaken by what he had seen; but the
warrior at his side had seen, too. "It is the same," he said. "It is
another of the arrows that were left behind in the base camp."
When Zveri came abreast of them, Kitembo handed him the arrow. "It is
the same," he said to the Russian, "and it is a warning for us to turn
back."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Zveri contemptuously. "It is only an arrow sticking
in the dirt and cannot stop a column of armed men. I did not think that
you were a coward, too, Kitembo."
The black scowled. "Nor do men with safety call me a coward," he
snapped; "but neither am I a fool, and better than you do I know the
danger signals of the forest. We shall go on because we are brave men,
but many will never come back. Also, your plans will fail."
At this Zveri flew into one of his frequent rages; and though the men
continued the march, they were in a sullen mood, and many were the ugly
glances that were cast at Zveri and his lieutenants.
Shortly after noon the expedition halted for the noonday rest. They had
been passing through a dense woods, gloomy and depressing; and there
was neither song nor laughter, nor a great deal of conversation as the
men squatted together in little knots while they devoured the cold food
that constituted their midday meal.
Suddenly, from somewhere far above, a voice floated down to them. Weird
and uncanny, it spoke to them in a Bantu dialect that most of them
could understand. "Turn back, children of Mulungo," it cried. "Turn
back before you die. Desert the white men before it is too late."
That was all. The men crouched fearfully, looking up into the trees. It
was Zveri who broke the silence. "What the hell was that?" he demanded.
"What did it say?"
"It warned us to turn back," said Kitembo.
"There will be no turning back," snapped Zveri.
"I do not know about that," replied Kitembo.
"I thought you wanted to be a king," cried Zveri. "You'd make a hell of
a king."
For the moment Kitembo had forgotten the dazzling prize that Zveri had
held before his eyes for months--to be king of Kenya. That was worth
risking much for.
"We will go on," he said.
"You may have to use force," said Zveri, "but stop at nothing. We
must go on, no matter what happens," and then he turned to his other
lieutenants. "Romero, you and Mori go to the rear of the column and
shoot every man who refuses to advance."
The men had not as yet refused to go on, and when the order to march
was given, they sullenly took their places in the column. For an hour
they marched thus; and then, far ahead, came the weird cry that many of
them had heard before at Opar, and a few minutes later a voice out of
the distance called to them. "Desert the white men," it said.