The Black Lion
Numa, the lion, was hungry. He had come out of the desert country
to the east into a land of plenty but though he was young and strong,
the wary grass-eaters had managed to elude his mighty talons each
time he had thought to make a kill.
Numa, the lion, was hungry and very savage. For two days he had
not eaten and now he hunted in the ugliest of humors. No more did
Numa roar forth a rumbling challenge to the world but rather he
moved silent and grim, stepping softly that no cracking twig might
betray his presence to the keen-eared quarry he sought.
Fresh was the spoor of Bara, the deer, that Numa picked up in the
well-beaten game trail he was following. No hour had passed since
Bara had come this way; the time could be measured in minutes and
so the great lion redoubled the cautiousness of his advance as he
crept stealthily in pursuit of his quarry.
A light wind was moving through the jungle aisles, and it wafted
down now to the nostrils of the eager carnivore the strong scent
spoor of the deer, exciting his already avid appetite to a point
where it became a gnawing pain. Yet Numa did not permit himself to
be carried away by his desires into any premature charge such as
had recently lost him the juicy meat of Pacco, the zebra. Increasing
his gait but slightly he followed the tortuous windings of the
trail until suddenly just before him, where the trail wound about
the bole of a huge tree, he saw a young buck moving slowly ahead
of him.
Numa judged the distance with his keen eyes, glowing now like two
terrible spots of yellow fire in his wrinkled, snarling face. He
could do it--this time he was sure. One terrific roar that would
paralyze the poor creature ahead of him into momentary inaction,
and a simultaneous charge of lightning-like rapidity and Numa, the
lion, would feed. The sinuous tail, undulating slowly at its tufted
extremity, whipped suddenly erect. It was the signal for the charge
and the vocal organs were shaped for the thunderous roar when, as
lightning out of a clear sky, Sheeta, the panther, leaped suddenly
into the trail between Numa and the deer.
A blundering charge made Sheeta, for with the first crash of his
spotted body through the foliage verging the trail, Bara gave a
single startled backward glance and was gone.
The roar that was intended to paralyze the deer broke horribly from
the deep throat of the great cat--an angry roar of rage against
the meddling Sheeta who had robbed him of his kill, and the charge
that was intended for Bara was launched against the panther; but
here too Numa was doomed to disappointment, for with the first notes
of his fearsome roar Sheeta, considering well the better part of
valor, leaped into a near-by tree.
A half-hour later it was a thoroughly furious Numa who came
unexpectedly upon the scent of man. Heretofore the lord of the jungle
had disdained the unpalatable flesh of the despised man-thing. Such
meat was only for the old, the toothless, and the decrepit who no
longer could make their kills among the fleet-footed grass-eaters.
Bara, the deer, Horta, the boar, and, best and wariest, Pacco, the
zebra, were for the young, the strong, and the agile, but Numa was
hungry--hungrier than he ever had been in the five short years of
his life.
What if he was a young, powerful, cunning, and ferocious beast?
In the face of hunger, the great leveler, he was as the old, the
toothless, and the decrepit. His belly cried aloud in anguish and
his jowls slavered for flesh. Zebra or deer or man, what mattered
it so that it was warm flesh, red with the hot juices of life?
Even Dango, the hyena, eater of offal, would, at the moment, have
seemed a tidbit to Numa.
The great lion knew the habits and frailties of man, though he never
before had hunted man for food. He knew the despised Gomangani as
the slowest, the most stupid, and the most defenseless of creatures.
No woodcraft, no cunning, no stealth was necessary in the hunting
of man, nor had Numa any stomach for either delay or silence.
His rage had become an almost equally consuming passion with
his hunger, so that now, as his delicate nostrils apprised him of
the recent passage of man, he lowered his head and rumbled forth
a thunderous roar, and at a swift walk, careless of the noise he
made, set forth upon the trail of his intended quarry.
Majestic and terrible, regally careless of his surroundings, the
king of beasts strode down the beaten trail. The natural caution
that is inherent to all creatures of the wild had deserted him.
What had he, lord of the jungle, to fear and, with only man to hunt,
what need of caution? And so he did not see or scent what a more
wary Numa might readily have discovered until, with the cracking of
twigs and a tumbling of earth, he was precipitated into a cunningly
devised pit that the wily Wamabos had excavated for just this
purpose in the center of the game trail.
Tarzan of the Apes stood in the center of the clearing watching the
plane shrinking to diminutive toy-like proportions in the eastern
sky. He had breathed a sigh of relief as he saw it rise safely with
the British flier and Fraulein Bertha Kircher. For weeks he had
felt the hampering responsibility of their welfare in this savage
wilderness where their utter helplessness would have rendered them
easy prey for the savage carnivores or the cruel Wamabos. Tarzan
of the Apes loved unfettered freedom, and now that these two were
safely off his hands, he felt that he could continue upon his
journey toward the west coast and the long-untenanted cabin of his
dead father.
And yet, as he stood there watching the tiny speck in the east,
another sigh heaved his broad chest, nor was it a sigh of relief,
but rather a sensation which Tarzan had never expected to feel
again and which he now disliked to admit even to himself. It could
not be possible that he, the jungle bred, who had renounced forever
the society of man to return to his beloved beasts of the wilds,
could be feeling anything akin to regret at the departure of these
two, or any slightest loneliness now that they were gone. Lieutenant
Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick Tarzan had liked, but the woman whom he
had known as a German spy he had hated, though he never had found it
in his heart to slay her as he had sworn to slay all Huns. He had
attributed this weakness to the fact that she was a woman, although
he had been rather troubled by the apparent inconsistency of
his hatred for her and his repeated protection of her when danger
threatened.
With an irritable toss of his head he wheeled suddenly toward the
west as though by turning his back upon the fast disappearing plane
he might expunge thoughts of its passengers from his memory. At
the edge of the clearing he paused; a giant tree loomed directly
ahead of him and, as though actuated by sudden and irresistible
impulse, he leaped into the branches and swung himself with apelike
agility to the topmost limbs that would sustain his weight. There,
balancing lightly upon a swaying bough, he sought in the direction
of the eastern horizon for the tiny speck that would be the British
plane bearing away from him the last of his own race and kind that
he expected ever again to see.
At last his keen eyes picked up the ship flying at a considerable
altitude far in the east. For a few seconds he watched it speeding
evenly eastward, when, to his horror, he saw the speck dive suddenly
downward. The fall seemed interminable to the watcher and he
realized how great must have been the altitude of the plane before
the drop commenced. Just before it disappeared from sight its
downward momentum appeared to abate suddenly, but it was still
moving rapidly at a steep angle when it finally disappeared from
view behind the far hills.
For half a minute the ape-man stood noting distant landmarks that
he judged might be in the vicinity of the fallen plane, for no
sooner had he realized that these people were again in trouble than
his inherent sense of duty to his own kind impelled him once more
to forego his plans and seek to aid them.
The ape-man feared from what he judged of the location of the machine
that it had fallen among the almost impassable gorges of the arid
country just beyond the fertile basin that was bounded by the
hills to the east of him. He had crossed that parched and desolate
country of the dead himself and he knew from his own experience
and the narrow escape he had had from succumbing to its relentless
cruelty no lesser man could hope to win his way to safety from
any considerable distance within its borders. Vividly he recalled
the bleached bones of the long-dead warrior in the bottom of the
precipitous gorge that had all but proved a trap for him as well.
He saw the helmet of hammered brass and the corroded breastplate of
steel and the long straight sword in its scabbard and the ancient
harquebus--mute testimonials to the mighty physique and the
warlike spirit of him who had somehow won, thus illy caparisoned
and pitifully armed, to the center of savage, ancient Africa; and
he saw the slender English youth and the slight figure of the girl
cast into the same fateful trap from which this giant of old had
been unable to escape--cast there wounded and broken perhaps, if
not killed.
His judgment told him that the latter possibility was probably
the fact, and yet there was a chance that they might have landed
without fatal injuries, and so upon this slim chance he started out
upon what he knew would be an arduous journey, fraught with many
hardships and unspeakable peril, that he might attempt to save them
if they still lived.
He had covered a mile perhaps when his quick ears caught the sound
of rapid movement along the game trail ahead of him. The sound,
increasing in volume, proclaimed the fact that whatever caused it
was moving in his direction and moving rapidly. Nor was it long
before his trained senses convinced him that the footfalls were
those of Bara, the deer, in rapid flight. Inextricably confused in
Tarzan's character were the attributes of man and of beasts. Long
experience had taught him that he fights best or travels fastest
who is best nourished, and so, with few exceptions, Tarzan could
delay his most urgent business to take advantage of an opportunity
to kill and feed. This perhaps was the predominant beast trait in
him. The transformation from an English gentleman, impelled by the
most humanitarian motives, to that of a wild beast crouching in the
concealment of a dense bush ready to spring upon its approaching
prey, was instantaneous.
And so, when Bara came, escaping the clutches of Numa and Sheeta,
his terror and his haste precluded the possibility of his sensing
that other equally formidable foe lying in ambush for him. Abreast
of the ape-man came the deer; a light-brown body shot from the
concealing verdure of the bush, strong arms encircled the sleek
neck of the young buck and powerful teeth fastened themselves in
the soft flesh. Together the two rolled over in the trail and a
moment later the ape-man rose, and, with one foot upon the carcass
of his kill, raised his voice in the victory cry of the bull ape.
Like an answering challenge came suddenly to the ears of the
ape-man the thunderous roar of a lion, a hideous angry roar in which
Tarzan thought that he discerned a note of surprise and terror. In
the breast of the wild things of the jungle, as in the breasts of
their more enlightened brothers and sisters of the human race, the
characteristic of curiosity is well developed. Nor was Tarzan far
from innocent of it. The peculiar note in the roar of his hereditary
enemy aroused a desire to investigate, and so, throwing the carcass
of Bara, the deer, across his shoulder, the ape-man took to the
lower terraces of the forest and moved quickly in the direction
from which the sound had come, which was in line with the trail he
had set out upon.
As the distance lessened, the sounds increased in volume, which
indicated that he was approaching a very angry lion and presently,
where a jungle giant overspread the broad game trail that countless
thousands of hoofed and padded feet had worn and trampled into a
deep furrow during perhaps countless ages, he saw beneath him the
lion pit of the Wamabos and in it, leaping futilely for freedom
such a lion as even Tarzan of the Apes never before had beheld. A
mighty beast it was that glared up at the ape-man--large, powerful
and young, with a huge black mane and a coat so much darker than
any Tarzan ever had seen that in the depths of the pit it looked
almost black--a black lion!
Tarzan who had been upon the point of taunting and reviling his
captive foe was suddenly turned to open admiration for the beauty
of the splendid beast. What a creature! How by comparison the
ordinary forest lion was dwarfed into insignificance! Here indeed
was one worthy to be called king of beasts. With his first sight of
the great cat the ape-man knew that he had heard no note of terror
in that initial roar; surprise doubtless, but the vocal chords of
that mighty throat never had reacted to fear.
With growing admiration came a feeling of quick pity for the hapless
situation of the great brute rendered futile and helpless by the
wiles of the Gomangani. Enemy though the beast was, he was less an
enemy to the ape-man than those blacks who had trapped him, for
though Tarzan of the Apes claimed many fast and loyal friends among
certain tribes of African natives, there were others of degraded
character and bestial habits that he looked upon with utter loathing,
and of such were the human flesh-eaters of Numabo the chief. For
a moment Numa, the lion, glared ferociously at the naked man-thing
upon the tree limb above him. Steadily those yellow-green eyes
bored into the clear eyes of the ape-man, and then the sensitive
nostrils caught the scent of the fresh blood of Bara and the eyes
moved to the carcass lying across the brown shoulder, and there
came from the cavernous depths of the savage throat a low whine.
Tarzan of the Apes smiled. As unmistakably as though a human voice
had spoken, the lion had said to him "I am hungry, even more than
hungry. I am starving," and the ape-man looked down upon the lion
beneath him and smiled, a slow quizzical smile, and then he shifted
the carcass from his shoulder to the branch before him and, drawing
the long blade that had been his father's, deftly cut off a hind
quarter and, wiping the bloody blade upon Bara's smooth coat, he
returned it to its scabbard. Numa, with watering jaws, looked up
at the tempting meat and whined again and the ape-man smiled down
upon him his slow smile and, raising the hind quarter in his strong
brown hands buried his teeth in the tender, juicy flesh.
For the third time Numa, the lion, uttered that low pleading whine
and then, with a rueful and disgusted shake of his head, Tarzan of
the Apes raised the balance of the carcass of Bara, the deer, and
hurled it to the famished beast below.
"Old woman," muttered the ape-man. "Tarzan has become a weak old
woman. Presently he would shed tears because he has killed Bara,
the deer. He cannot see Numa, his enemy, go hungry, because Tarzan's
heart is turning to water by contact with the soft, weak creatures
of civilization." But yet he smiled, nor was he sorry that he had
given way to the dictates of a kindly impulse.
As Tarzan tore the flesh from that portion of the kill he had retained
for himself his eyes were taking in each detail of the scene below.
He saw the avidity with which Numa devoured the carcass; he noted
with growing admiration the finer points of the beast, and also
the cunning construction of the trap. The ordinary lion pit with
which Tarzan was familiar had stakes imbedded in the bottom, upon
whose sharpened points the hapless lion would be impaled, but this
pit was not so made. Here the short stakes were set at intervals of
about a foot around the walls near the top, their sharpened points
inclining downward so that the lion had fallen unhurt into the trap
but could not leap out because each time he essayed it his head
came in contact with the sharp end of a stake above him.
Evidently, then, the purpose of the Wamabos was to capture a lion
alive. As this tribe had no contact whatsoever with white men in
so far as Tarzan knew, their motive was doubtless due to a desire
to torture the beast to death that they might enjoy to the utmost
his dying agonies.
Having fed the lion, it presently occurred to Tarzan that his act
would be futile were he to leave the beast to the mercies of the
blacks, and then too it occurred to him that he could derive more
pleasure through causing the blacks discomfiture than by leaving
Numa to his fate. But how was he to release him? By removing two
stakes there would be left plenty of room for the lion to leap from
the pit, which was not of any great depth. However, what assurance
had Tarzan that Numa would not leap out instantly the way to
freedom was open, and before the ape-man could gain the safety of
the trees? Regardless of the fact that Tarzan felt no such fear
of the lion as you and I might experience under like circumstances,
he yet was imbued with the sense of caution that is necessary to
all creatures of the wild if they are to survive. Should necessity
require, Tarzan could face Numa in battle, although he was not so
egotistical as to think that he could best a full-grown lion in
mortal combat other than through accident or the utilization of the
cunning of his superior man-mind. To lay himself liable to death
futilely, he would have considered as reprehensible as to have
shunned danger in time of necessity; but when Tarzan elected to do
a thing he usually found the means to accomplish it.
He had now fully determined to liberate Numa, and having so determined,
he would accomplish it even though it entailed considerable personal
risk. He knew that the lion would be occupied with his feeding for
some time, but he also knew that while feeding he would be doubly
resentful of any fancied interference. Therefore Tarzan must work
with caution.
Coming to the ground at the side of the pit, he examined the stakes
and as he did so was rather surprised to note that Numa gave no
evidence of anger at his approach. Once he turned a searching gaze
upon the ape-man for a moment and then returned to the flesh of
Bara. Tarzan felt of the stakes and tested them with his weight.
He pulled upon them with the muscles of his strong arms, presently
discovering that by working them back and forth he could loosen
them: and then a new plan was suggested to him so that he fell to
work excavating with his knife at a point above where one of the
stakes was imbedded. The loam was soft and easily removed, and it
was not long until Tarzan had exposed that part of one of the stakes
which was imbedded in the wall of the pit to almost its entire
length, leaving only enough imbedded to prevent the stake from
falling into the excavation. Then he turned his attention to an
adjoining stake and soon had it similarly exposed, after which he
threw the noose of his grass rope over the two and swung quickly
to the branch of the tree above. Here he gathered in the slack of
the rope and, bracing himself against the bole of the tree, pulled
steadily upward. Slowly the stakes rose from the trench in which
they were imbedded and with them rose Numa's suspicion and growling.
Was this some new encroachment upon his rights and his liberties?
He was puzzled and, like all lions, being short of temper, he
was irritated. He had not minded it when the Tarmangani squatted
upon the verge of the pit and looked down upon him, for had not
this Tarmangani fed him? But now something else was afoot and the
suspicion of the wild beast was aroused. As he watched, however,
Numa saw the stakes rise slowly to an erect position, tumble
against each other and then fall backwards out of his sight upon
the surface of the ground above. Instantly the lion grasped the
possibilities of the situation, and, too, perhaps he sensed the fact
that the man-thing had deliberately opened a way for his escape.
Seizing the remains of Bara in his great jaws, Numa, the lion,
leaped agilely from the pit of the Wamabos and Tarzan of the Apes
melted into the jungles to the east.
On the surface of the ground or through the swaying branches of the
trees the spoor of man or beast was an open book to the ape-man, but
even his acute senses were baffled by the spoorless trail of the
airship. Of what good were eyes, or ears, or the sense of smell
in following a thing whose path had lain through the shifting
air thousands of feet above the tree tops? Only upon his sense of
direction could Tarzan depend in his search for the fallen plane.
He could not even judge accurately as to the distance it might
lie from him, and he knew that from the moment that it disappeared
beyond the hills it might have traveled a considerable distance at
right angles to its original course before it crashed to earth. If
its occupants were killed or badly injured the ape-man might search
futilely in their immediate vicinity for some time before finding
them.
There was but one thing to do and that was to travel to a point
as close as possible to where he judged the plane had landed, and
then to follow in ever-widening circles until he picked up their
scent spoor. And this he did.
Before he left the valley of plenty he made several kills and
carried the choicest cuts of meat with him, leaving all the dead
weight of bones behind. The dense vegetation of the jungle terminated
at the foot of the western slope, growing less and less abundant
as he neared the summit beyond which was a sparse growth of sickly
scrub and sunburned grasses, with here and there a gnarled and hardy
tree that had withstood the vicissitudes of an almost waterless
existence.
From the summit of the hills Tarzan's keen eyes searched the arid
landscape before him. In the distance he discerned the ragged
tortuous lines that marked the winding course of the hideous gorges
which scored the broad plain at intervals--the terrible gorges that
had so nearly claimed his life in punishment for his temerity in
attempting to invade the sanctity of their ancient solitude.
For two days Tarzan sought futilely for some clew to the whereabouts
of the machine or its occupants. He cached portions of his kills at
different points, building cairns of rock to mark their locations.
He crossed the first deep gorge and circled far beyond it. Occasionally
he stopped and called aloud, listening for some response but
only silence rewarded him--a sinister silence that his cries only
accentuated.
Late in the evening of the second day he came to the well-remembered
gorge in which lay the clean-picked bones of the ancient adventurer,
and here, for the first time, Ska, the vulture, picked up his trail.
"Not this time, Ska," cried the ape-man in a taunting voice, "for
now indeed is Tarzan Tarzan. Before, you stalked the grim skeleton
of a Tarmangani and even then you lost. Waste not your time upon
Tarzan of the Apes in the full of his strength." But still Ska, the
vulture, circled and soared above him, and the ape-man, notwithstanding
his boasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brain ran
a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two
words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska
knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up
a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger.
Lowering himself over the precipitous side of the gorge Tarzan half
clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath. He had come
upon the rift at almost the exact spot at which he had clambered
from it weeks before, and there he saw, just as he had left it,
just, doubtless, as it had lain for centuries, the mighty skeleton
and its mighty armor.
As he stood looking down upon this grim reminder that another man
of might had succumbed to the cruel powers of the desert, he was
brought to startled attention by the report of a firearm, the sound
of which came from the depths of the gorge to the south of him,
and reverberated along the steep walls of the narrow rift.