Текст книги "Tarzan. Complete Collection"

Автор книги: Edgar Burroughs

CHAPTER TEN—FILLED WITH DESPAIR

A haggard white man, accompanied by a score of blacks, plodded doggedly along a jungle trail. His clothing was torn and soiled; his flesh scored by many a relentless thorn. Great dark circles were beneath his eyes—eyes that were filled with the anguish of spiritual torture and hopelessness.

Two blacks, who moved in advance of the balance of the party, halted for a momentary rest, and the others, closing up, joined them.

"Are there no signs, Natando?" asked the white man of one of the blacks who had been in the lead of the long procession.

"No, Bwana," replied Natando, "since the great rain we have seen no tracks."

"Up until then we followed them easily," said the white man. "During the rain they must have turned in a new direction. Perhaps we had better retrace our steps until we come upon the tracks again. We cannot go through this jungle aimlessly."

"Look!" whispered one of the Negroes in a low, affrighted voice.

He was pointing his arm ahead of them along the trail.

All eyes turned in the direction indicated by the trembling forefinger of the black.

Just ahead of them, majestically conspicuous in a frame of leafy verdure, where the trail turned from view, they saw a great black-maned forest lion surveying them.

The white man and four or five of the others who were armed with rifles cocked them. In the jungle, one has to be always prepared.

"Do not shoot," said the white, "unless he comes toward us. If we wound him, he will charge, but if we do not fire, he may go away."

They stood thus for a moment, the lion watching them intently, and then, to the amazement of the little party, an almost naked white man appeared from beyond the turn in the trail and stopped at the lion's shoulder.

The man, too, eyed them in silence for a moment, and then he raised his hand with its palm toward them and addressed them in one of the more common Bantu dialects.

"Put down your rifles," he said, "I am Tarzan of the Apes."

With a sigh of relief, the white man and his followers lowered their weapons as Tarzan, with Jad-bal-ja at heel, approached them.

"Who are you?" he asked, stopping in front of the white man.

"I am Doctor Karl von Harben, a missionary from the Urambi country," replied the white man. "I am a man of peace."

"I have heard of you, Doctor," said Tarzan, "and of the good work you are doing among your people. What brings you to my country?"

"A great misfortune," replied von Harben. "Two months ago my daughter was abducted. At first we thought that she had wandered into the forest and been killed by some wild beasts, but after days of searching we found her trail and saw that she was in the company of a band of men, or at least I assume that they are men, though their footprints slightly resemble those of gorillas. However, we know that they made fires and cooked their food, and so I assume that they are members of some race lower in the scale of evolution than are true men. You can imagine my fears."

Tarzan nodded and listened silently as the man went on with his story.

"It was some time after the abduction that we found their trail and as they moved quite as rapidly as we were able to, we could not overtake them, and then a great storm obliterated all signs of their spoor, nor have we been able to pick it up since," the missionary concluded.

"We are on similar missions then," said Tarzan, "for I am searching for two boys who are lost in the jungle. Two days ago I left them, to investigate a scent spoor that had aroused the suspicions of my lion, leaving him to guard the boys. Before I discovered the cause of his nervousness, the storm broke and when I returned to the spot at which I had left the boys, they had disappeared, nor have we been able to pick up their spoor since, as they mist have moved off through the trees while it was still raining. It is very possible that the scent spoor that disturbed Jad-bal-ja came from the party that abducted your daughter, since it was obvious to me that he scented some creature whose spoor was entirely unfamiliar, or else that of an enemy. He would not have reacted as he did to the scent spoor of any creature native to this part of the jungle."

"Perhaps it was us whose scent he caught," suggested von Harben.

"That is possible," replied Tarzan; "yet I rather doubt it, since we have been cognizant of your presence for some time and have been coming up wind along your spoor, yet at no time has he shown the nervous excitability that he did two days ago when he first caught the scent that aroused him."

"Let us join forces," said von Harben, "and search together for the two boys and my little girl."

"If Jad-bal-ja and I cannot find them," replied Tarzan, "They cannot be found. I can see from your appearance that you are upon the verge of exhaustion. A mile from here there is an open grove in the forest through which runs a small stream. Go there then with your people and make camp and rest while Jad-bal-ja and Tarzan search for your daughter."

"But can we not help?" insisted von Harben.

Tarzan shook his head.

"All that you might do is to follow the trails and you do not know which trail to follow to find your daughter. If the scent spoor was strong in your nostrils, you could not recognize it, and then when Tarzan and Jad-bal-ja had found her they would have to search again for you. No, make camp as I have told you and remain there until you hear further from me. As Jad-bal-ja makes his way upon the ground through the underbrush where there are no trails, Tarzan of the Apes travels through the branches of the trees. No scent spoor, however faint, may escape them. We shall make a great circle, Jad-bal-ja going in one direction, Tarzan of the Apes in the other, and all that lies within that circle shall be known to one or the other. Thus in a day we shall cover a territory that you could not search carefully in weeks."

"Perhaps you are right," said von Harben. "I shall do as you say, but at least my prayers for your success shall accompany you."

The ape man turned to the great lion and spoke a few words that neither black men nor the white could understand. The great cat turned and with lowered head entered the underbrush, while Tarzan sprang to an overhanging limb and in an instant the two had vanished from the sight of von Harben's party quite as though they had dissolved into thin air.

Gulm wasted no time in further effort to capture Doc, but leaving the dead priest where he had fallen, pressed forward toward the new temple site which Blk, who was guiding them, assured him was now near at hand.

Gretchen and Dick, closely guarded, marched hopelessly with their captors.

"Golly," said Dick, presently, "we seem to have all the bad luck in the world."

"Nothing worse could have happened to you, Dick," said Gretchen.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "It is just as bad for you."

"Oh, Dick, you must escape. You must! You must!" she cried frantically.

"How about you?" he demanded.

"They will not kill me," she answered.

"You mean—!"

"I mean that you must escape before we reach the site of the new temple. No matter what happens, nor what risks you must run, you must not let them take you there."

"I think I understand," said Dick, "but if I get away from them you are coming with me."

"No," she said, "you will be fortunate if you can get away alone. You cannot do it at all if you have to think of me. Do not consider me. I am positive that they will not kill me and some day my father will find me. I know that he will never stop searching until he finds me. If you see the slightest chance, you must take advantage of it and get away."

Dick shook his head.

"What sort of a fellow do you think I am? What kind of man would I be," he asked, "if I ran away and left you with them? No, I could not do that."

The girl shook her head and sighed.

"Please understand what I am saying. I do not want to be left alone with them," she said, "but whether you run away or whether you let them take you to the temple site, it will be all the same for I shall be alone with them in either event and I would rather know that you are alive than to feel always that I was the cause of—of the thing that I know must follow if you are with us when we reach the spot where the new temple is built."

Moving cautiously through the trees behind them, Doc followed the frightful men and their captives. In his mind he was revolving many plans of rescue, but in the face of the superior numbers that opposed him, each plan seemed futile and absolutely foredoomed to failure.

He counted his arrows. There were sixteen of them and he knew that there were nineteen sun worshippers to be accounted for. The plan that this calculation suggested appeared to offer as reasonable a chance for success as any that had occurred to him after racking his brains to the utmost.

He had been moving very cautiously, keeping just out of sight of the rear-most member of Gulm's party, but now he moved forward more rapidly, risking detection that he might get closer to his quarry. There was nothing like trying!

Doc was becoming very proficient in the use of his bow and he moved through the trees now with so much greater ease than he did when he first attempted it that it was not difficult for him to fit an arrow as he moved through the branches of a particularly large tree that gave him excellent foothold. Below him, and but a few yards distant, walked the priest that brought up the rear of the procession. Doc halted and bent his bow.

The priest screamed and lunged forward upon his face, and in the same instant Doc sprang quickly back behind the foliage of the tree and moved swiftly off into the jungle for a hundred yards.

Gulm and the lesser priests turned back as the scream of their fellow startled them into a realization of their own danger.

They looked in horror at the arrow protruding between the shoulders of the fallen man.

"It is the other, the one who escaped," said Gulm angrily.

He turned to Ulp.

"The Flaming God came in the night, did he, and took Kla from us, did he?" he shouted. "You lied to me, Ulp, and you shall die for it."

"I did not lie, Gulm," said Ulp, sullenly. "I told you the truth. The Flaming God came and spoke to me and I have told you what He said. That He was pleased with us is proven by the fact that He not only gave us back our high priestess, but offered us two sacrifices in addition. Is it His fault that we captured but one of them? Is it my fault? If you had captured them both, Gulm, this would not have happened. The Flaming God is punishing us, not for what I did, but for what you did not to."

"Very well," said Gulm, "you shall walk behind the rest of us so that you may capture the other sacrifice, if he returns," and with a sudden growl, Gulm resumed the march.

CHAPTER ELEVEN—STRIKING FROM THE REAR

Ulp did not like the idea of marching in the rear with his back continually exposed to the arrows of an unseen foe. He turned hes head about so often to look behind him that his neck pained him, and then he turned around and walked backward for awhile until the others got so far away from him that he became frightened and turned and ran rapidly to overtake them.

Meanwhile through the trees behind him came an American boy and now there were only eighteen enemies ahead of him and there were sixteen arrows in his quiver, for he had descended to the trail after the sun worshippers had moved on and wrenched the arrow from the body of his second victim.

It was grim and terrible work for Doc, who never in all his life had really wanted to kill anyone, nor did he wish to now. It was only stern necessity, induced by the danger that threatened Dick and Gretchen, that impelled him to undertake the grizzly work that he hated with all his heart and soul.

The forest was less dense now as the party advanced, and the undergrowth less thick. The trail led constantly into higher ground, and presently Dick and Gretchen saw hills looming before them.

Blk led them into the mouth of a ravine, which rose steeply upward into the hills. The great trees of the jungle disappeared and, in places, the undergrowth gave way entirely to rock formations that supported no vegetation.

Doc, coming to the edge of the jungle, surveyed the landscape ahead.

In a glance he saw that the trees were too scattered to offer him a continuous trail above the ground, and there were many places where the underbrush was so scant as to afford no sufficient shelter for him. But to the left of the ravine, a gently sloping hogback, strewn with great boulders, seemed to offer him the best chance of concealment and the easiest trail from which he might keep the quarry in view.

Ulp had caught up with his fellows and followed close behind them, as Doc clambered upward among the rocks to the summit of the hogback. Here he found a well marked game trail along which he could move with ease and, presently, he looked down into the ravine upon the little party.

Here was another opportunity. Again his bow twanged and as he dropped behind the concealing shelter of a great boulder, Ulp voiced a horrid shriek and crumpled to the ground.

Gulm was furious, not because Ulp had died, but partially because he had been robbed of an intended sacrifice for The Flaming God and partially because he realized the menace to all of them of this unseen foe, who clung so tenaciously to the rear from where he might pick them off one by one at his leisure—while they were helpless.

"It is the anger of The Flaming God!" he cried. "How much further to the temple site, Blk?"

"We are almost there," replied the guide.

"It is well," growled Gulm. "We must offer a sacrifice to appease the wrath of The Flaming God," and his eyes rested upon Dick.

Gretchen heard and understood. She turned imploringly to her companion.

"Oh, Dick!" she cried, her voice almost a sob. "You must escape at once. There is no time to spare. If ever we reach the temple site, you will be lost."

An arrow, speeding silently, buried itself in Gulm's leg, eliciting a cry of pain and anger. He wrenched the missile from his flesh, his eyes searching the direction from which it had come.

Then, quite unexpectedly, for a moment he glimpsed Doc upon the summit of the ridge, and then the lad stood up, clearly revealed to all of them.

"Don't give up hope, Dick," he shouted, "but look for me tonight. I will try to find a way to get you and Gretchen after dark. Be ready."

"It will be too late then, Doc," cried Gretchen. "If Dick is not saved in the next few minutes, he never will be."

"I will do the best I can," said Doc. Without saying more, Doc immediately fitted another arrow to his bow. He drove it swiftly in the direction of the Oparians and another priest collapsed, clutching at his pierced throat.

In a voice that sounded like the growling of a beast, Gulm issued orders to six of his followers, spurring them to action.

"Don't let that boy get the best of us! Go after him," he cried. "Bring him back to me alive if you can, but bring him back—dead or alive."

Doc was fitting another arrow when he saw the six start swiftly up the steep ravine side. They were close together and offered an excellent target, but suddenly an inspiration seized him. All about him were boulders of different shapes and sizes and in them he saw potential engines of destruction that might be used to accomplish his purpose while conserving his few remaining arrows.

Getting behind a fair sized, rounded boulder, he heaved against it with his shoulder until it gave, and then he guided it over the edge of the ridge directly above the six Oparians, who were ascending to capture or kill him. He did not wait for the boulder to strike them, but immediately seized smaller stones and hurled them down at his foe.

The priests attempted to scramble from the path of the descending boulder, but it had gained such momentum and was falling so rapidly that it was upon them before they could elude it. It struck one of them full in the breast, toppling him backward, crushing him, and then continued to bound down to the bottom of the ravine while the body of its victim, rolling and tumbling, leaped grotesquely in its wake.

"Good boy, Doc!" shouted Dick. "Give them another like that."

The five remaining priests hesitated, warding off the smaller stones that Doc hurled down upon them with their cudgels and their forearms.

They were starting to give back, slowly descending, when Gulm's voice rose up in a mighty bellow.

"Go on! Go on!" he cried. "If you come back without him, you shall be the first to be sacrificed to The Flaming God. Obey your high priest or die."

Knowing that Gulm's command was no idle threat, the five scrambled upward in the face of Doc's barrage until the lad was forced to the realization that some of them, at least, must reach the top, when his capture would be assured.

He sent them a parting arrow and then fled even before he saw its effect, while another priest rolled backward toward the bottom of the ravine. Doc leaped rapidly down the hogback toward the jungle where he knew he might better hope to elude his pursuers among the branches of the great trees.

The four lesser priests followed Doc until the foliage of the forest cut him from their view, and then they halted, grumbling.

"If we go in there after him," said one, "we shall not return alive. He will pick us off with his arrows."

"And if we go back to Gulm, we shall be sacrificed to The Flaming God," said another.

"There are four of us," said a third. "Why should we let Gulm offer us in sacrifice? Who made him high priest? In Opar he was only a lesser priest like us. There are four of us. Let us go back and tell Gulm that the creature escaped, and that before we will permit him to sacrifice any of us, we will kill him."

"Good," said the fourth. "Who is Gulm to be high priest or to take our lives if we do not wish it?"

Thus agreed, the four turned back up the ravine and Doc, relieved, watched them depart.

After they had passed out of sight he descended to the ground and followed them. By following along the bottom of the ravine he hoped to retrieve some of the arrows he had expended, for these were precious indeed, and then he hoped to make is way to the ridge on the right hand side of the ravine, which he had discovered from the summit of the opposite side was better suited to his purposes, since it dropped to the ravine bottom so precipitously that it would be difficult for the sun worshippers to scale it in pursuit of him, thus giving him a better opportunity to attack them in safety.

As the four priests who had succeeded in gaining the summit disappeared in pursuit of Doc, Gulm resumed the march up the steep and rocky gorge.

"Are you going to try to escape, Dick?" asked Gretchen.

The boy shook his head.

"Oh, please to for my sake," she urged.

"No," he persisted. "I could not do it. In the first place there has been no opportunity and if there is we will take it together."

Gretchen shook her head sadly. "I shall never forgive myself," she said.

"It is not your fault, Gretchen, and whatever happens, not one of us is to blame. We have all done our best and if they don't get good old Doc, he may save us both yet."

"I am afraid they will get him," said Gretchen. "These creatures can climb and run like monkeys. I think nothing could escape them."

"Well, good old Doc made them sit up and take notice," said Dick proudly. "If I have to die, at least I shall have that memory to console me."

The gorge had narrowed until there was room for but a single man to pass between its rocky walls and at this point it was necessary to climb steeply upward for twenty-five feet over a water-worn formation of stratified limestone, down one side of which splashed a miniature waterfall.

The smooth moist surface of the rocks offered only precarious foot and hand holds. Dick climbed directly behind Gretchen, steadying her as best he could, and helping her.

Finally they reached the top in safety, and as they stood erect again upon level ground, they saw that they were in the mouth of a rudely circular, natural, rockbound amphitheater.

Gulm looked slowly about him. His eyes gleamed with the fires of mad fanaticism. He looked up at the sun and stretched forth his arms.

"Here, O Great and Mighty God of our ancestors," he cried, "we shall dedicate to you the new temple and the new city that shall be raised in your honor, and here, before you hide your face again from the eyes of your people, we shall consecrate this ground as befits the holy purpose to which it shall be dedicated. Have patience with us, God of our fathers. You have waited long, but the time has almost come—you have not long to wait!"

He turned quickly to the lesser priests, who had knelt behind him.

"Quickly," he said, "go and gather stones and raise an altar."

Gretchen grasped Dick's hands and commenced to sob, softly