Part 6 (1/2)
The chief rose and approached the ape-ned unconsciousness He felt hairy hands upon hiund exa coreat toes
”With these and with no tail,” he said, ”it cannot clireed one of the warriors, ”it would surely fall even fro like it,” said the chief ”It is neither Waz-don nor Ho-don I wonder from whence it came and what it is called”
”The Kor-ul-JA shouted aloud, 'Tarzan-jad-guru!' and we thought that theythis one,” said a warrior ”Shall we kill it now?”
”No,” replied the chief, ”ait until its life returns into its head that I may question it Reain hear and speak call me”
He turned and departed fro hiht snatches of their conversation which indicated that the Kor-ul-JA reinforcereat numbers and driven them away Evidently the swift feet of Id-an had saved the day for the warriors of Om-at The ape-man smiled, then he partially opened an eye and cast it upon In-tan The warrior stood at the entrance to the cave looking out-his back was toward his prisoner Tarzan tested the bonds that secured his wrists They seemed none too stout and they had tied his hands in front of him! Evidence indeed that the Waz-don took few prisoners-if any
Cautiously he raised his wrists until he could exahted his features Instantly he was at work upon the bonds with his strong teeth, but ever a wary eye was upon In-tan, the warrior of Kor-ul-lul The last knot had been loosened and Tarzan's hands were free when In-tan turned to cast an appraising eye upon his ward He saw that the prisoner's position was changed-he no longer lay upon his back as they had left hiainst his face In-tan came closer and bent down The bonds seemed very loose upon the prisoner's wrists He extended his hand to exaers and instantly the two hands leaped from their bonds-one to seize his orist, the other his throat So unexpected the catlike attack that In-tan had not even tiers silenced him The creature pulled him suddenly forward so that he lost his balance and rolled over upon the prisoner and to the floor beyond to stop with Tarzan upon his breast In-tan struggled to release hiled to draw his knife; but Tarzan found it before hi it-he too could choke; but his own knife, in the hands of his antagonist, severed the beloved les beca his vision He knew that he was dying and he was right A moment later he was dead Tarzan rose to his feet and placed one foot upon the breast of his dead foe How the urge seized him to roar forth the victory cry of his kind! But he dared not He discovered that they had not removed his rope from his shoulders and that they had replaced his knife in its sheath It had been in his hand when he was felled Strange creatures! He did not know that they held a superstitious fear of the weapons of a dead ene that if buried without them he would forever haunt his slayers in search of them and that when he found theainst the wall leaned his bow and quiver of arrows
Tarzan stepped toward the doorway of the cave and looked out Night had just fallen He could hear voices from the nearer caves and there floated to his nostrils the odor of cooking food He looked down and experienced a sensation of relief The cave in which he had been held was in the lowest tier-scarce thirty feet from the base of the cliff He was about to chance an iht that brought a grin to his savage lips-a thought that was born of the nauru-Tarzan the Terrible-and a recollection of the days when he had delighted in baiting the blacks of the distant jungle of his birth He turned back into the cave where lay the dead body of In-tan With his knife he severed the warrior's head and carrying it to the outer edge of the recess tossed it to the ground below, then he dropped swiftly and silently down the ladder of pegs in a way that would have surprised the Kor-ul-lul who had been so sure that he could not climb
At the botto the shadows of the trees carrying the grisly trophy by its shock of shaggy hair Horrible? But you are judging a wild beast by the standards of civilization You may teach a lion tricks, but he is still a lion Tarzan looked well in a Tuxedo, but he was still a Tarani and beneath his pleated shi+rt beat a wild and savage heart
Nor was hisin method He knew that the hearts of the Kor-ul-lul would be filled with rage when they discovered the thing that he had done and he knew too, that e would be a leaven of fear and it was fear of hiles-one does not win the respect of the killers with bonbons
Below the village Tarzan returned to the foot of the cliff searching for a point where he could e of Om-at, the Kor-ul-JA He came at last to a place where the river ran so close to the rocky wall that he was forced to swim it in search of a trail upon the opposite side and here it was that his keen nostrils detected a familiar spoor It was the scent of Pan-at-lee at the spot where she had ele
Ied Pan-at-lee lived, or at least she had lived after the leap from the cliff's summit He had started in search of her for Om-at, his friend, and for Om-at he would continue upon the trail he had picked up thus fortuitously by accident It led hie and then to the point at which Pan-at-lee had commenced the ascent of the opposite cliffs Here Tarzan abandoned the head of In-tan, tying it to the lower branch of a tree, for he knew that it would handicap him in his ascent of the steep escarp easily the scent spoor of Pan-at-lee Over the sue the trail lay, plain as a printed page to the delicate senses of the jungle-bred tracker
Tarzan knew naught of the Kor-ul-GRYF He had seen, die, reat creatures that all ht and by day, there were dangers Frorim and terrible, at his heels He knew little of any other existence To cope with danger was his life and he lived his life as siers of the crowded city streets The black ht is afraid, for he has spent his life since infancy surrounded by nuht, by such crude means as lie within his powers But Tarzan had lived as the lion lives and the panther and the elephant and the ape-a true jungle creature dependent solely upon his prowess and his wits, playing a lone hand against creation Therefore he was surprised at nothing and feared nothing and so he walked through the strange night as undisturbed and unapprehensive as the farmer to the cow lot in the darkness before the dawn
Once e of a cliff; but this tie and a s upon which she hadover the top of the cliff exas his attention was suddenly attracted by souish its identity, but he saw that itslowly, apparently by s similar to those directly below hiher until he was able to distinguish its form more clearly, with the result that he becareat ape than a lower order It had a tail, though, and in other respects it did not seem a true ape
Slowly it ascended to the upper tier of caves, into one of which it disappeared Then Tarzan took up again the trail of Pan-at-lee He followed it down the stone pegs to the nearest cave and then further along the upper tier The ape-man raised his eyebrohen he saw the direction in which it led, and quickened his pace He had almost reached the third cave when the echoes of Kor-ul-GRYF were awakened by a shrill screaorge with the English plural, which is not the correct native plural form The latter, it seenored it throughout , for exaular and plural However, for the benefit of those who s I may say that the plurals are fore by doubling the initial letter of the word, as k'kor, gorges, pronounced as though written kakor, the a having the sound of a in sofa Lions, d' don
6
The Tor-o-don
Pan-at-lee slept-the troubled sleep, of physical and nervous exhaustion, filled eird dreareat tree in the bottom of the Kor-ul-GRYF and that one of the fearso upon her but she could not open her eyes nor move She tried to screa touch her throat, her breast, her ar her toward it With a super-human effort of will she opened her eyes In the instant she knew that she was drea and that quickly the hallucination of the dream would fade-it had happened to her ht that filtered into the dark chaers upon her and a hairy breast against which she was being drawn Jad-ben-Otho! this was no drea frorowl and another hairy hand seized her by the hair of the head The beast rose now upon its hind legs and dragged her from the cave to the ure of what she took to be a Ho-don rise above the outer edge of the niche
The beast that held her saw it too and growled ominously but it did not relinquish its hold upon her hair It crouched as though waiting an attack, and it increased the volurowls until the horrid sounds reverberated through the gorge, drowning even the deep bellowings of the beasts belohose s had broken out aneith the sudden co cave The beast that held her crouched and the creature that faced it crouched also, and growled-as hideously as the other Pan-at-lee treh she feared the Ho-don she feared this thing rowls She was lost-that Pan-at-lee knew The two things ht for her, but whichever won she was lost Perhaps, during the battle, if it caht find the opportunity to throw herself over into the Kor-ul-GRYF
The thing that held her she had recognized now as a Tor-o-don, but the other thing she could not place, though in the ht she could see it very distinctly It had no tail She could see its hands and its feet, and they were not the hands and feet of the races of Pal-ul-don It was slowly closing upon the Tor-o-don and in one hand it held a glea knife Now it spoke and to Pan-at-lee's terror was added an equal weight of consternation