Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

3

The Call of the Jungle

Moved by these vague yet all-powerful urgings the ape-man lay awake one night in the little thorn boma that protected, in a way, his party from the depredations of the great carnivora of the jungle.  A single warrior stood sleepy guard beside the fire that yellow eyes out of the darkness beyond the camp made imperative.  The moans and the coughing of the big cats mingled with the myriad noises of the lesser denizens of the jungle to fan the savage flame in the breast of this savage English lord.  He tossed upon his bed of grasses, sleepless, for an hour and then he rose, noiseless as a wraith, and while the Waziri’s back was turned, vaulted the boma wall in the face of the flaming eyes, swung silently into a great tree and was gone.

For a time in sheer exuberance of animal spirit he raced swiftly through the middle terrace, swinging perilously across wide spans from one jungle giant to the next, and then he clambered upward to the swaying, lesser boughs of the upper terrace where the moon shone full upon him and the air was stirred by little breezes and death lurked ready in each frail branch.  Here he paused and raised his face to Goro, the moon.  With uplifted arm he stood, the cry of the bull ape quivering upon his lips, yet he remained silent lest he arouse his faithful Waziri who were all too familiar with the hideous challenge of their master.

And then he went on more slowly and with greater stealth and caution, for now Tarzan of the Apes was seeking a kill.  Down to the ground he came in the utter blackness of the close-set boles and the overhanging verdure of the jungle.  He stooped from time to time and put his nose close to earth.  He sought and found a wide game trail and at last his nostrils were rewarded with the scent of the fresh spoor of Bara, the deer.  Tarzan’s mouth watered and a low growl escaped his patrician lips.  Sloughed from him was the last vestige of artificial caste—­once again he was the primeval hunter—­the first man—­the highest caste type of the human race.  Up wind he followed the elusive spoor with a sense of perception so transcending that of ordinary man as to be inconceivable to us.  Through counter currents of the heavy stench of meat eaters he traced the trail of Bara; the sweet and cloying stink of Horta, the boar, could not drown his quarry’s scent—­the permeating, mellow musk of the deer’s foot.

Presently the body scent of the deer told Tarzan that his prey was close at hand.  It sent him into the trees again—­into the lower terrace where he could watch the ground below and catch with ears and nose the first intimation of actual contact with his quarry.  Nor was it long before the ape-man came upon Bara standing alert at the edge of a moon-bathed clearing.  Noiselessly Tarzan crept through the trees until he was directly over the deer.  In the ape-man’s right hand was the long hunting knife of his father and in his heart the blood lust of the carnivore.  Just for an instant he poised above the unsuspecting Bara and then he launched himself downward upon the sleek back.  The impact of his weight carried the deer to its knees and before the animal could regain its feet the knife had found its heart.  As Tarzan rose upon the body of his kill to scream forth his hideous victory cry into the face of the moon the wind carried to his nostrils something which froze him to statuesque immobility and silence.  His savage eyes blazed into the direction from which the wind had borne down the warning to him and a moment later the grasses at one side of the clearing parted and Numa, the lion, strode majestically into view.  His yellow-green eyes were fastened upon Tarzan as he halted just within the clearing and glared enviously at the successful hunter, for Numa had had no luck this night.

From the lips of the ape-man broke a rumbling growl of warning.  Numa answered but he did not advance.  Instead he stood waving his tail gently to and fro, and presently Tarzan squatted upon his kill and cut a generous portion from a hind quarter.  Numa eyed him with growing resentment and rage as, between mouthfuls, the ape-man growled out his savage warnings.  Now this particular lion had never before come in contact with Tarzan of the Apes and he was much mystified.  Here was the appearance and the scent of a man-thing and Numa had tasted of human flesh and learned that though not the most palatable it was certainly by far the easiest to secure, yet there was that in the bestial growls of the strange creature which reminded him of formidable antagonists and gave him pause, while his hunger and the odor of the hot flesh of Bara goaded him almost to madness.  Always Tarzan watched him, guessing what was passing in the little brain of the carnivore and well it was that he did watch him, for at last Numa could stand it no longer.  His tail shot suddenly erect and at the same instant the wary ape-man, knowing all too well what the signal portended, grasped the remainder of the deer’s hind quarter between his teeth and leaped into a nearby tree as Numa charged him with all the speed and a sufficient semblance of the weight of an express train.

Tarzan’s retreat was no indication that he felt fear.  Jungle life is ordered along different lines than ours and different standards prevail.  Had Tarzan been famished he would, doubtless, have stood his ground and met the lion’s charge.  He had done the thing before upon more than one occasion, just as in the past he had charged lions himself; but tonight he was far from famished and in the hind quarter he had carried off with him was more raw flesh than he could eat; yet it was with no equanimity that he looked down upon Numa rending the flesh of Tarzan’s kill.  The presumption of this strange Numa must be punished!  And forthwith Tarzan set out to make life miserable for the big cat.  Close by were many trees bearing large, hard fruits and to one of these the ape-man swung with the agility of a squirrel.  Then commenced a bombardment which brought forth earthshaking roars from Numa.  One after another as rapidly as he could gather and hurl them, Tarzan pelted the hard fruit down upon the lion.  It was impossible for the tawny cat to eat under that hail of missiles—­he could but roar and growl and dodge and eventually he was driven away entirely from the carcass of Bara, the deer.  He went roaring and resentful; but in the very center of the clearing his voice was suddenly hushed and Tarzan saw the great head lower and flatten out, the body crouch and the long tail quiver, as the beast slunk cautiously toward the trees upon the opposite side.

Immediately Tarzan was alert.  He lifted his head and sniffed the slow, jungle breeze.  What was it that had attracted Numa’s attention and taken him soft-footed and silent away from the scene of his discomfiture?  Just as the lion disappeared among the trees beyond the clearing Tarzan caught upon the down-coming wind the explanation of his new interest—­the scent spoor of man was wafted strongly to the sensitive nostrils.  Caching the remainder of the deer’s hind quarter in the crotch of a tree the ape-man wiped his greasy palms upon his naked thighs and swung off in pursuit of Numa.  A broad, well-beaten elephant path led into the forest from the clearing.  Parallel to this slunk Numa, while above him Tarzan moved through the trees, the shadow of a wraith.  The savage cat and the savage man saw Numa’s quarry almost simultaneously, though both had known before it came within the vision of their eyes that it was a black man.  Their sensitive nostrils had told them this much and Tarzan’s had told him that the scent spoor was that of a stranger—­old and a male, for race and sex and age each has its own distinctive scent.  It was an old man that made his way alone through the gloomy jungle, a wrinkled, dried up, little old man hideously scarred and tattooed and strangely garbed, with the skin of a hyena about his shoulders and the dried head mounted upon his grey pate.  Tarzan recognized the ear-marks of the witch-doctor and awaited Numa’s charge with a feeling of pleasurable anticipation, for the ape-man had no love for witch-doctors; but in the instant that Numa did charge, the white man suddenly recalled that the lion had stolen his kill a few minutes before and that revenge is sweet.

The first intimation the black man had that he was in danger was the crash of twigs as Numa charged through the bushes into the game trail not twenty yards behind him.  Then he turned to see a huge, black-maned lion racing toward him and even as he turned, Numa seized him.  At the same instant the ape-man dropped from an overhanging limb full upon the lion’s back and as he alighted he plunged his knife into the tawny side behind the left shoulder, tangled the fingers of his right hand in the long mane, buried his teeth in Numa’s neck and wound his powerful legs about the beast’s torso.  With a roar of pain and rage, Numa reared up and fell backward upon the ape-man; but still the mighty man-thing clung to his hold and repeatedly the long knife plunged rapidly into his side.  Over and over rolled Numa, the lion, clawing and biting at the air, roaring and growling horribly in savage attempt to reach the thing upon its back.  More than once was Tarzan almost brushed from his hold.  He was battered and bruised and covered with blood from Numa and dirt from the trail, yet not for an instant did he lessen the ferocity of his mad attack nor his grim hold upon the back of his antagonist.  To have loosened for an instant his grip there, would have been to bring him within reach of those tearing talons or rending fangs, and have ended forever the grim career of this jungle-bred English lord.  Where he had fallen beneath the spring of the lion the witch-doctor lay, torn and bleeding, unable to drag himself away and watched the terrific battle between these two lords of the jungle.  His sunken eyes glittered and his wrinkled lips moved over toothless gums as he mumbled weird incantations to the demons of his cult.

For a time he felt no doubt as to the outcome—­the strange white man must certainly succumb to terrible Simba—­whoever heard of a lone man armed only with a knife slaying so mighty a beast!  Yet presently the old black man’s eyes went wider and he commenced to have his doubts and misgivings.  What wonderful sort of creature was this that battled with Simba and held his own despite the mighty muscles of the king of beasts and slowly there dawned in those sunken eyes, gleaming so brightly from the scarred and wrinkled face, the light of a dawning recollection.  Gropingly backward into the past reached the fingers of memory, until at last they seized upon a faint picture, faded and yellow with the passing years.  It was the picture of a lithe, white-skinned youth swinging through the trees in company with a band of huge apes, and the old eyes blinked and a great fear came into them—­the superstitious fear of one who believes in ghosts and spirits and demons.

And came the time once more when the witch-doctor no longer doubted the outcome of the duel, yet his first judgment was reversed, for now he knew that the jungle god would slay Simba and the old black was even more terrified of his own impending fate at the hands of the victor than he had been by the sure and sudden death which the triumphant lion would have meted out to him.  He saw the lion weaken from loss of blood.  He saw the mighty limbs tremble and stagger and at last he saw the beast sink down to rise no more.  He saw the forest god or demon rise from the vanquished foe, and placing a foot upon the still quivering carcass, raise his face to the moon and bay out a hideous cry that froze the ebbing blood in the veins of the witch-doctor.