Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

8

The Escape from Opar

Werper was astounded.  Could this creature be the same dignified Englishman who had entertained him so graciously in his luxurious African home?  Could this wild beast, with blazing eyes, and bloody countenance, be at the same time a man?  Could the horrid, victory cry he had but just heard have been formed in human throat?

Tarzan was eyeing the man and the woman, a puzzled expression in his eyes, but there was no faintest tinge of recognition.  It was as though he had discovered some new species of living creature and was marveling at his find.

La was studying the ape-man’s features.  Slowly her large eyes opened very wide.

“Tarzan!” she exclaimed, and then, in the vernacular of the great apes which constant association with the anthropoids had rendered the common language of the Oparians:  “You have come back to me!  La has ignored the mandates of her religion, waiting, always waiting for Tarzan—­for her Tarzan.  She has taken no mate, for in all the world there was but one with whom La would mate.  And now you have come back!  Tell me, O Tarzan, that it is for me you have returned.”

Werper listened to the unintelligible jargon.  He looked from La to Tarzan.  Would the latter understand this strange tongue?  To the Belgian’s surprise, the Englishman answered in a language evidently identical to hers.

“Tarzan,” he repeated, musingly.  “Tarzan.  The name sounds familiar.”

“It is your name—­you are Tarzan,” cried La.

“I am Tarzan?” The ape-man shrugged.  “Well, it is a good name—­I know no other, so I will keep it; but I do not know you.  I did not come hither for you.  Why I came, I do not know at all; neither do I know from whence I came.  Can you tell me?”

La shook her head.  “I never knew,” she replied.

Tarzan turned toward Werper and put the same question to him; but in the language of the great apes.  The Belgian shook his head.

“I do not understand that language,” he said in French.

Without effort, and apparently without realizing that he made the change, Tarzan repeated his question in French.  Werper suddenly came to a full realization of the magnitude of the injury of which Tarzan was a victim.  The man had lost his memory—­no longer could he recollect past events.  The Belgian was upon the point of enlightening him, when it suddenly occurred to him that by keeping Tarzan in ignorance, for a time at least, of his true identity, it might be possible to turn the ape-man’s misfortune to his own advantage.

“I cannot tell you from whence you came,” he said; “but this I can tell you—­if we do not get out of this horrible place we shall both be slain upon this bloody altar.  The woman was about to plunge her knife into my heart when the lion interrupted the fiendish ritual.  Come!  Before they recover from their fright and reassemble, let us find a way out of their damnable temple.”

Tarzan turned again toward La.

“Why,” he asked, “would you have killed this man?  Are you hungry?”

The High Priestess cried out in disgust.

“Did he attempt to kill you?” continued Tarzan.

The woman shook her head.

“Then why should you have wished to kill him?” Tarzan was determined to get to the bottom of the thing.

La raised her slender arm and pointed toward the sun.

“We were offering up his soul as a gift to the Flaming God,” she said.

Tarzan looked puzzled.  He was again an ape, and apes do not understand such matters as souls and Flaming Gods.

“Do you wish to die?” he asked Werper.

The Belgian assured him, with tears in his eyes, that he did not wish to die.

“Very well then, you shall not,” said Tarzan.  “Come!  We will go.  This she would kill you and keep me for herself.  It is no place anyway for a Mangani.  I should soon die, shut up behind these stone walls.”

He turned toward La.  “We are going now,” he said.

The woman rushed forward and seized the ape-man’s hands in hers.

“Do not leave me!” she cried.  “Stay, and you shall be High Priest.  La loves you.  All Opar shall be yours.  Slaves shall wait upon you.  Stay, Tarzan of the Apes, and let love reward you.”

The ape-man pushed the kneeling woman aside.  “Tarzan does not desire you,” he said, simply, and stepping to Werper’s side he cut the Belgian’s bonds and motioned him to follow.

Panting—­her face convulsed with rage, La sprang to her feet.

“Stay, you shall!” she screamed.  “La will have you—­if she cannot have you alive, she will have you dead,” and raising her face to the sun she gave voice to the same hideous shriek that Werper had heard once before and Tarzan many times.

In answer to her cry a babel of voices broke from the surrounding chambers and corridors.

“Come, Guardian Priests!” she cried.  “The infidels have profaned the holiest of the holies.  Come!  Strike terror to their hearts; defend La and her altar; wash clean the temple with the blood of the polluters.”

Tarzan understood, though Werper did not.  The former glanced at the Belgian and saw that he was unarmed.  Stepping quickly to La’s side the ape-man seized her in his strong arms and though she fought with all the mad savagery of a demon, he soon disarmed her, handing her long, sacrificial knife to Werper.

“You will need this,” he said, and then from each doorway a horde of the monstrous, little men of Opar streamed into the temple.

They were armed with bludgeons and knives, and fortified in their courage by fanatical hate and frenzy.  Werper was terrified.  Tarzan stood eyeing the foe in proud disdain.  Slowly he advanced toward the exit he had chosen to utilize in making his way from the temple.  A burly priest barred his way.  Behind the first was a score of others.  Tarzan swung his heavy spear, clublike, down upon the skull of the priest.  The fellow collapsed, his head crushed.

Again and again the weapon fell as Tarzan made his way slowly toward the doorway.  Werper pressed close behind, casting backward glances toward the shrieking, dancing mob menacing their rear.  He held the sacrificial knife ready to strike whoever might come within its reach; but none came.  For a time he wondered that they should so bravely battle with the giant ape-man, yet hesitate to rush upon him, who was relatively so weak.  Had they done so he knew that he must have fallen at the first charge.  Tarzan had reached the doorway over the corpses of all that had stood to dispute his way, before Werper guessed at the reason for his immunity.  The priests feared the sacrificial knife!  Willingly would they face death and welcome it if it came while they defended their High Priestess and her altar; but evidently there were deaths, and deaths.  Some strange superstition must surround that polished blade, that no Oparian cared to chance a death thrust from it, yet gladly rushed to the slaughter of the ape-man’s flaying spear.

Once outside the temple court, Werper communicated his discovery to Tarzan.  The ape-man grinned, and let Werper go before him, brandishing the jeweled and holy weapon.  Like leaves before a gale, the Oparians scattered in all directions and Tarzan and the Belgian found a clear passage through the corridors and chambers of the ancient temple.

The Belgian’s eyes went wide as they passed through the room of the seven pillars of solid gold.  With ill-concealed avarice he looked upon the age-old, golden tablets set in the walls of nearly every room and down the sides of many of the corridors.  To the ape-man all this wealth appeared to mean nothing.

On the two went, chance leading them toward the broad avenue which lay between the stately piles of the half-ruined edifices and the inner wall of the city.  Great apes jabbered at them and menaced them; but Tarzan answered them after their own kind, giving back taunt for taunt, insult for insult, challenge for challenge.

Werper saw a hairy bull swing down from a broken column and advance, stiff-legged and bristling, toward the naked giant.  The yellow fangs were bared, angry snarls and barkings rumbled threateningly through the thick and hanging lips.

The Belgian watched his companion.  To his horror, he saw the man stoop until his closed knuckles rested upon the ground as did those of the anthropoid.  He saw him circle, stiff-legged about the circling ape.  He heard the same bestial barkings and growlings issue from the human throat that were coming from the mouth of the brute.  Had his eyes been closed he could not have known but that two giant apes were bridling for combat.

But there was no battle.  It ended as the majority of such jungle encounters end—­one of the boasters loses his nerve, and becomes suddenly interested in a blowing leaf, a beetle, or the lice upon his hairy stomach.

In this instance it was the anthropoid that retired in stiff dignity to inspect an unhappy caterpillar, which he presently devoured.  For a moment Tarzan seemed inclined to pursue the argument.  He swaggered truculently, stuck out his chest, roared and advanced closer to the bull.  It was with difficulty that Werper finally persuaded him to leave well enough alone and continue his way from the ancient city of the Sun Worshipers.

The two searched for nearly an hour before they found the narrow exit through the inner wall.  From there the well-worn trail led them beyond the outer fortification to the desolate valley of Opar.

Tarzan had no idea, in so far as Werper could discover, as to where he was or whence he came.  He wandered aimlessly about, searching for food, which he discovered beneath small rocks, or hiding in the shade of the scant brush which dotted the ground.

The Belgian was horrified by the hideous menu of his companion.  Beetles, rodents and caterpillars were devoured with seeming relish.  Tarzan was indeed an ape again.

At last Werper succeeded in leading his companion toward the distant hills which mark the northwestern boundary of the valley, and together the two set out in the direction of the Greystoke bungalow.

What purpose prompted the Belgian in leading the victim of his treachery and greed back toward his former home it is difficult to guess, unless it was that without Tarzan there could be no ransom for Tarzan’s wife.

That night they camped in the valley beyond the hills, and as they sat before a little fire where cooked a wild pig that had fallen to one of Tarzan’s arrows, the latter sat lost in speculation.  He seemed continually to be trying to grasp some mental image which as constantly eluded him.

At last he opened the leathern pouch which hung at his side.  From it he poured into the palm of his hand a quantity of glittering gems.  The firelight playing upon them conjured a multitude of scintillating rays, and as the wide eyes of the Belgian looked on in rapt fascination, the man’s expression at last acknowledged a tangible purpose in courting the society of the ape-man.