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Tarzan the Untamed

E >> Edgar Rice Burroughs >> Tarzan the Untamed



This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE





TARZAN
THE UNTAMED

Edgar Rice Burroughs




CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I Murder and Pillage
II The Lion's Cave
III In the German Lines
IV When the Lion Fed
V The Golden Locket
VI Vengeance and Mercy
VII When Blood Told
VIII Tarzan and the Great Apes
IX Dropped from the Sky
X In the Hands of Savages
XI Finding the Airplane
XII The Black Flier
XIII Usanga's Reward
XIV The Black Lion
XV Mysterious Footprints
XVI The Night Attack
XVII The Walled City
XVIII Among the Maniacs
XIX The Queen's Story
XX Came Tarzan
XXI In the Alcove
XXII Out of the Niche
XXIII The Flight from Xuja
XXIV The Tommies




TARZAN
THE UNTAMED

Edgar Rice Burroughs




Murder and Pillage

Hauptmann Fritz Schneider trudged wearily through
the somber aisles of the dark forest. Sweat rolled down
his bullet head and stood upon his heavy jowls and bull
neck. His lieutenant marched beside him while Underlieutenant
von Goss brought up the rear, following with a handful of
askaris the tired and all but exhausted porters whom the black
soldiers, following the example of their white officer, en-
couraged with the sharp points of bayonets and the metal-shod
butts of rifles.

There were no porters within reach of Hauptmann Schnei-
der so he vented his Prussian spleen upon the askaris nearest
at hand, yet with greater circumspection since these men bore
loaded rifles -- and the three white men were alone with them
in the heart of Africa.

Ahead of the hauptmann marched half his company, be-
hind him the other half -- thus were the dangers of the savage
jungle minimized for the German captain. At the forefront
of the column staggered two naked savages fastened to each
other by a neck chain. These were the native guides im-
pressed into the service of Kultur and upon their poor, bruised
bodies Kultur's brand was revealed in divers cruel wounds and
bruises.

Thus even in darkest Africa was the light of German civili-
zation commencing to reflect itself upon the undeserving na-
tives just as at the same period, the fall of 1914, it was shed-
ding its glorious effulgence upon benighted Belgium.

It is true that the guides had led the party astray; but this
is the way of most African guides. Nor did it matter that ig-
norance rather than evil intent had been the cause of their
failure. It was enough for Hauptmann Fritz Schneider to
know that he was lost in the African wilderness and that he
had at hand human beings less powerful than he who could be
made to suffer by torture. That he did not kill them outright
was partially due to a faint hope that they might eventually
prove the means of extricating him from his difficulties and
partially that so long as they lived they might still be made
to suffer.

The poor creatures, hoping that chance might lead them at
last upon the right trail, insisted that they knew the way and
so led on through a dismal forest along a winding game trail
trodden deep by the feet of countless generations of the sav-
age denizens of the jungle.

Here Tantor, the elephant, took his long way from dust
wallow to water. Here Buto, the rhinoceros, blundered blindly
in his solitary majesty, while by night the great cats paced
silently upon their padded feet beneath the dense canopy of
overreaching trees toward the broad plain beyond, where they
found their best hunting.

It was at the edge of this plain which came suddenly and
unexpectedly before the eyes of the guides that their sad hearts
beat with renewed hope. Here the hauptmann drew a deep
sigh of relief, for after days of hopeless wandering through
almost impenetrable jungle the broad vista of waving grasses
dotted here and there with open parklike woods and in the
far distance the winding line of green shrubbery that denoted
a river appeared to the European a veritable heaven.

The Hun smiled in his relief, passed a cheery word with his
lieutenant, and then scanned the broad plain with his field
glasses. Back and forth they swept across the rolling land
until at last they came to rest upon a point near the center of
the landscape and close to the green-fringed contours of the
river.

"We are in luck," said Schneider to his companions. "Do
you see it?"

The lieutenant, who was also gazing through his own glasses,
finally brought them to rest upon the same spot that had
held the attention of his superior.

"Yes," he said, "an English farm. It must be Greystoke's,
for there is none other in this part of British East Africa. God
is with us, Herr Captain."

"We have come upon the English schweinhund long before
he can have learned that his country is at war with ours,"
replied Schneider. "Let him be the first to feel the iron hand
of Germany."

"Let us hope that he is at home," said the lieutenant, "that
we may take him with us when we report to Kraut at Nairobi.
It will go well indeed with Herr Hauptmann Fritz Schneider
if he brings in the famous Tarzan of the Apes as a prisoner
of war."

Schneider smiled and puffed out his chest. "You are right,
my friend," he said, "it will go well with both of us; but I
shall have to travel far to catch General Kraut before he
reaches Mombasa. These English pigs with their contemptible
army will make good time to the Indian Ocean."

It was in a better frame of mind that the small force set
out across the open country toward the trim and well-kept
farm buildings of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke; but disap-
pointment was to be their lot since neither Tarzan of the Apes
nor his son was at home.

Lady Jane, ignorant of the fact that a state of war existed
between Great Britain and Germany, welcomed the officers
most hospitably and gave orders through her trusted Waziri
to prepare a feast for the black soldiers of the enemy.

Far to the east, Tarzan of the Apes was traveling rapidly
from Nairobi toward the farm. At Nairobi he had received
news of the World War that had already started, and, antici-
pating an immediate invasion of British East Africa by the
Germans, was hurrying homeward to fetch his wife to a place
of greater security. With him were a score of his ebon war-
riors, but far too slow for the ape-man was the progress of
these trained and hardened woodsmen.

When necessity demanded, Tarzan of the Apes sloughed
the thin veneer of his civilization and with it the hampering
apparel that was its badge. In a moment the polished Eng-
lish gentleman reverted to the naked ape man.

His mate was in danger. For the time, that single thought
dominated. He did not think of her as Lady Jane Greystoke,
but rather as the she he had won by the might of his steel
thews, and that he must hold and protect by virtue of the
same offensive armament.

It was no member of the House of Lords who swung
swiftly and grimly through the tangled forest or trod with
untiring muscles the wide stretches of open plain -- it was a
great he ape filled with a single purpose that excluded all
thoughts of fatigue or danger.

Little Manu, the monkey, scolding and chattering in the
upper terraces of the forest, saw him pass. Long had it been
since he had thus beheld the great Tarmangani naked and
alone hurtling through the jungle. Bearded and gray was
Manu, the monkey, and to his dim old eyes came the fire of
recollection of those days when Tarzan of the Apes had ruled
supreme, Lord of the Jungle, over all the myriad life that trod
the matted vegetation between the boles of the great trees,
or flew or swung or climbed in the leafy fastness upward
to the very apex of the loftiest terraces.

And Numa, the lion, lying up for the day close beside last
night's successful kill, blinked his yellow-green eyes and
twitched his tawny tail as he caught the scent spoor of his
ancient enemy.

Nor was Tarzan senseless to the presence of Numa or Manu
or any of the many jungle beasts he passed in his rapid flight
towards the west. No particle had his shallow probing of
English society dulled his marvelous sense faculties. His nose
had picked out the presence of Numa, the lion, even before
the majestic king of beasts was aware of his passing.

He had heard noisy little Manu, and even the soft rustling
of the parting shrubbery where Sheeta passed before either
of these alert animals sensed his presence.

But however keen the senses of the ape-man, however
swift his progress through the wild country of his adoption,
however mighty the muscles that bore him, he was still mortal.
Time and space placed their inexorable limits upon him; nor
was there another who realized this truth more keenly than
Tarzan. He chafed and fretted that he could not travel with
the swiftness of thought and that the long tedious miles
stretching far ahead of him must require hours and hours of
tireless effort upon his part before he would swing at last from
the final bough of the fringing forest into the open plain and
in sight of his goal.

Days it took, even though he lay up at night for but a few
hours and left to chance the finding of meat directly on his
trail. If Wappi, the antelope, or Horta, the boar, chanced in
his way when he was hungry, he ate, pausing but long
enough to make the kill and cut himself a steak.

Then at last the long journey drew to its close and he was
passing through the last stretch of heavy forest that bounded
his estate upon the east, and then this was traversed and he
stood upon the plain's edge looking out across his broad
lands towards his home.

At the first glance his eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed.
Even at that distance he could see that something was amiss.
A thin spiral of smoke arose at the right of the bungalow
where the barns had stood, but there were no barns there
now, and from the bungalow chimney from which smoke
should have arisen, there arose nothing.

Once again Tarzan of the Apes was speeding onward, this
time even more swiftly than before, for he was goaded now
by a nameless fear, more product of intuition than of reason.
Even as the beasts, Tarzan of the Apes seemed to possess a
sixth sense. Long before he reached the bungalow, he had
almost pictured the scene that finally broke upon his view.

Silent and deserted was the vine-covered cottage. Smolder-
ing embers marked the site of his great barns. Gone were
the thatched huts of his sturdy retainers, empty the fields, the
pastures, and corrals. Here and there vultures rose and circled
above the carcasses of men and beasts.

It was with a feeling as nearly akin to terror as he ever had
experienced that the ape-man finally forced himself to enter
his home. The first sight that met his eyes set the red haze
of hate and bloodlust across his vision, for there, crucified
against the wall of the living-room, was Wasimbu, giant son
of the faithful Muviro and for over a year the personal body-
guard of Lady Jane.

The overturned and shattered furniture of the room, the
brown pools of dried blood upon the floor, and prints of
bloody hands on walls and woodwork evidenced something
of the frightfulness of the battle that had been waged within
the narrow confines of the apartment. Across the baby grand
piano lay the corpse of another black warrior, while before
the door of Lady Jane's boudoir were the dead bodies of three
more of the faithful Greystoke servants.

The door of this room was closed. With drooping shoulders
and dull eyes Tarzan stood gazing dumbly at the insensate
panel which hid from him what horrid secret he dared not
even guess.

Slowly, with leaden feet, he moved toward the door. Grop-
ingly his hand reached for the knob. Thus he stood for
another long minute, and then with a sudden gesture he
straightened his giant frame, threw back his mighty shoulders
and, with fearless head held high, swung back the door and
stepped across the threshold into the room which held for
him the dearest memories and associations of his life. No
change of expression crossed his grim and stern-set features
as he strode across the room and stood beside the little couch
and the inanimate form which lay face downward upon it; the
still, silent thing that had pulsed with life and youth and
love.

No tear dimmed the eye of the ape-man, but the God who
made him alone could know the thoughts that passed through
that still half-savage brain. For a long time he stood there
just looking down upon the dead body, charred beyond
recognition, and then he stooped and lifted it in his arms.
As he turned the body over and saw how horribly death had
been meted he plumbed, in that instant, the uttermost depths
of grief and horror and hatred.

Nor did he require the evidence of the broken German
rifle in the outer room, or the torn and blood-stained service
cap upon the floor, to tell him who had been the perpetrators
of this horrid and useless crime.

For a moment he had hoped against hope that the black-
ened corpse was not that of his mate, but when his eyes dis-
covered and recognized the rings upon her fingers the last
faint ray of hope forsook him.

In silence, in love, and in reverence he buried, in the little
rose garden that had been Jane Clayton's pride and love, the
poor, charred form and beside it the great black warriors who
had given their lives so futilely in their mistress' protection.

At one side of the house Tarzan found other newly made
graves and in these he sought final evidence of the identity
of the real perpetrators of the atrocities that had been com-
mitted there in his absence.

Here he disinterred the bodies of a dozen German askaris
and found upon their uniforms the insignia of the company
and regiment to which they had belonged. This was enough
for the ape-man. White officers had commanded these men,
nor would it be a difficult task to discover who they were.

Returning to the rose garden, he stood among the Hun-
trampled blooms and bushes above the grave of his dead --
with bowed head he stood there in a last mute farewell. As
the sun sank slowly behind the towering forests of the west,
he turned slowly away upon the still-distinct trail of Haupt-
mann Fritz Schneider and his blood-stained company.

His was the suffering of the dumb brute -- mute; but though
voiceless no less poignant. At first his vast sorrow numbed
his other faculties of thought -- his brain was overwhelmed by
the calamity to such an extent that it reacted to but a single
objective suggestion: She is dead! She is dead! She is dead!
Again and again this phrase beat monotonously upon his brain
-- a dull, throbbing pain, yet mechanically his feet followed
the trail of her slayer while, subconsciously, his every sense
was upon the alert for the ever-present perils of the jungle.

Gradually the labor of his great grief brought forth another
emotion so real, so tangible, that it seemed a companion walk-
ing at his side. It was Hate -- and it brought to him a measure
of solace and of comfort, for it was a sublime hate that en-
nobled him as it has ennobled countless thousands since --
hatred for Germany and Germans. It centered about the
slayer of his mate, of course; but it included everything Ger-
man, animate or inanimate. As the thought took firm hold
upon him he paused and raising his face to Goro, the moon,
cursed with upraised hand the authors of the hideous crime
that had been perpetrated in that once peaceful bungalow
behind him; and he cursed their progenitors, their progeny,
and all their kind the while he took silent oath to war upon
them relentlessly until death overtook him.

There followed almost immediately a feeling of content,
for, where before his future at best seemed but a void, now it
was filled with possibilities the contemplation of which
brought him, if not happiness, at least a surcease of absolute
grief, for before him lay a great work that would occupy his
time.

Stripped not only of all the outward symbols of civilization,
Tarzan had also reverted morally and mentally to the status
of the savage beast he had been reared. Never had his
civilization been more than a veneer put on for the sake of
her he loved because he thought it made her happier to see
him thus. In reality he had always held the outward evi-
dences of so-called culture in deep contempt. Civilization
meant to Tarzan of the Apes a curtailment of freedom in all
its aspects -- freedom of action, freedom of thought, freedom
of love, freedom of hate. Clothes he abhorred -- uncomfort-
able, hideous, confining things that reminded him somehow
of bonds securing him to the life he had seen the poor crea-
tures of London and Paris living. Clothes were the emblems
of that hypocrisy for which civilization stood -- a pretense that
the wearers were ashamed of what the clothes covered, of the
human form made in the semblance of God. Tarzan knew how
silly and pathetic the lower orders of animals appeared in
the clothing of civilization, for he had seen several poor
creatures thus appareled in various traveling shows in Europe,
and he knew, too, how silly and pathetic man appears in them
since the only men he had seen in the first twenty years of
his life had been, like himself, naked savages. The ape-man
had a keen admiration for a well-muscled, well-proportioned
body, whether lion, or antelope, or man, and it had ever been
beyond him to understand how clothes could be considered
more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy skin, or coat and
trousers more graceful than the gentle curves of rounded
muscles playing beneath a flexible hide.

In civilization Tarzan had found greed and selfishness and
cruelty far beyond that which he had known in his familiar,
savage jungle, and though civilization had given him his mate
and several friends whom he loved and admired, he never
had come to accept it as you and I who have known little or
nothing else; so it was with a sense of relief that he now
definitely abandoned it and all that it stood for, and went
forth into the jungle once again stripped to his loin cloth and
weapons.

The hunting knife of his father hung at his left hip, his bow
and his quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders,
while around his chest over one shoulder and beneath the
opposite arm was coiled the long grass rope without which
Tarzan would have felt quite as naked as would you should
you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway clad only in a
union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes carried in
one hand and again slung by a thong about his neck so that
it hung down his back completed his armament and his
apparel. The diamond-studded locket with the pictures of
his mother and father that he had worn always until he had
given it as a token of his highest devotion to Jane Clayton
before their marriage was missing. She always had worn it
since, but it had not been upon her body when he found her
slain in her boudoir, so that now his quest for vengeance in-
cluded also a quest for the stolen trinket.

Toward midnight Tarzan commenced to feel the physical
strain of his long hours of travel and to realize that even
muscles such as his had their limitations. His pursuit of the
murderers had not been characterized by excessive speed; but
rather more in keeping with his mental attitude, which was
marked by a dogged determination to require from the Ger-
mans more than an eye for an eye and more than a tooth for
a tooth, the element of time entering but slightly into his
calculations.

Inwardly as well as outwardly Tarzan had reverted to beast
and in the lives of beasts, time, as a measurable aspect of
duration, has no meaning. The beast is actively interested
only in NOW, and as it is always NOW and always shall be, there
is an eternity of time for the accomplishment of objects. The
ape-man, naturally, had a slightly more comprehensive realiza-
tion of the limitations of time; but, like the beasts, he moved
with majestic deliberation when no emergency prompted him
to swift action.

Having dedicated his life to vengeance, vengeance became
his natural state and, therefore, no emergency, so he took his
time in pursuit. That he had not rested earlier was due to
the fact that he had felt no fatigue, his mind being occupied
by thoughts of sorrow and revenge; but now he realized that
he was tired, and so he sought a jungle giant that had harbored
him upon more than a single other jungle night.

Dark clouds moving swiftly across the heavens now and
again eclipsed the bright face of Goro, the moon, and fore-
warned the ape-man of impending storm. In the depth of
the jungle the cloud shadows produced a thick blackness that
might almost be felt -- a blackness that to you and me might
have proven terrifying with its accompaniment of rustling
leaves and cracking twigs, and its even more suggestive inter-
vals of utter silence in which the crudest of imaginations
might have conjured crouching beasts of prey tensed for the
fatal charge; but through it Tarzan passed unconcerned, yet
always alert. Now he swung lightly to the lower terraces
of the overarching trees when some subtle sense warned him
that Numa lay upon a kill directly in his path, or again he
sprang lightly to one side as Buto, the rhinoceros, lumbered
toward him along the narrow, deep-worn trail, for the ape-
man, ready to fight upon necessity's slightest pretext, avoided
unnecessary quarrels.

When he swung himself at last into the tree he sought, the
moon was obscured by a heavy cloud, and the tree tops were
waving wildly in a steadily increasing wind whose soughing
drowned the lesser noises of the jungle. Upward went Tarzan
toward a sturdy crotch across which he long since had laid
and secured a little platform of branches. It was very dark
now, darker even than it had been before, for almost the
entire sky was overcast by thick, black clouds.

Presently the man-beast paused, his sensitive nostrils dilat-
ing as he sniffed the air about him. Then, with the swiftness
and agility of a cat, he leaped far outward upon a swaying
branch, sprang upward through the darkness, caught another,
swung himself upon it and then to one still higher. What
could have so suddenly transformed his matter-of-fact ascent
of the giant bole to the swift and wary action of his detour
among the branches? You or I could have seen nothing --
not even the little platform that an instant before had been
just above him and which now was immediately below -- but
as he swung above it we should have heard an ominous growl;
and then as the moon was momentarily uncovered, we should
have seen both the platform, dimly, and a dark mass that lay
stretched upon it -- a dark mass that presently, as our eyes
became accustomed to the lesser darkness, would take the
form of Sheeta, the panther.

In answer to the cat's growl, a low and equally ferocious
growl rumbled upward from the ape-man's deep chest -- a
growl of warning that told the panther he was trespassing
upon the other's lair; but Sheeta was in no mood to be dis-
possessed. With upturned, snarling face he glared at the
brown-skinned Tarmangani above him. Very slowly the
ape-man moved inward along the branch until he was directly
above the panther. In the man's hand was the hunting knife
of his long-dead father -- the weapon that had first given him
his real ascendancy over the beasts of the jungle; but he hoped
not to be forced to use it, knowing as he did that more jungle
battles were settled by hideous growling than by actual com-
bat, the law of bluff holding quite as good in the jungle as
elsewhere -- only in matters of love and food did the great
beasts ordinarily close with fangs and talons.

Tarzan braced himself against the bole of the tree and
leaned closer toward Sheeta.

"Stealer of balus!" he cried. The panther rose to a sitting
position, his bared fangs but a few feet from the ape-man's
taunting face. Tarzan growled hideously and struck at the
cat's face with his knife. "I am Tarzan of the Apes," he
roared. "This is Tarzan's lair. Go, or I will kill you."
Though
he spoke in the language of the great apes of the jungle, it is
doubtful that Sheeta understood the words, though he knew
well enough that the hairless ape wished to frighten him from
his well-chosen station past which edible creatures might be
expected to wander sometime during the watches of the night.

Like lightning the cat reared and struck a vicious blow at
his tormentor with great, bared talons that might well have
torn away the ape-man's face had the blow landed; but it did
not land -- Tarzan was even quicker than Sheeta. As the
panther came to all fours again upon the little platform, Tar-
zan unslung his heavy spear and prodded at the snarling face,
and as Sheeta warded off the blows, the two continued their
horrid duet of blood-curdling roars and growls.

Goaded to frenzy the cat presently determined to come up
after this disturber of his peace; but when he essayed to leap
to the branch that held Tarzan he found the sharp spear point
always in his face, and each time as he dropped back he was
prodded viciously in some tender part; but at length, rage
having conquered his better judgment, he leaped up the
rough bole to the very branch upon which Tarzan stood.
Now the two faced each other upon even footing and Sheeta
saw a quick revenge and a supper all in one. The hairless
ape-thing with the tiny fangs and the puny talons would be
helpless before him.

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