8

Tarzan the Terrible

by Edgar R. Burroughs

8, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE by Edgar R. Burroughs
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A-lur

AS THE hissing reptile bore down upon the stranger swimming in
the open water near the center of the morass on the frontier of
Pal-ul-don it seemed to the man that this indeed must be the
futile termination of an arduous and danger-filled journey. It
seemed, too, equally futile to pit his puny knife against this
frightful creature. Had he been attacked on land it is possible
that he might as a last resort have used his Enfield, though he
had come thus far through all these weary, danger-ridden miles
without recourse to it, though again and again had his life hung
in the balance in the face of the savage denizens of forest,
jungle, and steppe. For whatever it may have been for which he
was preserving his precious ammunition he evidently held it more
sacred even than his life, for as yet he had not used a single
round and now the decision was not required of him, since it
would have been impossible for him to have unslung his Enfield,
loaded and fired with the necessary celerity while swimming.

Though his chance for survival seemed slender, and hope at its
lowest ebb, he was not minded therefore to give up without a
struggle. Instead he drew his blade and awaited the oncoming
reptile. The creature was like no living thing he ever before had
seen although possibly it resembled a crocodile in some respects
more than it did anything with which he was familiar.

As this frightful survivor of some extinct progenitor charged
upon him with distended jaws there came to the man quickly a full
consciousness of the futility of endeavoring to stay the mad rush
or pierce the armor-coated hide with his little knife. The thing
was almost upon him now and whatever form of defense he chose
must be made quickly. There seemed but a single alternative to
instant death, and this he took at almost the instant the great
reptile towered directly above him.

With the celerity of a seal he dove headforemost beneath the
oncoming body and at the same instant, turning upon his back, he
plunged his blade into the soft, cold surface of the slimy belly
as the momentum of the hurtling reptile carried it swiftly over
him; and then with powerful strokes he swam on beneath the
surface for a dozen yards before he rose. A glance showed him the
stricken monster plunging madly in pain and rage upon the surface
of the water behind him. That it was writhing in its death
agonies was evidenced by the fact that it made no effort to
pursue him, and so, to the accompaniment of the shrill screaming
of the dying monster, the man won at last to the farther edge of
the open water to take up once more the almost superhuman effort
of crossing the last stretch of clinging mud which separated him
from the solid ground of Pal-ul-don.

A good two hours it took him to drag his now weary body through
the clinging, stinking muck, but at last, mud covered and spent,
he dragged himself out upon the soft grasses of the bank. A
hundred yards away a stream, winding its way down from the
distant mountains, emptied into the morass, and, after a short
rest, he made his way to this and seeking a quiet pool, bathed
himself and washed the mud and slime from his weapons,
accouterments, and loin cloth. Another hour was spent beneath the
rays of the hot sun in wiping, polishing, and oiling his Enfield
though the means at hand for drying it consisted principally of
dry grasses. It was afternoon before he had satisfied himself
that his precious weapon was safe from any harm by dirt, or
dampness, and then he arose and took up the search for the spoor
he had followed to the opposite side of the swamp.

Would he find again the trail that had led into the opposite side
of the morass, to be lost there, even to his trained senses? If
he found it not again upon this side of the almost impassable
barrier he might assume that his long journey had ended in
failure. And so he sought up and down the verge of the stagnant
water for traces of an old spoor that would have been invisible
to your eyes or mine, even had we followed directly in the tracks
of its maker.

As Tarzan advanced upon the gryfs he imitated as closely as he
could recall them the methods and mannerisms of the Tor-o-don, but
up to the instant that he stood close beside one of the huge
creatures he realized that his fate still hung in the balance,
for the thing gave forth no sign, either menacing or otherwise.
It only stood there, watching him out of its cold, reptilian eyes
and then Tarzan raised his staff and with a menacing "Whee-oo!"
struck the gryf a vicious blow across the face.

The creature made a sudden side snap in his direction, a snap
that did not reach him, and then turned sullenly away, precisely
as it had when the Tor-o-don commanded it. Walking around to its
rear as he had seen the shaggy first-man do, Tarzan ran up the
broad tail and seated himself upon the creature's back, and then
again imitating the acts of the Tor-o-don he prodded it with the
sharpened point of his staff, and thus goading it forward and
guiding it with blows, first upon one side and then upon the
other, he started it down the gorge in the direction of the
valley.

At first it had been in his mind only to determine if he could
successfully assert any authority over the great monsters,
realizing that in this possibility lay his only hope of immediate
escape from his jailers. But once seated upon the back of his
titanic mount the ape-man experienced the sensation of a new
thrill that recalled to him the day in his boyhood that he had
first clambered to the broad head of Tantor, the elephant, and
this, together with the sense of mastery that was always meat and
drink to the lord of the jungle, decided him to put his newly
acquired power to some utilitarian purpose.

Pan-at-lee he judged must either have already reached safety or
met with death. At least, no longer could he be of service to
her, while below Kor-ul-gryf, in the soft green valley, lay
A-lur, the City of Light, which, since he had gazed upon it from
the shoulder of Pastar-ul-ved, had been his ambition and his
goal.

Whether or not its gleaming walls held the secret of his lost
mate he could not even guess but if she lived at all within the
precincts of Pal-ul-don it must be among the Ho-don, since the
hairy black men of this forgotten world took no prisoners. And
so to A-lur he would go, and how more effectively than upon the
back of this grim and terrible creature that the races of
Pal-ul-don held in such awe?

A little mountain stream tumbles down from Kor-ul-gryf to be
joined in the foothills with that which empties the waters of
Kor-ul-lul into the valley, forming a small river which runs
southwest, eventually entering the valley's largest lake at the
City of A-lur, through the center of which the stream passes. An
ancient trail, well marked by countless generations of naked feet
of man and beast, leads down toward A-lur beside the river, and
along this Tarzan guided the gryf. Once clear of the forest which
ran below the mouth of the gorge, Tarzan caught occasional
glimpses of the city gleaming in the distance far below him.

The country through which he passed was resplendent with the
riotous beauties of tropical verdure. Thick, lush grasses grew
waist high upon either side of the trail and the way was broken
now and again by patches of open park-like forest, or perhaps a
little patch of dense jungle where the trees overarched the way
and trailing creepers depended in graceful loops from branch to
branch.

At times the ape-man had difficulty in commanding obedience upon
the part of his unruly beast, but always in the end its fear of
the relatively puny goad urged it on to obedience. Late in the
afternoon as they approached the confluence of the stream they
were skirting and another which appeared to come from the
direction of Kor-ul-ja the ape-man, emerging from one of the
jungle patches, discovered a considerable party of Ho-don upon
the opposite bank. Simultaneously they saw him and the mighty
creature he bestrode. For a moment they stood in wide-eyed
amazement and then, in answer to the command of their leader,
they turned and bolted for the shelter of the nearby wood.

The ape-man had but a brief glimpse of them but it was sufficient
indication that there were Waz-don with them, doubtless prisoners
taken in one of the raids upon the Waz-don villages of which
Ta-den and Om-at had told him.

At the sound of their voices the gryf had bellowed terrifically
and started in pursuit even though a river intervened, but by
dint of much prodding and beating, Tarzan had succeeded in
heading the animal back into the path though thereafter for a
long time it was sullen and more intractable than ever.

As the sun dropped nearer the summit of the western hills Tarzan
became aware that his plan to enter A-lur upon the back of a gryf
was likely doomed to failure, since the stubbornness of the great
beast was increasing momentarily, doubtless due to the fact that
its huge belly was crying out for food. The ape-man wondered if
the Tor-o-dons had any means of picketing their beasts for the
night, but as he did not know and as no plan suggested itself, he
determined that he should have to trust to the chance of finding
it again in the morning.

There now arose in his mind a question as to what would be their
relationship when Tarzan had dismounted. Would it again revert to
that of hunter and quarry or would fear of the goad continue to
hold its supremacy over the natural instinct of the hunting
flesh-eater? Tarzan wondered but as he could not remain upon the
gryf forever, and as he preferred dismounting and putting the
matter to a final test while it was still light, he decided to
act at once.

How to stop the creature he did not know, as up to this time his
sole desire had been to urge it forward. By experimenting with
his staff, however, he found that he could bring it to a halt by
reaching forward and striking the thing upon its beaklike snout.
Close by grew a number of leafy trees, in any one of which the
ape-man could have found sanctuary, but it had occurred to him
that should he immediately take to the trees it might suggest to
the mind of the gryf that the creature that had been commanding
him all day feared him, with the result that Tarzan would once
again be held a prisoner by the triceratops.

And so, when the gryf halted, Tarzan slid to the ground, struck
the creature a careless blow across the flank as though in
dismissal and walked indifferently away. From the throat of the
beast came a low rumbling sound and without even a glance at
Tarzan it turned and entered the river where it stood drinking
for a long time.

Convinced that the gryf no longer constituted a menace to him the
ape-man, spurred on himself by the gnawing of hunger, unslung his
bow and selecting a handful of arrows set forth cautiously in
search of food, evidence of the near presence of which was being
borne up to him by a breeze from down river.

Ten minutes later he had made his kill, again one of the
Pal-ul-don specimens of antelope, all species of which Tarzan had
known since childhood as Bara, the deer, since in the little
primer that had been the basis of his education the picture of a
deer had been the nearest approach to the likeness of the
antelope, from the giant eland to the smaller bushbuck of the
hunting grounds of his youth.

Cutting off a haunch he cached it in a nearby tree, and throwing
the balance of the carcass across his shoulder trotted back
toward the spot at which he had left the gryf. The great beast
was just emerging from the river when Tarzan, seeing it, issued
the weird cry of the Tor-o-don. The creature looked in the
direction of the sound voicing at the same time the low rumble
with which it answered the call of its master. Twice Tarzan
repeated his cry before the beast moved slowly toward him, and
when it had come within a few paces he tossed the carcass of the
deer to it, upon which it fell with greedy jaws.

"If anything will keep it within call," mused the ape-man as he
returned to the tree in which he had cached his own portion of
his kill, "it is the knowledge that I will feed it." But as he
finished his repast and settled himself comfortably for the night
high among the swaying branches of his eyrie he had little
confidence that he would ride into A-lur the following day upon
his prehistoric steed.

When Tarzan awoke early the following morning he dropped lightly
to the ground and made his way to the stream. Removing his
weapons and loin cloth he entered the cold waters of the little
pool, and after his refreshing bath returned to the tree to
breakfast upon another portion of Bara, the deer, adding to his
repast some fruits and berries which grew in abundance nearby.

His meal over he sought the ground again and raising his voice in
the weird cry that he had learned, he called aloud on the chance
of attracting the gryf, but though he waited for some time and
continued calling there was no response, and he was finally
forced to the conclusion that he had seen the last of his great
mount of the preceding day.

And so he set his face toward A-lur, pinning his faith upon his
knowledge of the Ho-don tongue, his great strength and his native
wit.

Refreshed by food and rest, the journey toward A-lur, made in the
cool of the morning along the bank of the joyous river, he found
delightful in the extreme. Differentiating him from his fellows
of the savage jungle were many characteristics other than those
physical and mental. Not the least of these were in a measure
spiritual, and one that had doubtless been as strong as another
in influencing Tarzan's love of the jungle had been his
appreciation of the beauties of nature. The apes cared more for a
grubworm in a rotten log than for all the majestic grandeur of
the forest giants waving above them. The only beauties that Numa
acknowledged were those of his own person as he paraded them
before the admiring eyes of his mate, but in all the
manifestations of the creative power of nature of which Tarzan
was cognizant he appreciated the beauties.

As Tarzan neared the city his interest became centered upon the
architecture of the outlying buildings which were hewn from the
chalklike limestone of what had once been a group of low hills,
similar to the many grass-covered hillocks that dotted the valley
in every direction. Ta-den's explanation of the Ho-don methods of
house construction accounted for the ofttimes remarkable shapes
and proportions of the buildings which, during the ages that must
have been required for their construction, had been hewn from the
limestone hills, the exteriors chiseled to such architectural
forms as appealed to the eyes of the builders while at the same
time following roughly the original outlines of the hills in an
evident desire to economize both labor and space. The excavation
of the apartments within had been similarly governed by
necessity.

As he came nearer Tarzan saw that the waste material from these
building operations had been utilized in the construction of
outer walls about each building or group of buildings resulting
from a single hillock, and later he was to learn that it had also
been used for the filling of inequalities between the hills and
the forming of paved streets throughout the city, the result,
possibly, more of the adoption of an easy method of disposing of
the quantities of broken limestone than by any real necessity for
pavements.

There were people moving about within the city and upon the
narrow ledges and terraces that broke the lines of the buildings
and which seemed to be a peculiarity of Ho-don architecture, a
concession, no doubt, to some inherent instinct that might be
traced back to their early cliff-dwelling progenitors.

Tarzan was not surprised that at a short distance he aroused no
suspicion or curiosity in the minds of those who saw him, since,
until closer scrutiny was possible, there was little to
distinguish him from a native either in his general conformation
or his color. He had, of course, formulated a plan of action and,
having decided, he did not hesitate in the carrying out his plan.

With the same assurance that you might venture upon the main
street of a neighboring city Tarzan strode into the Ho-don city of
A-lur. The first person to detect his spuriousness was a little
child playing in the arched gateway of one of the walled
buildings. "No tail! no tail!" it shouted, throwing a stone at
him, and then it suddenly grew dumb and its eyes wide as it
sensed that this creature was something other than a mere Ho-don
warrior who had lost his tail. With a gasp the child turned and
fled screaming into the courtyard of its home.

Tarzan continued on his way, fully realizing that the moment was
imminent when the fate of his plan would be decided. Nor had he
long to wait since at the next turning of the winding street he
came face to face with a Ho-don warrior. He saw the sudden
surprise in the latter's eyes, followed instantly by one of
suspicion, but before the fellow could speak Tarzan addressed
him.

"I am a stranger from another land," he said; "I would speak with
Ko-tan, your king."

The fellow stepped back, laying his hand upon his knife. "There
are no strangers that come to the gates of A-lur," he said,
"other than as enemies or slaves."

"I come neither as a slave nor an enemy," replied Tarzan. "I
come directly from Jad-ben-Otho. Look!" and he held out his hands
that the Ho-don might see how greatly they differed from his own,
and then wheeled about that the other might see that he was
tailless, for it was upon this fact that his plan had been based,
due to his recollection of the quarrel between Ta-den and Om-at,
in which the Waz-don had claimed that Jad-ben-Otho had a long
tail while the Ho-don had been equally willing to fight for his
faith in the taillessness of his god.

The warrior's eyes widened and an expression of awe crept into
them, though it was still tinged with suspicion. "Jad-ben-Otho!"
he murmured, and then, "It is true that you are neither Ho-don
nor Waz-don, and it is also true that Jad-ben-Otho has no tail.
Come," he said, "I will take you to Ko-tan, for this is a matter
in which no common warrior may interfere. Follow me," and still
clutching the handle of his knife and keeping a wary side glance
upon the ape-man he led the way through A-lur.

The city covered a large area. Sometimes there was a considerable
distance between groups of buildings, and again they were quite
close together. There were numerous imposing groups, evidently
hewn from the larger hills, often rising to a height of a hundred
feet or more. As they advanced they met numerous warriors and
women, all of whom showed great curiosity in the stranger, but
there was no attempt to menace him when it was found that he was
being conducted to the palace of the king.

They came at last to a great pile that sprawled over a
considerable area, its western front facing upon a large blue
lake and evidently hewn from what had once been a natural cliff.
This group of buildings was surrounded by a wall of considerably
greater height than any that Tarzan had before seen. His guide
led him to a gateway before which waited a dozen or more warriors
who had risen to their feet and formed a barrier across the
entrance-way as Tarzan and his party appeared around the corner
of the palace wall, for by this time he had accumulated such a
following of the curious as presented to the guards the
appearance of a formidable mob.

The guide's story told, Tarzan was conducted into the courtyard
where he was held while one of the warriors entered the palace,
evidently with the intention of notifying Ko-tan. Fifteen minutes
later a large warrior appeared, followed by several others, all
of whom examined Tarzan with every sign of curiosity as they
approached.

The leader of the party halted before the ape-man. "Who are you?"
he asked, "and what do you want of Ko-tan, the king?"

"I am a friend," replied the ape-man, "and I have come from the
country of Jad-ben-Otho to visit Ko-tan of Pal-ul-don."

The warrior and his followers seemed impressed. Tarzan could see
the latter whispering among themselves.

"How come you here," asked the spokesman, "and what do you want
of Ko-tan?"

Tarzan drew himself to his full height. "Enough!" he cried.
"Must the messenger of Jad-ben-Otho be subjected to the treatment
that might be accorded to a wandering Waz-don? Take me to the
king at once lest the wrath of Jad-ben-Otho fall upon you."

There was some question in the mind of the ape-man as to how far
he might carry his unwarranted show of assurance, and he waited
therefore with amused interest the result of his demand. He did
not, however, have long to wait for almost immediately the
attitude of his questioner changed. He whitened, cast an
apprehensive glance toward the eastern sky and then extended his
right palm toward Tarzan, placing his left over his own heart in
the sign of amity that was common among the peoples of
Pal-ul-don.

Tarzan stepped quickly back as though from a profaning hand, a
feigned expression of horror and disgust upon his face.

"Stop!" he cried, "who would dare touch the sacred person of the
messenger of Jad-ben-Otho? Only as a special mark of favor from
Jad-ben-Otho may even Ko-tan himself receive this honor from me.
Hasten! Already now have I waited too long! What manner of
reception the Ho-don of A-lur would extend to the son of my
father!"

At first Tarzan had been inclined to adopt the role of
Jad-ben-Otho himself but it occurred to him that it might prove
embarrassing and considerable of a bore to be compelled constantly
to portray the character of a god, but with the growing success
of his scheme it had suddenly occurred to him that the authority
of the son of Jad-ben-Otho would be far greater than that of an
ordinary messenger of a god, while at the same time giving him
some leeway in the matter of his acts and demeanor, the ape-man
reasoning that a young god would not be held so strictly
accountable in the matter of his dignity and bearing as an older
and greater god.

This time the effect of his words was immediately and painfully
noticeable upon all those near him. With one accord they shrank
back, the spokesman almost collapsing in evident terror. His
apologies, when finally the paralysis of his fear would permit
him to voice them, were so abject that the ape-man could scarce
repress a smile of amused contempt.

"Have mercy, O Dor-ul-Otho," he pleaded, "on poor old Dak-lot.
Precede me and I will show you to where Ko-tan, the king, awaits
you, trembling. Aside, snakes and vermin," he cried pushing his
warriors to right and left for the purpose of forming an avenue
for Tarzan.

"Come!" cried the ape-man peremptorily, "lead the way, and let
these others follow."

The now thoroughly frightened Dak-lot did as he was bid, and
Tarzan of the Apes was ushered into the palace of Kotan, King of
Pal-ul-don.