20

Tarzan the Terrible

by Edgar R. Burroughs

20, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE by Edgar R. Burroughs
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Silently in the Night

IN A-LUR the fortunes of the city had been tossed from hand to
hand. The party of Ko-tan's loyal warriors that Tarzan had led to
the rendezvous at the entrance to the secret passage below the
palace gates had met with disaster. Their first rush had been met
with soft words from the priests. They had been exhorted to
defend the faith of their fathers from blasphemers. Ja-don was
painted to them as a defiler of temples, and the wrath of
Jad-ben-Otho was prophesied for those who embraced his cause. The
priests insisted that Lu-don's only wish was to prevent the
seizure of the throne by Ja-don until a new king could be chosen
according to the laws of the Ho-don.

The result was that many of the palace warriors joined their
fellows of the city, and when the priests saw that those whom
they could influence outnumbered those who remained loyal to the
palace, they caused the former to fall upon the latter with the
result that many were killed and only a handful succeeded in
reaching the safety of the palace gates, which they quickly
barred.

The priests led their own forces through the secret passageway
into the temple, while some of the loyal ones sought out Ja-don
and told him all that had happened. The fight in the banquet hall
had spread over a considerable portion of the palace grounds and
had at last resulted in the temporary defeat of those who had
opposed Ja-don. This force, counseled by under priests sent for
the purpose by Lu-don, had withdrawn within the temple grounds so
that now the issue was plainly marked as between Ja-don on the
one side and Lu-don on the other.

The former had been told of all that had occurred in the
apartments of O-lo-a to whose safety he had attended at the first
opportunity and he had also learned of Tarzan's part in leading
his men to the gathering of Lu-don's warriors.

These things had naturally increased the old warrior's former
inclinations of friendliness toward the ape-man, and now he
regretted that the other had departed from the city.

The testimony of O-lo-a and Pan-at-lee was such as to strengthen
whatever belief in the godliness of the stranger Ja-don and
others of the warriors had previously entertained, until
presently there appeared a strong tendency upon the part of this
palace faction to make the Dor-ul-otho an issue of their original
quarrel with Lu-don. Whether this occurred as the natural
sequence to repeated narrations of the ape-man's exploits, which
lost nothing by repetition, in conjunction with Lu-don's enmity
toward him, or whether it was the shrewd design of some wily old
warrior such as Ja-don, who realized the value of adding a
religious cause to their temporal one, it were difficult to
determine; but the fact remained that Ja-don's followers
developed bitter hatred for the followers of Lu-don because of
the high priest's antagonism to Tarzan.

Unfortunately however Tarzan was not there to inspire the
followers of Ja-don with the holy zeal that might have quickly
settled the dispute in the old chieftain's favor. Instead, he was
miles away and because their repeated prayers for his presence
were unanswered, the weaker spirits among them commenced to
suspect that their cause did not have divine favor. There was
also another and a potent cause for defection from the ranks of
Ja-don. It emanated from the city where the friends and relatives
of the palace warriors, who were largely also the friends and
relatives of Lu-don's forces, found the means, urged on by the
priesthood, to circulate throughout the palace pernicious
propaganda aimed at Ja-don's cause.

The result was that Lu-don's power increased while that of Ja-don
waned. Then followed a sortie from the temple which resulted in
the defeat of the palace forces, and though they were able to
withdraw in decent order withdraw they did, leaving the palace to
Lu-don, who was now virtually ruler of Pal-ul-don.

Ja-don, taking with him the princess, her women, and their
slaves, including Pan-at-lee, as well as the women and children
of his faithful followers, retreated not only from the palace but
from the city of A-lur as well and fell back upon his own city of
Ja-lur. Here he remained, recruiting his forces from the
surrounding villages of the north which, being far removed from
the influence of the priesthood of A-lur, were enthusiastic
partisans in any cause that the old chieftain espoused, since for
years he had been revered as their friend and protector.

And while these events were transpiring in the north,
Tarzan-jad-guru lay in the lion pit at Tu-lur while messengers
passed back and forth between Mo-sar and Lu-don as the two
dickered for the throne of Pal-ul-don. Mo-sar was cunning enough
to guess that should an open breach occur between himself and the
high priest he might use his prisoner to his own advantage, for
he had heard whisperings among even his own people that suggested
that there were those who were more than a trifle inclined to
belief in the divinity of the stranger and that he might indeed
be the Dor-ul-Otho. Lu-don wanted Tarzan himself. He wanted to
sacrifice him upon the eastern altar with his own hands before a
multitude of people, since he was not without evidence that his
own standing and authority had been lessened by the claims of the
bold and heroic figure of the stranger.

The method that the high priest of Tu-lur had employed to trap
Tarzan had left the ape-man in possession of his weapons though
there seemed little likelihood of their being of any service to
him. He also had his pouch, in which were the various odds and
ends which are the natural accumulation of all receptacles from a
gold meshbag to an attic. There were bits of obsidian and choice
feathers for arrows, some pieces of flint and a couple of steel,
an old knife, a heavy bone needle, and strips of dried gut.
Nothing very useful to you or me, perhaps; but nothing useless to
the savage life of the ape-man.

When Tarzan realized the trick that had been so neatly played
upon him he had awaited expectantly the coming of the lion, for
though the scent of ja was old he was sure that sooner or later
they would let one of the beasts in upon him. His first
consideration was a thorough exploration of his prison. He had
noticed the hide-covered windows and these he immediately
uncovered, letting in the light, and revealing the fact that
though the chamber was far below the level of the temple courts
it was yet many feet above the base of the hill from which the
temple was hewn. The windows were so closely barred that he could
not see over the edge of the thick wall in which they were cut to
determine what lay close in below him. At a little distance were
the blue waters of Jad-in-lul and beyond, the verdure-clad farther
shore, and beyond that the mountains. It was a beautiful picture
upon which he looked--a picture of peace and harmony and quiet.
Nor anywhere a slightest suggestion of the savage men and beasts
that claimed this lovely landscape as their own. What a paradise!
And some day civilized man would come and--spoil it! Ruthless
axes would raze that age-old wood; black, sticky smoke would rise
from ugly chimneys against that azure sky; grimy little boats
with wheels behind or upon either side would churn the mud from
the bottom of Jad-in-lul, turning its blue waters to a dirty
brown; hideous piers would project into the lake from squalid
buildings of corrugated iron, doubtless, for of such are the
pioneer cities of the world.

But would civilized man come? Tarzan hoped not. For countless
generations civilization had ramped about the globe; it had
dispatched its emissaries to the North Pole and the South; it had
circled Pal-ul-don once, perhaps many times, but it had never
touched her. God grant that it never would. Perhaps He was
saving this little spot to be always just as He had made it, for
the scratching of the Ho-don and the Waz-don upon His rocks had
not altered the fair face of Nature.

Through the windows came sufficient light to reveal the whole
interior to Tarzan. The room was fairly large and there was a
door at each end--a large door for men and a smaller one for
lions. Both were closed with heavy masses of stone that had been
lowered in grooves running to the floor. The two windows were
small and closely barred with the first iron that Tarzan had seen
in Pal-ul-don. The bars were let into holes in the casing, and
the whole so strongly and neatly contrived that escape seemed
impossible. Yet within a few minutes of his incarceration Tarzan
had commenced to undertake his escape. The old knife in his pouch
was brought into requisition and slowly the ape-man began to
scrape and chip away the stone from about the bars of one of the
windows. It was slow work but Tarzan had the patience of absolute
health.

Each day food and water were brought him and slipped quickly
beneath the smaller door which was raised just sufficiently to
allow the stone receptacles to pass in. The prisoner began to
believe that he was being preserved for something beside lions.
However that was immaterial. If they would but hold off for a few
more days they might select what fate they would--he would not be
there when they arrived to announce it.

And then one day came Pan-sat, Lu-don's chief tool, to the city
of Tu-lur. He came ostensibly with a fair message for Mo-sar from
the high priest at A-lur. Lu-don had decided that Mo-sar should
be king and he invited Mo-sar to come at once to A-lur and then
Pan-sat, having delivered the message, asked that he might go to
the temple of Tu-lur and pray, and there he sought the high
priest of Tu-lur to whom was the true message that Lu-don had
sent. The two were closeted alone in a little chamber and Pan-sat
whispered into the ear of the high priest.

"Mo-sar wishes to be king," he said, "and Lu-don wishes to be
king. Mo-sar wishes to retain the stranger who claims to be the
Dor-ul-Otho and Lu-don wishes to kill him, and now," he leaned
even closer to the ear of the high priest of Tu-lur, "if you
would be high priest at A-lur it is within your power."

Pan-sat ceased speaking and waited for the other's reply. The
high priest was visibly affected. To be high priest at A-lur!
That was almost as good as being king of all Pal-ul-don, for great
were the powers of him who conducted the sacrifices upon the
altars of A-lur.

"How?" whispered the high priest. "How may I become high priest
at A-lur?"

Again Pan-sat leaned close: "By killing the one and bringing the
other to A-lur," replied he. Then he rose and departed knowing
chat the other had swallowed the bait and could be depended upon
to do whatever was required to win him the great prize.

Nor was Pan-sat mistaken other than in one trivial consideration.
This high priest would indeed commit murder and treason to attain
the high office at A-lur; but he had misunderstood which of his
victims was to be killed and which to be delivered to Lu-don.
Pan-sat, knowing himself all the details of the plannings of
Lu-don, had made the quite natural error of assuming that the
ocher was perfectly aware that only by publicly sacrificing the
false Dor-ul-Otho could the high priest at A-lur bolster his
waning power and that the assassination of Mo-sar, the pretender,
would remove from Lu-don's camp the only obstacle to his
combining the offices of high priest and king. The high priest at
Tu-lur thought that he had been commissioned to kill Tarzan and
bring Mo-sar to A-lur. He also thought that when he had done
these things he would be made high priest at A-lur; but he did
not know that already the priest had been selected who was to
murder him within the hour that he arrived at A-lur, nor did he
know that a secret grave had been prepared for him in the floor
of a subterranean chamber in the very temple he dreamed of
controlling.

And so when he should have been arranging the assassination of
his chief he was leading a dozen heavily bribed warriors through
the dark corridors beneath the temple to slay Tarzan in the lion
pit. Night had fallen. A single torch guided the footsteps of the
murderers as they crept stealthily upon their evil way, for they
knew that they were doing the thing that their chief did not want
done and their guilty consciences warned them to stealth.

In the dark of his cell the ape-man worked at his seemingly
endless chipping and scraping. His keen ears detected the coming
of footsteps along the corridor without--footsteps that
approached the larger door. Always before had they come to the
smaller door--the footsteps of a single slave who brought his
food. This time there were many more than one and their coming at
this time of night carried a sinister suggestion. Tarzan
continued to work at his scraping and chipping. He heard them
stop beyond the door. All was silence broken only by the scrape,
scrape, scrape of the ape-man's tireless blade.

Those without heard it and listening sought to explain it. They
whispered in low tones making their plans. Two would raise the
door quickly and the others would rush in and hurl their clubs at
the prisoner. They would take no chances, for the stories that
had circulated in A-lur had been brought to Tu-lur--stories of
the great strength and wonderful prowess of Tarzan-jad-guru that
caused the sweat to stand upon the brows of the warriors, though
it was cool in the damp corridor and they were twelve to one.

And then the high priest gave the signal--the door shot upward
and ten warriors leaped into the chamber with poised clubs. Three
of the heavy weapons flew across the room toward a darker shadow
that lay in the shadow of the opposite wall, then the flare of
the torch in the priest's hand lighted the interior and they saw
that the thing at which they had flung their clubs was a pile of
skins torn from the windows and that except for themselves the
chamber was vacant.

One of them hastened to a window. All but a single bar was gone
and to this was tied one end of a braided rope fashioned from
strips cut from the leather window hangings.

To the ordinary dangers of Jane Clayton's existence was now added
the menace of Obergatz' knowledge of her whereabouts. The lion
and the panther had given her less cause for anxiety than did the
return of the unscrupulous Hun, whom she had always distrusted
and feared, and whose repulsiveness was now immeasurably
augmented by his unkempt and filthy appearance, his strange and
mirthless laughter, and his unnatural demeanor. She feared him
now with a new fear as though he had suddenly become the
personification of some nameless horror. The wholesome, outdoor
life that she had been leading had strengthened and rebuilt her
nervous system yet it seemed to her as she thought of him that if
this man should ever touch her she should scream, and, possibly,
even faint. Again and again during the day following their
unexpected meeting the woman reproached herself for not having
killed him as she would ja or jato or any other predatory beast
that menaced her existence or her safety. There was no attempt at
self-justification for these sinister reflections--they needed no
justification. The standards by which the acts of such as you or
I may be judged could not apply to hers. We have recourse to the
protection of friends and relatives and the civil soldiery that
upholds the majesty of the law and which may be invoked to
protect the righteous weak against the unrighteous strong; but
Jane Clayton comprised within herself not only the righteous weak
but all the various agencies for the protection of the weak. To
her, then, Lieutenant Erich Obergatz presented no different
problem than did ja, the lion, other than that she considered the
former the more dangerous animal. And so she determined that
should he ignore her warning there would be no temporizing upon
the occasion of their next meeting--the same swift spear that
would meet ja's advances would meet his.

That night her snug little nest perched high in the great tree
seemed less the sanctuary that it had before. What might resist
the sanguinary intentions of a prowling panther would prove no
great barrier to man, and influenced by this thought she slept
less well than before. The slightest noise that broke the
monotonous hum of the nocturnal jungle startled her into alert
wakefulness to lie with straining ears in an attempt to classify
the origin of the disturbance, and once she was awakened thus by
a sound that seemed to come from something moving in her own
tree. She listened intently--scarce breathing. Yes, there it was
again. A scuffing of something soft against the hard bark of the
tree. The woman reached out in the darkness and grasped her
spear. Now she felt a slight sagging of one of the limbs that
supported her shelter as though the thing, whatever it was, was
slowly raising its weight to the branch. It came nearer. Now she
thought that she could detect its breathing. It was at the door.
She could hear it fumbling with the frail barrier. What could it
be? It made no sound by which she might identify it. She raised
herself upon her hands and knees and crept stealthily the little
distance to the doorway, her spear clutched tightly in her hand.
Whatever the thing was, it was evidently attempting to gain
entrance without awakening her. It was just beyond the pitiful
little contraption of slender boughs that she had bound together
with grasses and called a door--only a few inches lay between the
thing and her. Rising to her knees she reached out with her left
hand and felt until she found a place where a crooked branch had
left an opening a couple of inches wide near the center of the
barrier. Into this she inserted the point of her spear. The thing
must have heard her move within for suddenly it abandoned its
efforts for stealth and tore angrily at the obstacle. At the same
moment Jane thrust her spear forward with all her strength. She
felt it enter flesh. There was a scream and a curse from without,
followed by the crashing of a body through limbs and foliage. Her
spear was almost dragged from her grasp, but she held to it until
it broke free from the thing it had pierced.

It was Obergatz; the curse had told her that. From below came no
further sound. Had she, then, killed him? She prayed so--with all
her heart she prayed it. To be freed from the menace of this
loathsome creature were relief indeed. During all the balance of
the night she lay there awake, listening. Below her, she
imagined, she could see the dead man with his hideous face bathed
in the cold light of the moon--lying there upon his back staring
up at her.

She prayed that ja might come and drag it away, but all during
the remainder of the night she heard never another sound above
the drowsy hum of the jungle. She was glad that he was dead, but
she dreaded the gruesome ordeal that awaited her on the morrow,
for she must bury the thing that had been Erich Obergatz and live
on there above the shallow grave of the man she had slain.

She reproached herself for her weakness, repeating over and over
that she had killed in self-defense, that her act was justified;
but she was still a woman of today, and strong upon her were the
iron mandates of the social order from which she had sprung, its
interdictions and its superstitions.

At last came the tardy dawn. Slowly the sun topped the distant
mountains beyond Jad-in-lul. And yet she hesitated to loosen the
fastenings of her door and look out upon the thing below. But it
must be done. She steeled herself and untied the rawhide thong
that secured the barrier. She looked down and only the grass and
the flowers looked up at her. She came from her shelter and
examined the ground upon the opposite side of the tree--there was
no dead man there, nor anywhere as far as she could see. Slowly
she descended, keeping a wary eye and an alert ear ready for the
first intimation of danger.

At the foot of the tree was a pool of blood and a little trail of
crimson drops upon the grass, leading away parallel with the
shore of Jad-ben-lul. Then she had not slain him! She was vaguely
aware of a peculiar, double sensation of relief and regret. Now
she would be always in doubt. He might return; but at least she
would not have to live above his grave.

She thought some of following the bloody spoor on the chance that
he might have crawled away to die later, but she gave up the idea
for fear that she might find him dead nearby, or, worse yet badly
wounded. What then could she do? She could not finish him with
her spear--no, she knew that she could not do that, nor could she
bring him back and nurse him, nor could she leave him there to
die of hunger or of thirst, or to become the prey of some
prowling beast. It were better then not to search for him for
fear that she might find him.

That day was one of nervous starting to every sudden sound. The
day before she would have said that her nerves were of iron; but
not today. She knew now the shock that she had suffered and that
this was the reaction. Tomorrow it might be different, but
something told her that never again would her little shelter and
the patch of forest and jungle that she called her own be the
same. There would hang over them always the menace of this man.
No longer would she pass restful nights of deep slumber. The
peace of her little world was shattered forever.

That night she made her door doubly secure with additional thongs
of rawhide cut from the pelt of the buck she had slain the day
that she met Obergatz. She was very tired for she had lost much
sleep the night before; but for a long time she lay with
wide-open eyes staring into the darkness. What saw she there?
Visions that brought tears to those brave and beautiful
eyes--visions of a rambling bungalow that had been home to her
and that was no more, destroyed by the same cruel force that
haunted her even now in this remote, uncharted corner of the
earth; visions of a strong man whose protecting arm would never
press her close again; visions of a tall, straight son who looked
at her adoringly out of brave, smiling eyes that were like his
father's. Always the vision of the crude simple bungalow rather
than of the stately halls that had been as much a part of her
life as the other. But he had loved the bungalow and the broad,
free acres best and so she had come to love them best, too.

At last she slept, the sleep of utter exhaustion. How long it
lasted she did not know; but suddenly she was wide awake and once
again she heard the scuffing of a body against the bark of her
tree and again the limb bent to a heavy weight. He had returned!
She went cold, trembling as with ague. Was it he, or, O God! had
she killed him then and was this--? She tried to drive the horrid
thought from her mind, for this way, she knew, lay madness.

And once again she crept to the door, for the thing was outside
just as it had been last night. Her hands trembled as she placed
the point of her weapon to the opening. She wondered if it would
scream as it fell.