But there was no alternative other than to meet the rage-
maddened creature with the weapons with which nature had
endowed him.

Over the bull's shoulder Tarzan could see now the heads
and shoulders of perhaps a dozen more of these mighty fore-
runners of primitive man.

He knew, however, that there was little chance that they
would attack him, since it is not within the reasoning powers
of the anthropoid to be able to weigh or appreciate the value
of concentrated action against an enemy--otherwise they
would long since have become the dominant creatures of
their haunts, so tremendous a power of destruction lies in
their mighty thews and savage fangs.

With a low snarl the beast now hurled himself at Tarzan,
but the ape-man had found, among other things in the haunts
of civilized man, certain methods of scientific warfare that
are unknown to the jungle folk.

Whereas, a few years since, he would have met the brute
rush with brute force, he now sidestepped his antagonist's
headlong charge, and as the brute hurtled past him swung a
mighty right to the pit of the ape's stomach.

With a howl of mingled rage and anguish the great anthropoid
bent double and sank to the ground, though almost
instantly he was again struggling to his feet.

Before he could regain them, however, his white-skinned
foe had wheeled and pounced upon him, and in the act there
dropped from the shoulders of the English lord the last shred
of his superficial mantle of civilization.

Once again he was the jungle beast revelling in bloody
conflict with his kind.  Once again he was Tarzan,
son of Kala the she-ape.

His strong, white teeth sank into the hairy throat of his
enemy as he sought the pulsing jugular.

Powerful fingers held the mighty fangs from his own flesh,
or clenched and beat with the power of a steam-hammer
upon the snarling, foam-flecked face of his adversary.

In a circle about them the balance of the tribe of apes stood
watching and enjoying the struggle.  They muttered low gutturals
of approval as bits of white hide or hairy bloodstained
skin were torn from one contestant or the other.  But they
were silent in amazement and expectation when they saw the
mighty white ape wriggle upon the back of their king, and,
with steel muscles tensed beneath the armpits of his antagonist,
bear down mightily with his open palms upon the back of the
thick bullneck, so that the king ape could but shriek in agony
and flounder helplessly about upon the thick mat of jungle grass.

As Tarzan had overcome the huge Terkoz that time years
before when he had been about to set out upon his quest for
human beings of his own kind and colour, so now he overcame
this other great ape with the same wrestling hold upon
which he had stumbled by accident during that other combat.  
The little audience of fierce anthropoids heard the creaking
of their king's neck mingling with his agonized shrieks
and hideous roaring.

Then there came a sudden crack, like the breaking of a
stout limb before the fury of the wind.  The bullet-head
crumpled forward upon its flaccid neck against the great
hairy chest--the roaring and the shrieking ceased.

The little pig-eyes of the onlookers wandered from the still
form of their leader to that of the white ape that was rising
to its feet beside the vanquished, then back to their king as
though in wonder that he did not arise and slay this
presumptuous stranger.

They saw the new-comer place a foot upon the neck of the quiet
figure at his feet and, throwing back his head, give vent to
the wild, uncanny challenge of the bull-ape that has made a kill.
Then they knew that their king was dead.

Across the jungle rolled the horrid notes of the victory cry.  
The little monkeys in the tree-tops ceased their chattering.  
The harsh-voiced, brilliant-plumed birds were still.  From afar
came the answering wail of a leopard and the deep roar of a lion.

It was the old Tarzan who turned questioning eyes upon
the little knot of apes before him.  It was the old Tarzan who
shook his head as though to toss back a heavy mane that had
fallen before his face--an old habit dating from the days that
his great shock of thick, black hair had fallen about his
shoulders, and often tumbled before his eyes when it had meant
life or death to him to have his vision unobstructed.

The ape-man knew that he might expect an immediate
attack on the part of that particular surviving bull-ape who
felt himself best fitted to contend for the kingship of the tribe.  
Among his own apes he knew that it was not unusual for an
entire stranger to enter a community and, after having
dispatched the king, assume the leadership of the tribe himself,
together with the fallen monarch's mates.

On the other hand, if he made no attempt to follow them,
they might move slowly away from him, later to fight among
themselves for the supremacy.  That he could be king of them,
if he so chose, he was confident; but he was not sure he cared
to assume the sometimes irksome duties of that position,
for he could see no particular advantage to be gained thereby.

One of the younger apes, a huge, splendidly muscled brute,
was edging threateningly closer to the ape-man.  Through his
bared fighting fangs there issued a low, sullen growl.

Tarzan watched his every move, standing rigid as a statue.  
To have fallen back a step would have been to precipitate an
immediate charge; to have rushed forward to meet the other
might have had the same result, or it might have put the
bellicose one to flight--it all depended upon the young bull's
stock of courage.

To stand perfectly still, waiting, was the middle course.  
In this event the bull would, according to custom, approach
quite close to the object of his attention, growling hideously
and baring slavering fangs.  Slowly he would circle about the other,
as though with a chip upon his shoulder; and this he did,
even as Tarzan had foreseen.

It might be a bluff royal, or, on the other hand, so unstable is
the mind of an ape, a passing impulse might hurl the hairy mass,
tearing and rending, upon the man without an instant's warning.

As the brute circled him Tarzan turned slowly, keeping
his eyes ever upon the eyes of his antagonist.  He had
appraised the young bull as one who had never quite felt equal
to the task of overthrowing his former king, but who one day
would have done so.  Tarzan saw that the beast was of wondrous
proportions, standing over seven feet upon his short, bowed legs.

His great, hairy arms reached almost to the ground even
when he stood erect, and his fighting fangs, now quite close
to Tarzan's face, were exceptionally long and sharp.  Like the
others of his tribe, he differed in several minor essentials
from the apes of Tarzan's boyhood.

At first the ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at
sight of the shaggy bodies of the anthropoids--a hope that
by some strange freak of fate he had been again returned to
his own tribe; but a closer inspection had convinced him that
these were another species.

As the threatening bull continued his stiff and jerky
circling of the ape-man, much after the manner that you have
noted among dogs when a strange canine comes among them,
it occurred to Tarzan to discover if the language of his own
tribe was identical with that of this other family, and so he
addressed the brute in the language of the tribe of Kerchak.

"Who are you," he asked, "who threatens Tarzan of the Apes?"

The hairy brute looked his surprise.

"I am Akut," replied the other in the same simple, primal
tongue which is so low in the scale of spoken languages that,
as Tarzan had surmised, it was identical with that of the tribe
in which the first twenty years of his life had been spent.

"I am Akut," said the ape.  "Molak is dead.  I am king.
Go away or I shall kill you!"

"You saw how easily I killed Molak," replied Tarzan.  "So I
could kill you if I cared to be king.  But Tarzan of the
Apes would not be king of the tribe of Akut.  All he wishes
is to live in peace in this country.  Let us be friends.  
Tarzan of the Apes can help you, and you can help Tarzan
of the Apes."

"You cannot kill Akut," replied the other.  "None is so
great as Akut.  Had you not killed Molak, Akut would have
done so, for Akut was ready to be king."

For answer the ape-man hurled himself upon the great brute
who during the conversation had slightly relaxed his vigilance.

In the twinkling of an eye the man had seized the wrist of
the great ape, and before the other could grapple with him
had whirled him about and leaped upon his broad back.

Down they went together, but so well had Tarzan's plan
worked out that before ever they touched the ground he had
gained the same hold upon Akut that had broken Molak's neck.

Slowly he brought the pressure to bear, and then as in days
gone by he had given Kerchak the chance to surrender and
live, so now he gave to Akut--in whom he saw a possible
ally of great strength and resource--the option of living in
amity with him or dying as he had just seen his savage and
heretofore invincible king die.

"Ka-Goda?" whispered Tarzan to the ape beneath him.

It was the same question that he had whispered to Kerchak,
and in the language of the apes it means, broadly,
"Do you surrender?"

Akut thought of the creaking sound he had heard just
before Molak's thick neck had snapped, and he shuddered.

He hated to give up the kingship, though, so again he struggled
to free himself; but a sudden torturing pressure upon his
vertebra brought an agonized "ka-goda!" from his lips.

Tarzan relaxed his grip a trifle.

"You may still be king, Akut," he said.  "Tarzan told you
that he did not wish to be king.  If any question your right,
Tarzan of the Apes will help you in your battles."

The ape-man rose, and Akut came slowly to his feet.  
Shaking his bullet head and growling angrily, he waddled toward
his tribe, looking first at one and then at another of the
larger bulls who might be expected to challenge his leadership.

But none did so; instead, they drew away as he approached,
and presently the whole pack moved off into the jungle,
and Tarzan was left alone once more upon the beach.

The ape-man was sore from the wounds that Molak had
inflicted upon him, but he was inured to physical suffering
and endured it with the calm and fortitude of the wild beasts
that had taught him to lead the jungle life after the manner
of all those that are born to it.

His first need, he realized, was for weapons of offence and defence,
for his encounter with the apes, and the distant notes of the savage
voices of Numa the lion, and Sheeta, the panther, warned him that
his was to be no life of indolent ease and security.

It was but a return to the old existence of constant bloodshed
and danger--to the hunting and the being hunted.  Grim beasts
would stalk him, as they had stalked him in the past,
and never would there be a moment, by savage day or by
cruel night, that he might not have instant need of such crude
weapons as he could fashion from the materials at hand.

Upon the shore he found an out-cropping of brittle, igneous rock.  
By dint of much labour he managed to chip off a narrow sliver some
twelve inches long by a quarter of an inch thick.  One edge was quite
thin for a few inches near the tip.  It was the rudiment of a knife.

With it he went into the jungle, searching until he found a
fallen tree of a certain species of hardwood with which he
was familiar.  From this he cut a small straight branch,
which he pointed at one end.

Then he scooped a small, round hole in the surface of the
prostrate trunk.  Into this he crumbled a few bits of dry bark,
minutely shredded, after which he inserted the tip of his
pointed stick, and, sitting astride the bole of the tree, spun
the slender rod rapidly between his palms.

After a time a thin smoke rose from the little mass of
tinder, and a moment later the whole broke into flame.  
Heaping some larger twigs and sticks upon the tiny fire,
Tarzan soon had quite a respectable blaze roaring in the
enlarging cavity of the dead tree.

Into this he thrust the blade of his stone knife, and as it
became superheated he would withdraw it, touching a spot
near the thin edge with a drop of moisture.  Beneath the
wetted area a little flake of the glassy material would
crack and scale away.

Thus, very slowly, the ape-man commenced the tedious
operation of putting a thin edge upon his primitive hunting-knife.

He did not attempt to accomplish the feat all in one sitting.  
At first he was content to achieve a cutting edge of a couple
of inches, with which he cut a long, pliable bow, a handle
for his knife, a stout cudgel, and a goodly supply of arrows.

These he cached in a tall tree beside a little stream,
and here also he constructed a platform with a roof of
palm-leaves above it.

When all these things had been finished it was growing dusk,
and Tarzan felt a strong desire to eat.

He had noted during the brief incursion he had made into
the forest that a short distance up-stream from his tree there
was a much-used watering place, where, from the trampled
mud of either bank, it was evident beasts of all sorts and in
great numbers came to drink.  To this spot the hungry ape-man
made his silent way.

Through the upper terrace of the tree-tops he swung with
the grace and ease of a monkey.  But for the heavy burden
upon his heart he would have been happy in this return to the
old free life of his boyhood.

Yet even with that burden he fell into the little habits and
manners of his early life that were in reality more a part of
him than the thin veneer of civilization that the past three
years of his association with the white men of the outer world
had spread lightly over him--a veneer that only hid the
crudities of the beast that Tarzan of the Apes had been.

Could his fellow-peers of the House of Lords have seen him
then they would have held up their noble hands in holy horror.

Silently he crouched in the lower branches of a great forest
giant that overhung the trail, his keen eyes and sensitive ears
strained into the distant jungle, from which he knew his dinner
would presently emerge.

Nor had he long to wait.

Scarce had he settled himself to a comfortable position,
his lithe, muscular legs drawn well up beneath him as the
panther draws his hindquarters in preparation for the spring,
than Bara, the deer, came daintily down to drink.

But more than Bara was coming.  Behind the graceful buck
came another which the deer could neither see nor scent, but
whose movements were apparent to Tarzan of the Apes because
of the elevated position of the ape-man's ambush.

He knew not yet exactly the nature of the thing that moved
so stealthily through the jungle a few hundred yards behind
the deer; but he was convinced that it was some great beast
of prey stalking Bara for the selfsame purpose as that which
prompted him to await the fleet animal.  Numa, perhaps, or
Sheeta, the panther.

In any event, Tarzan could see his repast slipping from his
grasp unless Bara moved more rapidly toward the ford than
at present.

Even as these thoughts passed through his mind some noise
of the stalker in his rear must have come to the buck, for
with a sudden start he paused for an instant, trembling, in
his tracks, and then with a swift bound dashed straight for
the river and Tarzan.  It was his intention to flee through the
shallow ford and escape upon the opposite side of the river.

Not a hundred yards behind him came Numa.

Tarzan could see him quite plainly now.  Below the ape-man
Bara was about to pass.  Could he do it?  But even as he
asked himself the question the hungry man launched himself
from his perch full upon the back of the startled buck.

In another instant Numa would be upon them both, so if
the ape-man were to dine that night, or ever again,
he must act quickly.

Scarcely had he touched the sleek hide of the deer with a
momentum that sent the animal to its knees than he had
grasped a horn in either hand, and with a single quick wrench
twisted the animal's neck completely round, until he felt the
vertebrae snap beneath his grip.

The lion was roaring in rage close behind him as he swung
the deer across his shoulder, and, grasping a foreleg between
his strong teeth, leaped for the nearest of the lower branches
that swung above his head.

With both hands he grasped the limb, and, at the instant
that Numa sprang, drew himself and his prey out of reach of
the animal's cruel talons.

There was a thud below him as the baffled cat fell back to
earth, and then Tarzan of the Apes, drawing his dinner
farther up to the safety of a higher limb, looked down with
grinning face into the gleaming yellow eyes of the other wild
beast that glared up at him from beneath, and with taunting
insults flaunted the tender carcass of his kill in the face of
him whom he had cheated of it.

With his crude stone knife he cut a juicy steak from the
hindquarters, and while the great lion paced, growling, back
and forth below him, Lord Greystoke filled his savage belly,
nor ever in the choicest of his exclusive London clubs had a
meal tasted more palatable.

The warm blood of his kill smeared his hands and face
and filled his nostrils with the scent that the savage
carnivora love best.

And when he had finished he left the balance of the carcass
in a high fork of the tree where he had dined, and with Numa
trailing below him, still keen for revenge, he made his way
back to his tree-top shelter, where he slept until the sun was
high the following morning.




Chapter 4


Sheeta


The next few days were occupied by Tarzan in completing
his weapons and exploring the jungle.  He strung his
bow with tendons from the buck upon which he had dined
his first evening upon the new shore, and though he would
have preferred the gut of Sheeta for the purpose, he was
content to wait until opportunity permitted him to kill
one of the great cats.

He also braided a long grass rope--such a rope as he had
used so many years before to tantalize the ill-natured Tublat,
and which later had developed into a wondrous effective
weapon in the practised hands of the little ape-boy.

A sheath and handle for his hunting-knife he fashioned,
and a quiver for arrows, and from the hide of Bara a belt
and loin-cloth.  Then he set out to learn something of the
strange land in which he found himself.  That it was not his
old familiar west coast of the African continent he knew from
the fact that it faced east--the rising sun came up out of the
sea before the threshold of the jungle.

But that it was not the east coast of Africa he was equally
positive, for he felt satisfied that the Kincaid had not
passed through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea,
nor had she had time to round the Cape of Good Hope.  So he was
quite at a loss to know where he might be.

Sometimes he wondered if the ship had crossed the broad
Atlantic to deposit him upon some wild South American
shore; but the presence of Numa, the lion, decided him that
such could not be the case.

As Tarzan made his lonely way through the jungle paralleling
the shore, he felt strong upon him a desire for companionship,
so that gradually he commenced to regret that he had not cast
his lot with the apes.  He had seen nothing of them since that
first day, when the influences of civilization were still
paramount within him.

Now he was more nearly returned to the Tarzan of old,
and though he appreciated the fact that there could be
little in common between himself and the great anthropoids,
still they were better than no company at all.

Moving leisurely, sometimes upon the ground and again
among the lower branches of the trees, gathering an occasional
fruit or turning over a fallen log in search of the larger
bugs, which he still found as palatable as of old, Tarzan had
covered a mile or more when his attention was attracted by
the scent of Sheeta up-wind ahead of him.

Now Sheeta, the panther, was one of whom Tarzan was exceptionally
glad to fall in with, for he had it in mind not only to utilize
the great cat's strong gut for his bow, but also to fashion
a new quiver and loin-cloth from pieces of his hide.  
So, whereas the ape-man had gone carelessly before,
he now became the personification of noiseless stealth.

Swiftly and silently he glided through the forest in the wake
of the savage cat, nor was the pursuer, for all his noble birth,
one whit less savage than the wild, fierce thing he stalked.
