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, encouraged with the
sharp points of bayonets and the metal-shod butts of rifles.
There were no porters within reach of Hauptmann Schneider 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, behind 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 impressed 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 civilization
commencing to reflect itself upon the undeserving natives just as
at the same period, the fall of 1914, it was shedding 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 ignorance
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 savage 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 park like 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 disappointment 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, anticipating 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 warriors, 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 English 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. Smoldering
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 bodyguard 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. Gropingly
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 blackened corpse
was not that of his mate, but when his eyes discovered 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 committed 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 Hauptmann 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 walking 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 ennobled 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 German, 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 evidences 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--uncomfortable, hideous, confining things that reminded
him somehow of bonds securing him to the life he had seen the poor
creatures 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 included 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 Germans 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 realization 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 forewarned 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 intervals 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 dilating
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 dispossessed. 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 combat, 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, Tarzan un-slung 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.
The heavy limb bent beneath the weight of the two beasts as
Sheeta crept cautiously out upon it and Tarzan backed slowly away,
growling. The wind had risen to the proportions of a gale so that
even the greatest giants of the forest swayed, groaning, to its
force and the branch upon which the two faced each other rose and
fell like the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Goro was now entirely
obscured, but vivid flashes of lightning lit up the jungle at brief
intervals, revealing the grim tableau of primitive passion upon the
swaying limb.
Tarzan backed away, drawing Sheeta farther from the stem of the
tree and out upon the tapering branch, where his footing became
ever more precarious. The cat, infuriated by the pain of spear
wounds, was overstepping the bounds of caution. Already he had
reached a point where he could do little more than maintain a
secure footing, and it was this moment that Tarzan chose to charge.
With a roar that mingled with the booming thunder from above he
leaped toward the panther, who could only claw futilely with one
huge paw while he clung to the branch with the other; but the
ape-man did not come within that parabola of destruction. Instead
he leaped above menacing claws and snapping fangs, turning in
mid-air and alighting upon Sheeta's back, and at the instant of
impact his knife struck deep into the tawny side. Then Sheeta,
impelled by pain and hate and rage and the first law of Nature,
went mad. Screaming and clawing he attempted to turn upon the
ape-thing clinging to his back. For an instant he toppled upon the
now wildly gyrating limb, clutched frantically to save himself, and
then plunged downward into the darkness with Tarzan still clinging
to him. Crashing through splintering branches the two fell. Not for
an instant did the ape-man consider relinquishing his death-hold
upon his adversary. He had entered the lists in mortal combat and
true to the primitive instincts of the wild--the unwritten law of
the jungle--one or both must die before the battle ended.
Sheeta, catlike, alighted upon four out-sprawled feet, the
weight of the ape-man crushing him to earth, the long knife again
imbedded in his side. Once the panther struggled to rise; but only
to sink to earth again. Tarzan felt the giant muscles relax beneath
him. Sheeta was dead. Rising, the ape-man placed a foot upon the
body of his vanquished foe, raised his face toward the thundering
heavens, and as the lightning flashed and the torrential rain broke
upon him, screamed forth the wild victory cry of the bull ape.
Having accomplished his aim and driven the enemy from his lair,
Tarzan gathered an armful of large fronds and climbed to his
dripping couch. Laying a few of the fronds upon the poles he lay
down and covered himself against the rain with the others, and
despite the wailing of the wind and the crashing of the thunder,
immediately fell asleep.
