Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (top 10 novels of all time TXT) š
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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The next morning they set out upon the return march. Their original intention had been to burn the village, but this idea was abandoned and the prisoners were left behind, weeping and moaning, but with roofs to cover them and a palisade for refuge from the beasts of the jungle.
Slowly the expedition retraced its steps of the preceding day. Ten loaded hammocks retarded its pace. In eight of them lay the more seriously wounded, while two swung beneath the weight of the dead.
Clayton and Lieutenant Charpentier brought up the rear of the column; the Englishman silent in respect for the otherās grief, for DāArnot and Charpentier had been inseparable friends since boyhood.
Clayton could not but realize that the Frenchman felt his grief the more keenly because DāArnotās sacrifice had been so futile, since Jane had been rescued before DāArnot had fallen into the hands of the savages, and again because the service in which he had lost his life had been outside his duty and for strangers and aliens; but when he spoke of it to Lieutenant Charpentier, the latter shook his head.
āNo, Monsieur,ā he said, āDāArnot would have chosen to die thus. I only grieve that I could not have died for him, or at least with him. I wish that you could have known him better, Monsieur. He was indeed an officer and a gentlemanāa title conferred on many, but deserved by so few.
āHe did not die futilely, for his death in the cause of a strange American girl will make us, his comrades, face our ends the more bravely, however they may come to us.ā
Clayton did not reply, but within him rose a new respect for Frenchmen which remained undimmed ever after.
It was quite late when they reached the cabin by the beach. A single shot before they emerged from the jungle had announced to those in camp as well as on the ship that the expedition had been too lateāfor it had been prearranged that when they came within a mile or two of camp one shot was to be fired to denote failure, or three for success, while two would have indicated that they had found no sign of either DāArnot or his black captors.
So it was a solemn party that awaited their coming, and few words were spoken as the dead and wounded men were tenderly placed in boats and rowed silently toward the cruiser.
Clayton, exhausted from his five days of laborious marching through the jungle and from the effects of his two battles with the blacks, turned toward the cabin to seek a mouthful of food and then the comparative ease of his bed of grasses after two nights in the jungle.
By the cabin door stood Jane.
āThe poor lieutenant?ā she asked. āDid you find no trace of him?ā
āWe were too late, Miss Porter,ā he replied sadly.
āTell me. What had happened?ā she asked.
āI cannot, Miss Porter, it is too horrible.ā
āYou do not mean that they had tortured him?ā she whispered.
āWe do not know what they did to him before they killed him,ā he answered, his face drawn with fatigue and the sorrow he felt for poor DāArnot and he emphasized the word before.
āBefore they killed him! What do you mean? They are notā? They are notā?ā
She was thinking of what Clayton had said of the forest manās probable relationship to this tribe and she could not frame the awful word.
āYes, Miss Porter, they wereācannibals,ā he said, almost bitterly, for to him too had suddenly come the thought of the forest man, and the strange, unaccountable jealousy he had felt two days before swept over him once more.
And then in sudden brutality that was as unlike Clayton as courteous consideration is unlike an ape, he blurted out:
āWhen your forest god left you he was doubtless hurrying to the feast.ā
He was sorry ere the words were spoken though he did not know how cruelly they had cut the girl. His regret was for his baseless disloyalty to one who had saved the lives of every member of his party, and offered harm to none.
The girlās head went high.
āThere could be but one suitable reply to your assertion, Mr. Clayton,ā she said icily, āand I regret that I am not a man, that I might make it.ā She turned quickly and entered the cabin.
Clayton was an Englishman, so the girl had passed quite out of sight before he deduced what reply a man would have made.
āUpon my word,ā he said ruefully, āshe called me a liar. And I fancy I jolly well deserved it,ā he added thoughtfully. āClayton, my boy, I know you are tired out and unstrung, but thatās no reason why you should make an ass of yourself. Youād better go to bed.ā
But before he did so he called gently to Jane upon the opposite side of the sailcloth partition, for he wished to apologize, but he might as well have addressed the Sphinx. Then he wrote upon a piece of paper and shoved it beneath the partition.
Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was very angry and hurt and mortified, butāshe was a woman, and so eventually she picked it up and read it.
MY DEAR MISS PORTER:
I had no reason to insinuate what I did. My only excuse is that my nerves must be unstrungāwhich is no excuse at all.
Please try and think that I did not say it. I am very sorry. I would not have hurt you, above all others in the world. Say that you forgive me.
WM. CECIL CLAYTON.
āHe did think it or he never would have said it,ā reasoned the girl, ābut it cannot be trueāoh, I know it is not true!ā
One sentence in the letter frightened her: āI would not have hurt you above all others in the world.ā
A week ago that sentence would have filled her with delight, now it depressed her.
She wished she had never met Clayton. She was sorry that she had ever seen the forest god. No, she was glad. And there was that other note she had found in the grass before the cabin the day after her return from the jungle, the love note signed by Tarzan of the Apes.
Who could be this new suitor? If he were another of the wild denizens of this terrible forest what might he not do to claim her?
āEsmeralda! Wake up,ā she cried.
āYou make me so irritable, sleeping there peacefully when you know perfectly well that the world is filled with sorrow.ā
āGaberelle!ā screamed Esmeralda, sitting up. āWhat is it now? A hipponocerous? Where is he, Miss Jane?ā
āNonsense, Esmeralda, there is nothing. Go back to sleep. You are bad enough asleep, but you are infinitely worse awake.ā
āYes honey, but whatās the matter with you, precious? You acts sort of disgranulated this evening.ā
āOh, Esmeralda, Iām just plain ugly to-night,ā said the girl. āDonāt pay any attention to meāthatās a dear.ā
āYes, honey; now you go right to sleep. Your nerves are all on edge. What with all these ripotamuses and man eating geniuses that Mister Philander been telling aboutāLord, it aināt no wonder we all get nervous prosecution.ā
Jane crossed the little room, laughing, and kissing the faithful woman, bid Esmeralda good night.
Brother Men.
When DāArnot regained consciousness, he found himself lying upon a bed of soft ferns and grasses beneath a little āAā shaped shelter of boughs.
At his feet an opening looked out upon a green sward, and at a little distance beyond was the dense wall of jungle and forest.
He was very lame and sore and weak, and as full consciousness returned he felt the sharp torture of many cruel wounds and the dull aching of every bone and muscle in his body as a result of the hideous beating he had received.
Even the turning of his head caused him such excruciating agony that he lay still with closed eyes for a long time.
He tried to piece out the details of his adventure prior to the time he lost consciousness to see if they would explain his present whereaboutsāhe wondered if he were among friends or foes.
At length he recollected the whole hideous scene at the stake, and finally recalled the strange white figure in whose arms he had sunk into oblivion.
DāArnot wondered what fate lay in store for him now. He could neither see nor hear any signs of life about him.
The incessant hum of the jungleāthe rustling of millions of leavesāthe buzz of insectsāthe voices of the birds and monkeys seemed blended into a strangely soothing purr, as though he lay apart, far from the myriad life whose sounds came to him only as a blurred echo.
At length he fell into a quiet slumber, nor did he awake again until afternoon.
Once more he experienced the strange sense of utter bewilderment that had marked his earlier awakening, but soon he recalled the recent past, and looking through the opening at his feet he saw the figure of a man squatting on his haunches.
The broad, muscular back was turned toward him, but, tanned though it was, DāArnot saw that it was the back of a white man, and he thanked God.
The Frenchman called faintly. The man turned, and rising, came toward the shelter. His face was very handsomeāthe handsomest, thought DāArnot, that he had ever seen.
Stooping, he crawled into the shelter beside the wounded officer, and placed a cool hand upon his forehead.
DāArnot spoke to him in French, but the man only shook his headāsadly, it seemed to the Frenchman.
Then DāArnot tried English, but still the man shook his head. Italian, Spanish and German brought similar discouragement.
DāArnot knew a few words of Norwegian, Russian, Greek, and also had a smattering of the language of one of the West Coast negro tribesāthe man denied them all.
After examining DāArnotās wounds the man left the shelter and disappeared. In half an hour he was back with fruit and a hollow gourd-like vegetable filled with water.
DāArnot drank and ate a little. He was surprised that he had no fever. Again he tried to converse with his strange nurse, but the attempt was useless.
Suddenly the man hastened from the shelter only to return a few minutes later with several pieces of bark andāwonder of wondersāa lead pencil.
Squatting beside DāArnot he wrote for a minute on the smooth inner surface of the bark; then he handed it to the Frenchman.
DāArnot was astonished to see, in plain print-like characters, a message in English:
I am Tarzan of the Apes. Who are you? Can you read this language?
DāArnot seized the pencilāthen he stopped. This strange man wrote Englishāevidently he was an Englishman.
āYes,ā said DāArnot, āI read English. I speak it also. Now we may talk. First let me thank you for all that you have done for me.ā
The man only shook his head and pointed to the pencil and the bark.
āMon Dieu!ā cried DāArnot. āIf you are English why is it then that you cannot speak English?ā
And then in a flash it came to himāthe man was a mute, possibly a deaf mute.
So DāArnot wrote a message on the bark, in English.
I am Paul dāArnot, Lieutenant in the navy of France. I thank you for what you have done for me. You have saved my life, and all that I have is yours. May I ask how it is that one who writes English does not speak it?
Tarzanās reply filled DāArnot with still greater wonder:
I speak only the language of my tribeāthe great apes who were Kerchakās; and a little of the languages of Tantor, the elephant, and Numa, the lion, and of the other folks of the jungle I understand. With a human being I have never spoken, except once with Jane Porter, by signs. This is the first time I have spoken with another of my kind through written words.
DāArnot was mystified. It seemed incredible that there lived upon earth a full-grown man who had never spoken with a fellow man, and still more preposterous that such a one could read and write.
He looked again at Tarzanās messageāāexcept once, with Jane Porter.ā That was the American girl who had been carried into the jungle by a gorilla.
A sudden light commenced to dawn on DāArnotāthis then was the āgorilla.ā He seized the pencil and wrote:
Where is Jane Porter?
And Tarzan replied, below:
Back with her people in the cabin of Tarzan of the Apes.
She is not dead then? Where was she? What happened to her?
She is not dead. She was taken by Terkoz
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