Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (top 10 novels of all time TXT) 📗
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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“Not the slightest,” replied Tarzan.
“No writings in the cabin that might have told something of the lives of its original inmates?”
“I have read everything that was in the cabin with the exception of one book which I know now to be written in a language other than English. Possibly you can read it.”
Tarzan fished the little black diary from the bottom of his quiver, and handed it to his companion.
D’Arnot glanced at the title page.
“It is the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, an English nobleman, and it is written in French,” he said.
Then he proceeded to read the diary that had been written over twenty years before, and which recorded the details of the story which we already know—the story of adventure, hardships and sorrow of John Clayton and his wife Alice, from the day they left England until an hour before he was struck down by Kerchak.
D’Arnot read aloud. At times his voice broke, and he was forced to stop reading for the pitiful hopelessness that spoke between the lines.
Occasionally he glanced at Tarzan; but the ape-man sat upon his haunches, like a carven image, his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Only when the little babe was mentioned did the tone of the diary alter from the habitual note of despair which had crept into it by degrees after the first two months upon the shore.
Then the passages were tinged with a subdued happiness that was even sadder than the rest.
One entry showed an almost hopeful spirit.
To-day our little boy is six months old. He is sitting in Alice’s lap beside the table where I am writing—a happy, healthy, perfect child.
Somehow, even against all reason, I seem to see him a grown man, taking his father’s place in the world—the second John Clayton—and bringing added honors to the house of Greystoke.
There—as though to give my prophecy the weight of his endorsement—he has grabbed my pen in his chubby fists and with his inkbegrimed little fingers has placed the seal of his tiny finger prints upon the page.
And there, on the margin of the page, were the partially blurred imprints of four wee fingers and the outer half of the thumb.
When D’Arnot had finished the diary the two men sat in silence for some minutes.
“Well! Tarzan of the Apes, what think you?” asked D’Arnot. “Does not this little book clear up the mystery of your parentage?
“Why man, you are Lord Greystoke.”
“The book speaks of but one child,” he replied. “Its little skeleton lay in the crib, where it died crying for nourishment, from the first time I entered the cabin until Professor Porter’s party buried it, with its father and mother, beside the cabin.
“No, that was the babe the book speaks of—and the mystery of my origin is deeper than before, for I have thought much of late of the possibility of that cabin having been my birthplace. I am afraid that Kala spoke the truth,” he concluded sadly.
D’Arnot shook his head. He was unconvinced, and in his mind had sprung the determination to prove the correctness of his theory, for he had discovered the key which alone could unlock the mystery, or consign it forever to the realms of the unfathomable.
A week later the two men came suddenly upon a clearing in the forest.
In the distance were several buildings surrounded by a strong palisade. Between them and the enclosure stretched a cultivated field in which a number of negroes were working.
The two halted at the edge of the jungle.
Tarzan fitted his bow with a poisoned arrow, but D’Arnot placed a hand upon his arm.
“What would you do, Tarzan?” he asked.
“They will try to kill us if they see us,” replied Tarzan. “I prefer to be the killer.”
“Maybe they are friends,” suggested D’Arnot.
“They are black,” was Tarzan’s only reply.
And again he drew back his shaft.
“You must not, Tarzan!” cried D’Arnot. “White men do not kill wantonly. Mon Dieu! but you have much to learn.
“I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild man, when I take you to Paris. I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the guillotine.”
Tarzan lowered his bow and smiled.
“I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle, yet not kill them here. Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon us, I should say, then, I presume: Good morning, Monsieur Numa, how is Madame Numa; eh?”
“Wait until the blacks spring upon you,” replied D’Arnot, “then you may kill them. Do not assume that men are your enemies until they prove it.”
“Come,” said Tarzan, “let us go and present ourselves to be killed,” and he started straight across the field, his head high held and the tropical sun beating upon his smooth, brown skin.
Behind him came D’Arnot, clothed in some garments which had been discarded at the cabin by Clayton when the officers of the French cruiser had fitted him out in more presentable fashion.
Presently one of the blacks looked up, and beholding Tarzan, turned, shrieking, toward the palisade.
In an instant the air was filled with cries of terror from the fleeing gardeners, but before any had reached the palisade a white man emerged from the enclosure, rifle in hand, to discover the cause of the commotion.
What he saw brought his rifle to his shoulder, and Tarzan of the Apes would have felt cold lead once again had not D’Arnot cried loudly to the man with the leveled gun:
“Do not fire! We are friends!”
“Halt, then!” was the reply.
“Stop, Tarzan!” cried D’Arnot. “He thinks we are enemies.”
Tarzan dropped into a walk, and together he and D’Arnot advanced toward the white man by the gate.
The latter eyed them in puzzled bewilderment.
“What manner of men are you?” he asked, in French.
“White men,” replied D’Arnot. “We have been lost in the jungle for a long time.”
The man had lowered his rifle and now advanced with outstretched hand.
“I am Father Constantine of the French Mission here,” he said, “and I am glad to welcome you.”
“This is Monsieur Tarzan, Father Constantine,” replied D’Arnot, indicating the ape-man; and as the priest extended his hand to Tarzan, D’Arnot added: “and I am Paul D’Arnot, of the French Navy.”
Father Constantine took the hand which Tarzan extended in imitation of the priest’s act, while the latter took in the superb physique and handsome face in one quick, keen glance.
And thus came Tarzan of the Apes to the first outpost of civilization.
For a week they remained there, and the ape-man, keenly observant, learned much of the ways of men; meanwhile black women sewed white duck garments for himself and D’Arnot so that they might continue their journey properly clothed.
The Height of Civilization
Another month brought them to a little group of buildings at the mouth of a wide river, and there Tarzan saw many boats, and was filled with the timidity of the wild thing by the sight of many men.
Gradually he became accustomed to the strange noises and the odd ways of civilization, so that presently none might know that two short months before, this handsome Frenchman in immaculate white ducks, who laughed and chatted with the gayest of them, had been swinging naked through primeval forests to pounce upon some unwary victim, which, raw, was to fill his savage belly.
The knife and fork, so contemptuously flung aside a month before, Tarzan now manipulated as exquisitely as did the polished D’Arnot.
So apt a pupil had he been that the young Frenchman had labored assiduously to make of Tarzan of the Apes a polished gentleman in so far as nicety of manners and speech were concerned.
“God made you a gentleman at heart, my friend,” D’Arnot had said; “but we want His works to show upon the exterior also.”
As soon as they had reached the little port, D’Arnot had cabled his government of his safety, and requested a three-months’ leave, which had been granted.
He had also cabled his bankers for funds, and the enforced wait of a month, under which both chafed, was due to their inability to charter a vessel for the return to Tarzan’s jungle after the treasure.
During their stay at the coast town “Monsieur Tarzan” became the wonder of both whites and blacks because of several occurrences which to Tarzan seemed the merest of nothings.
Once a huge black, crazed by drink, had run amuck and terrorized the town, until his evil star had led him to where the black-haired French giant lolled upon the veranda of the hotel.
Mounting the broad steps, with brandished knife, the Negro made straight for a party of four men sitting at a table sipping the inevitable absinthe.
Shouting in alarm, the four took to their heels, and then the black spied Tarzan.
With a roar he charged the ape-man, while half a hundred heads peered from sheltering windows and doorways to witness the butchering of the poor Frenchman by the giant black.
Tarzan met the rush with the fighting smile that the joy of battle always brought to his lips.
As the Negro closed upon him, steel muscles gripped the black wrist of the uplifted knife-hand, and a single swift wrench left the hand dangling below a broken bone.
With the pain and surprise, the madness left the black man, and as Tarzan dropped back into his chair the fellow turned, crying with agony, and dashed wildly toward the native village.
On another occasion as Tarzan and D’Arnot sat at dinner with a number of other whites, the talk fell upon lions and lion hunting.
Opinion was divided as to the bravery of the king of beasts—some maintaining that he was an arrant coward, but all agreeing that it was with a feeling of greater security that they gripped their express rifles when the monarch of the jungle roared about a camp at night.
D’Arnot and Tarzan had agreed that his past be kept secret, and so none other than the French officer knew of the ape-man’s familiarity with the beasts of the jungle.
“Monsieur Tarzan has not expressed himself,” said one of the party. “A man of his prowess who has spent some time in Africa, as I understand Monsieur Tarzan has, must have had experiences with lions—yes?”
“Some,” replied Tarzan, dryly. “Enough to know that each of you are right in your judgment of the characteristics of the lions—you have met. But one might as well judge all blacks by the fellow who ran amuck last week, or decide that all whites are cowards because one has met a cowardly white.
“There is as much individuality among the lower orders, gentlemen, as there is among ourselves. Today we may go out and stumble upon a lion which is over-timid—he runs away from us. To-morrow we may meet his uncle or his twin brother, and our friends wonder why we do not return from the jungle. For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.”
“There would be little pleasure in hunting,” retorted the first speaker, “if one is afraid of the thing he hunts.”
D’Arnot smiled. Tarzan afraid!
“I do not exactly understand what you mean by fear,” said Tarzan. “Like lions, fear is a different thing in different men, but to me the only pleasure in the hunt is the knowledge that the hunted thing has power to harm me as much as I have to harm him. If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt.”
“Then I am to take it that Monsieur Tarzan would prefer to go naked into the jungle, armed only with a jackknife, to kill the king of beasts,” laughed the other, good naturedly, but with the merest touch of sarcasm in his tone.
“And a piece of rope,” added Tarzan.
Just then the deep roar of a lion sounded from the distant jungle, as though to challenge whoever dared enter the lists with him.
“There is your opportunity, Monsieur Tarzan,” bantered the Frenchman.
“I am not hungry,” said Tarzan simply.
The men laughed, all but D’Arnot. He alone knew that a savage beast had spoken its simple reason through the lips of the ape-man.
“But you are afraid, just as any of us would be, to go out there naked, armed only with a knife and a piece of rope,” said the banterer. “Is it not so?”
“No,” replied Tarzan. “Only a fool performs any act without reason.”
“Five thousand francs is a reason,” said the other. “I wager you that amount you cannot
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