Burroughs, Edgar Rice Tarzan 03 The Beasts of Tarzan

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fell upon the giant figure of the sleeping ape-man.
The chief looked at the other inquiringly. The latter nodded
his head, to signify that the chief had made no mistake
in his suspicions. Then he turned to those behind him and,
pointing to the sleeping man, motioned for them to seize
and bind him.
A moment later a dozen brutes had leaped upon the surprised
Tarzan, and so quickly did they work that he was securely
bound before he could make half an effort to escape.
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Then they threw him down upon his back, and as his eyes
turned toward the crowd that stood near, they fell upon the
malign face of Nikolas Rokoff.
A sneer curled the Russian's lips. He stepped quite close
to Tarzan.
"Pig!" he cried. "Have you not learned sufficient
wisdom to keep away from Nikolas Rokoff?"
Then he kicked the prostrate man full in the face.
"That for your welcome," he said.
"Tonight, before my Ethiop friends eat you, I shall tell
you what has already befallen your wife and child, and what
further plans I have for their futures."
Chapter 8
The Dance of Death
Through the luxuriant, tangled vegetation of the Stygian
jungle night a great lithe body made its way sinuously
and in utter silence upon its soft padded feet. Only two
blazing points of yellow-green flame shone occasionally with
the reflected light of the equatorial moon that now and again
pierced the softly sighing roof rustling in the night wind.
Occasionally the beast would stop with high-held nose,
sniffing searchingly. At other times a quick, brief incursion
into the branches above delayed it momentarily in its steady
journey toward the east. To its sensitive nostrils came the
subtle unseen spoor of many a tender four-footed creature,
bringing the slaver of hunger to the cruel, drooping jowl.
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But steadfastly it kept on its way, strangely ignoring the
cravings of appetite that at another time would have sent
the rolling, fur-clad muscles flying at some soft throat.
All that night the creature pursued its lonely way, and the
next day it halted only to make a single kill, which it tore
to fragments and devoured with sullen, grumbling rumbles as
though half famished for lack of food.
It was dusk when it approached the palisade that surrounded
a large native village. Like the shadow of a swift and silent
death it circled the village, nose to ground, halting at last
close to the palisade, where it almost touched the backs
of several huts. Here the beast sniffed for a moment, and then,
turning its head upon one side, listened with up-pricked ears.
What it heard was no sound by the standards of human ears,
yet to the highly attuned and delicate organs of the beast
a message seemed to be borne to the savage brain. A wondrous
transformation was wrought in the motionless mass of
statuesque bone and muscle that had an instant before stood
as though carved out of the living bronze.
As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly released,
it rose quickly and silently to the top of the palisade,
disappearing, stealthily and catlike, into the dark space
between the wall and the back of an adjacent hut.
In the village street beyond women were preparing many little
fires and fetching cooking-pots filled with water, for a great
feast was to be celebrated ere the night was many hours older.
About a stout stake near the centre of the circling fires
a little knot of black warriors stood conversing, their bodies
smeared with white and blue and ochre in broad and grotesque bands.
Great circles of colour were drawn about their eyes and lips,
their breasts and abdomens, and from their clay-plastered
coiffures rose gay feathers and bits of long, straight wire.
The village was preparing for the feast, while in a hut at
one side of the scene of the coming orgy the bound victim of
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their bestial appetites lay waiting for the end. And such an end!
Tarzan of the Apes, tensing his mighty muscles, strained
at the bonds that pinioned him; but they had been re-enforced
many times at the instigation of the Russian, so that not even
the ape-man's giant brawn could budge them.
Death!
Tarzan had looked the Hideous Hunter in the face many a time,
and smiled. And he would smile again tonight when he knew
the end was coming quickly; but now his thoughts were not
of himself, but of those others--the dear ones who must
suffer most because of his passing.
Jane would never know the manner of it. For that he thanked Heaven;
and he was thankful also that she at least was safe in the heart of
the world's greatest city. Safe among kind and loving friends who
would do their best to lighten her misery.
But the boy!
Tarzan writhed at the thought of him. His son! And now
he--the mighty Lord of the Jungle--he, Tarzan, King of the
Apes, the only one in all the world fitted to find and save the
child from the horrors that Rokoff's evil mind had planned--
had been trapped like a silly, dumb creature. He was to die
in a few hours, and with him would go the child's last chance
of succour.
Rokoff had been in to see and revile and abuse him several
times during the afternoon; but he had been able to wring no
word of remonstrance or murmur of pain from the lips of the
giant captive.
So at last he had given up, reserving his particular bit of
exquisite mental torture for the last moment, when, just
before the savage spears of the cannibals should for ever make
the object of his hatred immune to further suffering, the
Russian planned to reveal to his enemy the true whereabouts of
his wife whom he thought safe in England.
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Dusk had fallen upon the village, and the ape-men could hear
the preparations going forward for the torture and the feast.
The dance of death he could picture in his mind's eye--for
he had seen the thing many times in the past. Now he was
to be the central figure, bound to the stake.
The torture of the slow death as the circling warriors cut
him to bits with the fiendish skill, that mutilated without
bringing unconsciousness, had no terrors for him. He was
inured to suffering and to the sight of blood and to cruel
death; but the desire to live was no less strong within him,
and until the last spark of life should flicker and go out, his
whole being would remain quick with hope and determination.
Let them relax their watchfulness but for an instant, he
knew that his cunning mind and giant muscles would find a
way to escape--escape and revenge.
As he lay, thinking furiously on every possibility of self-
salvation, there came to his sensitive nostrils a faint and a
familiar scent. Instantly every faculty of his mind was upon
the alert. Presently his trained ears caught the sound of the
soundless presence without--behind the hut wherein he lay.
His lips moved, and though no sound came forth that might
have been appreciable to a human ear beyond the walls of
his prison, yet he realized that the one beyond would hear.
Already he knew who that one was, for his nostrils had told
him as plainly as your eyes or mine tell us of the identity of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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