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his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat
over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to see Sheeta's great fangs sink into the
soft throat of the ape-man? Or did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had pronipted Tarzan to
rush to the rescue and imperil his life for Teeka's balu for Taug's little balu? Is gratitude a possession of
man only, or do the lower orders know it also?
With the spilling of Tarzan's blood, Taug answered these questions. With all the weight of his great body
he leaped, hideously growling, upon Sheeta. His long fighting fangs buried themselves in the white throat.
His powerful arms beat and clawed at the soft fur until it flew upward in the jungle breeze.
And with Taug's example before them the other bulls charged, burying Sheeta beneath rending fangs and
filling all the forest with the wild din of their battle cries.
Ah! but it was a wondrous and inspiring sight this battle of the primordial apes and the great, white
ape-man with their ancestral foe, Sheeta, the panther.
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In frenzied excitement, Teeka fairly danced upon the limb which swayed beneath her great weight as she
urged on the males of her people, and Thaka, and Mumga, and Kamma, with the other shes of the tribe
of Kerchak, added their shrill cries or fierce barkings to the pandemonium which now reigned within the
jungle.
Bitten and biting, tearing and torn, Sheeta battled for his life; but the odds were against him. Even Numa,
the lion, would have hesitated to have attacked an equal number of the great bulls of the tribe of
Kerchak, and now, a half mile away, hearing the sounds of the terrific battle, the king of beasts rose
uneasily from his midday slumber and slunk off farther into the jungle.
Presently Sheeta's torn and bloody body ceased its titanic struggles. It stiffened spasmodically, twitched
and was still, yet the bulls continued to lacerate it until the beautiful coat was torn to shreds. At last they
desisted from sheer physical weariness, and then from the tangle of bloody bodies rose a crimson giant,
straight as an arrow.
He placed a foot upon the dead body of the panther, and lifting his blood-stained face to the blue of the
equatorial heavens, gave voice to the horrid victory cry of the bull ape.
One by one his hairy fellows of the tribe of Kerchak followed his example. The shes came down from
their perches of safety and struck and reviled the dead body of Sheeta. The young apes refought the
battle in mimicry of their mighty elders.
Teeka was quite close to Tarzan. He turned and saw her with the balu hugged close to her hairy breast,
and put out his hands to take the little one, expecting that Teeka would bare her fangs and spring upon
him; but instead she placed the balu in his arms, and coming nearer, licked his frightful wounds.
And presently Taug, who had escaped with only a few scratches, came and squatted beside Tarzan and
watched him as he played with the little balu, and at last he too leaned over and helped Teeka with the
cleansing and the healing of the ape-man's hurts.
|Go to Contents |
4
The God of Tarzan
AMONG the books of his dead father in the little cabin by the land-locked harbor, Tarzan of the Apes
found many things to puzzle his young head. By much labor and through the medium of infinite patience as
well, he had, without assistance, discovered the purpose of the little bugs which ran riot upon the printed
pages. He had learned that in the many combinations in which he found them they spoke in a silent
language, spoke in a strange tongue, spoke of wonderful things which a little ape-boy could not by any
chance fully understand, arousing his curiosity, stimulating his imagination and filling his soul with a mighty
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longing for further knowledge.
A dictionary had proven itself a wonderful storehouse of information, when, after several years of tireless
endeavor, he had solved the mystery of its purpose and the manner of its use. He had learned to make a
species of game out of it, following up the spoor of a new thought through the mazes of the many
definitions which each new word required him to consult. It was like following a quarry through the
jungle it was hunting, and Tarzan of the Apes was an indefatigable huntsman.
There were, of course, certain words which aroused his curiosity to a greater extent than others, words
which, for one reason or another, excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning of
which was rather difficult to grasp. It was the wordGod . Tarzan first had been attracted to it by the fact
that it was very short and that it commenced with a larger g-bug than those about it a male g-bug it was
to Tarzan, the lower-case letters being females. Another fact which attracted him to this word was the
number of he-bugs which figured in its definition Supreme Deity, Creator or Upholder of the Universe.
This must be a very important word indeed, he would have to look into it, and he did, though it still
baffled him after many months of thought and study.
However, Tarzan counted no time wasted which he devoted to these strange hunting expeditions into the
game preserves of knowledge, for each word and each definition led on and on into strange places, into
new worlds where, with increasing frequency, he met old, familiar faces. And always he added to his
store of knowledge.
But of the meaning ofGod he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he had grasped it that God was a
mighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani. He was not quite sure, however, since that would mean that
God was mightier than Tarzan a point which Tarzan of the Apes, who acknowledged no equal in the
jungle, was loath to concede.
But in all the books he had there was no picture of God, though he found much to confirm his belief that
God was a great, an all-powerful individual. He saw pictures of places where God was worshiped; but
never any sign of God. Finally he began to wonder if God were not of a different form than he, and at last
he determined to set out in search of Him.
He commenced by questioning Mumba, who was very old and had seen many strange things in her long
life; but Mumga, being an ape, had a faculty for recalling the trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a
sting-bug for an edible beetle had made more impression upon Mumga than all the innumerable
manifestations of the greatness of God which she had witnessed, and which, of course, she had not
understood.
Numgo, overhearing Tarzan's questions, managed to wrest his attention long enough from the diversion
of flea hunting to advance the theory that the power which made the lightning and the rain and the thunder
came from Goro, the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dum always was danced in the
light of Goro. This reasoning, though entirely satisfactory to Numgo and Mumga, failed fully to convince
Tarzan. However, it gave him a basis for further investigation along a new line. He would investigate the
moon.
That night he clambered to the loftiest pinnacle of the tallest jungle giant. The moon was full, a great,
glorious, equatorial moon. The ape-man, upright upon a slender, swaying limb, raised his bronzed face to
the silver orb. Now that he had clambered to the highest point within his reach, he discovered, to his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat
over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to see Sheeta's great fangs sink into the
soft throat of the ape-man? Or did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had pronipted Tarzan to
rush to the rescue and imperil his life for Teeka's balu for Taug's little balu? Is gratitude a possession of
man only, or do the lower orders know it also?
With the spilling of Tarzan's blood, Taug answered these questions. With all the weight of his great body
he leaped, hideously growling, upon Sheeta. His long fighting fangs buried themselves in the white throat.
His powerful arms beat and clawed at the soft fur until it flew upward in the jungle breeze.
And with Taug's example before them the other bulls charged, burying Sheeta beneath rending fangs and
filling all the forest with the wild din of their battle cries.
Ah! but it was a wondrous and inspiring sight this battle of the primordial apes and the great, white
ape-man with their ancestral foe, Sheeta, the panther.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
In frenzied excitement, Teeka fairly danced upon the limb which swayed beneath her great weight as she
urged on the males of her people, and Thaka, and Mumga, and Kamma, with the other shes of the tribe
of Kerchak, added their shrill cries or fierce barkings to the pandemonium which now reigned within the
jungle.
Bitten and biting, tearing and torn, Sheeta battled for his life; but the odds were against him. Even Numa,
the lion, would have hesitated to have attacked an equal number of the great bulls of the tribe of
Kerchak, and now, a half mile away, hearing the sounds of the terrific battle, the king of beasts rose
uneasily from his midday slumber and slunk off farther into the jungle.
Presently Sheeta's torn and bloody body ceased its titanic struggles. It stiffened spasmodically, twitched
and was still, yet the bulls continued to lacerate it until the beautiful coat was torn to shreds. At last they
desisted from sheer physical weariness, and then from the tangle of bloody bodies rose a crimson giant,
straight as an arrow.
He placed a foot upon the dead body of the panther, and lifting his blood-stained face to the blue of the
equatorial heavens, gave voice to the horrid victory cry of the bull ape.
One by one his hairy fellows of the tribe of Kerchak followed his example. The shes came down from
their perches of safety and struck and reviled the dead body of Sheeta. The young apes refought the
battle in mimicry of their mighty elders.
Teeka was quite close to Tarzan. He turned and saw her with the balu hugged close to her hairy breast,
and put out his hands to take the little one, expecting that Teeka would bare her fangs and spring upon
him; but instead she placed the balu in his arms, and coming nearer, licked his frightful wounds.
And presently Taug, who had escaped with only a few scratches, came and squatted beside Tarzan and
watched him as he played with the little balu, and at last he too leaned over and helped Teeka with the
cleansing and the healing of the ape-man's hurts.
|Go to Contents |
4
The God of Tarzan
AMONG the books of his dead father in the little cabin by the land-locked harbor, Tarzan of the Apes
found many things to puzzle his young head. By much labor and through the medium of infinite patience as
well, he had, without assistance, discovered the purpose of the little bugs which ran riot upon the printed
pages. He had learned that in the many combinations in which he found them they spoke in a silent
language, spoke in a strange tongue, spoke of wonderful things which a little ape-boy could not by any
chance fully understand, arousing his curiosity, stimulating his imagination and filling his soul with a mighty
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
longing for further knowledge.
A dictionary had proven itself a wonderful storehouse of information, when, after several years of tireless
endeavor, he had solved the mystery of its purpose and the manner of its use. He had learned to make a
species of game out of it, following up the spoor of a new thought through the mazes of the many
definitions which each new word required him to consult. It was like following a quarry through the
jungle it was hunting, and Tarzan of the Apes was an indefatigable huntsman.
There were, of course, certain words which aroused his curiosity to a greater extent than others, words
which, for one reason or another, excited his imagination. There was one, for example, the meaning of
which was rather difficult to grasp. It was the wordGod . Tarzan first had been attracted to it by the fact
that it was very short and that it commenced with a larger g-bug than those about it a male g-bug it was
to Tarzan, the lower-case letters being females. Another fact which attracted him to this word was the
number of he-bugs which figured in its definition Supreme Deity, Creator or Upholder of the Universe.
This must be a very important word indeed, he would have to look into it, and he did, though it still
baffled him after many months of thought and study.
However, Tarzan counted no time wasted which he devoted to these strange hunting expeditions into the
game preserves of knowledge, for each word and each definition led on and on into strange places, into
new worlds where, with increasing frequency, he met old, familiar faces. And always he added to his
store of knowledge.
But of the meaning ofGod he was yet in doubt. Once he thought he had grasped it that God was a
mighty chieftain, king of all the Mangani. He was not quite sure, however, since that would mean that
God was mightier than Tarzan a point which Tarzan of the Apes, who acknowledged no equal in the
jungle, was loath to concede.
But in all the books he had there was no picture of God, though he found much to confirm his belief that
God was a great, an all-powerful individual. He saw pictures of places where God was worshiped; but
never any sign of God. Finally he began to wonder if God were not of a different form than he, and at last
he determined to set out in search of Him.
He commenced by questioning Mumba, who was very old and had seen many strange things in her long
life; but Mumga, being an ape, had a faculty for recalling the trivial. That time when Gunto mistook a
sting-bug for an edible beetle had made more impression upon Mumga than all the innumerable
manifestations of the greatness of God which she had witnessed, and which, of course, she had not
understood.
Numgo, overhearing Tarzan's questions, managed to wrest his attention long enough from the diversion
of flea hunting to advance the theory that the power which made the lightning and the rain and the thunder
came from Goro, the moon. He knew this, he said, because the Dum-Dum always was danced in the
light of Goro. This reasoning, though entirely satisfactory to Numgo and Mumga, failed fully to convince
Tarzan. However, it gave him a basis for further investigation along a new line. He would investigate the
moon.
That night he clambered to the loftiest pinnacle of the tallest jungle giant. The moon was full, a great,
glorious, equatorial moon. The ape-man, upright upon a slender, swaying limb, raised his bronzed face to
the silver orb. Now that he had clambered to the highest point within his reach, he discovered, to his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]