Chapter VIII
The Tree-top Hunter
The morning after the Dum-Dum the tribe started slowly back through theforest toward the coast.
The body of Tublat lay where it had fallen, for the people of Kerchakdo not eat their own dead.
The march was but a leisurely search for food. Cabbage palm and grayplum, pisang and scitamine they found in abundance, with wildpineapple, and occasionally small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles, andinsects. The nuts they cracked between their powerful jaws, or, if toohard, broke by pounding between stones.
Once old Sabor, crossing their path, sent them scurrying to the safetyof the higher branches, for if she respected their number and theirsharp fangs, they on their part held her cruel and mighty ferocity inequal esteem.
Upon a low-hanging branch sat Tarzan directly above the majestic,supple body as it forged silently through the thick jungle. He hurleda pineapple at the ancient enemy of his people. The great beaststopped and, turning, eyed the taunting figure above her.
With an angry lash of her tail she bared her yellow fangs, curling hergreat lips in a hideous snarl that wrinkled her bristling snout inserried ridges and closed her wicked eyes to two narrow slits of rageand hatred.
With back-laid ears she looked straight into the eyes of Tarzan of theApes and sounded her fierce, shrill challenge. And from the safety ofhis overhanging limb the ape-child sent back the fearsome answer of hiskind.
For a moment the two eyed each other in silence, and then the great catturned into the jungle, which swallowed her as the ocean engulfs atossed pebble.
But into the mind of Tarzan a great plan sprang. He had killed thefierce Tublat, so was he not therefore a mighty fighter? Now would hetrack down the crafty Sabor and slay her likewise. He would be amighty hunter, also.
At the bottom of his little English heart beat the great desire tocover his nakedness with CLOTHES for he had learned from his picturebooks that all MEN were so covered, while MONKEYS and APES and everyother living thing went naked.
CLOTHES therefore, must be truly a badge of greatness; the insignia ofthe superiority of MAN over all other animals, for surely there couldbe no other reason for wearing the hideous things.
Many moons ago, when he had been much smaller, he had desired the skinof Sabor, the lioness, or Numa, the lion, or Sheeta, the leopard tocover his hairless body that he might no longer resemble hideousHistah, the snake; but now he was proud of his sleek skin for itbetokened his descent from a mighty race, and the conflicting desiresto go naked in prideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to thecustoms of his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparelfound first one and then the other in the ascendency.
As the tribe continued their slow way through the forest after thepassing of Sabor, Tarzan's head was filled with his great scheme forslaying his enemy, and for many days thereafter he thought of littleelse.
On this day, however, he presently had other and more immediateinterests to attract his attention.
Suddenly it became as midnight; the noises of the jungle ceased; thetrees stood motionless as though in paralyzed expectancy of some greatand imminent disaster. All nature waited--but not for long.
Faintly, from a distance, came a low, sad moaning. Nearer and nearerit approached, mounting louder and louder in volume.
The great trees bent in unison as though pressed earthward by a mightyhand. Farther and farther toward the ground they inclined, and stillthere was no sound save the deep and awesome moaning of the wind.
Then, suddenly, the jungle giants whipped back, lashing their mightytops in angry and deafening protest. A vivid and blinding lightflashed from the whirling, inky clouds above. The deep cannonade ofroaring thunder belched forth its fearsome challenge. The delugecame--all hell broke loose upon the jungle.
The tribe shivering from the cold rain, huddled at the bases of greattrees. The lightning, darting and flashing through the blackness,showed wildly waving branches, whipping streamers and bending trunks.
Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rent by a flashingbolt, would crash in a thousand pieces among the surrounding trees,carrying down numberless branches and many smaller neighbors to add tothe tangled confusion of the tropical jungle.
Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of the tornado,hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carrying death anddestruction to countless unhappy denizens of the thickly peopled worldbelow.
For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease, and stillthe tribe huddled close in shivering fear. In constant danger fromfalling trunks and branches and paralyzed by the vivid flashing oflightning and the bellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful miseryuntil the storm passed.
The end was as sudden as the beginning. The wind ceased, the sun shoneforth--nature smiled once more.
The dripping leaves and branches, and the moist petals of gorgeousflowers glistened in the splendor of the returning day. And, so--asNature forgot, her children forgot also. Busy life went on as it hadbeen before the darkness and the fright.
But to Tarzan a dawning light had come to explain the mystery ofCLOTHES. How snug he would have been beneath the heavy coat of Sabor!And so was added a further incentive to the adventure.
For several months the tribe hovered near the beach where stoodTarzan's cabin, and his studies took up the greater portion of histime, but always when journeying through the forest he kept his rope inreadiness, and many were the smaller animals that fell into the snareof the quick thrown noose.
Once it fell about the short neck of Horta, the boar, and his mad lungefor freedom toppled Tarzan from the overhanging limb where he had lainin wait and from whence he had launched his sinuous coil.
The mighty tusker turned at the sound of his falling body, and, seeingonly the easy prey of a young ape, he lowered his head and chargedmadly at the surprised youth.
Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the fall, alighting catlike upon allfours far outspread to take up the shock. He was on his feet in aninstant and, leaping with the agility of the monkey he was, he gainedthe safety of a low limb as Horta, the boar, rushed futilely beneath.
Thus it was that Tarzan learned by experience the limitations as wellas the possibilities of his strange weapon.
He lost a long rope on this occasion, but he knew that had it beenSabor who had thus dragged him from his perch the outcome might havebeen very different, for he would have lost his life, doubtless, intothe bargain.
It took him many days to braid a new rope, but when, finally, it wasdone he went forth purposely to hunt, and lie in wait among the densefoliage of a great branch right above the well-beaten trail that led towater.
Several small animals passed unharmed beneath him. He did not wantsuch insignificant game. It would take a strong animal to test theefficacy of his new scheme.
At last came she whom Tarzan sought, with lithe sinews rolling beneathshimmering hide; fat and glossy came Sabor, the lioness.
Her great padded feet fell soft and noiseless on the narrow trail. Herhead was high in ever alert attention; her long tail moved slowly insinuous and graceful undulations.
Nearer and nearer she came to where Tarzan of the Apes crouched uponhis limb, the coils of his long rope poised ready in his hand.
Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death, sat Tarzan. Sabor passedbeneath. One stride beyond she took--a second, a third, and then thesilent coil shot out above her.
For an instant the spreading noose hung above her head like a greatsnake, and then, as she looked upward to detect the origin of theswishing sound of the rope, it settled about her neck. With a quickjerk Tarzan snapped the noose tight about the glossy throat, and thenhe dropped the rope and clung to his support with both hands.
Sabor was trapped.
With a bound the startled beast turned into the jungle, but Tarzan wasnot to lose another rope through the same cause as the first. He hadlearned from experience. The lioness had taken but half her secondbound when she felt the rope tighten about her neck; her body turnedcompletely over in the air and she fell with a heavy crash upon herback. Tarzan had fastened the end of the rope securely to the trunk ofthe great tree on which he sat.
Thus far his plan had worked to perfection, but when he grasped therope, bracing himself behind a crotch of two mighty branches, he foundthat dragging the mighty, struggling, clawing, biting, screaming massof iron-muscled fury up to the tree and hanging her was a verydifferent proposition.
The weight of old Sabor was immense, and when she braced her huge pawsnothing less than Tantor, the elephant, himself, could have budged her.
The lioness was now back in the path where she could see the author ofthe indignity which had been placed upon her. Screaming with rage shesuddenly charged, leaping high into the air toward Tarzan, but when herhuge body struck the limb on which Tarzan had been, Tarzan was nolonger there.
Instead he perched lightly upon a smaller branch twenty feet above theraging captive. For a moment Sabor hung half across the branch, whileTarzan mocked, and hurled twigs and branches at her unprotected face.
Presently the beast dropped to the earth again and Tarzan came quicklyto seize the rope, but Sabor had now found that it was only a slendercord that held her, and grasping it in her huge jaws severed it beforeTarzan could tighten the strangling noose a second time.
Tarzan was much hurt. His well-laid plan had come to naught, so he satthere screaming at the roaring creature beneath him and making mockinggrimaces at it.
Sabor paced back and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times shecrouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as wellhave clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through the tree tops.
At last Tarzan tired of the sport, and with a parting roar of challengeand a well-aimed ripe fruit that spread soft and sticky over thesnarling face of his enemy, he swung rapidly through the trees, ahundred feet above the ground, and in a short time was among themembers of his tribe.
Here he recounted the details of his adventure, with swelling chest andso considerable swagger that he quite impressed even his bitterestenemies, while Kala fairly danced for joy and pride.