Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
This troubled them. They ceased to annoy the prostrate woman. Their
leader, the fiercest of them, paced to and fro, making hideous faces.
Suddenly she halted.
"Come!" she signaled. "We shall go forth together and find these men,
and bring them back and punish them." She shook her cudgel above her
head and grimaced horribly.
The others danced about her, imitating her expression and her actions,
and when she started off toward the forest they trooped behind her, a
savage, blood-thirsty company--all but the woman who still lay panting
where she had fallen. She had had enough of man--she was through with
him forever.
"For this you shall die!" screamed Caraftap, as he rushed upon Tarzan
of the Apes in the long gallery of the slaves' quarters in the quarry
of Elkomoelhago, king of Veltopismakus.
The ape-man stepped quickly aside, avoiding the other, and tripped him
with a foot, sending him sprawling, face downward, upon the floor.
Caraftap, before he arose, looked about as though in search of a
weapon and, his eyes alighting upon the hot brazier, he reached forth
to seize it. A murmur of disapproval rose from the slaves who, having
been occupied nearby, had seen the inception of the quarrel.
"No weapons!" cried one. "It is not permitted among us. Fight with your
bare hands or not at all."
But Caraftap was too drunk with hate and jealousy to hear them or to
heed, and so he grasped the brazier and, rising, rushed at Tarzan to
hurl it in his face. Now it was another who tripped him and this time
two slaves leaped upon him and wrenched the brazier from his hand.
"Fight fair!" they admonished him, and dragged him to his feet.
Tarzan had stood smiling and indifferent, for the rage of others
amused him where it was greater than circumstances warranted, and now
he waited for Caraftap and when his adversary saw the smile upon his
face it but increased his spleen, so that he fairly leaped upon the
ape-man in his madness to destroy him, and Tarzan met him with the most
surprising defense that Caraftap, who for long had been a bully among
the slaves, ever had encountered. It was a doubled fist at the end
of a straight arm and it caught Caraftap upon the point of his chin,
stretching him upon his back. The slaves, who had by this time gathered
in considerable numbers to watch the quarrel, voiced their approval in
the shrill, "Ee-ah-ee-ah," that constituted one form of applause.
Dazed and groggy, Caraftap staggered to his feet once more and with
lowered head looked about him as though in search of his enemy. The
girl, Talaskar, had come to Tarzan's side and was standing there
looking up into his face.
"You are very strong," she said, but the expression in her eyes said
more, or at least it seemed to Caraftap to say more. It seemed to speak
of love, whereas it was only the admiration that a normal woman always
feels for strength exercised in a worthy cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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