Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“But La,” cried he who had aroused Cadj’s anger in the garden, “I
distinctly recall that La offered the friendship of Opar to Tarzan of
the Apes upon that time, many moons ago, that he saved her from the
tusks of infuriated Tantor.”
“Silence,” growled Cadj, “he shall not enter; we shall slay them all,
though we need not know their identity until it is too late. Do you
understand? And know, too, that whosoever attempts to thwart my purpose
shall die—and he die not as a sacrifice, he shall die at my hands, but
die he shall. You hear me?” And he pointed an unclean finger at the
trembling priest.
Manu, the monkey, hearing all this, was almost bursting with excitement.
He knew Tarzan of the Apes—as all the migratory monkeys the length and
breadth of Africa knew him—he knew him for a friend and protector. To
Manu the males of Opar were neither beast, nor man, nor friend. He knew
them as cruel and surly creatures who ate the flesh of his kind, and he
hated them accordingly. He was therefore greatly exercised at the plot
that he had heard discussed which was aimed at the life of the great
Tarmangani. He scratched his little gray head, and the root of his tail,
and his belly, as he attempted to mentally digest what he had heard, and
bring forth from the dim recesses of his little brain a plan to foil the
priests and save Tarzan of the Apes. He made grotesque grimaces that
were aimed at the unsuspecting Cadj and his followers, but which failed
to perturb them, possibly because a huge granite block hid the little
monkey from them. This was quite the most momentous thing that had
occurred in the life of Manu. He wanted to jump up and down and dance
and screech and jabber—to scold and threaten the hated Oparians, but
something told him that nothing would be gained by this, other than,
perhaps, to launch in his direction a shower of granite missiles, which
the priests knew only too well how to throw with accuracy. Now Manu is
not a deep thinker, but upon this occasion he quite outdid himself, and
managed to concentrate his mind upon the thing at hand rather than
permit its being distracted by each falling leaf or buzzing insect. He
even permitted a succulent caterpillar to crawl within his reach and out
again with impunity.
Just before darkness fell, Cadj saw a little gray monkey disappear over
the summit of the outer wall fifty paces from where he crouched with his
fellows, waiting for the coming of the fighting men. But so numerous
were the monkeys about the ruins of Opar that the occurrence left Cadj’s
mind almost as quickly as the monkey disappeared from his view, and in
the gathering gloom he did not see the little gray figure scampering off
across the valley toward the band of intruders who now appeared to have
stopped to rest at the foot of a large kopje that stood alone out in the
valley, about a mile from the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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