Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
buildings of corrugated iron, doubtless, for of such are the pioneer
cities of the world.
But would civilized man come? Tarzan hoped not. For countless
generations civilization had ramped about the globe; it had dispatched
its emissaries to the North Pole and the South; it had circled
Pal-ul-don once, perhaps many times, but it had never touched her. God
grant that it never would. Perhaps He was saving this little spot to be
always just as He had made it, for the scratching of the Ho-don and the
Waz-don upon His rocks had not altered the fair face of Nature.
Through the windows came sufficient light to reveal the whole interior
to Tarzan. The room was fairly large and there was a door at each
end--a large door for men and a smaller one for lions. Both were closed
with heavy masses of stone that had been lowered in grooves running to
the floor. The two windows were small and closely barred with the first
iron that Tarzan had seen in Pal-ul-don. The bars were let into holes
in the casing, and the whole so strongly and neatly contrived that
escape seemed impossible. Yet within a few minutes of his incarceration
Tarzan had commenced to undertake his escape. The old knife in his
pouch was brought into requisition and slowly the ape-man began to
scrape and chip away the stone from about the bars of one of the
windows. It was slow work but Tarzan had the patience of absolute
health.
Each day food and water were brought him and slipped quickly beneath
the smaller door which was raised just sufficiently to allow the stone
receptacles to pass in. The prisoner began to believe that he was being
preserved for something beside lions. However that was immaterial. If
they would but hold off for a few more days they might select what fate
they would--he would not be there when they arrived to announce it.
And then one day came Pan-sat, Lu-don's chief tool, to the city of
Tu-lur. He came ostensibly with a fair message for Mo-sar from the high
priest at A-lur. Lu-don had decided that Mo-sar should be king and he
invited Mo-sar to come at once to A-lur and then Pan-sat, having
delivered the message, asked that he might go to the temple of Tu-lur
and pray, and there he sought the high priest of Tu-lur to whom was the
true message that Lu-don had sent. The two were closeted alone in a
little chamber and Pan-sat whispered into the ear of the high priest.
"Mo-sar wishes to be king," he said, "and Lu-don wishes to be king.
Mo-sar wishes to retain the stranger who claims to be the Dor-ul-Otho
and Lu-don wishes to kill him, and now," he leaned even closer to the
ear of the high priest of Tu-lur, "if you would be high priest at A-lur
it is within your power."
Pan-sat ceased speaking and waited for the other's reply. The high
priest was visibly affected. To be high priest at A-lur! That was
almost as good as being king of all Pal-ul-don, for great were the
powers of him who conducted the sacrifices upon the altars of A-lur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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