Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Tarzan stepped toward the doorway of the cave and looked out. Night had
just fallen. He could hear voices from the nearer caves and there
floated to his nostrils the odor of cooking food. He looked down and
experienced a sensation of relief. The cave in which he had been held
was in the lowest tier--scarce thirty feet from the base of the cliff.
He was about to chance an immediate descent when there occurred to him
a thought that brought a grin to his savage lips--a thought that was
born of the name the Waz-don had given him--Tarzan-jad-guru--Tarzan the
Terrible--and a recollection of the days when he had delighted in
baiting the blacks of the distant jungle of his birth. He turned back
into the cave where lay the dead body of In-tan. With his knife he
severed the warrior's head and carrying it to the outer edge of the
recess tossed it to the ground below, then he dropped swiftly and
silently down the ladder of pegs in a way that would have surprised the
Kor-ul-lul who had been so sure that he could not climb.
At the bottom he picked up the head of In-tan and disappeared among the
shadows of the trees carrying the grisly trophy by its shock of shaggy
hair. Horrible? But you are judging a wild beast by the standards of
civilization. You may teach a lion tricks, but he is still a lion.
Tarzan looked well in a Tuxedo, but he was still a Tarmangani and
beneath his pleated shirt beat a wild and savage heart.
Nor was his madness lacking in method. He knew that the hearts of the
Kor-ul-lul would be filled with rage when they discovered the thing
that he had done and he knew too, that mixed with the rage would be a
leaven of fear and it was fear of him that had made Tarzan master of
many jungles--one does not win the respect of the killers with bonbons.
Below the village Tarzan returned to the foot of the cliff searching
for a point where he could make the ascent to the ridge and thus back
to the village of Om-at, the Kor-ul-JA. He came at last to a place
where the river ran so close to the rocky wall that he was forced to
swim it in search of a trail upon the opposite side and here it was
that his keen nostrils detected a familiar spoor. It was the scent of
Pan-at-lee at the spot where she had emerged from the pool and taken to
the safety of the jungle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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