Wolff grunted. "We don't need him nohow. I can take you to Ashair. We'd be well rid of the monkey-man."
"I've heard about all of that that I care to, Wolff," said d'Arnot. "Tarzan is our only hope either of reaching Ashair or getting out of this country alive. You stick to your hunting job. Even at that you haven't been doing so well. Tarzan has brought in all the meat we've had so far."
"Listen!" exclaimed Lava. "The drums! They've stopped."
The howling pack circled the helpless girl. Now and then a spear point touched her lightly, and involuntarily her flesh recoiled. Later the torture might be more excruciating, or some maddened savage, driven to frenzy by the excitement of the dance, might plunge his spear through her heart and with unintentional mercy deliver her from further suffering.
As Tarzan reached the edge of the clearing where lay the village of Mpingu , the chief, he dropped to the ground and ran swiftly toward the palisade. This side of the village was in darkness, and he knew that all the tribesmen would be gathered around the great fire that lighted the foliage of the trees that grew within the village. He would not be seen, and what slight noise he might make would be drowned by the throbbing of the drums.
With the agility of Sheeta, the panther, he scaled the palisade and dropped down into the shadow of the huts beyond; then he crept silently toward a great tree which overhung the hut of the chief and commanded a view of the main street of the village, where the fire burned and the dancers leaped and howled. Swinging up among the branches, he crossed to the other side of the tree and looked down upon the scene of savagery below. It was almost with a sense of shock that he recognized the victim at the stake. He saw the horde of armed warriors incited to frenzy by the drums, the dancing, the lust for human flesh. He fitted an arrow to his bow.
As one of the dancing savages, carried away by the excitement of the moment, paused before the girl and raised his short spear above his head to drive it through her heart a sudden hush fell upon the expectant assemblage; and Helen closed her eyes. The end had come! She breathed a silent prayer. The ominous hush was broken only by the increased madness of the drums; then came a scream of mortal agony.
The assurance of the savages vanished, as an arrow, mysteriously sped, pierced the heart of the executioner. It was then that the drums stopped.
At the scream of the stricken warrior, Helen opened her eyes. A man lay dead at her feet, and consternation was written on the faces of the savage Buiroos. She saw one, braver than the rest, creeping toward her with a long knife ready in his hand; then a weird and uncanny cry rang out from somewhere above her, as Tarzan of the Apes rose to his full height; and, raising his face to Goto, the Moon, voiced the hideous victory cry of the bull ape that had made a kill. Louder than the drums had been, it carried far out into the night.
"Yes," said d'Arnot, "the drums have stopped—they have probably made the kill. Some poor thing has found relief from torture."
"Oh, what if it were Tarzan!" cried Magra; and as she spoke an eerie scream and wafted faintly across the still African night.
"Man Dieu!" exlaimed Lavac.
"It is Tarzan who has made a kill," said d'Arnot.
"By the beard of the prophet!" exclaimed Lal Taask. "What a hideous sound!"
"It is Africa , Lal Taask," said Atan Thome, "and that was the victory cry of a bull ape. I have heard it before, on the Congo ."
"It was far away," said Lal Taask.
"Still, it was too close for comfort," replied Atan Thome. "We shall break camp very early in the morning."
"But why should we fear apes?" demanded Lal Taask.
"It is not the apes I fear," explained Atan Thome. "I said that that noise was the victory cry of a bull ape, but I am not so sure. I have been talking with Mbuli. Perhaps the man we thought was Brian Gregory was not Brian Gregory at all. I asked Mbuli if he ever heard of a white man called Tarzan. He said that he had; that some thought that he was a demon, and that all who did wrong, feared him. When he kills, Mbuli says, he gives the kill cry of the bull ape. If what we heard was not a bull ape, it was Tarzan; and that means that he is looking for us and is far too close for comfort."
"I do not wish to see that man again," said Lal Taask.
As the bloodcurdling cry crashed through the silence of the night, the warrior who had been creeping up on Helen straightened up and stepped back, frightened. The others, terror stricken, shrank from the menace of the fearsome sound; then Tarzan spoke.
"The demon of the forest comes for the white mem-sahib," he said. "Beware!" And as he spoke he dropped to the ground near the stake, trusting, by the very boldness of his move, to overawe the savages for the few moments it would take to free Helen and escape; but he had reckoned without knowing of the courage of Chemungo, son of Mpingu, standing ready with his knife.
"Chemungo, son of Mpingu, is not afraid of the demon of the forest," he shouted, as he sprang forward with upraised knife; and as the last of Helen's bonds fell away, Tarzan slipped his own knife back into its sheath and turned to meet the chief's son, the challenging "Kre-e-gah!" on his lips. With bare hands he faced the infuriated warrior.
As Chemungo closed with upraised knife hand ready to strike, Tarzan seized him by the right wrist and at the belly and swung him high above his head as lightly as though he had been a child. The knife dropped from Chemungo's hand as the steel thews of the ape-man closed with viselike grip upon his wrist.
Helen Gregory, almost unable to believe her own senses, looked with astonishment upon this amazing man who dared face a whole cannibal village alone; and could see no hope but that two lives instead of one must now be sacrificed. It was a brave, a glorious gesture that Tarzan had made; but how pathetically futile!
"Open the gates!" he commanded the astounded throng, "or Chemungo, son of Mpingu, dies."
The villagers hesitated. Some of the warriors grumbled. Would they obey, or would they charge?
Chapter 9
"COME!" SAID TARZAN to Helen, and without waiting for any reply from the savages, he started toward the gate, still carrying Chemungo above his head; and Helen walked at his side.
Some of the warriors started to close upon them. It was a tense moment, fraught with danger. Then Mpingu spoke. "Wait!" he commanded his warriors, and then to Tarzan, "If I open the gates will you set Chemungo free, unharmed?"
"When I have gone a spear throw beyond the gates, I will free him," replied the ape man.
"How do I know that you will do that?" demanded Mpingu. "How do I know that you will not take him into the forest and kill him?"
"You know only what I tell you, Gomangani," replied Tarzan. "I tell you that if you open the gates and let us go out in safety, I shall free him. If you do not open the gates, I shall kill him now."
"Open the gates!" commanded Mpingu.
And so Tarzan and Helen passed in safety out of the village of the cannibals and into the black African night; and beyond the gates Tarzan liberated Chemungo.
"How did you happen to fall into the hands of those people?" Tarzan asked Helen, as they set their faces toward the Gregory camp.
"I escaped from Atan Thome's camp last night and tried to make my way back to Bonga; but I got lost, and then they got me. There was a lion, too. He had me down, but they killed him. I have had a horrible time. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you. How in the world did you happen to be here?"
He told her of the events that had led up to his discovery of her in the cannibal village.
"It will be good to see Dad again," she said; "I can scarcely believe it even now. And Captain d'Arnot came, too—how wonderful!"