"We'll never make it," he panted.
"Shut up and come along!" snapped Thorne. "If I fall, you may turn back."
"Oh, master, I couldn't even do that. No one could turn around on this hideous trail."
"Then keep coming and quit making such a fuss. You make me nervous."
"And to think you take such risks for a diamond! If it were as big as a house and I had it now, I'd give it to be back in Lahore ."
"You are a coward, Lal Taask," snapped Thorne.
"I am, master; but it is better to be a live coward than a dead fool."
For two hours the men moved slowly along the narrow foot path until both were on the verge of exhaustion, and even Thorne was beginning to regret his temerity; then, as he turned a jutting shoulder in the cliff, he saw a little wooded canyon that broke the face of the mighty escarpment and ran gently down to the river. Down into this canyon the trail led. When they reached it, they threw themselves upon the ground in total exhaustion; and lay there until almost dark.
Finally they aroused themselves and built a fire, for with the coming of night a chill settled upon the canyon. All day they had been without food; and they were famished, but there was nothing for them to eat, and they had to content themselves by filling their bellies with water at the river. For warmth, they huddled close to their little fire.
"Master, this is an evil place," said Lal Taask. "I have a feeling that we are being watched."
"It is the evil within you speaking, fool," growled Thorne.
"Allah! Master, look!" faltered Taask. "What is it?" He pointed into the blackness among the trees; and then a sepulchral voice spoke in a strange tongue, and Lal Taask faulted.
Chapter 11
UNGO, THE KING ape, was hunting with his tribe. They were nervous and irritable, for it was the period of the Dum-Dum; and as yet they had found no victim for the sacrificial dance. Suddenly the shaggy king raised his head and sniffed the air. He growled his disapproval of the evidence that Usha, the wind, brought to his nostrils. The other apes looked at him questioningly.
"Gomangani, tarmangani," he said. "They come," then he led his people into the underbrush and hid close to the trail.
The little band of men and women who formed the Gregory "safari" followed the plain trail left by Atan Thome's safari, while Tarzan hunted for meat far afield.
"Tarzan must have had difficulty in locating game," said d'Arnot. "I haven't heard his kill-call yet."
"He's marvellous," said Magra. "We'd have starved to death if it hadn't been for him—even with a hunter along."
"Well, you can't shoot game where there ain't none," growled Wolff.
"Tarzan never comes back empty handed," said Magra; "and he hasn't any gun, either."
"The other monkeys find food, too," sneered Wolff; "but who wants to be a monkey?"
Ungo was watching them now, as they came in sight along the trail. His close-set, bloodshot eyes blazed with anger; and then suddenly and without warning he charged, and his whole tribe followed him. The little band fell back in dismay. D'Arnot whipped out his pistol and fired; and an ape fell, screaming; then the others were among them, and he could not fire again without endangering his companions. Wolff ran. Lavac and Gregory were both knocked down and bitten. For a few moments all was confusion, so that afterward no one could recall just what happened. The apes were among them and gone again; and when they went, Ungo carried Magra off under one great hairy arm.
Magra struggled to escape until she was exhausted, but the powerful beast that carried her paid little attention to her struggles. Once, annoyed, he cuffed her, almost knocking her insensible; then she ceased, waiting and hoping for some opportunity to escape. She wondered to what awful fate she was being dragged. So man-like was the huge creature, she shuddered as she contemplated what might befall her.
Half carrying her, half dragging her through the woods, with his huge fellows lumbering behind, Ungo, the king ape, bore the girl to a small, natural clearing, a primitive arena where, from time immemorial, the great apes had held their sacrificial dance. There he threw her roughly to the ground, and two females squatted beside her to see that she did not escape.
Back on the trail, the little party, overwhelmed by the tragedy of this misadventure, stood debating what they had best do.
"We could follow them," said d'Arnot; "but we haven't a chance of overtaking them, and if we did, what could we do against them, even though we are armed?"
"But we can't just stand here and do nothing," cried Helen.
"I'll tell you," said d'Arnot. "I'll take Wolff's rifle and follow them. I may be able to pick off enough of them to frighten the others away if I come up with them after they halt; then, when Tarzan returns, send him after me."
"Here's Tarzan now," said Helen, as the ape-man came trotting along the trail with the carcass of his kill across his shoulder.
Tarzan found a very disorganized party as he joined them. They were all excited and trying to talk at the same time.
"We never saw them 'til they jumped us," said Lavac.
"They were as big as gorillas," added Helen.
"They were gorillas," put in Wolff.
"They were not gorillas," contradicted d'Arnot; "and anyway, you didn't wait to see what they were."
"The biggest one carried Magra off under his arm," said Gregory.
"They took Magra?" Tarzan looked concerned. "Why didn't you say so in the first place? Which way did they go?"
D'Arnot pointed in the direction in which the apes had made off.
"Keep on this trail until you find a good place to camp," said Tarzan; then he was gone.
As the moon rose slowly over the arena where Magra lay beside a primitive earthen drum upon which three old apes beat with sticks, several of the great shaggy bulls commenced to dance around her. Menacing her with heavy sticks, the bulls leaped and whirled as they circled the frightened girl. Magra had no knowledge of the significance of these rites. She only guessed that she was to die.
The Lord of the Jungle followed the trail of the great apes through the darkness of the forest as unerringly as though he were following a well marked spoor by daylight, followed it by the scent of the anthropoids that clung to the grasses and the foliage of the underbrush, tainting the air with the effluvia of the great bodies. He knew that he should come upon them eventually, but would he be in time?
As the moon rose, the throbbing of the earthen drum directed him toward the arena of the Dum-Dum; so that he could take to the trees and move more swiftly in a direct line. It told him, too, the nature of the danger that threatened Magra. He knew that she still lived, for the drum would be stilled only after her death, when the apes would be fighting over her body and tearing it to pieces. He knew, because he had leaped and danced in the moonlight at many a Dum-Dum when Sheeta, the panther, or Wappi, the antelope, was the sacrificial victim.
The moon was almost at zenith as he neared the arena. When it hung at zenith would be the moment of the kill; and in the arena, the shaggy bulls danced in simulation of the hunt. Magra lay as they had thrown her, exhausted, hopeless, resigned to death, knowing that nothing could save her now.
Goro, the moon, hung upon the verge of the fateful moment, when a tarmangani, naked but for a G string, dropped from an overhanging tree into the arena. With growls and mutterings of rage, the bulls turned upon the intruder who dared thus sacrilegiously to invade the sanctity of their holy of holies. The king ape, crouching, led them.