"That, I do not know," replied Thorne; "but I presume they are. They have ample means."
Queen Atka turned to one of her nobles. "If this man has spoken the truth, he shall not fare ill at our hands. Akamen, I place the prisoners in your charge. Permit them reasonable liberties. Take them away." Then she spoke to another. "See that the approaches to Ashair are watched."
Akamen, the noble, conducted Atan Thome and Lal Taask to pleasant quarters in a far wing of the palace. "You are free to go where you will inside the palace walls, except to the royal wing. Nor may you go beneath the palace. There lie the secrets of Ashair and death for strangers."
"The Queen has been most magnanimous," said Thorne. "We shall do nothing to forfeit her good will. Ashair is most interesting. I am only sorry that we may not go out into the city or upon the lake."
"It would not be safe," said Akamen. "You might be captured by a galley from Thobos. They would not treat you as well as Atka has."
"I should like to look down again at the beautiful building at the bottom of the lake," said Thorne. "That was my reason for wishing to go upon the lake. What is the building? and what the strange creature I saw coming from it?"
"Curiosity is often a fatal poison," said Akamen.
Chapter 14
THE TRAIL OF Atan Thome's safari was not difficult to follow, and the Gregory party made good time along it without encountering any obstacles to delay them. The general mistrust of Wolff, the doubts concerning Mag-ra's position among them, and the moody jealousy of Lavac added to the nervous strain of their dangerous existence; and the hardships they had undergone had told upon their nerves; so that it was not always a happy company that trudged the day's trails. Only Tarzan remained serene and unruffled.
It was midday, and they had halted for a brief rest, when Tarzan suddenly became alert. "Natives are coming," he said. "There are a number of them, and they are very close. The wind just changed and brought their scent to me."
"There they are now," said Gregory. "Why, it's another safari. There are porters with packs, but I see no white men."
"It is your safari, bwana," said Ogabi. "It is the safari that was to have met you at Bonga."
"Then is must be the one that Thorne stole," said d'Ar-not, "but I don't see Thorne."
"Another mystery of darkest Africa , perhaps," suggested Helen.
Mbuli, leading his people back toward Bonga, halted in surprise as he saw the little party of whites, then, seeing that his men greatly outnumbered them, he came forward, swaggering a little.
"Who are you?" demanded Tarzan.
"I am Mbuli," replied the chief.
"Where are your bwanas? You have deserted them."
"Who are you, white man, to question Mbuli?" demanded the native, arrogantly, the advantage of numbers giving him courage.
"I am Tarzan," replied the ape-man.
Mbuli wilted. All the arrogance went out of him. "Forgive, bwana," he begged. "I did not know you, for I have never seen you before."
"You know the law of the safari," said Tarzan. "Those who desert their white masters are punished."
"But my people would not go on," explained Mbuli. "When we came to Tuen-Baka, they would go no farther. They were afraid, for Tuen-Baka is taboo."
"You took all their equipment," continued the ape-man, glancing over the loads that the porters had thrown to the ground. "Why, you even took their food."
"Yes, bwana; but they needed no food—they were about to die—Tuen-Baka is taboo. Also, Bwana Thorne lied to us. We had agreed to serve Bwana Gregory, but he told us Bwana Gregory wished us to accompany him instead."
"Nevertheless, you did wrong to abandon him. To escape punishment, you will accompany us to Tuen-Baka—we need porters and askaris."
"But my people are afraid," remonstrated Mbuli.
"Where Tarzan goes, your people may go," replied the ape-man. "I shall not lead them into danger needlessly."
"But, bwana—"
"But nothing," snapped Tarzan; then he turned to the porters. "Up packs! You are going back to Tuen-Baka."
The porters grumbled; but they picked up their packs and turned back along the trail they had just travelled, for the will of the white man was supreme; and, too, the word had spread among them that this was the fabulous Tarzan who was half man and half demon.
For three days they trekked back along the trail toward Ashair, and at noon on the seventh day the safari broke from the forest beside a quiet river. The terrain ahead was rocky and barren. Above low hills rose the truncated cone of an extinct volcano, a black, forbidding mass.
"So that is Tuen-Baka," said d'Arnot. "It is just an old volcano, after all."
"Nevertheless, the boys are afraid," said Tarzan. "We shall have to watch them at night or they'll desert again. I'm going on now to see what lies ahead."
"Be careful," cautioned d'Arnot. "The place has a bad reputation, you know."
"I am always careful," replied Tarzan.
D'Arnot grinned. "Sometimes you are about as careful of yourself as a Paris taxi driver is of pedestrians."
Tarzan followed a dim trail that roughly paralleled the river, the same trail that Lal Taask and Atan Thome had followed. As was his custom, he moved silently with every sense alert. He saw signs of strange animals and realized that he was in a country that might hold dangers beyond his experience. In a small patch of earth among the boulders and rough lava rocks, he saw the imprint of a great foot and caught faintly the odor of a reptile that had passed that way recently. He knew, from the size of the footprint, that the creature was large; and when he heard ahead of him an ominous hissing and roaring, he guessed that the maker of the footprint was not far off. Increasing his speed, but not lessening his caution, he moved forward in the direction of the sound; and coming to the edge of a gully, looked down to see a strangely garbed white warrior facing such a creature as Tarzan had never seen on earth. Perhaps he did not know it, but he was looking at a small edition of the terrible Tyrannosaurus Rex, that mighty king of carnivorous reptiles which ruled the earth eons ago. Perhaps the one below him was tiny compared with his gigantic progenitor; but he was still a formidable creature, as large as a full grown bull.
Tarzan saw in the warrior either a hostage or a means of securing information concerning this strange country and its inhabitants. If the dinosaur killed the man, he would be quite valueless; so, acting as quickly as he thought, he leaped from the cliff just as the brute charged. Only a man who did not know the meaning of fear would have taken such a risk.
The warrior facing the great reptile with his puny spear was stunned to momentary inaction when he saw an almost naked bronzed giant drop, apparently from the blue, onto the back of the monster he had been facing without hope. He saw the stranger's knife striking futilely at the armored back, as the man clung with one arm about the creature's neck. He could have escaped; but he did not, and as Tarzan found a vulnerable spot in the dinosaur's throat and drove his knife home again and again, he rushed in to the ape-man's aid.
The huge reptile, seriously hurt, screamed and hissed as it threw itself about in vain effort to dislodge the man-thing from its back; but, hurt though it was, like all the reptilia it was tenacious of life and far from overcome.
As Tarzan's knife found and severed the creature's jugular vein, the warrior drove his spear through the savage heart, and with a last convulsive shudder it crashed to the ground, dead; then the two men faced one another across the great carcass.
Neither knew the temper or intentions of the other; and both were on guard as they sought to find a medium of communication more satisfactory than an improvised sign language. At last the warrior hit upon a tongue that both could speak and understand, a language he and his people had learned from the Negroes they had captured and forced into slavery—Swahili.