They were armed with bludgeons and knives, and fortified in their courage by fanatical hate and frenzy.Werper was terrified.Tarzan stood eyeing the foe in proud disdain.Slowly he advanced toward the exit he had chosen to utilize in making his way from the temple.A burly priest barred his way.Behind the first was a score of others.Tarzan swung his heavy spear, clublike, down upon the skull of the priest.
The fellow collapsed, his head crushed.
Again and again the weapon fell as Tarzan made his way slowly toward the doorway.Werper pressed close behind, casting backward glances toward the shrieking, dancing mob menacing their rear.He held the sacrificial knife ready to strike whoever might come within its reach; but none came.For a time he wondered that they should so bravely battle with the giant ape-man, yet hesitate to rush upon him, who was relatively so weak.Had they done so he knew that he must have fallen at the first charge.Tarzan had reached the doorway over the corpses of all that had stood to dispute his way, before Werper guessed at the reason for his immunity.The priests feared the sacrificial knife! Willingly would they face death and welcome it if it came while they defended their High Priestess and her altar; but evidently there were deaths, and deaths.Some strange superstition must surround that polished blade, that no Oparian cared to chance a death thrust from it, yet gladly rushed to the slaughter of the ape-man's flaying spear.
Once outside the temple court, Werper communicated his discovery to Tarzan.The ape-man grinned, and let Werper go before him, brandishing the jeweled and holy weapon.Like leaves before a gale, the Oparians scattered in all directions and Tarzan and the Belgian found a clear passage through the corridors and chambers of the ancient temple.
The Belgian's eyes went wide as they passed through the room of the seven pillars of solid gold.With ill-concealed avarice he looked upon the age-old, golden tablets set in the walls of nearly every room and down the sides of many of the corridors.To the ape-man all this wealth appeared to mean nothing.
On the two went, chance leading them toward the broad avenue which lay between the stately piles of the half-ruined edifices and the inner wall of the city.
Great apes jabbered at them and menaced them; but Tarzan answered them after their own kind, giving back taunt for taunt, insult for insult, challenge for challenge.
Werper saw a hairy bull swing down from a broken column and advance, stiff-legged and bristling, toward the naked giant.The yellow fangs were bared, angry snarls and barkings rumbled threateningly through the thick and hanging lips.
The Belgian watched his companion.To his horror, he saw the man stoop until his closed knuckles rested upon the ground as did those of the anthropoid.He saw him circle, stiff-legged about the circling ape.He heard the same bestial barkings and growlings issue from the human throat that were coming from the mouth of the brute.Had his eyes been closed he could not have known but that two giant apes were bridling for combat.
But there was no battle.It ended as the majority of such jungle encounters end--one of the boasters loses his nerve, and becomes suddenly interested in a blowing leaf, a beetle, or the lice upon his hairy stomach.
In this instance it was the anthropoid that retired in stiff dignity to inspect an unhappy caterpillar, which he presently devoured.For a moment Tarzan seemed inclined to pursue the argument.He swaggered truculently, stuck out his chest, roared and advanced closer to the bull.It was with difficulty that Werper finally persuaded him to leave well enough alone and continue his way from the ancient city of the Sun Worshipers.
The two searched for nearly an hour before they found the narrow exit through the inner wall.From there the well-worn trail led them beyond the outer fortification to the desolate valley of Opar.
Tarzan had no idea, in so far as Werper could discover, as to where he was or whence he came.He wandered aimlessly about, searching for food, which he discovered beneath small rocks, or hiding in the shade of the scant brush which dotted the ground.
The Belgian was horrified by the hideous menu of his companion.Beetles, rodents and caterpillars were devoured with seeming relish.Tarzan was indeed an ape again.
At last Werper succeeded in leading his companion toward the distant hills which mark the northwestern boundary of the valley, and together the two set out in the direction of the Greystoke bungalow.
What purpose prompted the Belgian in leading the victim of his treachery and greed back toward his former home it is difficult to guess, unless it was that without Tarzan there could be no ransom for Tarzan's wife.
That night they camped in the valley beyond the hills, and as they sat before a little fire where cooked a wild pig that had fallen to one of Tarzan's arrows, the latter sat lost in speculation.He seemed continually to be trying to grasp some mental image which as constantly eluded him.
At last he opened the leathern pouch which hung at his side.From it he poured into the palm of his hand a quantity of glittering gems.The firelight playing upon them conjured a multitude of scintillating rays, and as the wide eyes of the Belgian looked on in rapt fascination, the man's expression at last acknowledged a tangible purpose in courting the society of the ape-man.
