Tarzan was the first to regain consciousness.Sitting up, he looked about him.Blood was flowing from a wound in his shoulder.The shock had thrown him down and dazed him; but he was far from dead.Rising slowly to his feet he let his eyes wander toward the spot where last he had seen the she, who had aroused within his savage breast such strange emotions.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"The Tarmangani took her away," replied one of the apes.
"Who are you who speak the language of the Mangani?"
"I am Tarzan," replied the ape-man; "mighty hunter, greatest of fighters.When I roar, the jungle is silent and trembles with terror.I am Tarzan of the Apes.I have been away; but now I have come back to my people."
"Yes," spoke up an old ape, "he is Tarzan.I know him.
It is well that he has come back.Now we shall have good hunting."
The other apes came closer and sniffed at the ape-man.
Tarzan stood very still, his fangs half bared, and his muscles tense and ready for action; but there was none there to question his right to be with them, and presently, the inspection satisfactorily concluded, the apes again returned their attention to the other survivor.
He too was but slightly wounded, a bullet, grazing his skull, having stunned him, so that when he regained consciousness he was apparently as fit as ever.
The apes told Tarzan that they had been traveling toward the east when the scent spoor of the she had attracted them and they had stalked her.Now they wished to continue upon their interrupted march; but Tarzan preferred to follow the Arabs and take the woman from them.After a considerable argument it was decided that they should first hunt toward the east for a few days and then return and search for the Arabs, and as time is of little moment to the ape folk, Tarzan acceded to their demands, he, himself, having reverted to a mental state but little superior to their own.
Another circumstance which decided him to postpone pursuit of the Arabs was the painfulness of his wound.
It would be better to wait until that had healed before he pitted himself again against the guns of the Tarmangani.
And so, as Jane Clayton was pushed into her prison hut and her hands and feet securely bound, her natural protector roamed off toward the east in company with a score of hairy monsters, with whom he rubbed shoulders as familiarly as a few months before he had mingled with his immaculate fellow-members of one of London's most select and exclusive clubs.
But all the time there lurked in the back of his injured brain a troublesome conviction that he had no business where he was--that he should be, for some unaccountable reason, elsewhere and among another sort of creature.Also, there was the compelling urge to be upon the scent of the Arabs, undertaking the rescue of the woman who had appealed so strongly to his savage sentiments; though the thought-word which naturally occurred to him in the contemplation of the venture, was "capture," rather than "rescue."
To him she was as any other jungle she, and he had set his heart upon her as his mate.For an instant, as he had approached closer to her in the clearing where the Arabs had seized her, the subtle aroma which had first aroused his desires in the hut that had imprisoned her had fallen upon his nostrils, and told him that he had found the creature for whom he had developed so sudden and inexplicable a passion.
The matter of the pouch of jewels also occupied his thoughts to some extent, so that he found a double urge for his return to the camp of the raiders.He would obtain possession of both his pretty pebbles and the she.Then he would return to the great apes with his new mate and his baubles, and leading his hairy companions into a far wilderness beyond the ken of man, live out his life, hunting and battling among the lower orders after the only manner which he now recollected.
He spoke to his fellow-apes upon the matter, in an attempt to persuade them to accompany him; but all except Taglat and Chulk refused.The latter was young and strong, endowed with a greater intelligence than his fellows, and therefore the possessor of better developed powers of imagination.To him the expedition savored of adventure, and so appealed, strongly.With Taglat there was another incentive--a secret and sinister incentive, which, had Tarzan of the Apes had knowledge of it, would have sent him at the other's throat in jealous rage.
Taglat was no longer young; but he was still a formidable beast, mightily muscled, cruel, and, because of his greater experience, crafty and cunning.
Too, he was of giant proportions, the very weight of his huge bulk serving ofttimes to discount in his favor the superior agility of a younger antagonist.
He was of a morose and sullen disposition that marked him even among his frowning fellows, where such characteristics are the rule rather than the exception, and, though Tarzan did not guess it, he hated the ape-man with a ferocity that he was able to hide only because the dominant spirit of the nobler creature had inspired within him a species of dread which was as powerful as it was inexplicable to him.
These two, then, were to be Tarzan's companions upon his return to the village of Achmet Zek.As they set off, the balance of the tribe vouchsafed them but a parting stare, and then resumed the serious business of feeding.
Tarzan found difficulty in keeping the minds of his fellows set upon the purpose of their adventure, for the mind of an ape lacks the power of long-sustained concentration.To set out upon a long journey, with a definite destination in view, is one thing, to remember that purpose and keep it uppermost in one's mind continually is quite another.There are so many things to distract one's attention along the way.
