Chapter VI. Jungle Battles

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　The wanderings of the tribe brought them often near theclosed and silent cabin by the little land-locked harbor.To Tarzan this was always a source of never-ending mysteryand pleasure.

　　He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbingupon the roof, peer down the black depths of the chimney invain endeavor to solve the unknown wonders that lay withinthose strong walls.

　　His child-like imagination pictured wonderful creatureswithin, and the very impossibility of forcing entranceadded a thousandfold to his desire to do so.

　　He could clamber about the roof and windows for hoursattempting to discover means of ingress, but to the door he paidlittle attention, for this was apparently as solid as the walls.

　　It was in the next visit to the vicinity, following theadventure with old Sabor, that, as he approached the cabin,Tarzan noticed that from a distance the door appeared to be anindependent part of the wall in which it was set, and for the firsttime it occurred to him that this might prove the means ofentrance which had so long eluded him.

　　He was alone, as was often the case when he visited thecabin, for the apes had no love for it; the story of thethunder-stick having lost nothing in the telling during theseten years had quite surrounded the white man's deserted abodewith an atmosphere of weirdness and terror for the simians.

　　The story of his own connection with the cabin had neverbeen told him. The language of the apes had so few wordsthat they could talk but little of what they had seen in thecabin, having no words to accurately describe either thestrange people or their belongings, and so, long beforeTarzan was old enough to understand, the subject had beenforgotten by the tribe.

　　Only in a dim, vague way had Kala explained to him thathis father had been a strange white ape, but he did not knowthat Kala was not his own mother.

　　On this day, then, he went directly to the door and spenthours examining it and fussing with the hinges, the knob andthe latch. Finally he stumbled upon the right combination,and the door swung creakingly open before his astonished eyes.

　　For some minutes he did not dare venture within, but finally,as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of theinterior he slowly and cautiously entered.

　　In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige offlesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewedand moldered remnants of what had once been clothing.Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome thing, but smaller, whilein a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.

　　To none of these evidences of a fearful tragedy of a longdead day did little Tarzan give but passing heed. His wildjungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dyinganimals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remainsof his own father and mother he would have been no moregreatly moved.

　　The furnishings and other contents of the room it waswhich riveted his attention. He examined many thingsminutely--strange tools and weapons, books, paper, clothing--what little had withstood the ravages of time in the humidatmosphere of the jungle coast.

　　He opened chests and cupboards, such as did not baffle hissmall experience, and in these he found the contents muchbetter preserved.

　　Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on thekeen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut hisfinger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding thathe could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table andchairs with this new toy.

　　For a long time this amused him, but finally tiring hecontinued his explorations. In a cupboard filled with bookshe came across one with brightly colored pictures--it was achild's illustrated alphabet--

　　A is for Archer Who shoots with a bow. B is for Boy, His first name is Joe.The pictures interested him greatly.

　　There were many apes with faces similar to his own, andfurther over in the book he found, under "M," some littlemonkeys such as he saw daily flitting through the trees of hisprimeval forest. But nowhere was pictured any of his ownpeople; in all the book was none that resembled Kerchak, orTublat, or Kala.

　　At first he tried to pick the little figures from the leaves,but he soon saw that they were not real, though he knew notwhat they might be, nor had he any words to describe them.

　　The boats, and trains, and cows and horses were quitemeaningless to him, but not quite so baffling as the odd littlefigures which appeared beneath and between the coloredpictures--some strange kind of bug he thought they might be,for many of them had legs though nowhere could he find onewith eyes and a mouth. It was his first introduction to theletters of the alphabet, and he was over ten years old.

　　Of course he had never before seen print, or ever hadspoken with any living thing which had the remotest idea thatsuch a thing as a written language existed, nor ever had heseen anyone reading.

　　So what wonder that the little boy was quite at a loss toguess the meaning of these strange figures.

　　Near the middle of the book he found his old enemy,Sabor, the lioness, and further on, coiled Histah, the snake.

　　Oh, it was most engrossing! Never before in all his tenyears had he enjoyed anything so much. So absorbed was hethat he did not note the approaching dusk, until it was quiteupon him and the figures were blurred.

　　He put the book back in the cupboard and closed the door,for he did not wish anyone else to find and destroy histreasure, and as he went out into the gathering darkness he closedthe great door of the cabin behind him as it had been beforehe discovered the secret of its lock, but before he left he hadnoticed the hunting knife lying where he had thrown it uponthe floor, and this he picked up and took with him to show tohis fellows.

　　He had taken scarce a dozen steps toward the jungle whena great form rose up before him from the shadows of a lowbush. At first he thought it was one of his own people but inanother instant he realized that it was Bolgani, the huge gorilla.

　　So close was he that there was no chance for flight andlittle Tarzan knew that he must stand and fight for his life;for these great beasts were the deadly enemies of his tribe, andneither one nor the other ever asked or gave quarter.

　　Had Tarzan been a full-grown bull ape of the species ofhis tribe he would have been more than a match for the gorilla,but being only a little English boy, though enormouslymuscular for such, he stood no chance against his cruelantagonist. In his veins, though, flowed the blood of the bestof a race of mighty fighters, and back of this was the trainingof his short lifetime among the fierce brutes of the jungle.

　　He knew no fear, as we know it; his little heart beat thefaster but from the excitement and exhilaration of adventure.Had the opportunity presented itself he would have escaped,but solely because his judgment told him he was no matchfor the great thing which confronted him. And since reasonshowed him that successful flight was impossible he met thegorilla squarely and bravely without a tremor of a singlemuscle, or any sign of panic.

　　In fact he met the brute midway in its charge, striking itshuge body with his closed fists and as futilely as he had beena fly attacking an elephant. But in one hand he still clutchedthe knife he had found in the cabin of his father, and as thebrute, striking and biting, closed upon him the boy accidentallyturned the point toward the hairy breast. As the knifesank deep into its body the gorilla shrieked in pain and rage.

　　But the boy had learned in that brief second a use for hissharp and shining toy, so that, as the tearing, striking beastdragged him to earth he plunged the blade repeatedly and tothe hilt into its breast.

　　The gorilla, fighting after the manner of its kind, struckterrific blows with its open hand, and tore the flesh at theboy's throat and chest with its mighty tusks.

　　For a moment they rolled upon the ground in the fiercefrenzy of combat. More and more weakly the torn and bleedingarm struck home with the long sharp blade, then the littlefigure stiffened with a spasmodic jerk, and Tarzan, the youngLord Greystoke, rolled unconscious upon the dead and decayingvegetation which carpeted his jungle home.

　　A mile back in the forest the tribe had heard the fiercechallenge of the gorilla, and, as was his custom when anydanger threatened, Kerchak called his people together, partlyfor mutual protection against a common enemy, since thisgorilla might be but one of a party of several, and also to seethat all members of the tribe were accounted for.

　　It was soon discovered that Tarzan was missing, and Tublatwas strongly opposed to sending assistance. Kerchak himselfhad no liking for the strange little waif, so he listened toTublat, and, finally, with a shrug of his shoulders, turnedback to the pile of leaves on which he had made his bed.

　　But Kala was of a different mind; in fact, she had notwaited but to learn that Tarzan was absent ere she was fairlyflying through the matted branches toward the point fromwhich the cries of the gorilla were still plainly audible.

　　Darkness had now fallen, and an early moon was sendingits faint light to cast strange, grotesque shadows among thedense foliage of the forest.

　　Here and there the brilliant rays penetrated to earth, butfor the most part they only served to accentuate the Stygianblackness of the jungle's depths.

　　Like some huge phantom, Kala swung noiselessly fromtree to tree; now running nimbly along a great branch, nowswinging through space at the end of another, only to graspthat of a farther tree in her rapid progress toward the sceneof the tragedy her knowledge of jungle life told her was beingenacted a short distance before her.

　　The cries of the gorilla proclaimed that it was in mortalcombat with some other denizen of the fierce wood. Suddenlythese cries ceased, and the silence of death reigned throughoutthe jungle.

　　Kala could not understand, for the voice of Bolgani had atlast been raised in the agony of suffering and death, butno sound had come to her by which she possibly could determinethe nature of his antagonist.

　　That her little Tarzan could destroy a great bull gorilla sheknew to be improbable, and so, as she neared the spot fromwhich the sounds of the struggle had come, she moved morewarily and at last slowly and with extreme caution shetraversed the lowest branches, peering eagerly into the moon-splashed blackness for a sign of the combatants.

　　Presently she came upon them, lying in a little open spacefull under the brilliant light of the moon--little Tarzan's tornand bloody form, and beside it a great bull gorilla, stone dead.

　　With a low cry Kala rushed to Tarzan's side, and gathering thepoor, blood-covered body to her breast, listened for a sign oflife. Faintly she heard it--the weak beating of the little heart.

　　Tenderly she bore him back through the inky jungle towhere the tribe lay, and for many days and nights she satguard beside him, bringing him food and water, and brushingthe flies and other insects from his cruel wounds.

　　Of medicine or surgery the poor thing knew nothing. Shecould but lick the wounds, and thus she kept them cleansed,that healing nature might the more quickly do her work.

　　At first Tarzan would eat nothing, but rolled and tossed ina wild delirium of fever. All he craved was water, and thisshe brought him in the only way she could, bearing it in herown mouth.

　　No human mother could have shown more unselfish andsacrificing devotion than did this poor, wild brute for thelittle orphaned waif whom fate had thrown into her keeping.

　　At last the fever abated and the boy commenced to mend.No word of complaint passed his tight set lips, though thepain of his wounds was excruciating.

　　A portion of his chest was laid bare to the ribs, three ofwhich had been broken by the mighty blows of the gorilla.One arm was nearly severed by the giant fangs, and a greatpiece had been torn from his neck, exposing his jugular vein,which the cruel jaws had missed but by a miracle.

　　With the stoicism of the brutes who had raised him he enduredhis suffering quietly, preferring to crawl away from theothers and lie huddled in some clump of tall grasses ratherthan to show his misery before their eyes.

　　Kala, alone, he was glad to have with him, but now that hewas better she was gone longer at a time, in search of food;for the devoted animal had scarcely eaten enough to supporther own life while Tarzan had been so low, and was inconsequence, reduced to a mere shadow of her former self.