Chapter VIII. The Tree-top Hunter

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　The morning after the Dum-Dum the tribe started slowlyback through the forest toward the coast.

　　The body of Tublat lay where it had fallen, for the peopleof Kerchak do not eat their own dead.

　　The march was but a leisurely search for food. Cabbagepalm and gray plum, pisang and scitamine they found inabundance, with wild pineapple, and occasionally small mammals,birds, eggs, reptiles, and insects. The nuts they crackedbetween their powerful jaws, or, if too hard, broke by poundingbetween stones.

　　Once old Sabor, crossing their path, sent them scurrying tothe safety of the higher branches, for if she respected theirnumber and their sharp fangs, they on their part held hercruel and mighty ferocity in equal esteem.

　　Upon a low-hanging branch sat Tarzan directly above themajestic, supple body as it forged silently through the thickjungle. He hurled a pineapple at the ancient enemy of hispeople. The great beast stopped and, turning, eyed thetaunting figure above her.

　　With an angry lash of her tail she bared her yellow fangs,curling her great lips in a hideous snarl that wrinkled herbristling snout in serried ridges and closed her wicked eyes totwo narrow slits of rage and hatred.

　　With back-laid ears she looked straight into the eyes ofTarzan of the Apes and sounded her fierce, shrill challenge.And from the safety of his overhanging limb the ape-childsent back the fearsome answer of his kind.

　　For a moment the two eyed each other in silence, and thenthe great cat turned into the jungle, which swallowed her asthe ocean engulfs a tossed pebble.

　　But into the mind of Tarzan a great plan sprang. He hadkilled the fierce Tublat, so was he not therefore a mightyfighter? Now would he track down the crafty Sabor and slayher likewise. He would be a mighty hunter, also.

　　At the bottom of his little English heart beat the great desireto cover his nakedness with clothes for he had learnedfrom his picture books that all men were so covered, whilemonkeys and apes and every other living thing went naked.

　　Clothes therefore, must be truly a badge of greatness; theinsignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, forsurely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideousthings.

　　Many moons ago, when he had been much smaller, he haddesired the skin of Sabor, the lioness, or Numa, the lion, orSheeta, the leopard to cover his hairless body that he mightno longer resemble hideous Histah, the snake; but now hewas proud of his sleek skin for it betokened his descent froma mighty race, and the conflicting desires to go naked inprideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to the customsof his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparelfound first one and then the other in the ascendency.

　　As the tribe continued their slow way through the forestafter the passing of Sabor, Tarzan's head was filled withhis great scheme for slaying his enemy, and for many daysthereafter he thought of little else.

　　On this day, however, he presently had other and moreimmediate interests to attract his attention.

　　Suddenly it became as midnight; the noises of the jungleceased; the trees stood motionless as though in paralyzedexpectancy of some great and imminent disaster. All naturewaited--but not for long.

　　Faintly, from a distance, came a low, sad moaning. Nearerand nearer it approached, mounting louder and louder in volume.

　　The great trees bent in unison as though pressed earthwardby a mighty hand. Farther and farther toward the groundthey inclined, and still there was no sound save the deep andawesome moaning of the wind.

　　Then, suddenly, the jungle giants whipped back, lashingtheir mighty tops in angry and deafening protest. A vivid andblinding light flashed from the whirling, inky clouds above.The deep cannonade of roaring thunder belched forth its fearsomechallenge. The deluge came--all hell broke loose upon the jungle.

　　The tribe shivering from the cold rain, huddled at the basesof great trees. The lightning, darting and flashing through theblackness, showed wildly waving branches, whipping streamersand bending trunks.

　　Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rentby a flashing bolt, would crash in a thousand pieces amongthe surrounding trees, carrying down numberless branchesand many smaller neighbors to add to the tangled confusionof the tropical jungle.

　　Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of thetornado, hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carryingdeath and destruction to countless unhappy denizens of thethickly peopled world below.

　　For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease,and still the tribe huddled close in shivering fear.In constant danger from falling trunks and branches andparalyzed by the vivid flashing of lightning and thebellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful misery untilthe storm passed.

　　The end was as sudden as the beginning. The wind ceased,the sun shone forth--nature smiled once more.

　　The dripping leaves and branches, and the moist petals ofgorgeous flowers glistened in the splendor of the returning day.And, so--as Nature forgot, her children forgot also. Busy lifewent on as it had been before the darkness and the fright.

　　But to Tarzan a dawning light had come to explain themystery of clothes. How snug he would have been beneaththe heavy coat of Sabor! And so was added a further incentiveto the adventure.

　　For several months the tribe hovered near the beach wherestood Tarzan's cabin, and his studies took up the greaterportion of his time, but always when journeying through theforest he kept his rope in readiness, and many were the smalleranimals that fell into the snare of the quick thrown noose.

　　Once it fell about the short neck of Horta, the boar, andhis mad lunge for freedom toppled Tarzan from the overhanginglimb where he had lain in wait and from whence hehad launched his sinuous coil.

　　The mighty tusker turned at the sound of his falling body,and, seeing only the easy prey of a young ape, he lowered hishead and charged madly at the surprised youth.

　　Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the fall, alighting catlikeupon all fours far outspread to take up the shock. He was onhis feet in an instant and, leaping with the agility of themonkey he was, he gained the safety of a low limb as Horta,the boar, rushed futilely beneath.

　　Thus it was that Tarzan learned by experience the limitationsas well as the possibilities of his strange weapon.

　　He lost a long rope on this occasion, but he knew that hadit been Sabor who had thus dragged him from his perch theoutcome might have been very different, for he would havelost his life, doubtless, into the bargain.

　　It took him many days to braid a new rope, but when,finally, it was done he went forth purposely to hunt, and liein wait among the dense foliage of a great branch right abovethe well-beaten trail that led to water.

　　Several small animals passed unharmed beneath him. He didnot want such insignificant game. It would take a stronganimal to test the efficacy of his new scheme.

　　At last came she whom Tarzan sought, with lithe sinewsrolling beneath shimmering hide; fat and glossy came Sabor,the lioness.

　　Her great padded feet fell soft and noiseless on the narrowtrail. Her head was high in ever alert attention; her long tailmoved slowly in sinuous and graceful undulations.

　　Nearer and nearer she came to where Tarzan of the Apescrouched upon his limb, the coils of his long rope poisedready in his hand.

　　Like a thing of bronze, motionless as death, sat Tarzan.Sabor passed beneath. One stride beyond she took--a second,a third, and then the silent coil shot out above her.

　　For an instant the spreading noose hung above her headlike a great snake, and then, as she looked upward to detectthe origin of the swishing sound of the rope, it settled abouther neck. With a quick jerk Tarzan snapped the noose tightabout the glossy throat, and then he dropped the rope andclung to his support with both hands.

　　Sabor was trapped.

　　With a bound the startled beast turned into the jungle, butTarzan was not to lose another rope through the same causeas the first. He had learned from experience. The lioness hadtaken but half her second bound when she felt the ropetighten about her neck; her body turned completely over inthe air and she fell with a heavy crash upon her back. Tarzanhad fastened the end of the rope securely to the trunk of thegreat tree on which he sat.

　　Thus far his plan had worked to perfection, but when hegrasped the rope, bracing himself behind a crotch of twomighty branches, he found that dragging the mighty, struggling,clawing, biting, screaming mass of iron-muscled fury up tothe tree and hanging her was a very different proposition.

　　The weight of old Sabor was immense, and when she bracedher huge paws nothing less than Tantor, the elephant,himself, could have budged her.

　　The lioness was now back in the path where she could seethe author of the indignity which had been placed upon her.Screaming with rage she suddenly charged, leaping high intothe air toward Tarzan, but when her huge body struck thelimb on which Tarzan had been, Tarzan was no longer there.

　　Instead he perched lightly upon a smaller branch twentyfeet above the raging captive. For a moment Sabor hung halfacross the branch, while Tarzan mocked, and hurled twigsand branches at her unprotected face.

　　Presently the beast dropped to the earth again and Tarzancame quickly to seize the rope, but Sabor had now found thatit was only a slender cord that held her, and grasping it inher huge jaws severed it before Tarzan could tighten thestrangling noose a second time.

　　Tarzan was much hurt. His well-laid plan had come tonaught, so he sat there screaming at the roaring creaturebeneath him and making mocking grimaces at it.

　　Sabor paced back and forth beneath the tree for hours;four times she crouched and sprang at the dancing spriteabove her, but might as well have clutched at the illusivewind that murmured through the tree tops.

　　At last Tarzan tired of the sport, and with a parting roarof challenge and a well-aimed ripe fruit that spread soft andsticky over the snarling face of his enemy, he swung rapidlythrough the trees, a hundred feet above the ground, and in ashort time was among the members of his tribe.

　　Here he recounted the details of his adventure, with swellingchest and so considerable swagger that he quite impressedeven his bitterest enemies, while Kala fairly danced for joyand pride.