The Call of the Jungle
Moved by these vague yet all-powerful urgings the ape-man lay awake one night in the little thorn boma that protected, in a way, his party from the depredations of the great carnivora of the jungle.A single warrior stood sleepy guard beside the fire that yellow eyes out of the darkness beyond the camp made imperative.
The moans and the coughing of the big cats mingled with the myriad noises of the lesser denizens of the jungle to fan the savage flame in the breast of this savage English lord.He tossed upon his bed of grasses, sleepless, for an hour and then he rose, noiseless as a wraith, and while the Waziri's back was turned, vaulted the boma wall in the face of the flaming eyes, swung silently into a great tree and was gone.
For a time in sheer exuberance of animal spirit he raced swiftly through the middle terrace, swinging perilously across wide spans from one jungle giant to the next, and then he clambered upward to the swaying, lesser boughs of the upper terrace where the moon shone full upon him and the air was stirred by little breezes and death lurked ready in each frail branch.Here he paused and raised his face to Goro, the moon.
With uplifted arm he stood, the cry of the bull ape quivering upon his lips, yet he remained silent lest he arouse his faithful Waziri who were all too familiar with the hideous challenge of their master.
And then he went on more slowly and with greater stealth and caution, for now Tarzan of the Apes was seeking a kill.Down to the ground he came in the utter blackness of the close-set boles and the overhanging verdure of the jungle.He stooped from time to time and put his nose close to earth.He sought and found a wide game trail and at last his nostrils were rewarded with the scent of the fresh spoor of Bara, the deer.Tarzan's mouth watered and a low growl escaped his patrician lips.Sloughed from him was the last vestige of artificial caste--once again he was the primeval hunter--the first man--the highest caste type of the human race.Up wind he followed the elusive spoor with a sense of perception so transcending that of ordinary man as to be inconceivable to us.Through counter currents of the heavy stench of meat eaters he traced the trail of Bara; the sweet and cloying stink of Horta, the boar, could not drown his quarry's scent--
the permeating, mellow musk of the deer's foot.
Presently the body scent of the deer told Tarzan that his prey was close at hand.It sent him into the trees again--into the lower terrace where he could watch the ground below and catch with ears and nose the first intimation of actual contact with his quarry.Nor was it long before the ape-man came upon Bara standing alert at the edge of a moon-bathed clearing.
Noiselessly Tarzan crept through the trees until he was directly over the deer.In the ape-man's right hand was the long hunting knife of his father and in his heart the blood lust of the carnivore.Just for an instant he poised above the unsuspecting Bara and then he launched himself downward upon the sleek back.The impact of his weight carried the deer to its knees and before the animal could regain its feet the knife had found its heart.As Tarzan rose upon the body of his kill to scream forth his hideous victory cry into the face of the moon the wind carried to his nostrils something which froze him to statuesque immobility and silence.His savage eyes blazed into the direction from which the wind had borne down the warning to him and a moment later the grasses at one side of the clearing parted and Numa, the lion, strode majestically into view.His yellow-green eyes were fastened upon Tarzan as he halted just within the clearing and glared enviously at the successful hunter, for Numa had had no luck this night.
From the lips of the ape-man broke a rumbling growl of warning.Numa answered but he did not advance.
Instead he stood waving his tail gently to and fro, and presently Tarzan squatted upon his kill and cut a generous portion from a hind quarter.Numa eyed him with growing resentment and rage as, between mouthfuls, the ape-man growled out his savage warnings.Now this particular lion had never before come in contact with Tarzan of the Apes and he was much mystified.Here was the appearance and the scent of a man-thing and Numa had tasted of human flesh and learned that though not the most palatable it was certainly by far the easiest to secure, yet there was that in the bestial growls of the strange creature which reminded him of formidable antagonists and gave him pause, while his hunger and the odor of the hot flesh of Bara goaded him almost to madness.Always Tarzan watched him, guessing what was passing in the little brain of the carnivore and well it was that he did watch him, for at last Numa could stand it no longer.His tail shot suddenly erect and at the same instant the wary ape-man, knowing all too well what the signal portended, grasped the remainder of the deer's hind quarter between his teeth and leaped into a nearby tree as Numa charged him with all the speed and a sufficient semblance of the weight of an express train.
Tarzan's retreat was no indication that he felt fear.
Jungle life is ordered along different lines than ours and different standards prevail.Had Tarzan been famished he would, doubtless, have stood his ground and met the lion's charge.He had done the thing before upon more than one occasion, just as in the past he had charged lions himself; but tonight he was far from famished and in the hind quarter he had carried off with him was more raw flesh than he could eat; yet it was with no equanimity that he looked down upon Numa rending the flesh of Tarzan's kill.The presumption of this strange Numa must be punished! And forthwith Tarzan set out to make life miserable for the big cat.
