CHAPTER II
QUEEN OF HIS KIND
Into the heart of the jungle, mysterious and fascinating, where Tantor, the elephant, prince of beasts, trumpeted to the herd, where Numa, the lion, ruler of his kind, preyed on man and beast, where lived the tiger, the rhinoceros, the crocodile and above all the ape people who made u p in shrewd cunning what they laced in strength, years before had come two intrepid explorers, Lord and Lady Greystoke.
Delirious with the dread jungle fever, Lord Greystoke and Lady Rosalie tossed in their bunks in the cabin they had built. Scientists though they were and protected against the perils of the jungle, the science of their day had given them only imperfect protection from perils unseen, microscopic.
In a sudden silence, Rosalie staggered up from her bed, swayed across to her husband, so still, and took his hand. It was cold. She laid it down, tottered in a daze over to the bed where crooned little Edward, her baby born on the expedition. With a prayer on her lips she, too, collapsed on the floor, another martyr to the white man's conquest of the tropics.
Toka, the she-ape, had just been the victim of another jungle tragedy. Her own baby had fallen a victim to the dread of man and beast -- death. Toka wandered, unconsoled, when suddenly from a strange habitation in her jungle she heard a piercing cry, a wail. It was not of an ape-child. Yet it was the young of some animal strangely akin. And it was the wail of hunger.
Toka looped over, looked in and entered. What she found stirred the depths of her already over-wrought mother heart. She picked up the baby, caressed it, fondled it, clasped it to her breast. There was none to say her nay. She loped off with her foundling man-child.
Through babyhood an childhood the foster-child of Toka grew. And, though he was the little friend of all the jungle world, yet the jungle knew he was different. Gradually as he grew to manhood in the life of the jungle, gleaning the rudiments of his own language from picture books left in the effects of his parents in the cabin, heir to the wonderful carved hunting knife of the dead sportsman, his father, gradually the jungle people came to realize that he was their king in brain and cunning, accepted the overlordship of Tarzan the Mighty, foster-child of Toka, the she-ape.
It was not often now that his power was questioned, except by Numa, who seemed to retain a hereditary enmity. That was why as Tarzan faced TAug, protecting Teeka, Tarzan laughed.
"Taug has chosen and there is none in the jungle to stay him!"
Quickly Tarzan's laughter changed to rage. Here was a defiance of his mandate to rule that he could not afford to pass.
Tarzan hit Taug a staggering blow. A moment and Taug was back at him. Again Tarzan hit him. Taug crumpled. In an instant Tarzan was over him, his Greystoke hunting knife unsheathed.
He felt his arm stayed. It was Teeka, pleading for Taug. Slowly he returned the knife to its sheath, rose from the prostrate Taug and turned away. Again, as so often since he had reached the estate of manhood, swept over him the realization that neither the ape people nor the other beasts were his real kin.
Morose and moody Tarzan proceeded through the jungle. Now more than ever before he felt alone, all alone. Th ese friends of the jungle were not his own people. Who were his own people?
Mechanically his course took him to the hut. Except for the ravages of time and the weather it was the same hut he remembered from earliest childhood. Something ws vaguely stirring within him now as he entered. He picked up a child's picture book, glanced through it. It did not satisfy. On the table was a Bible, very worn and old. He opened it. There was a picture of a woman. He gazed at it long and earnestly. It stirred some recollections within him, indefinite, formless. Then, too, there was the picture of a man.
These were his people. For a long time he turned it over in his mind. Dead! Yes; without a doubt . But were there others?
He closed the book, put it back on the table. Somehow now he was more alone than even he had been before. He felt he must get back into the jungle. At least there were his friends. Tantor, and the apes. . .
Suddenly Tarzan paused. What was that strange new sound in the jungle? It was a voice -- but the voice of no animal he knew and he knew them all.
There was something silvery, bell-like, about this voice. Nor was it mere repetition, like the calls of animals. It was always the same, yes -- but it was always different. He stood a moment spellbound. He felt as if something were tugging at his heart. That voice! Why did it arouse such feelings within him? Other unfamiliar sounds aroused fear, wariness. But this, this seemed to fascinate, to lead him.
It came from close at hand, down the glen, down by the drinking pool. He took a step, then checked himself warily. Instead he swung himself upward by his grass rope into the tallest of the trees. From the top he could look over the edge, down into the pool.
Tarzan gripped the branch of the trees just in time to catch himself. Such a sight his eyes had never before looked upon. Never even in his wildest dreams had hd had conceived anything so lovely, anything even remotely like it.
Standing stark, unclad, her little body poised just an instant on the edge of the pool that reflected back her gleaming white beauty stood Mary. Her dance completed she had fled form the stockade, thrown off her crude garment, prepared to plunge into the cooling waters as it were to to wash from her the contamination of contact with Black John and his crew.
In the exuberance of her freedom she was trilling to herself some silvery ditty that recalled the civilization from which disaster had so rudely snatched her. It was this song of a human feminine voice that was new and sweet to the ear of Tarzan.
An instant and she slithered into the depths of the water of the pool striking out with a graceful crawl that left Tarzan speechless in admiration.
Suddenly his sharp eyes from his lofty perch caught a sight as from an airplane an observer might see a murderous submarine headed toward a graceful liner. Other eyes than Tarzan's had seen the girl. A huge crocodile was shooting straight from a dark eddy scenting a dainty morsel.
Tarzan uttered a cry, the cry with which he struck terror into the denizens of the jungle. Mary heard it, looked in time, saw the ferocious crocodile shooting with sea-plane speed at her, turned and headed for the shore.
At the same instant Tarzan leaped through the air in a high dive such as would have turned green with envy any stunt circus performer. Down -- down -- down he shot like a human projectile, plunged, turned upward, and grappled with the prince of the crocodiles just at the moment when those murderous jaws were within inches of snapping this queen of Tarzan's own kind, first he had ever seen in his marvellouss winning of the jungle.
Over and over the man and the infuriated crocodile rolled in the water as Tarzan vainly struggled to grasp his knife from its sheath at some moment when the animal at home in his own element might be off guard. For Tarzan being off-guard for an instant might mean the loss of one of his own superbly developed limbs, perhaps of his life.
Mary, headed for safety and shore, looked back just in time to see a dozen or more of the crocodile tribe threshing after her so closely that it was scarcely an even break whether she could reach the shore first -- and even then must she depend on a miraculous toughness of the slender tropical tangle of vines to pull herself well clear of those voracious, cruel jaws. She grasped the tangle and it parted in her hands as she creamed in frantic terror at the snapping jaws only a few inches behind her.
Next:
CHAPTER III: BLACK JOHN PLOTS
TARZAN THE MIGHTY
FILM SERIAL SUMMARY
From Universal Weekly 1928
Chapter Two: The Love CallFrom the bank Mary sees her deliverer kill the crocodile and realizes she has been saved by Tarzan. Returning to the village, she learns that black John plans to trap Tarzan. Taug, the ape, wandering through the forest, is caught in the trap. The natives, who are watching, think they have caught Tarzan and, leaving a guard, speed to the village with the news. The enraged cries of Taug are heard by Tarzan, who rushes to his rescue. He leaps upon the guar, knocks him senseless, releases Taug and entraps the guard. When Black John arrives with the villagers he is infuriated at being duped, and when he sees Mary smile her relief promises her Tarzan's head as a wedding present. Mary cries out in horror, and Tarzan, who is watching from a treetop, gives his battle-cry.
The terrified natives flee for safety. Black John realizes Mary has stayed behind, and sneaking back discovers Mary and Bobby talking to Tarzan. Later, when Mary overhears Black John planning to trap Tantor, she determines to warn Tarzan, but discovers she is a prisoner in her hut. Little Bobby escapes and goes into the forest looking for Tarzan. Just as he is about to be trampled by the terrified elephant who is being driven toward the pit by the natives, Tarzan rescues him and climbs into a tree. A limb breaks and they are thrown into the spiked elephant pit.
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