It was in a state of mind superinduced by these conditions that La led forth her jabbering company to retrieve the sacred emblem of her high office and wreak vengeance upon the author of her wrongs.To Werper she gave little thought.The fact that the knife had been in his hand when it departed from Opar brought down no thoughts of vengeance upon his head.Of course, he should be slain when captured; but his death would give La no pleasure--she looked for that in the contemplated death agonies of Tarzan.He should be tortured.
His should be a slow and frightful death.His punishment should be adequate to the immensity of his crime.
He had wrested the sacred knife from La; he had lain sacreligious hands upon the High Priestess of the Flaming God; he had desecrated the altar and the temple.For these things he should die; but he had scorned the love of La, the woman, and for this he should die horribly with great anguish.
The march of La and her priests was not without its adventures.Unused were these to the ways of the jungle, since seldom did any venture forth from behind Opar's crumbling walls, yet their very numbers protected them and so they came without fatalities far along the trail of Tarzan and Werper.Three great apes accompanied them and to these was delegated the business of tracking the quarry, a feat beyond the senses of the Oparians.La commanded.She arranged the order of march, she selected the camps, she set the hour for halting and the hour for resuming and though she was inexperienced in such matters, her native intelligence was so far above that of the men or the apes that she did better than they could have done.
She was a hard taskmaster, too, for she looked down with loathing and contempt upon the misshapen creatures amongst which cruel Fate had thrown her and to some extent vented upon them her dissatisfaction and her thwarted love.She made them build her a strong protection and shelter each night and keep a great fire burning before it from dusk to dawn.When she tired of walking they were forced to carry her upon an improvised litter, nor did one dare to question her authority or her right to such services.In fact they did not question either.To them she was a goddess and each loved her and each hoped that he would be chosen as her mate, so they slaved for her and bore the stinging lash of her displeasure and the habitually haughty disdain of her manner without a murmur.
For many days they marched, the apes following the trail easily and going a little distance ahead of the body of the caravan that they might warn the others of impending danger.It was during a noonday halt while all were lying resting after a tiresome march that one of the apes rose suddenly and sniffed the breeze.In a low guttural he cautioned the others to silence and a moment later was swinging quietly up wind into the jungle.La and the priests gathered silently together, the hideous little men fingering their knives and bludgeons, and awaited the return of the shaggy anthropoid.
Nor had they long to wait before they saw him emerge from a leafy thicket and approach them.Straight to La he came and in the language of the great apes which was also the language of decadent Opar he addressed her.
"The great Tarmangani lies asleep there," he said, pointing in the direction from which he had just come.
"Come and we can kill him."
"Do not kill him," commanded La in cold tones.
"Bring the great Tarmangani to me alive and unhurt.
The vengeance is La's.Go; but make no sound!" and she waved her hands to include all her followers.
Cautiously the weird party crept through the jungle in the wake of the great ape until at last he halted them with a raised hand and pointed upward and a little ahead.There they saw the giant form of the ape-man stretched along a low bough and even in sleep one hand grasped a stout limb and one strong, brown leg reached out and overlapped another.At ease lay Tarzan of the Apes, sleeping heavily upon a full stomach and dreaming of Numa, the lion, and Horta, the boar, and other creatures of the jungle.No intimation of danger assailed the dormant faculties of the ape-man--he saw no crouching hairy figures upon the ground beneath him nor the three apes that swung quietly into the tree beside him.
The first intimation of danger that came to Tarzan was the impact of three bodies as the three apes leaped upon him and hurled him to the ground, where he alighted half stunned beneath their combined weight and was immediately set upon by the fifty hairy men or as many of them as could swarm upon his person.Instantly the ape-man became the center of a whirling, striking, biting maelstrom of horror.He fought nobly but the odds against him were too great.Slowly they overcame him though there was scarce one of them that did not feel the weight of his mighty fist or the rending of his fangs.