Condemned To Torture and Death
La had followed her company and when she saw them clawing and biting at Tarzan, she raised her voice and cautioned them not to kill him.She saw that he was weakening and that soon the greater numbers would prevail over him, nor had she long to wait before the mighty jungle creature lay helpless and bound at her feet.
"Bring him to the place at which we stopped," she commanded and they carried Tarzan back to the little clearing and threw him down beneath a tree.
"Build me a shelter!" ordered La."We shall stop here tonight and tomorrow in the face of the Flaming God, La will offer up the heart of this defiler of the temple.
Where is the sacred knife? Who took it from him?"
But no one had seen it and each was positive in his assurance that the sacrificial weapon had not been upon Tarzan's person when they captured him.The ape-man looked upon the menacing creatures which surrounded him and snarled his defiance.He looked upon La and smiled.In the face of death he was unafraid.
"Where is the knife?" La asked him.
"I do not know," replied Tarzan."The man took it with him when he slipped away during the night.Since you are so desirous for its return I would look for him and get it back for you, did you not hold me prisoner; but now that I am to die I cannot get it back.Of what good was your knife, anyway? You can make another.
Did you follow us all this way for nothing more than a knife? Let me go and find him and I will bring it back to you."
La laughed a bitter laugh, for in her heart she knew that Tarzan's sin was greater than the purloining of the sacrificial knife of Opar; yet as she looked at him lying bound and helpless before her, tears rose to her eyes so that she had to turn away to hide them; but she remained inflexible in her determination to make him pay in frightful suffering and in eventual death for daring to spurn the love of La.
When the shelter was completed La had Tarzan transferred to it."All night I shall torture him,"
she muttered to her priests, "and at the first streak of dawn you may prepare the flaming altar upon which his heart shall be offered up to the Flaming God.
Gather wood well filled with pitch, lay it in the form and size of the altar at Opar in the center of the clearing that the Flaming God may look down upon our handiwork and be pleased."
During the balance of the day the priests of Opar were busy erecting an altar in the center of the clearing, and while they worked they chanted weird hymns in the ancient tongue of that lost continent that lies at the bottom of the Atlantic.They knew not the meanings of the words they mouthed; they but repeated the ritual that had been handed down from preceptor to neophyte since that long-gone day when the ancestors of the Piltdown man still swung by their tails in the humid jungles that are England now.
And in the shelter of the hut, La paced to and fro beside the stoic ape-man.Resigned to his fate was Tarzan.No hope of succor gleamed through the dead black of the death sentence hanging over him.He knew that his giant muscles could not part the many strands that bound his wrists and ankles, for he had strained often, but ineffectually for release.He had no hope of outside help and only enemies surrounded him within the camp, and yet he smiled at La as she paced nervously back and forth the length of the shelter.
And La? She fingered her knife and looked down upon her captive.She glared and muttered but she did not strike."Tonight!" she thought."Tonight, when it is dark I will torture him." She looked upon his perfect, godlike figure and upon his handsome, smiling face and then she steeled her heart again by thoughts of her love spurned; by religious thoughts that damned the infidel who had desecrated the holy of holies; who had taken from the blood-stained altar of Opar the offering to the Flaming God--and not once but thrice.
Three times had Tarzan cheated the god of her fathers.
At the thought La paused and knelt at his side.In her hand was a sharp knife.She placed its point against the ape-man's side and pressed upon the hilt; but Tarzan only smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
How beautiful he was! La bent low over him, looking into his eyes.How perfect was his figure.She compared it with those of the knurled and knotted men from whom she must choose a mate, and La shuddered at the thought.Dusk came and after dusk came night.
A great fire blazed within the little thorn boma about the camp.The flames played upon the new altar erected in the center of the clearing, arousing in the mind of the High Priestess of the Flaming God a picture of the event of the coming dawn.She saw this giant and perfect form writhing amid the flames of the burning pyre.She saw those smiling lips, burned and blackened, falling away from the strong, white teeth.
She saw the shock of black hair tousled upon Tarzan's well-shaped head disappear in a spurt of flame.She saw these and many other frightful pictures as she stood with closed eyes and clenched fists above the object of her hate--ah! was it hate that La of Opar felt?
The darkness of the jungle night had settled down upon the camp, relieved only by the fitful flarings of the fire that was kept up to warn off the man-eaters.
Tarzan lay quietly in his bonds.He suffered from thirst and from the cutting of the tight strands about his wrists and ankles; but he made no complaint.
A jungle beast was Tarzan with the stoicism of the beast and the intelligence of man.He knew that his doom was sealed--that no supplications would avail to temper the severity of his end and so he wasted no breath in pleadings; but waited patiently in the firm conviction that his sufferings could not endure forever.