She felt him leap into the air and marveled at his strength and his ability as, burdened with her weight, he swung nimbly into the lower branches of a large tree and quickly bore her upward beyond reach of the sinuous trunk of the pachyderm.
Momentarily baffled here, the huge elephant wheeled and bore down upon the hapless priests who had now scattered, terror-stricken, in every direction.
The nearest he gored and threw high among the branches of a tree.One he seized in the coils of his trunk and broke upon a huge bole, dropping the mangled pulp to charge, trumpeting, after another.Two he trampled beneath his huge feet and by then the others had disappeared into the jungle.Now Tantor turned his attention once more to Tarzan for one of the symptoms of madness is a revulsion of affection--objects of sane love become the objects of insane hatred.Peculiar in the unwritten annals of the jungle was the proverbial love that had existed between the ape-man and the tribe of Tantor.No elephant in all the jungle would harm the Tarmangani--the white-ape; but with the madness of MUST upon him the great bull sought to destroy his long-time play-fellow.
Back to the tree where La and Tarzan perched came Tantor, the elephant.He reared up with his forefeet against the bole and reached high toward them with his long trunk; but Tarzan had foreseen this and clambered beyond the bull's longest reach.Failure but tended to further enrage the mad creature.He bellowed and trumpeted and screamed until the earth shook to the mighty volume of his noise.He put his head against the tree and pushed and the tree bent before his mighty strength; yet still it held.
The actions of Tarzan were peculiar in the extreme.
Had Numa, or Sabor, or Sheeta, or any other beast of the jungle been seeking to destroy him, the ape-man would have danced about hurling missiles and invectives at his assailant.He would have insulted and taunted them, reviling in the jungle Billingsgate he knew so well; but now he sat silent out of Tantor's reach and upon his handsome face was an expression of deep sorrow and pity, for of all the jungle folk Tarzan loved Tantor the best.Could he have slain him he would not have thought of doing so.His one idea was to escape, for he knew that with the passing of the MUST Tantor would be sane again and that once more he might stretch at full length upon that mighty back and make foolish speech into those great, flapping ears.
Finding that the tree would not fall to his pushing, Tantor was but enraged the more.He looked up at the two perched high above him, his red-rimmed eyes blazing with insane hatred, and then he wound his trunk about the bole of the tree, spread his giant feet wide apart and tugged to uproot the jungle giant.A huge creature was Tantor, an enormous bull in the full prime of all his stupendous strength.Mightily he strove until presently, to Tarzan's consternation, the great tree gave slowly at the roots.The ground rose in little mounds and ridges about the base of the bole, the tree tilted--in another moment it would be uprooted and fall.
The ape-man whirled La to his back and just as the tree inclined slowly in its first movement out of the perpendicular, before the sudden rush of its final collapse, he swung to the branches of a lesser neighbor.It was a long and perilous leap.La closed her eyes and shuddered; but when she opened them again she found herself safe and Tarzan whirling onward through the forest.Behind them the uprooted tree crashed heavily to the ground, carrying with it the lesser trees in its path and then Tantor, realizing that his prey had escaped him, set up once more his hideous trumpeting and followed at a rapid charge upon their trail.