With at least fifty of their number flying through the black jungle, and without the slightest knowledge of when their uncanny foemen might resume the cold-blooded slaughter they had commenced, it was a desperate band of cut-throats that waited sleeplessly for the dawn.Only on the promise of the Arabs that they would leave the village at daybreak, and hasten onward toward their own land, would the remaining Manyuema consent to stay at the village a moment longer.Not even fear of their cruel masters was sufficient to overcome this new terror.
And so it was that when Tarzan and his warriors returned to the attack the next morning they found the raiders prepared to march out of the village.The Manyuema were laden with stolen ivory.As Tarzan saw it he grinned, for he knew that they would not carry it far.Then he saw something which caused him anxiety--a number of the Manyuema were lighting torches in the remnant of the camp-fire.
They were about to fire the village.
Tarzan was perched in a tall tree some hundred yards from the palisade.Making a trumpet of his hands, he called loudly in the Arab tongue: "Do not fire the huts, or we shall kill you all! Do not fire the huts, or we shall kill you all!"A dozen times he repeated it.The Manyuema hesitated, then one of them flung his torch into the campfire.
The others were about to do the same when an Arab sprung upon them with a stick, beating them toward the huts.
Tarzan could see that he was commanding them to fire the little thatched dwellings.Then he stood erect upon the swaying branch a hundred feet above the ground, and, raising one of the Arab guns to his shoulder, took careful aim and fired.With the report the Arab who was urging on his men to burn the village fell in his tracks, and the Manyuema threw away their torches and fled from the village.
The last Tarzan saw of them they were racing toward the jungle, while their former masters knelt upon the ground and fired at them.
But however angry the Arabs might have been at the insubordination of their slaves, they were at least convinced that it would be the better part of wisdom to forego the pleasure of firing the village that had given them two such nasty receptions.In their hearts, however, they swore to return again with such force as would enable them to sweep the entire country for miles around, until no vestige of human life remained.
They had looked in vain for the owner of the voice which had frightened off the men who had been detailed to put the torch to the huts, but not even the keenest eye among them had been able to locate him.They had seen the puff of smoke from the tree following the shot that brought down the Arab, but, though a volley had immediately been loosed into its foliage, there had been no indication that it had been effective.
Tarzan was too intelligent to be caught in any such trap, and so the report of his shot had scarcely died away before the ape-man was on the ground and racing for another tree a hundred yards away.Here he again found a suitable perch from which he could watch the preparations of the raiders.
It occurred to him that he might have considerable more fun with them, so again he called to them through his improvised trumpet.
"Leave the ivory!" he cried."Leave the ivory! Dead men have no use for ivory!"Some of the Manyuema started to lay down their loads, but this was altogether too much for the avaricious Arabs.
With loud shouts and curses they aimed their guns full upon the bearers, threatening instant death to any who might lay down his load.They could give up firing the village, but the thought of abandoning this enormous fortune in ivory was quite beyond their conception--better death than that.
And so they marched out of the village of the Waziri, and on the shoulders of their slaves was the ivory ransom of a score of kings.Toward the north they marched, back toward their savage settlement in the wild and unknown country which lies back from the Kongo in the uttermost depths of The Great Forest, and on either side of them traveled an invisible and relentless foe.
Under Tarzan's guidance the black Waziri warriors stationed themselves along the trail on either side in the densest underbrush.
They stood at far intervals, and, as the column passed, a single arrow or a heavy spear, well aimed, would pierce a Manyuema or an Arab.Then the Waziri would melt into the distance and run ahead to take his stand farther on.
They did not strike unless success were sure and the danger of detection almost nothing, and so the arrows and the spears were few and far between, but so persistent and inevitable that the slow-moving column of heavy-laden raiders was in a constant state of panic--panic at the uncertainty of who the next would be to fall, and when.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the Arabs prevented their men a dozen times from throwing away their burdens and fleeing like frightened rabbits up the trail toward the north.
And so the day wore on--a frightful nightmare of a day for the raiders--a day of weary but well-repaid work for the Waziri.
At night the Arabs constructed a rude BOMA in a little clearing by a river, and went into camp.
At intervals during the night a rifle would bark close above their heads, and one of the dozen sentries which they now had posted would tumble to the ground.Such a condition was insupportable, for they saw that by means of these hideous tactics they would be completely wiped out, one by one, without inflicting a single death upon their enemy.
But yet, with the persistent avariciousness of the white man, the Arabs clung to their loot, and when morning came forced the demoralized Manyuema to take up their burdens of death and stagger on into the jungle.
For three days the withering column kept up its frightful march.
Each hour was marked by its deadly arrow or cruel spear.
The nights were made hideous by the barking of the invisible gun that made sentry duty equivalent to a death sentence.