And so when he should have been arranging the assassination of his chief he was leading a dozen heavily bribed warriors through the dark corridors beneath the temple to slay Tarzan in the lion pit.Night had fallen.A single torch guided the footsteps of the murderers as they crept stealthily upon their evil way, for they knew that they were doing the thing that their chief did not want done and their guilty consciences warned them to stealth.
In the dark of his cell the ape-man worked at his seemingly endless chipping and scraping.His keen ears detected the coming of footsteps along the corridor without--footsteps that approached the larger door.Always before had they come to the smaller door--the footsteps of a single slave who brought his food.This time there were many more than one and their coming at this time of night carried a sinister suggestion.Tarzan continued to work at his scraping and chipping.He heard them stop beyond the door.All was silence broken only by the scrape, scrape, scrape of the ape-man's tireless blade.
Those without heard it and listening sought to explain it.They whispered in low tones making their plans.Two would raise the door quickly and the others would rush in and hurl their clubs at the prisoner.They would take no chances, for the stories that had circulated in A-lur had been brought to Tu-lur--stories of the great strength and wonderful prowess of Tarzan-jad-guru that caused the sweat to stand upon the brows of the warriors, though it was cool in the damp corridor and they were twelve to one.
And then the high priest gave the signal--the door shot upward and ten warriors leaped into the chamber with poised clubs.Three of the heavy weapons flew across the room toward a darker shadow that lay in the shadow of the opposite wall, then the flare of the torch in the priest's hand lighted the interior and they saw that the thing at which they had flung their clubs was a pile of skins torn from the windows and that except for themselves the chamber was vacant.
One of them hastened to a window.All but a single bar was gone and to this was tied one end of a braided rope fashioned from strips cut from the leather window hangings.
To the ordinary dangers of Jane Clayton's existence was now added the menace of Obergatz' knowledge of her whereabouts.The lion and the panther had given her less cause for anxiety than did the return of the unscrupulous Hun, whom she had always distrusted and feared, and whose repulsiveness was now immeasurably augmented by his unkempt and filthy appearance, his strange and mirthless laughter, and his unnatural demeanor.She feared him now with a new fear as though he had suddenly become the personification of some nameless horror.The wholesome, outdoor life that she had been leading had strengthened and rebuilt her nervous system yet it seemed to her as she thought of him that if this man should ever touch her she should scream, and, possibly, even faint.Again and again during the day following their unexpected meeting the woman reproached herself for not having killed him as she would ja or jato or any other predatory beast that menaced her existence or her safety.There was no attempt at self-justification for these sinister reflections--they needed no justification.The standards by which the acts of such as you or I may be judged could not apply to hers.We have recourse to the protection of friends and relatives and the civil soldiery that upholds the majesty of the law and which may be invoked to protect the righteous weak against the unrighteous strong; but Jane Clayton comprised within herself not only the righteous weak but all the various agencies for the protection of the weak.To her, then, Lieutenant Erich Obergatz presented no different problem than did ja, the lion, other than that she considered the former the more dangerous animal.And so she determined that should he ignore her warning there would be no temporizing upon the occasion of their next meeting--the same swift spear that would meet ja's advances would meet his.
That night her snug little nest perched high in the great tree seemed less the sanctuary that it had before.What might resist the sanguinary intentions of a prowling panther would prove no great barrier to man, and influenced by this thought she slept less well than before.The slightest noise that broke the monotonous hum of the nocturnal jungle startled her into alert wakefulness to lie with straining ears in an attempt to classify the origin of the disturbance, and once she was awakened thus by a sound that seemed to come from something moving in her own tree.She listened intently--scarce breathing.Yes, there it was again.A scuffing of something soft against the hard bark of the tree.The woman reached out in the darkness and grasped her spear.Now she felt a slight sagging of one of the limbs that supported her shelter as though the thing, whatever it was, was slowly raising its weight to the branch.It came nearer.Now she thought that she could detect its breathing.It was at the door.
She could hear it fumbling with the frail barrier.What could it be? It made no sound by which she might identify it.She raised herself upon her hands and knees and crept stealthily the little distance to the doorway, her spear clutched tightly in her hand.