The ape-man's mind was untroubled by regret for the past, or aspiration for the future.He could lie at full length along a swaying branch, stretching his giant limbs, and luxuriating in the blessed peace of utter thoughtlessness, without an apprehension or a worry to sap his nervous energy and rob him of his peace of mind.Recalling only dimly any other existence, the ape-man was happy.Lord Greystoke had ceased to exist.
For several hours Tarzan lolled upon his swaying, leafy couch until once again hunger and thirst suggested an excursion.Stretching lazily he dropped to the ground and moved slowly toward the river.The game trail down which he walked had become by ages of use a deep, narrow trench, its walls topped on either side by impenetrable thicket and dense-growing trees closely interwoven with thick-stemmed creepers and lesser vines inextricably matted into two solid ramparts of vegetation.Tarzan had almost reached the point where the trail debouched upon the open river bottom when he saw a family of lions approaching along the path from the direction of the river.The ape-man counted seven--
a male and two lionesses, full grown, and four young lions as large and quite as formidable as their parents.Tarzan halted, growling, and the lions paused, the great male in the lead baring his fangs and rumbling forth a warning roar.In his hand the ape-man held his heavy spear; but he had no intention of pitting his puny weapon against seven lions; yet he stood there growling and roaring and the lions did likewise.It was purely an exhibition of jungle bluff.
Each was trying to frighten off the other.Neither wished to turn back and give way, nor did either at first desire to precipitate an encounter.The lions were fed sufficiently so as not to be goaded by pangs of hunger and as for Tarzan he seldom ate the meat of the carnivores; but a point of ethics was at stake and neither side wished to back down.So they stood there facing one another, making all sorts of hideous noises the while they hurled jungle invective back and forth.
How long this bloodless duel would have persisted it is difficult to say, though eventually Tarzan would have been forced to yield to superior numbers.
There came, however, an interruption which put an end to the deadlock and it came from Tarzan's rear.He and the lions had been making so much noise that neither could hear anything above their concerted bedlam, and so it was that Tarzan did not hear the great bulk bearing down upon him from behind until an instant before it was upon him, and then he turned to see Buto, the rhinoceros, his little, pig eyes blazing, charging madly toward him and already so close that escape seemed impossible; yet so perfectly were mind and muscles coordinated in this unspoiled, primitive man that almost simultaneously with the sense perception of the threatened danger he wheeled and hurled his spear at Buto's chest.It was a heavy spear shod with iron, and behind it were the giant muscles of the ape-man, while coming to meet it was the enormous weight of Buto and the momentum of his rapid rush.All that happened in the instant that Tarzan turned to meet the charge of the irascible rhinoceros might take long to tell, and yet would have taxed the swiftest lens to record.
As his spear left his hand the ape-man was looking down upon the mighty horn lowered to toss him, so close was Buto to him.The spear entered the rhinoceros' neck at its junction with the left shoulder and passed almost entirely through the beast's body, and at the instant that he launched it, Tarzan leaped straight into the air alighting upon Buto's back but escaping the mighty horn.
Then Buto espied the lions and bore madly down upon them while Tarzan of the Apes leaped nimbly into the tangled creepers at one side of the trail.The first lion met Buto's charge and was tossed high over the back of the maddened brute, torn and dying, and then the six remaining lions were upon the rhinoceros, rending and tearing the while they were being gored or trampled.From the safety of his perch Tarzan watched the royal battle with the keenest interest, for the more intelligent of the jungle folk are interested in such encounters.They are to them what the racetrack and the prize ring, the theater and the movies are to us.They see them often; but always they enjoy them for no two are precisely alike.
For a time it seemed to Tarzan that Buto, the rhinoceros, would prove victor in the gory battle.
Already had he accounted for four of the seven lions and badly wounded the three remaining when in a momentary lull in the encounter he sank limply to his knees and rolled over upon his side.Tarzan's spear had done its work.It was the man-made weapon which killed the great beast that might easily have survived the assault of seven mighty lions, for Tarzan's spear had pierced the great lungs, and Buto, with victory almost in sight, succumbed to internal hemorrhage.
Then Tarzan came down from his sanctuary and as the wounded lions, growling, dragged themselves away, the ape-man cut his spear from the body of Buto, hacked off a steak and vanished into the jungle.The episode was over.It had been all in the day's work--something which you and I might talk about for a lifetime Tarzan dismissed from his mind the moment that the scene passed from his sight.
