Burroughs, Edgar Rice Tarzan 01 Tarzan of the Apes

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With difficulty he wriggled from beneath the great weight, and as he stood erect and gazed down upon
the trophy of his skill, a mighty wave of exultation swept over him.
With swelling breast, he placed a foot upon the body of his powerful enemy, and throwing back his fine
young head, roared out the awful challenge of the victorious bull ape.
The forest echoed to the savage and triumphant paean. Birds fell still, and the larger animals and beasts
of prey slunk stealthily away, for few there were of all the jungle who sought for trouble with the great
anthropoids.
And in London another Lord Greystoke was speaking tohis kind in the House of Lords, but none
trembled at the sound of his soft voice.
Sabor proved unsavory eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious
disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to
sleep again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for this as for any other purpose
that he had desired to destroy Sabor.
Deftly he removed the great pelt, for he had practiced often on smaller animals. When the task was
finished he carried his trophy to the fork of a high tree, and there, curling himself securely in a crotch, he
fell into deep and dreamless slumber.
What with loss of sleep, arduous exercise, and a full belly, Tarzan of the Apes slept the sun around,
awakening about noon of the following day. He straightway repaired to the carcass of Sabor, but was
angered to find the bones picked clean by other hungry denizens of the jungle.
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Half an hour's leisurely progress through the forest brought to sight a young deer, and before the little
creature knew that an enemy was near a tiny arrow had lodged in its neck.
So quickly the virus worked that at the end of a dozen leaps the deer plunged headlong into the
undergrowth, dead. Again did Tarzan feast well, but this time he did not sleep.
Instead, he hastened on toward the point where he had left the tribe, and when he had found them
proudly exhibited the skin of Sabor, the lioness.
Look! he cried, Apes of Kerchak. See what Tarzan, the mighty killer, has done. Who else among
you has ever killed one of Numa's people? Tarzan is mightiest amongst you for Tarzan is no ape. Tarzan
is-- But here he stopped, for in the language of the anthropoids there was no word for man, and Tarzan
could only write the word in English; he could not pronounce it.
The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of his wondrous prowess, and to listen to his
words.
Only Kerchak hung back, nursing his hatred and his rage.
Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of the anthropoid. With a frightful roar the great
beast sprang among the assemblage.
Biting, and striking with his huge hands, he killed and maimed a dozen ere the balance could escape to
the upper terraces of the forest.
Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of his fury, Kerchak looked about for the object of his greatest
hatred, and there, upon a near-by limb, he saw him sitting.
Come down, Tarzan, great killer, cried Kerchak. Come down and feel the fangs of a greater! Do
mighty fighters fly to the trees at the first approach of danger? And then Kerchak emitted the volleying
challenge of his kind.
Quietly Tarzan dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watched from their lofty perches as
Kerchak, still roaring, charged the relatively puny figure.
Nearly seven feet stood Kerchak on his short legs. His enormous shoulders were bunched and rounded
with huge muscles. The back of his short neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond
the base of his skull, so that his head seemed like a small ball protruding from a huge mountain of flesh.
His back-drawn, snarling lips exposed his great fighting fangs, and his little, wicked, blood-shot eyes
gleamed in horrid reflection of his madness.
Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal, but his six feet of height and his great rolling
sinews seemed pitifully inadequate to the ordeal which awaited them.
His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had dropped them while showing Sabor's hide to
his fellow apes, so that he confronted Kerchak now with only his hunting knife and his superior intellect to
offset the ferocious strength of his enemy.
As his antagonist came roaring toward him, Lord Greystoke tore his long knife from its sheath, and with
an answering challenge as horrid and bloodcurdling as that of the beast he faced, rushed swiftly to meet
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