'Here conies the under priest, My Lord,' interrupted Cranmer.
'He is alone,' exclaimed God. 'He has not brought the girl.'
An old gorilla lumbered up to the two. He appeared excited.
'Where is the girl?' demanded God.
'She was not there, My Lord. She is gone, and the man too.'
'Gone! But that is impossible.'
'The room is empty.'
'And the doors! Had they been unlocked—either of them?'
'No, My Lord; they were both locked,' replied the under priest.
The gorilla god went suddenly silent. For a few moments he remained in thought; then he spoke in very low tones to Ms two companions.
Tarzan and the girl watched them from their place of concealment in the tower. The ape-man was restless. He wished that they would go away so that he could search for some avenue of escape from the castle. Alone, he might have faced them and relied on his strength and agility to win his freedom; but he could not hope to make good the escape of the girl and himself both in the face of their ignorance of a way out of the castle and the numbers which he was sure the gorilla god could call to his assistance
He saw the priest turn and hurry away. The other two walked a short distance from the tower, turned so that they faced it, leaned against the parapet, and continued their conversation: though now Tarzan could no longer overhear their exact words. The position of the two was such that the fugitives could not have left the tower without being seen by them.
The ape-man became apprehensive. The abnormal sensibility of the hunted beast warned him of impending danger; but he did not know where to look for it, nor in what form to expect it.
Presently he saw a bull gorilla roll within the range of his vision. The beast carried a poke. Behind him came an other similarly armed, and another and another and another until twenty of the great anthropoids were gathered on the castle roof.
They clustered about Cranmer and the gorilla god for a minute or two. The latter was talking to them. Tarzan could recognize the tones if not the words. Then the twenty approached the tower and grouped themselves in a semicircle before the low aperture leading into it.
Both Rhonda Terry and the lord of the jungle were assured that their hiding place was guessed if not known, yet they could not be certain. They would wait. That was all that they could do. However, it was an easy place to defend; and they might remain there awaiting some happy circumstance that would give them a better chance of escape than was presented to them at the moment.
The gorillas on the roof seemed only to be waiting. They did not appear to be contemplating an investigation of the interior of the tower. Perhaps, thought Tarzan, they were there for some other purpose than that which he had imagined. They might have been gathered in preparation for the coming of the king to his death in the morning.
By the parapet stood the gorilla god with the bull called Cranmer. The weird chuckle of the former was the only sound that broke the silence of the night. The ape-man wondered why the thing was chuckling.
A sudden upward draft from the shaft below them brought a puff of acrid smoke and a wave of heat. Tarzan felt the girl clutch his arm. Now he knew why the gorillas waited so patiently before the entrance to the tower. Now he knew why the gorilla god chuckled,
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Holocaust
Tarzan considered the problem that confronted him. It was evident that they could not long endure the stifling, blinding smoke. To make a sudden attack upon the gorillas would be but to jeopardize the life of his companion without offering her any hope of escape. Had he been alone it would have been different, but now there seemed no alternative to coming quietly out and giving themselves up.
On the other hand he knew that the gorilla god purposed death for him and either death or a worse fate for the girl. Whatever course he pursued, then, would evidently prove disastrous. The ape-man, seldom hesitant in reaching a decision, was frankly in a quandary.
Briefly he explained his doubts to Rhonda. 'I think I'll rush them,' he concluded. 'At least there will be some satisfaction in that.'
'They'd only kill you, Stanley,' she said. 'Oh, I wish you hadn't come. It was brave, but you have just thrown away your life. I can never—' The stifling smoke terminated her words in a fit of coughing.
'We can't stand this any longer,' he muttered. 'I'm going out. Follow me, and watch for a chance to escape.'
Stooping low, the ape-man sprang from the tower. A savage growl rumbled from his deep chest. The girl, following directly behind him, heard and was horrified. She thought only of the man with her as Stanley Obroski, the coward; and she believed that his mind must have been deranged by the hopelessness of his situation.
The gorillas leaped forward to seize him. 'Capture him!' cried the gorilla god. 'But do not kill him.'
Tarzan leaped at the nearest beast. His knife flashed in the light of the torches that some of the creatures carried. It sank deep into the chest of the victim that chance had placed in the path of the lord of the jungle. The brute screamed, clutched at the ape-man only to collapse at his feet.
But others closed upon the bronzed giant; then another and another tasted the steel of that swift blade. The gorilla god was beside himself with rage and excitement. 'Seize him! Seize him!' he screamed. 'Do not kill him! He is mine!'
During the excitement Rhonda sought an avenue of escape. She slunk behind the battling beasts to search for a stairway leading from the roof. Every eye, every thought was on the battle being waged before the tower. No one noticed the girl. She came to a doorway in another tower. Before her she saw the top of a flight of stairs. They were illuminated by the flickering light of torches.
At a run she started down. Below her, smoke was billowing, shutting off her view. It was evident, she guessed, that the smoke from the fire that had been lighted to dislodge
Obroski and herself from the tower had drifted to other parts of the castle.
At a turn in the stairs she ran directly into the arms of a gorilla leaping upward. Behind him were two others. The first seized her and whirled her back to the others. 'She must be trying to escape,' said her captor. 'Bring her along to God.' Then he leaped swiftly on up the stairs.
Three gorillas had fallen before Tarzan's knife, but the fourth seized his wrist and struck at him with the haft of his pike. The ape-man closed; his teeth sought the jugular of his antagonist and fastened there. The brute screamed and sought to tear himself free; then one of his companions stepped in and struck Tarzan heavily across one temple with the butt of a battle axe.
The lord of the jungle sank senseless to the roof amid the victorious shouts of his foemen. The gorilla god pushed forward.
'Do not kill him!' he screamed again. 'He is already dead, My Lord,' said one of the gorillas. The god trembled with disappointment and rage, and was about to speak when the gorilla that had recaptured Rhonda forced its way through the crowd.
'The castle is afire, My Lord!' he cried. 'The smudge that was built to smoke out the prisoners spread to the dry grass on the floor of their cell, and now the beams and floor above are all ablaze—the first floor of the castle is a roaring furnace. If you are not to be trapped, My Lord, you must escape at once.'
Those who heard him looked quickly about. A dense volume of smoke was pouring from the tower from which Tarzan and Rhonda had come; smoke was coming from other towers nearby; it was rising from beyond the parapet, evidently coming from the windows of the lower floors.
There was instant uneasiness. The gorillas rushed uncertainly this way and that. All beasts are terrified by fire, and the instincts of beasts dominated these aberrant creatures. Presently, realizing that they might be cut off from all escape, panic seized them.
