Tarzan the Untamed

Tarzan the Untamed

By Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. I: Murder and Pillage
4. II: The Lion’s Cave
5. III: In the German Lines
6. IV: When the Lion Fed
7. V: The Golden Locket
8. VI: Vengeance and Mercy
9. VII: When Blood Told
10. VIII: Tarzan and the Great Apes
11. IX: Dropped from the Sky
12. X: In the Hands of Savages
13. XI: Finding the Airplane
14. XII: The Black Flier
15. XIII: Usanga’s Reward
16. XIV: The Black Lion
17. XV: Mysterious Footprints
18. XVI: The Night Attack
19. XVII: The Walled City
20. XVIII: Among the Maniacs
21. XIX: The Queen’s Story
22. XX: Came Tarzan
23. XXI: In the Alcove
24. XXII: Out of the Niche
25. XXIII: The Flight from Xuja
26. XXIV: The Tommies
27. Colophon
28. Uncopyright

Imprint

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I

Murder and Pillage

Hauptmann Fritz Schneider trudged wearily through the somber aisles of the dark forest. Sweat rolled down his bullet head and stood upon his heavy jowls and bull neck. His lieutenant marched beside him while Underlieutenant von Goss brought up the rear, following with a handful of askaris the tired and all but exhausted porters whom the black soldiers, following the example of their white officer, encouraged with the sharp points of bayonets and the metal-shod butts of rifles.

There were no porters within reach of Hauptmann Schneider so he vented his Prussian spleen upon the askaris nearest at hand, yet with greater circumspection since these men bore loaded rifles⁠—and the three white men were alone with them in the heart of Africa.

Ahead of the Hauptmann marched half his company, behind him the other half⁠—thus were the dangers of the savage jungle minimized for the German captain. At the forefront of the column staggered two naked savages fastened to each other by a neck chain. These were the native guides impressed into the service of Kultur and upon their poor, bruised bodies Kultur’s brand was revealed in divers cruel wounds and bruises.

Thus even in darkest Africa was the light of German civilization commencing to reflect itself upon the undeserving natives just as at the same period, the fall of 1914, it was shedding its glorious effulgence upon benighted Belgium.

It is true that the guides had led the party astray; but this is the way of most African guides. Nor did it matter that ignorance rather than evil intent had been the cause of their failure. It was enough for Hauptmann Fritz Schneider to know that he was lost in the African wilderness and that he had at hand human beings less powerful than he who could be made to suffer by torture. That he did not kill them outright was partially due to a faint hope that they might eventually prove the means of extricating him from his difficulties and partially that so long as they lived they might still be made to suffer.

The poor creatures, hoping that chance might lead them at last upon the right trail, insisted that they knew the way and so led on through a dismal forest along a winding game trail trodden deep by the feet of countless generations of the savage denizens of the jungle.

Here Tantor, the elephant, took his long way from dust wallow to water. Here Buto, the rhinoceros, blundered blindly in his solitary majesty, while by night the great cats paced silently upon their padded feet beneath the dense canopy of overreaching trees toward the broad plain beyond, where they found their best hunting.

It was at the edge of this plain which came suddenly and unexpectedly before the eyes of the guides that their sad hearts beat with renewed hope. Here the Hauptmann drew a deep sigh of relief, for after days of hopeless wandering through almost impenetrable jungle the broad vista of waving grasses dotted here and there with open parklike woods and in the far distance the winding line of green shrubbery that denoted a river appeared to the European a veritable heaven.

The Hun smiled in his relief, passed a cheery word with his lieutenant, and then scanned the broad plain with his field glasses. Back and forth they swept across the rolling land until at last they came to rest upon a point near the center of the landscape and close to the green-fringed contours of the river.

“We are in luck,” said Schneider to his companions. “Do you see it?”

The lieutenant, who was also gazing through his own glasses, finally brought them to rest upon the same spot that had held the attention of his superior.

“Yes,” he said, “an English farm. It must be Greystoke’s, for there is none other in this part of British East Africa. God is