Tarzan the Untamed | Page 7

the rose garden, he stood among the Hun trampled blooms
and bushes above the grave of his dead-with bowed head he stood there
in a last mute farewell. As the sun sank slowly behind the towering
forests of the west, he turned slowly away upon the still-distinct trail of
Hauptmann Fritz Schneider and his blood-stained company.
His was the suffering of the dumb brute--mute; but though voiceless no
less poignant. At first his vast sorrow numbed his other faculties of
thought--his brain was overwhelmed by the calamity to such an extent
that it reacted to but a single objective suggestion: She is dead! She is
dead! She is dead! Again and again this phrase beat monotonously
upon his brain--a dull, throbbing pain, yet mechanically his feet
followed the trail of her slayer while, subconsciously, his every sense
was upon the alert for the ever-present perils of the jungle.

Gradually the labor of his great grief brought forth another emotion so
real, so tangible, that it seemed a companion walking at his side. It was
Hate--and it brought to him a measure of solace and of comfort, for it
was a sublime hate that ennobled him as it has ennobled countless
thousands since-hatred for Germany and Germans. It centered about the
slayer of his mate, of course; but it included everything German,
animate or inanimate. As the thought took firm hold upon him he
paused and raising his face to Goro, the moon, cursed with upraised
hand the authors of the hideous crime that had been perpetrated in that
once peaceful bungalow behind him; and he cursed their progenitors,
their progeny, and all their kind the while he took silent oath to war
upon them relentlessly until death overtook him.
There followed almost immediately a feeling of content, for, where
before his future at best seemed but a void, now it was filled with
possibilities the contemplation of which brought him, if not happiness,
at least a surcease of absolute grief, for before him lay a great work that
would occupy his time.
Stripped not only of all the outward symbols of civilization, Tarzan had
also reverted morally and mentally to the status of the savage beast he
had been reared. Never had his civilization been more than a veneer put
on for the sake of her he loved because he thought it made her happier
to see him thus. In reality he had always held the outward evidences of
so-called culture in deep contempt. Civilization meant to Tarzan of the
Apes a curtailment of freedom in all its aspects--freedom of action,
freedom of thought, freedom of love, freedom of hate. Clothes he
abhorred--uncomfortable, hideous, confining things that reminded him
somehow of bonds securing him to the life he had seen the poor
creatures of London and Paris living. Clothes were the emblems of that
hypocrisy for which civilization stood--a pretense that the wearers were
ashamed of what the clothes covered, of the human form made in the
semblance of God. Tarzan knew how silly and pathetic the lower orders
of animals appeared in the clothing of civilization, for he had seen
several poor creatures thus appareled in various traveling shows in
Europe, and he knew, too, how silly and pathetic man appears in them
since the only men he had seen in the first twenty years of his life had

been, like himself, naked savages. The ape-man had a keen admiration
for a well-muscled, well-proportioned body, whether lion, or antelope,
or man, and it had ever been beyond him to understand how clothes
could be considered more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy skin, or
coat and trousers more graceful than the gentle curves of rounded
muscles playing beneath a flexible hide.
In civilization Tarzan had found greed and selfishness and cruelty far
beyond that which he had known in his familiar, savage jungle, and
though civilization had given him his mate and several friends whom
he loved and admired, he never had come to accept it as you and I who
have known little or nothing else; so it was with a sense of relief that he
now definitely abandoned it and all that it stood for, and went forth into
the jungle once again stripped to his loin cloth and weapons.
The hunting knife of his father hung at his left hip, his bow and his
quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders, while around his
chest over one shoulder and beneath the opposite arm was coiled the
long grass rope without which Tarzan would have felt quite as naked as
would you should you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway clad
only in a union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes carried in
one hand and again slung by a thong about his neck so