Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (best way to read an ebook TXT) 📕

three weeks upon the march. It would require three more to return to the treasure, and then, with that enormous weight which required, you say, four sailors to carry, it would be months before we had again reached this spot.”

“It must be done, my friend,” insisted Tarzan. “You may go on toward civilization, and I will return for the treasure. I can go very much faster alone.”

“I have a better plan, Tarzan,” exclaimed D’Arnot. “We shall go on together to the nearest settlement, and there we will charter a boat and sail back down the coast for the treasure and so transport it easily.

“That will be safer and quicker and also not require us to be separated. What do you think of that plan?”

“Very well,” said Tarzan. “The treasure will be there whenever we go for it; and while I could fetch it now, and catch up with you in a moon or two, I shall feel safer for you to know that you are not alone on the trail. When I see how helpless you are, D’Arnot, I often wonder how the human race has escaped annihilation all these ages which you tell me about. Why, Sabor, single handed, could exterminate a thousand of you.”

D’Arnot laughed.

“You will think more highly of your genus when you have seen its armies and navies, its great cities, and its mighty engineering works. Then you will realize that it is mind, and not muscle, that makes the human animal greater than the mighty beasts of your jungle.

“Alone and unarmed, a single man is no match for any of the larger beasts; but if ten men were together, they would combine their wits and their muscles against their savage enemies, while the beasts, being unable to reason, would never think of combining against the men.

“Otherwise, Tarzan of the Apes, how long would you have lasted in the savage wilderness?”

“You are right, D’Arnot,” replied Tarzan, “for if Kerchak had come to Tublat’s aid that night at the Dum-Dum, there would have been an end of me. But Kerchak could never think far enough ahead to take advantage of any such opportunity. Even Kala, my mother, could never plan ahead. She simply ate what she needed when she needed it, and if the supply was very scarce, even though she found plenty for several meals, she would never gather any ahead.

“I remember that she used to think it very silly of me to burden myself with extra food upon the march, though she was quite glad to eat it with me, if the way chanced to be barren of sustenance.”

“Then you knew your mother, Tarzan?” asked D’Arnot, in surprise.

“Yes. She was a great, fine ape, larger than I, and weighing twice as much.”

“And your father?” asked D’Arnot.

“I did not know him. Kala told me he was a white ape, and hairless like myself. I know now that he must have been a white man.”

D’Arnot looked long and earnestly at his companion.

“Tarzan,” he said at length, “it is impossible that the ape, Kala, was your mother. If such a thing can be, which I doubt, you would have inherited some of the characteristics of the ape, but you have not⁠—you are pure man, and, I should say, the offspring of highly bred and intelligent parents. Have you not the slightest clue to your past?”

“Not the slightest,” replied Tarzan.

“No writings in the cabin that might have told something of the lives of its original inmates?”

“I have read everything that was in the cabin with the exception of one book which I know now to be written in a language other than English. Possibly you can read it.”

Tarzan fished the little black diary from the bottom of his quiver, and handed it to his companion.

D’Arnot glanced at the title page.

“It is the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, an English nobleman, and it is written in French,” he said.

Then he proceeded to read the diary that had been written over twenty years before, and which recorded the details of the story which we already know⁠—the story of adventure, hardships and sorrow of John Clayton and his wife Alice, from the day they left England until an hour before he was struck down by Kerchak.

D’Arnot read aloud. At times his voice broke, and he was forced to stop reading for the pitiful hopelessness that spoke between the lines.

Occasionally he glanced at Tarzan; but the ape-man sat upon his haunches, like a carven image, his eyes fixed upon the ground.

Only when the little babe was mentioned did the tone of the diary alter from the habitual note of despair which had crept into it by degrees after the first two months upon the shore.

Then the passages were tinged with a subdued happiness that was even sadder than the rest.

One entry showed an almost hopeful spirit.

Today our little boy is six months old. He is sitting in Alice’s lap beside the table where I am writing⁠—a happy, healthy, perfect child.
Somehow, even against all reason, I seem to see him a grown man, taking his father’s place in the world⁠—the second John Clayton⁠—and bringing added honors to the house of Greystoke.
There⁠—as though to give my prophecy the weight of his endorsement⁠—he has grabbed my pen in his chubby fists and with his inkbegrimed little fingers has placed the seal of his tiny finger prints upon the page.

And there, on the margin of the page, were the partially blurred imprints of four wee fingers and the outer half of the thumb.

When D’Arnot had finished the diary the two men sat in silence for some minutes.

“Well! Tarzan of the Apes, what think you?” asked D’Arnot. “Does not this little book clear up the mystery of your parentage?

“Why man, you are Lord Greystoke.”

“The book speaks of but one child,” he replied. “Its little skeleton lay in the crib, where it died crying for nourishment, from the first time I entered the cabin until Professor Porter’s party buried it, with its father and mother, beside the