For more than a year Jane and Tarzan lived happily with
Chita in their treetop home. Jane learned to know and to love the animals
and to speak their language. She fashioned dresses of soft skin to match
Tarzan's leopard skin clothing. She taught Tarzan to speak a few words
of her language. Together they swam in the shaded streams, raced along
the trails and swayed in the branches of the trees.
Then, one day when they were returning home from a hunting trip,
they heard the strange sound of gunfire and the growl of battling gorillas.
Quickly Tarzan swung through the trees until he looked down upon a long
safari of natives led by two white men, fighting an army of maddened gorillas.
Tarzan's cry rang above the noise of the battle. The guns were silenced
and the gorillas stood motionless. Tarzan dropped rapidly to the ground.
Sternly he ordered the animals back into the jungle and walked forward
to meet the white men.
"Tarzan," cried one, rushing toward him, "Don't you remember me.
I'm Holt. Harry Holt."
"Holt," Tarzan repeated, smiling, "Holt."
"And this is Martin, my friend," Holt explained.
"Martin-my friend," Tarzan repeated slowly. "Holt. Tarzan. Martin-my
friend," he continued, pointing to each one in turn.
The three men looked upward as the leaves parted and Jane appeared
on a low branch above their heads. Tarzan held his arms and the girl slipped
down into them.
"Jane," Holt cried.
"Harry," she exclaimed in glad surprise. "Is it really you?"
Holt introduced "Martin-my friend" and the three chatted gaily as
they walked to the camp of the safari with Tarzan stepping silently at
Jane's side.
"Aren't you homesick, Jane?" Holt asked when they were sitting before
the fire.
"Not a bit," the girl answered proudly, "I love Tarzan and I'm happy.
I never want to go back to the other world. I guess that I belong to Tarzan
and his jungle."
Then Holt told her that he had come back with Martin and the huge
safari to find again the Burial Ground of the Elephants and to carry away
the ivory.
"Tarzan is our only hope of finding the way," he said. "You will
persuade him to take us there, won't you Jane?"
Jane promised. As they talked, Tarzan arose and quietly slipped away
into the jungle.
"He has gone to build a house for us in the trees," Jane smiled.
"We always have our little sky mansions wherever we go."
"And we have a brought a surprise for you Jane," Holt said. He pointed
to a trunk standing beside his tent. Slowly Jane opened it and gasped at
what she saw. There were lovely dresses, perfumes, powders, all the things
which she had not seen for so long a time.
Holt persuaded her to go into the tent and put on one of the dresses.
When she came back, wearing a trailing evening gown, Holt turned on a portable
phonograph and Jane danced with Martin to its melodies.
"Doesn't this make you want to go back to England?" Martin asked.
"No," Jane answered, "I couldn't be happy away from Tarzan."
When Tarzan appeared noiselessly from the darkness, he stared with
surprised fright at the phonograph. Suddenly he sprang upon it and slashed
it with his knife. Jane, smiling, stopped him and explained to him that
it was not a strange animal. Then he noticed her changed clothes and smelled
the sweet odor of the perfume. With a smile he swung her up through the
branches to the little house he had built high above the camp of the safari.
The next morning they started on their long, weary journey to the
secret tomb of the elephants. Above the safari, in the treetops, travelled
Tarzan and Jane to show the men the way. When Jane's lovely, trailing dress
caught in the branches, she suddenly threw it away and put on her skin
clothing. Tarzan smiled happily.
When they made camp that night the natives cut stout poles and tested
them for strength under Martin's direction. Tarzan sat by the fire and
watched with eyes which did not understand until Jane explained that the
poles would carry the tusks of the dead elephants away from the Burial
Ground.
"No," Tarzan said, "No!" He broke one of the poles in his steel-strong
fingers and walked away from the camp.
"The elephants are Tarzan's friends," Jane explained to Holt and
Martin, "I hadn't thought of that before. I know he will not like it if
you disturb their resting place."
"But he must go with us, Jane," Holt pleaded. "We can't find the
place without him. Please ask him to do it."
Tarzan refused to go on to the Burial Ground. Holt understood and
was willing to turn back. But Martin insisted on pushing forward without
Tarzan. As they talked, Saidi, their native gun-bearer, ran into camp to
tell them that the elephants were grazing near by. Martin seized is gun
and ordered the natives to follow him. He remembered Holt's story of the
dying elephant which had led them to the Burial Ground.
   
Creeping through the bushes, followed by Holt, Martin came
upon a peaceful scene, two grown elephants and a baby feeding beside a
water hole. Before Holt could stop him, Martin fired, wounding one of the
beasts. The injured elephant staggered into the jungle.
"Hurry, Saidi," Martin ordered. "Get the boys. We'll follow the trail.
You brought me out here, Holt, with the promise of wealth in ivory. Are
you going with me or will you stay with Tarzan?"
"I'll go with you," Holt answered shortly.
As the two men started on the trail, Tarzan dropped from the trees
in their path. Martin raised his gun. But Tarzan quickly grabbed it from
his hand and broke it into two pieces. Then he seized Martin and held him
above his head, poised to hurl him to the ground.
"Stop, Tarzan, please," Jane cried, running to his side.
Seeing her tears, Tarzan dropped the man to the ground. Martin scrambled
to his feet and led the safari along the trail of the wounded elephant.
Holt lingered for a minute, then followed Martin. The safari disappeared.
    
For many days Holt, Martin and the natives followed the
wounded elephant until they stood, at last, in the hidden tomb. Their eyes
glittered greedily at the sight of the piles of precious ivory. Martin
ordered the weary natives to load the tusks on poles so they could be carried
away.
As they finished tying the last tusk to the heavily-laden poles,
the trumpeting of the elephants shattered the torch-lighted silence of
the tomb. Tarzan's cry rang above the angry roars of the animals. A horde
of the huge beasts surged through the entrance. Tarzan leaped from back
to back, urging them onward.
Frantically the safari dashed for the narrow passage-way at the opposite
end of the tomb. Again Tarzan's cry echoed against the rocky walls. Through
the other entrance a second army of elephants thundered into the little
valley. The trapped, terror-stricken men stood still. Martin pointed his
gun toward Tarzan but Holt struck it from his hand.
    
Then above the clamor came the sound of Jane's voice, calling to Tarzan.
He commanded the elephants to be quiet. Through the path which they opened
for her, Jane rode into the tomb on the back of an elephant. She held little
Chita in her arms. Tarzan followed her as she jumped from the elephant
to the ground and ran to Holt and Martin.
"Don't you understand?" she asked them. "The elephants are Tarzan's
friends. He loves them and they love him. He will not let you disturb their
burial ground."
"Will Tarzan lead us safely out of here if we do not touch the ivory?"
Martin asked, craftily pretending friendliness.
"Of course," Jane answered. Then she turned to Tarzan, "They understand
now, Tarzan. They will go back. They don't want the ivory."
Tarzan smiled. He then sounded his call. This time it had a note
of command in its gentleness. The elephants turned slowly and left the
Burial Ground.
Martin suggested that they remain there for the night, so the safari
made its camp in the quiet of the little valley. Tarzan, Jane and Chita
slept in the soft moss on a ledge overlooking the silent tomb.
With the first rosy gray of the dawn, Tarzan slipped from his mossy
bed, aroused the sleeping Saidi and told him in gestures that he would
hunt meat for breakfast. As Tarzan disappeared through the entrance, Martin
walked out of his tent. Saidi told him that Tarzan had gone to the jungle
in search of fresh meat.
"I'd like to watch him hunt," Martin said, "But I won't disturb him.
See, Saidi, I'm not even taking a gun." But as soon as he was out of Saidi's
sight, Martin tightened his belt around the revolver which he had hidden
beneath his shirt.
At the edge of the crocodile-filled stream, the two men came face
to face. Suddenly a crocodile slipped from the river, its angry head turned
toward Martin.
"Martin-my friend," Tarzan shouted in warning. At the sound of his
voice, the crocodile slid back into the water. Tarzan plunged into the
river. With a quick slash of his knife he wounded the animal and came hastily
back to shore.
As he stepped from the water and smiled, Martin raised his revolver
and fired straight at Tarzan's body. With a look of surprised bewilderment,
Tarzan dropped his knife and fell backward into the river. Again and again
Martin fired at the spot where Tarzan had sunk beneath the water. Then
he flung his revolver into the middle of the stream.
Martin returned breathlessly to camp to tell of Tarzan's tragic death
in a fight with a crocodile. "If only I had had a gun with me," Martin
murmured sadly.
The sorrowing natives searched the underbrush along the stream and
came back to camp, bringing with them only Tarzan's knife, mute evidence
of the owner's death.
Sadly and silently, bearing its load of ivory, the safari started
back toward civilization. Since Tarzan was gone, Jane did not care about
the ivory. She walked slowly, leaning against Holt. Martin mercilessly
whipped the overloaded natives forward.
But little Chita did not go with the safari. Jane, in her grief,
did not notice the little small monkey's absence from her side. Along the
riverbank ran the frantic Chita, calling to Tarzan. Suddenly her bright
eyes saw a hand lying among the grasses. She parted the leaves. There lay
Tarzan, unconscious and bleeding from a wound in his shoulder. Swiftly
Chita ran through the trees, screaming for the apes. She led them to Tarzan.
In their strong arms they lifted him and carried him to his treetop home.
Then little Chita returned to the safari and tried to tell Jane what
had happened. But the heartsick girl was too numb with grief to notice
the monkey's chatter.
    
As the weary, footsore safari struggled along the rough
trail, it was suddenly stopped by a rain of arrows from the trees. The
Lion Men, a savage, cruel tribe of jungle warriors, leered down upon them.
The safari dropped the ivory and huddled together in fear. From the trees
the savages roared their summons to the lions in the jungle. Slowly the
underbrush around the terrified safari was filled with the tawny beasts.
Once more Chita crept away from Jane. Unseen, she fled into the jungle.
Straight to Tarzan's house she hurried. He listened to her excited chatter,
called
together his army of apes and raced through the trees behind Chita.
  
With the coming of darkness the Lion
Men and the lions charged the safari and the fighting was furious and desperate.
Then, ringing above the clamor of the battle, came the cry
of Tarzan as he reached the fray with his army of apes. The apes fell upon
the Lion Men in the trees in a desperate hand-to-hand fight.
  
Again Tarzan's call echoed through the night -- a weird
call with a strange compelling note. It was answered by the trumpeting
of his elephant friends.
Jane forgot all danger and rushed happily toward Tarzan whom she
had thought was dead.
A Lion Man hurled a spear at her running figure. But Hold saw it
and flung himself directly in its path.
As Holt fell lifeless to the ground, the spear in his heart, Tarzan
leaped from the tree and seized Jane in his arms.
The Lion Men fled before the mad onrush of the apes. The lions, hearing
the battle cry of the elephants as they rushed in a great herd to help
Tarzan, gave up the fight and slunk away into the jungle.
Martin, in desperate fear of Tarzan, raised his gun and pointed it
toward the tall figure in the leopard skin. As Martin pulled the trigger,
an elephant seized him in his trunk and hurled him with bone-crushing force
against a tree. Martin dropped to the ground and lay motionless. The bullet
sped on until it buried itself harmlessly in a branch.
At Tarzan's words of quiet command, the elephants picked up the ivory
and lumbered off into the forest, carrying it back to its resting place.
Then, hand in hand and smiling into each other's eyes, Tarzan and
Jane with brave little Chita, swung through the branches to their treetop
home where they would find safety and happiness.
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