Tarzan and the Ant Men

In the filth of a dark hut, in the village of Obebe the cannibal, upon the banks of the Ugogo, Esteban Miranda squatted upon his haunches and gnawed upon the remnants of a half-cooked fish. About his neck was an iron slave collar from which a few feet of rusty chain ran to a stout post set deep in the ground near the low entranceway that let upon the village street not far from the hut of Obebe himself.

For a year Esteban Miranda had been chained thus, like a dog, and like a dog he sometimes crawled through the low doorway of his kennel and basked in the sun outside. Two diversions had he; and only two. One was the persistent idea that he was Tarzan of the Apes, whom he had impersonated for so long and with such growing success that, like the good actor he was, he had come not only to act the part, but to live it⁠—to be it. He was, as far as he was concerned, Tarzan of the Apes⁠—there was no other⁠—and he was Tarzan of the Apes to Obebe, too; but the village witch doctor still insisted that he was the river devil and as such, one to propitiate rather than to anger.

It had been this difference of opinion between the chief and the witch doctor that had kept Esteban Miranda from the flesh pots of the village, for Obebe had wanted to eat him, thinking him his old enemy the ape-man;

“I have been in the village of the chief Obebe for a year,” he said haltingly, in the laboriously acquired language of his captors, “but never before did I guess that its walls held one so beautiful as you. What is your name?”

Uhha was pleased. She smiled broadly. “I am Uhha,” she told him. “My father is Khamis the witch doctor.”

It was Esteban who was pleased now. Fate, after rebuffing him for long, was at last kind. She had sent to him one who, with cultivation, might prove a flower of hope indeed.

“Why have you never come to see me before?” asked Esteban.

“I was afraid,” replied Uhha simply.

“Why?”

“I was afraid⁠—” she hesitated.

“Afraid that I was the river devil and would harm you?” demanded the Spaniard, smiling.

“Yes,” she said.

“Listen!” whispered Esteban; “but tell no one. I am the river devil, but I shall not harm you.”

“If you are the river devil why then do you remain chained to a stake?” inquired Uhha. “Why do you not change yourself to something else and return to the river?”

“You wonder about that, do you?” asked Miranda, sparring for time that he might concoct a plausible answer.

“It is not only Uhha who wonders,” said the girl. “Many others have asked the same question of late. Obebe asked it first and there was none to explain.

Along a forest trail slouched a mighty creature, manlike in its physical attributes, yet vaguely inhuman; a great brute that walked erect upon two feet and carried a club in one horny, calloused hand. Its long hair fell, unkempt, about its shoulders, and there was hair upon its chest and a little upon its arms and legs, though no more than is found upon many males of civilized races. A strip of hide about its waist supported the ends of a narrow G-string as well as numerous rawhide strands to the lower ends of which were fastened round stones from one to two inches in diameter. Close to each stone were attached several small feathers, for the most part of brilliant hues. The strands supporting the stones being fastened to the belt at intervals of one to two inches and the strands themselves being about eighteen inches long the whole formed a skeleton skirt, fringed with round stones and feathers, that fell almost to the creature’s knees. Its large feet were bare and its white skin tanned to a light brown by exposure to the elements. The illusion of great size was suggested more by the massiveness of the shoulders and the development of the muscles of the back and arms than by height, though the creature measured close to six feet. Its face was massive, with a broad nose and a wide, full-lipped mouth, the eyes, of normal size, being set beneath heavy, beetling brows, topped by a wide, low forehead.

As he drew nearer he realized that there were many voices and much commotion and then he came upon a large plain that stretched away to distant hills, and in the foreground, not a hundred yards from him, he looked upon a sight that might well have caused him to doubt the veracity of his own eyes. The only familiar figure was a giant Alalus woman. Surrounding her was a horde of diminutive men⁠—tiny white warriors⁠—mounted upon what appeared to be a form of the Royal Antelope of the West Coast. Armed with lances and swords they repeatedly charged at the huge legs of the Alalus, who, backing slowly toward the forest, kicked viciously at her assailants and struck at them with her heavy bludgeon.

It quickly became evident to Tarzan that they were attempting to hamstring her and had they been successful they might easily have slain her then; but though there must have been fully a hundred of them their chances of success appeared small, since, with a single kick of her mighty foot the woman could lay low a dozen or more of her assailants at a time. Already fully half the force was hors de combat, their bodies with those of many of their mounts being scattered out onto the plain marking the trail of the combat up to the time that Tarzan had come upon the scene.

The courage of the survivors, however, filled Tarzan with admiration as he watched them hurl themselves upon almost certain death in their stubborn efforts to bring down the female, and

“But you are not ill-favored⁠—your face would surely attract attention anywhere,” Tarzan reminded her.

For just an instant she turned her back upon him, putting her hands to her face and to her hair, and then she faced him again and the ape-man saw before him a hideous and wrinkled hag upon whose crooked features no man would look a second time.

“God!” ejaculated Tarzan.

Slowly the girl’s face relaxed, assuming its normal lines of beauty, and with quick, deft touches she arranged her disheveled hair. An expression that was almost a smile haunted her lips.

“My mother taught me this,” she said, “so that when they came and looked upon me they would not want me.”

“But would it not be better to be mated with one of them and live a life of comfort above ground than to eke out a terrible existence below ground?” he demanded. “The warriors of Veltopismakus are, doubtless, but little different from those of your own country.”

She shook her head. “It cannot be, for me,” she said. “My father is of far Mandalamakus. My mother was stolen from him but a couple of moons before I was born in this horrid chamber, far from the air and sunlight that my mother never tired of telling me about.

“And your mother?” asked Tarzan. “Is she here?”

The girl shook her head sadly. “They came for her over twenty moons since and took her away. I do not know what became of her.”