What was even more curious was that in some of the drawings, the mantises were in strange and extravagant postures. There was something about the postures that rang a distant bell, but Hunt couldn't quite place them.
Hunt wondered if he had discovered a prehistoric documentation of an afore unknown creature, or if the drawings represented exaggerations. Storytelling. Made-up monsters. Perhaps the drawings were symbolic. The insects could be locusts, they could portray a plague to crops, and the warriors with their spears were representative of mankind battling the horrid plague.
Plague to what?
Crops?
No. These prehistoric humans were hunters and gatherers, not farmers, and they had little time for silly symbolism. Leave that stuff to the professors who taught Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter by using symbolism charts in the backs of their teacher's editions.
Hunt proceeded into darkness, the torch flickering before him. He decided to advance only a few more feet and then return to the sanctuary of the brightly lit cavern behind him, but the drawings and paintings became more frequent, and he was entranced by them. This was an even greater archaeological find than he had first expected. It was phenomenal, in fact. Once he reported this to Hanson, the cave might even be named after him.
Wouldn't that be something? A prehistoric site named after him.
Hunt's Cavern.
Yeah. Hunt's Cavern. It had a ring to it. He liked it.
Following the cavern wall with his torch, trying to discern the content of the drawings, seeing more and more representations of the sticklike insects, Hunt continued to explore, and did not realize how long he had been walking until his torch began to sputter and smoke.
Pausing to light his spare torch, Hunt was amazed to find he was surrounded by darkness. The torch gave him immediate light, but when he turned to look behind him, extended the torch in that direction, he could no longer see the illuminated walls. He determined that, preoccupied with the paintings, he had most likely turned a corner and had gone off track.
He attempted to start back and was horrified when he came up against solid rock. He turned right and went along the cavern wall, using his torch to examine the paintings, hoping to spot a familiar one, but all of the paintings looked different. Some of them looked to have been painted quite recently.
Hunt tried several directions, but the results were always the same.
He was lost.
How had it happened?
He had been on course one moment, and the next he was utterly and completely confused. He decided to try and backtrack his steps again. He studied his situation, became confident of the problem, certain where he had made his wrong turn, and set out to correct it.
No sooner had he made his first assured step, than the floor went out from under him and he dropped down into empty and total darkness, the torch hurtling ahead of him like a burning meteor.
Chapter 13
TARZAN TRAVELED QUICKLY through the trees, and soon he came across the camp of the renegades, formerly the camp of Hunt and Small.
The storm had torn it apart. Supplies had been tossed in all directions, filling the brush and trees. Tarzan walked about the camp, sniffed an odor. His nostrils led him to the decaying head of Gromvitch lodged in a tree. It stunk and was covered with flies. Soon it would be the home of thousands of squirming maggots.
From the smell of rotting flesh, the amount of flies on the head, Tarzan determined how much time had elapsed since Gromvitch died. That was an easy one, since it was obvious he had died in the storm. No beast had done this. The man had been torn apart by the tempest, like an angry child ripping up a paper doll. Afterwards, the wet . head had boiled in the heat of the day and the flies had come. They were so thick, Gromvitch's head looked like an idol for flies; an insect mecca where they came to prostrate themselves and pray.
Tarzan noticed that the sides of Gromvitch's mouth were damaged. He used his knife to probe inside the mouth. Flies rose up in a blue-black tornado, twisted about Tarzan's hand and head. He ignored them. He looked inside Gromvitch's mouth, saw where teeth had been popped free. This had not been the workings of the storm. This was man at his worst. Most likely gold fillings or gold teeth had been removed.
Tarzan returned his knife to the loop on his loincloth, and the flies settled back to their prayer.
Tarzan considered the head and missing teeth, and this consideration gave him a fuller picture of the events. At least one of the renegades had survived the storm after being caught outside of camp. He returned, found the head here, and had taken the teeth.
Tarzan determined that would not be the black man, but the remaining white man. That was only a guess, but from the manner of the white man it seemed to fit. It would not be the sort of reasoning that would suit a court of law, but out here Tarzan was the law, and he trusted his instincts.
Tarzan examined the ground around the head carefully. All right. Two of the renegades had survived. The footprints of their boots were clear, especially after the storm had dampened the ground and the sun had begun to dry the impressions of their steps in the mud and leaf mold. The bearers did not wear boots. They either went barefoot or wore sandals, usually the former, so these were the prints of the renegades.
Also, one set of tracks was deeper than the other, and Tarzan knew that would be Cannon, the white man. Cannon's boot marks stopped right in front of the head, and Tarzan could tell at a glance that Cannon's feet had shifted from side to side. This was due to Cannon using his knife to work the teeth out of Gromvitch's mouth. The deed had required a bit of body English, so therefore the peculiar markings.
Tarzan returned to the camp proper, looked about, determined many of the bearers had escaped the storm and were probably now well on their way home, provided they hadn't run into trouble from animals. However, some of the bearers had not escaped. He found their remains.
The fresh tracks in camp told Tarzan another story. The two renegades had come back here, supplied themselves with what they could find in the way of guns, ammunition, and food, and moved on. It was clear to Tarzan they would pursue Hanson's safari, for it was a source not only for supplies, but bearers to carry them. This would be the way these men would think. They would want someone else to provide for them, someone else to carry their load.
Tarzan found a tin of rations that had rolled under a bush, and using his knife he opened it and ate, scooping it out with his fingers. It was a mushy potted meat and tasted like the leaf mold at his feet. He would have preferred to make a kill, drink the blood of an animal for energy, but for the time being, this was the easiest and quickest way to gain vitality and return to the chase. There was a great possibility that the renegades had already reached the Hanson party, and if not, traveling light as they were, they were closing fast.
Tarzan finished eating and took silently to the trees.
When Small had been startled by the panther and had gone off at a run in his shoes and underwear, he ran until his sides hurt. Finally, he sat down on a log to rest and was startled by a small black snake crawling out from under it and between his legs.
Small leapt to his feet, started to run again and went headlong into a tree. It was not a tremendous impact, but it was enough to spin him around and cause him to slide to a sitting position with the bark burning his naked back.
From there, exhausted, he watched the small snake, its middle swollen, slither away. There was a bird's nest lying there beneath the log. In the nest was one cracked egg. There had most likely been others, and that was why the snake had been plump. It had taken advantage of this meal dropped into its path by last night's storm.