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Chapter VII - When Blood Told

Tarzan of the Apes was disgusted. He had had the German spy, Bertha Kircher,

in his power and had left her unscathed. It is true that he had slain Hauptmann

Fritz Schneider, that Underlieutenant von Goss had died at his hands, and that

he had otherwise wreaked vengeance upon the men of the German company who

had murdered, pillaged, and raped at Tarzan's bungalow in the Waziri country.

There was still another officer to be accounted for, but him he could not find. It

was Lieutenant Obergatz he still sought, though vainly, for at last he learned that

the man had been sent upon some special mission, whether in Africa or back to

Europe Tarzan's informant either did not know or would not divulge.

But the fact that he had permitted sentiment to stay his hand when he might so

easily have put Bertha Kircher out of the way in the hotel at Wilhelmstal that

night rankled in the ape-man's bosom. He was shamed by his weakness, and

when he had handed the paper she had given him to the British chief of staff,

even though the information it contained permitted the British to frustrate a

German flank attack, he was still much dissatisfied with himself. And possibly

the root of this dissatisfaction lay in the fact that he realized that were he again to

have the same opportunity he would still find it as impossible to slay a woman as

it had been in Wilhelmstal that night.

Tarzan blamed this weakness, as he considered it, upon his association with the

effeminizing influences of civilization, for in the bottom of his savage heart he

held in contempt both civilization and its representatives--the men and women of

the civilized countries of the world. Always was he comparing their weaknesses,

their vices, their hypocrisies, and their little vanities with the open, primitive

ways of his ferocious jungle mates, and all the while there battled in that same

big heart with these forces another mighty force--Tarzan's love and loyalty for his

friends of the civilized world.

The ape-man, reared as he had been by savage beasts amid savage beasts, was

slow to make friends. Acquaintances he numbered by the hundreds; but of

friends he had few. These few he would have died for as, doubtless, they would

have died for him; but there were none of these fighting with the British forces in

East Africa, and so, sickened and disgusted by the sight of man waging his cruel

and inhuman warfare, Tarzan determined to heed the insistent call of the remote

jungle of his youth, for the Germans were now on the run and the war in East

Africa was so nearly over that he realized that his further services would be of

negligible value.

Tarzan the Untamed