Story of the Phantom (3 page)

Now, as the Wambesi froze and stared from all sides, there was a sudden deathly silence. Back at the gates, Kit and Guran watched. Trembling, Guran touched Kit's shoulder to comfort him. The little boy seemed attentive, but completely unafraid. Perhaps he was unaware of the danger his father faced. Perhaps, to him, it was just another illustrated lesson.

Not a sound anywhere. Even the crackling and chattering from the surrounding jungle seemed to have hushed. All eyes-of the people on the ground, of birds and monkeys in the trees, furry animals in the bushes-all eyes were watching. The Phantom, spear held poised in two hands, pointed toward the crouched tiger and studied the beast. A broken spearhead protruded from a flank. The beast had been wounded by a careless or terrified spearsman. A painful wound ... hence its fury. The Phantom knew cats. He would have liked to have helped this one to escape, but it was too late. The tiger had focused upon him. The enemy. Man with a spear. His jaws widened and a great roar surged from him, a roar that froze every vestige of animal- or birdlife for a mile around. And then he leaped-ten feet long, eight-hundred pounds of iron muscle, six-inch fangs-leaped at the man. There is no more frightening sight in all nature than the charge of the tiger. The great bulk moves like a flash. The roar paralyzes. The Phantom met the charge by driving the point of his heavy spear into the heart of the tiger. His powerful body strained, held for a moment that was brief but long enough, then went down under the momentum and weight of the tiger's charge. All watched without moving. A tiger on top of a man, the man hidden under the huge body. Then movement, from under the tiger, as one arm emerged . . . then a leg, as the man crawled out from under the beast. The tiger was dead when he hit the ground.

The man stood silently for a moment, looking at the dead animal. There was no feeling of triumph in him, only sorrow that this had had to be. He loved all animals. All about him respected this moment of silence. Then he turned slowly and smiled toward Kit in the background.

Kit shouted happily and ran toward him. That was the signal for all. There was bedlam in the Wambesi village. Hundreds poured in from outside the walls, from the fields and hills where they bad hidden. The jungle came alive with crackling and chattering as the birds, the monkeys, and furry animals passed on news of the event in their own manner. And the tom-toms began to beat, passing on the story from valley to valley, over jungle and desert, so that all the world might know.

After a kiss and embrace, Kit stood proudly by his father as the Wambesi swarmed about him. A few boys started hitting the dead tiger with sticks and stones. The Phantom called to them. "Stop," he said.

"Skin the tiger for the value of its hide. Then carry the body to the fields where the carrion may feed upon it. For such is the chain of life in the jungle. But do not dishonor yourselves by mistreating the dead beast. It only followed its nature." Shamefaced, the boys did as they were told, and the Wambesi who were wise in the ways of jungle life cheered and applauded this wisdom. And Kit looked up at his father in admiration. Another lesson to be remembered. And like many another boy 10

with a father he admires, Kit told himself that day, "When I grow up, I want to be like him." He told as much to Guran and Guran agreed that it would be a good thing.

His father was not always in the Deep Woods. Sometimes he was away for days and weeks, sometimes for months. He called these absences "missions," and Kit was uncertain what they meant, only that his father was busy somewhere doing something. But during these missions, the people around Kit were tense. The pygmies kept watch at the secret entrances, and his mother waited up at the Cave mouth until long after dark each night. Sometimes she would sit with Kit until he was asleep on his pile of furs. She read to him, but sometimes she couldn't continue because she was too worried and nervous. Usually, warning shouts of welcome from the woods told them be was near, and all rushed to the clearing before the Cave to await him. Then would come the sounds of hooves like an approaching storm as Thunder came racing through the waterfall bearing the powerful masked figure. That was a time of rejoicing, kissing, and hugging. He rarely spoke of where he had been, or what he had done, but was happy to relax before a fire with his wife and son, his pygmy and animal friends, and enjoy a homecoming feast.

Once or twice he came back nursing wounds, a knife cut in his shoulder, a grazing bullet wound on his arm. Then beautiful mother anxiously cleansed and bound his wounds as he assured her they were trivial and didn't hurt. Once they were not trivial. This time there were no distant welcoming cries from the pygmy sentries. Thunder raced through the falls with his master clinging to his neck.

When Thunder stopped before the Skull Cave, the father slid to the ground in a dead faint. Six pygmies carried the massive figure into the Cave to his pallet of animal furs. This time he was badly wounded, suffering from a dozen knife and bullet wounds. It was a month before he could come out of the Cave, and another month before he could ride on Thunder.

He told Kit and Guran the story. He'd been in a desperate battle with river pirates who had been terrorizing villages along the banks. Though the boys were avid for details, he told them only that he had boarded the steamer, met a few of the pirates, made his way to the ship's ammunition magazine, and ignited it, blowing up the ship and sinking it. "How many pirates?" Kit wanted to know. "A few dozen, I guess. I didn't have time to count," was the reply. "What happened to them all when the ship sank?" The father answered, "The ones able to swim made it to shore, where the people were waiting for them." One of the ones who made it to shore was his father, but barely. That was all he had to say about the event, but word trickled through the jungle via messengers, tom-toms, and travelers.

Single-handed, he had overcome a dozen vicious armed bandits and blown up their ship, scattering the remaining two dozen bandits to the tender mercies of the river crocodiles or the warriors waiting on the shore. There were no policemen in the jungle. No law. Only the Phantom. But Kit would learn more about that in time to come.

CHAPTER 3

There were no few wonders in the ancient realm of the Phantom, and in the weeks and months that followed, Kit was to see and hear many of them. First, the Cave itself contained amazing things in those rocky chambers he had glimpsed ever since he crawled about on all fours. There was the chamber filled with fiery flashes, called the "minor treasure room." Here, there were many chests, some open, some closed. The open ones were filled to the top and often overflowing with red, green, blue, and white stones, and with yellow metal discs of all sizes. These were gold, he was told. The colored stones had names: diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and others. They were also called gems or jewels. Some of the chests held cups and dishes of gold, and there were hundreds of rings with colored stones to be worn on the fingers, and yellow necklaces and bracelets-ornaments with the colored stones-to be worn on arms, ankles or around the neck.

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Kit played with the heaps of jewels and gold coins, building castles and walls and pits, as a child does with sand in a sandbox or on the beach. He told Guran about the gold and jewels. Guran pondered for a moment and asked, "What is it for?" Kit didn't know, and passed on the question to his father, who explained that the gold- also called money-was used by people to buy things like food and clothes. The ideas of buying, and money, had to be explained, and this was all strange to Kit, for food and clothing were to be had for the taking in the jungle. "What do you use it for?" he asked. His father explained that he rarely had any need for money, and that the gold of the treasure room was used in the endless battle against evil. "What is evil?" Kit wanted to know. "I'll tell you about that another time," his father answered, standing up. "And the bracelets, and the rings, and the jewels?"

Kit started to ask. "People-mostly women-like to wear them, to look pretty," he answered, walking out.

Kit noticed that after a few hours of questions like that, his father always went out for a walk in the open air. "But dear," he overheard beautiful mother saying one night, "you must answer the child's questions. Be patient." "Patient?" his father said. "I answered at least three thousand questions today.

They're endless." As Kit dozed off he heard his mother's voice saying, "How else can he learn?"

How else? The next day he asked, "Where did you get all this gold and colored stones?" His father sighed, and answered patiently. "It was all here when I was your age," he said. "It's been piling up for centuries." He explained that his ancestors had on occasion done favors for rulers-kings, princes and emperors-and the grateful rulers had heaped presents upon them. "When an emperor or king gives you a chest of gold, it is impolite to refuse," he told the boy. Kit passed this lesson on to Guran the next day, gravely informing him that if an emperor or king ever gave him a chest of gold or jewels, he must accept it as it would be bad manners to refuse. Guran promised to remember.

Next to this chamber was another one that his father called the "major" treasure room. He remembered this place with some qualms. This was where he had dropped the shining cup. Now he learned that it was a drinking cup made from a single diamond. It had been made for an emperor named Alexander whom some people called "the Great," his father told him. "Was he great?" Kit asked. "He conquered most of the world," father replied. "Most of the world! He was great!"

exclaimed Kit. "That all depends on who is writing the story," father said. "He invaded other countries, like Persia, burned down their cities, killed their kings and warriors, made slaves of their women and children, and stole all their treasures. Does that sound great?" Kit shook his head. "Not to the Persians," he said. "Exactly, it depends on who is writing the story," agreed his father.

"Now take this whip," he continued. It was an old leather whip with small metal stars on the ends of the thongs. "This belonged to a man called Attila the Hun. He lived long ago, and his name has come down to us as a bad, evil man, a barbarian, a destroyer. Do you know what Attila did? He invaded other countries, burned down their cities, killed their kings and warriors, made slaves of their women and children, and stole all their treasure. Who does he sound like?" "Like Alexander the Great!"

shouted Kit.

"Darius, the Persian, whom he conquered was no different," continued his father warming to the subject. "Alexander the Great, Darius the Persian, Attila the Hun, Caesar of Rome, Hannibal of Carthage, Napoleon of France: all gang lords leading their hordes of mobsters to loot and kill." So ended the history lesson for that day. In later years, when Kit studied history at a school, he realized that his father had unusual opinions about history, and practically everything else. But then, he was an unusual man.

There were other rare things in the major treasure room, which was actually a small museum. A dead viper floated inside an ancient green flask. "The asp that bit Cleopatra," his father said, and told him the story of Egypt's famed queen. Two great swords hung on the wall encased in glass. He took them out carefully and let the boy feel them. They were too heavy for him to hold. "This one is Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur. And this, Durandal, the sword of Roland. In their day, they were thought to be magic swords, and perhaps they were." He told Kit the stirring tales of the heroes, England's 12

Arthur and France's Roland. Near Durandal hung an ivory horn, also the horn of Roland, on which he blew his dying breath.

There were other things: a golden laurel wreath that had rested on Caesar's head; a curly black lady's wig that had been worn by an actor playing the girl's role, Juliet, in the first production of the play Romeo and Juliet. He was to hear more of that wig another time. Inside another glass case was a musical instrument made of bone, the lyre of an ancient blind poet named Homer. And much more.

"Does this all belong to us?" Kit asked in wonderment. His father shook his head. "These things have come to us through the centuries by various hands, for safekeeping. Because of wars, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, thieves and vandals, many such treasures of old have been lost forever. We are the guardians of these things for all people."

In another chamber, hanging behind sliding doors, were row upon row of clothes such as his father wore. "These were worn by my father; these by his father; these by his father, and so on and so forth." It did not seem strange to Kit that all these men of the olden times had worn skintight suits and hoods and masks like his father wore. Except for the pygmies, who wore loincloths as he did, Kit had never seen another man except his father, so he assumed that this was how all other men dressed.

In another chamber, there were shelves with big heavy books on them. His father often spent time writing in one of these books when he returned from one of his mysterious missions. These books, his father explained, were the chronicles of the Phantom and added that he was too young to know about them now but that soon he would know. Kit was not curious and did not object. He knew what books were about, spelling and grammar and arithmetic. Dull. He couldn't dream of the excitement and magical adventures in these huge dusty volumes.

Outside the Cave, there were even greater wonders. Riding bareback on his little pony, which he named Shaggy, he would canter on the jungle trails with his father, mounted on the mighty black stallion, Thunder. And he was taken to some of the secret places. First, there was the Whispering Grove where they spent a night sleeping on the ground. The wind that blew through the trees made a peculiar sound. It was almost as if it were saying Phantom-Phan-tom. Others had noticed that sound and had another name for the place: the Phantom Grove. Jungle folk avoided it, for the weird whisper of the wind in the trees frightened them and the place was said to be haunted.

Not far from the Whispering Grove was the ocean, and a hidden cove. This was the Golden Beach of Keela-Wee, said by many to be the most beautiful place in the world. Behind it was a backdrop of thick jungle and distant mountains. Ahead was the vast, rolling, green and sapphire sea, with sharp coral reefs that prevented even small ships or boats from reaching this hidden beach. The beach itself was unique and extraordinary. This Golden Beach of Keela-Wee was the color of gold because half of the sand was actually pure gold dust. In the center of the beach was a small hut made of carved green jade. Father explained that this golden beach and the jade hut had been a gift to a seventeenth century Phantom from the great black emperor, Joonkar. Since then, every Phantom had spent his honeymoon night in this jade hut on the Golden Beach. But they were not the only ones.

The great and friendly tribes of the Wambesi and Lion- go lived in the nearby jungle. Each spring, they held mass weddings on the Golden Beach. It was to see this that his father brought Kit there on this first visit. When they arrived, the mass wedding was in progress. Kit watched in fascination.

These were the first people he had ever seen outside the Deep Woods. There were about two hundred couples on the beach. The pretty brides wore gay sarongs, and flowers in their long black hair. The young bride- grooms wearing loincloths, also had necklaces of flowers.

When Kit and his father rode upon the beach, the couples were kneeling, facing two priests who wore bright red robes and waved yellow banners as they performed the marriage rites. All heads turned to see the man and boy, and all smiled at the sight of their friend, the Phantom. The rites continued. Then the couples, hand in hand, leaped into the sea, laughing and shouting, then returned

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to the beach and rolled in the sand. When they stood up, they were all the color of gold, for the golden sand stuck to their skin.

Then each couple, hand in hand, walked through the small jade hut and this passage completed the ceremony. The couples dashed off into the woods. The golden sand on their bodies was a symbol of their recent marriage, and they refrained from washing it off as long as possible. For days afterward, one could see golden couples moving happily through the woods, laughing and singing and playing.

After they had all left the beach, Kit and his father walked into the jade hut. It was intricately carved, and the sunlight shone through the tiny lace openings, making intricate patterns of light and shadow on the jade floor. The little hut was like a huge hollow gem. "I spent my wedding night here with your mother," his father told Kit, "as did my fathers and their wives before me. Someday, you will marry and bring your bride here." Kit looked at him with wide eyes. "Who will I marry?" he asked.

His father laughed. "Don't worry. You'll find her. Or maybe she'll find you." He couldn't know how prophetic these words were.

Kit raced across the golden beach and leaped into the sea. He was a good swimmer, but his only experience had been in cool jungle pools and swift streams. The warm salt water was a surprise. He frolicked in the clear calm water, diving down to the sand bottom, and then swam through the gentle surf to the great coral reefs where the waves from the sea broke with a roar and a shower of foam. He cut himself slightly on the sharp coral, then swam back to the beach and rolled in the golden sand as the bridal party had done. Now, covered with gold, he ran laughing to the jade hut and entered it as his smiling father watched. "Now, I'm married," he shouted.

The Whispering Grove had been tingly and spooky. The Golden Beach was beautiful. But the greatest thrill was yet to come. The Phantom's Garden of Eden.

They rode for a day and night through the jungle, near the ocean shore. Then they came to a high bank overlooking a broad river that ran from the jungle into the sea. Across the river was a green island, heavily wooded, with a white beach. Beyond the island were the roaring breakers of the ocean.

Kit and his father climbed a big tree on the bank. That was fun in itself. Near the top, he saw that two heavy ropes stretched from the tree, high above the river, to a tall tree on the island shore. One of the ropes slanted downward from the tree they were in; the other rope slanted upward. Following instructions he put his arms around his father's neck and held on tightly. A short rope was passed around him, tying him securely to his father's chest. "Mustn't fall into the river, it's filled with piranha," he was told. He learned later that this was a dangerous fish. His father grasped a heavy iron ring that hung from the rope. "Here we go," he said. And hanging onto the ring, they slid swiftly down the rope and so crossed the river. Kit looked down at the brown and green water far below. It seemed so inviting and peaceful. But what lurked beneath the surface? Piranha? They reached the other side, and this was the strangest and most exciting of all the things Kit had yet seen or even imagined in his short life.

As they climbed down the tree on the island beach, some animals were waiting for them. Kit stared.

He couldn't believe his eyes. There was a giraffe, a zebra, and an antelope. And a lion. And a leopard.

And a tiger. And they were all standing together, peacefully waiting. Kit knew about lions and leopards. He had seen the big cat his father had killed in the Wambesi village. He looked at his father with sudden fear, still tied to his broad chest. His father smiled. "Don't be afraid. They are all our friends," he said. He dropped to the sand, and untied Kit. Instantly the animals pressed gently against them, nuzzling them, grunting, and whinnying. The big cat purred. The lion and the tiger rubbed against his father's legs, their backs arched, purring like giant housecats. It was all he could do to hold his balance, for this tiger weighed about eight hundred pounds. The lion was almost as big. The leopard was content with Kit who quickly lost his fear and rolled on the sand with the purring velvety cat.