Regret: A Study in Ancient Moral

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OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 30/8/2021, SPi

Regret
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Regret
A Study in Ancient Moral Psychology

JAMES WARREN

1
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© James Warren 2022
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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For Alison
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 30/8/2021, SPi

Contents

Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Why Regret? 1
1. Virtue, Metameleia, Regret, and Remorse 12
2. Plato on Regret, Akrasia, and the Tyrannical Soul 35
3. Aristotle on Regret and Counter-Voluntary Actions 84
4. Aristotle on Regret and Akrasia 98
5. Metameleia and Ignorance 117
6. Stoic Regret 127
7. Gellius and Gallus on the Limits of Regret 156
8. Epilogue 179

References 183
Index Locorum 189
Subject Index 193
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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of parts of this work were presented to audiences at the

Institute of Classical Studies, at the 2018 meeting of the Northern
Association for Ancient Philosophy, and as the 2019 Collis Lecture at
Transylvania University, Kentucky. I would like to thank in particular
George Boys-Stones, Jenny Bryan, Matthew Duncombe, Emily Fletcher,
Simon Gathercole, David Kaufman, Anthony Price, Katharine O’Reilly, John
Svarlien, Shaul Tor, and Raphael Woolf for their comments, assistance, and
suggestions. I have also benefited greatly from discussions of this material with
Frisbee Sheffield and Gábor Betegh. The Cambridge B Caucus remains a
source of inspiration and encouragement and a reminder of what fun it can
be to think about ancient philosophical texts with friends. Two readers for the
Press spotted some errors for me to correct and made helpful suggestions for
improving the final version. I also owe thanks to Peter Momtchiloff at the
Press and to Monica Matthews for her careful copy-editing.
The major part of the research for this work was completed while I was on
sabbatical leave for the 2017–18 academic year. I would like to thank my
colleagues in the Faculty of Classics and at Corpus Christi College who took
over my duties for that time.
I dedicate this book to my sister, with love and thanks.
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List of Abbreviations

EE Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, 1952, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th edition),
Berlin
EK L. Edelstein and I. Kidd, 1989, Posidonius, Volume I: The Fragments
(2nd edition), Cambridge
Nauck² A. Nauck, 1892, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (2nd edition), Leipzig
NE Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
PHP Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (On the Opinions of Hippocrates
and Plato)
SVF H. von Arnim, 1903–5, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 4 volumes, Leipzig
For references to ancient authors and works, please consult the Index locorum.
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Introduction
Why Regret?

Regret is a complex emotion. The form of regret I am most interested in

throughout this study is what the ancient Greek philosophical texts tend to
label metameleia (μεταμέλεια). Metameleia is most like what in modern discus-
sions is variously called ‘agent’ or ‘autobiographical’ regret; it is an attitude an
agent takes towards something they have chosen or done. There are various
qualifications that I will need to make at various points in what follows because
‘agent regret’ as it is currently used in the philosophical literature and metame-
leia as it appears in the ancient texts cannot be straightforwardly identified but,
for now, this rough equivalence is the most useful starting point. The necessary
qualifications will be better understood as we work through the ancient discus-
sions in more detail.
There are many reasons why philosophers might be interested in this kind
of regret and also why they should be interested in ancient Greek and Roman
philosophical discussions of it. This form of regret is a specific kind of the
more general attitude of preferring that things had been otherwise, which is
perhaps the broadest available notion of regret. In a case of metameleia, the
things the regretful person prefers to have been otherwise are things they have
themselves chosen or done. Regret therefore involves some kind of evaluative
stance on the part of the subject concerned towards their own past actions. But
it also has an affective aspect since it is usually a painful attitude. Regret is
therefore an interesting kind of self-reflexive emotion which carries both
a cognitive and evaluative component and also has an affective—usually
negative—aspect. Although there are ways in which we might come to see
regret as sometimes having positive consequences—for example, we might
encourage children to come to regret things they have done as a way of
encouraging them not to repeat that kind of behaviour—those positive con-
sequences are also connected with the simple fact that regret is something we
prefer not to feel. It is a sign that we have gone wrong somehow as well as a
sign that we have come to recognize that error. To put the matter in the most
general terms, the form of regret I am interested in here occurs when someone

Regret: A Study in Ancient Moral Psychology. James Warren, Oxford University Press. © James Warren 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840268.003.0001
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2 :      

forms a painful negative evaluation of something that they themselves did or

chose. Regret is therefore an interesting attitude for anyone considering
questions of moral development; that aspect of the philosophy of regret
plays a significant role in Greek and Roman moral psychology and deserves
more attention in modern accounts. Of course, the simple fact that the person
in question did previously perform or choose the very thing that they now
regret goes to show that something has changed between the occasion of the
action and the adoption of the retrospective negative evaluation. After all, if
the person concerned had felt at the time of the action what they now feel
about that same action then it is hard to see how they would have acted as they
did unless they were doing so under some kind of coercion. So regret in this
form is interesting not only because it is an example of a self-directed negative
evaluation accompanied by a painful affective state but also because one of the
conditions necessary for regret to come about is that the person in question
has changed their preference or evaluation over time. We are susceptible to
regret not only because we are capable of critical self-evaluation and of looking
back at our past actions but also because we are capable of changing our
assessment of ourselves and our actions over time.
I hope that these brief remarks already go some way to show why regret
might be a phenomenon worthy of philosophical interest. But in case further
justification is needed, let me outline some more reasons why it deserves our
attention and why, in particular, it is worthwhile considering regret specifically
by thinking carefully about its role in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.
So here are two sets of reasons why it is interesting to think about ancient
Greek and Roman philosophical accounts of metameleia both for our under-
standing of ancient moral psychology and also as an interesting source of
comparison and contrast with more recent accounts of regret.
First, thinking about regret offers us a way to think about ancient philo-
sophical accounts of moral psychology more generally. As we shall see, for the
most part it is a commonplace in these philosophical accounts that regret is
not to be associated with the very best human characters. Certainly, it is
commonly claimed that wise and virtuous people will be free from regret.
And in some cases, as in Aristotle for example, it is also thought that regret is
not associated with the very worst human characters. It follows, in that case,
that regret is an attitude that belongs to those people—presumably, most of
us—who are somewhere between these two extremes, neither wise and perfect
nor completely dissolute. That fact alone, I think, makes it an interesting
phenomenon for us to consider. Furthermore, for those philosophers whose
picture of human psychology includes reference to multiple possible sources of
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:   ? 3

motivation, regret is instead to be associated with those people whose actions

are the product of some kind of conflict between distinct motivations in which
the better side in the conflict—usually identified with reason—comes off
worse. Aristotle’s view, for example, which will be one of the principal points
of focus for my discussion, is that those people who are free from such conflict,
either because they have harmonious and virtuous souls or because their
rational soul has become entirely subservient to their unrestrained and baser
desires, will all as a result be free from regret. Insofar as metameleia is a
backwards-looking attitude it is taken to be a sign of an agent who has been
subject to internal conflict later reasserting the better evaluation and better
desire but only when it is too late. In this way, regret is associated with those
people who sometimes act on the basis of only temporary episodes of domin-
ation by a worse motivation such that when that moment has passed, they are
capable of assessing their choice differently. That model, of course, fits well with
those accounts of moral psychology that do indeed posit multiple sources for
human motivation and imagine the possibility of synchronic motivational con-
flict within an individual person. But there are also pictures of human moral
psychology—in Plato’s Protagoras and in Stoicism, for example—which do not
recognize such a psychological complexity but nevertheless find room for an
account of regret. In considering both accounts of metameleia, therefore, it will
be possible to see the ways in which, despite the important distinction between
what might be called monistic or intellectualist moral psychologies on the one
hand and complex moral psychologies on the other, these two very different
models of human motivations nevertheless share some important general views
about the difference between wise or virtuous and other kinds of person.
Above all, it will emerge that in these Greek and Roman philosophical texts
regret is closely associated with a kind of ignorance, more specifically with a
previous instance of ignorance that has now been dispelled. This is an import-
ant point of contact between both the accounts of regret that are concerned
with voluntary actions (including those that are the result of reason being
overcome by other motivations) and also Aristotle’s instructive identification
in Nicomachean Ethics 3.1 of the presence of regret in certain cases of what he
calls ‘counter-voluntary’ actions. What these two classes of action share is that
the ignorance in question, the ignorance under which the action that is later
regretted is originally performed, is only temporary. What is regretted is
performed under a kind of ignorance but the regret itself can happen only
once that temporary ignorance departs and the agent is then able to form a
better estimation of what he has done. The regret can occur either because he
is now in possession of a full picture of the relevant situation or because he is
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4 :      

now free from the impairment produced by an overwhelming motivation for

something other than what he rationally conceives to be the good. Regret is in
both cases a product of an agent coming to the right and full comprehension of
his action, but only in hindsight. That is an important part of why regret is
painful, since the affected agent realizes as he regrets that the mistake cannot
be undone, and this pain is in addition to whatever negative consequences flow
from the simple matter of having acted incorrectly in the first place. This
notion that regret requires both ignorance and comprehension—ignorance at
the time of acting and a later belated comprehension of the earlier error—is
what explains how these ancient philosophers can come to associate regret as a
characteristic of deficient but not irredeemable characters. It is also why they
tend not to associate it with either perfect, wise, and virtuous or incurable and
permanently corrupted characters. Someone who regrets must fall short of
excellence in a manner that allows him to act wrongly in the first place but that
same person must also be sufficiently capable of reassessing and properly
evaluating these actions in a better light, if only in hindsight. For philosophers
like Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics this makes regret an important marker for
distinguishing ideal from non-ideal characters and also a helpful indication of
those people who, though they currently fall short of being excellent moral
agents, are not beyond hope. Those who regret are capable of improvement.
Second, we should note how regret has been addressed in some modern
philosophical discussions and their relationship to the ancient notion of
metameleia. This is not only interesting in its own right, of course, but it will
serve to draw our attention to the deep contrasts as well as points of contact
between some modern assumptions and the guiding framework of the ancient
discussions. In particular, here I would like to highlight two broad areas in
which regret has been discussed in some modern accounts and then outline
briefly how the ancient philosophical discussions we will look at in the main
body of the book differ from the modern views. Further points of comparison
and contrast will emerge as we look more closely at specific questions and
texts. First, regret is sometimes taken in recent philosophical accounts to be an
indication that it is not always possible, even on the basis of a full understand-
ing of the situation at hand, to make a choice to promote or preserve
something of genuine value without having to sacrifice something else that
is also of genuine value. In other words, the assumption is that sometimes it is
right to regret an action even if we are sure we have done the right thing or
made the right choice. And this is so because sometimes there are competing
and conflicting values in play that cannot all be preserved; in brief, there are
genuine ethical dilemmas: choices that cannot be resolved without violating
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some moral requirement or without failing to promote something of genuine

moral value. If it is not always possible to resolve an ethical choice without
‘moral remainder’ or ‘moral residue’ then we should allow that someone can
act in a perfectly laudable fashion but nevertheless have good reason to regret
what they have done. Regret is appropriate in such a circumstance just in the
sense that it is appropriate for someone both to be sure that they have done
nothing wrong and also that what they did deserves to be regretted neverthe-
less. An action might be unavoidable but nevertheless regrettable; indeed, an
action may be the ‘right thing to do’ in the circumstances but nevertheless
regrettable. This argument justifies regret in even the wisest and most con-
scientious agents by reference to certain claims about values or obligations and
how different values or obligations may be in tension with one another. In this
case, the appropriateness of regret even for admirable agents is taken to be an
indication of the presence of potentially conflicting values.
This train of thought might also run in the opposite direction too: insofar
as we find it reasonable for someone to feel regret after making a choice
between two possibilities in such dilemmas—situations in which either there
are good reasons for pursuing (or avoiding) each of the two options but only
one can be chosen at the expense of the other or, more strongly, situations in
which an agent cannot perform everything that is morally obligatory—then
this may give us reason to think that there is a plurality of genuine values or
obligations that cannot always be reconciled. In this way, if such a picture of
reasonable regret is plausible then it presents challenges to various kinds of
accounts of value and of right action. And in doing so then it also suggests a
reason why we ought to allow room in the life of even the very best ethical
agents for cases of justifiable regret. Indeed, we should think that the absence
of regret from a person’s life is probably a sign that they have failed properly to
appreciate an ethical choice for the genuine dilemma that it is; the absence of
regret itself may become a reason for criticism and censure.
There are, therefore, interesting philosophical questions that emerge from
thinking about whether it is reasonable to expect the presence of regret in the
lives even of admirable moral agents. And there are interesting discussions
about whether the phenomenon of reasonable regret indicates anything
important about the nature of moral dilemmas and, if it does, just what that
might be.¹ Ancient examples often play a central role in these debates in the

¹ For the view that the presence of regret in fact offers no substantial support for the possibility of
moral dilemmas in the sense of cases of genuinely inconsistent obligations, see, for example, Conee
1982. Cf. MacIntyre 1990, 371–2; McConnell 1996, 37–9; Mothersill 1996, 77–8.
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6 :      

modern philosophical literature, perhaps with the underlying thought that the
ancient Greek world, particularly in the form of Attic tragic drama, was able to
express and capture something important about moral psychology and the
nature of moral dilemmas that more modern philosophy has overlooked. For
example, we might consider the case of Agamemnon who is faced with a
choice between sacrificing his own daughter, Iphigenia, to allow the Greek fleet
to sail to Troy to reclaim his brother’s wife and saving his daughter but failing
in his obligations as a king and a brother. Certainly, how we understand such
choices and how an agent will react to making such a choice is an important
theme in some of Bernard Williams’ influential work and the importance of
the question is evident in the discussions of moral dilemmas and the consist-
ency of ethical requirements that have been written in response to him.
One of the important themes in what follows is that the ancient philosoph-
ical authors I will discuss seem to present a significant alternative to Williams’
line of thinking on this point because they all share the view that an admirable
ethical agent—the truly virtuous person or the wise person—will always be
without regret. As Aristotle puts it, the virtuous person will be without
metameleia: he will be ‘ametamelētos’. This is worthy of note first of all because
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics can hardly be thought to have been unaware of
what we might well characterize as ‘tragic dilemmas’. The stories of
Agamemnon and Iphigenia or Antigone and Creon were part of their cultural
and ethical landscape. Nevertheless, regret in the sense of metameleia is
associated in their accounts of moral psychology with a class of deficient but
not incurably dissolute agents. This is also important because we should note
that Aristotle’s aversion to ascribing metameleia to a virtuous person appears
to be in tension with a claim sometimes made on behalf of virtue ethics. It is
sometimes claimed to be a positive characteristic of an approach to ethics that
is based on the concept of an agent’s virtue rather than on the assessment of
actions according to a set of obligations or certain desired consequences that it
is more hospitable to the phenomena of the tragic moral dilemma and the
good but regretful agent.² Aristotle is certainly a proponent of an ethical
outlook based on the cultivation of virtuous character and so we might expect
him to agree with this picture. But, in that case, it does seem again surprising
that he should so clearly state that the virtuous person is ‘without regret’. Part
of my task in this study will therefore be to try to explain why he might take
this view and how it is related to his more general understanding of value,
virtuous character, and ethical choice-making. In brief, I shall argue that

² See, for example, the rich discussion in Hursthouse 1999, 43–87.

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Aristotle can certainly acknowledge that a virtuous agent may, on occasion, act
well while also recognizing and feeling that in doing so something else of value
has been lost. But Aristotle will not call that an instance of metameleia because
for Aristotle the essential characteristic of metameleia is that an agent later
comes to know something that was not known at the time of the original
action and which, if it had been known then, would have altered what was
done. Aristotle is much more interested, in other words, in evaluating agents
on the basis of their understanding of the salient facts at the time of the action
and the later occurrence of metameleia is, for him, a sign of some form of
deficiency in this regard. Anyone acting in full knowledge of the relevant
ethical considerations, however challenging the decision and no matter the
cost of acting virtuously, will not be subject to metameleia. This is an import-
ant contrast between a modern understanding of ‘regret’ and the ancient
philosophical understanding of metameleia.
The second way in which regret has been addressed in some modern
philosophical discussions is in its relation to what is sometimes called ‘moral
luck’. In one well-known example, we are asked to consider the case of a lorry
driver who, through no fault of his, accidentally hits and kills a child with his
lorry. In this case the driver is likely to experience something we can call
‘regret’, not because of any thought that he is at fault for the death through
some kind of ethical failing but simply because he nevertheless has caused it.
This is one way in which the notion of ‘agent regret’ has been illustrated in
order to show that it may be appropriate not only for voluntary and inten-
tional actions. This case is interesting to me not only because, together with
the example of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, it also features in Bernard
Williams’ work and those articles too have become a focus of attention for
other philosophers interested in notions of regret and moral luck. It is
interesting also because Aristotle considers in Nicomachean Ethics 3.1 a series
of cases of what he labels ‘counter-voluntary’ actions and notes in that
discussion that the agent involved may well in retrospect feel metameleia at
recalling the action. In this respect, therefore, he seems to agree with some of
the intuitions behind Williams’ account while it seems he does not similarly
agree with Williams’ diagnosis of cases of ‘tragic dilemmas’, at least for
genuinely virtuous agents. Here too, it seems that Aristotle’s ascription of
metameleia in cases of counter-voluntary action is connected with thoughts
about the role played by ignorance in the original action. Once the agent
realizes—too late—some important fact about the situation at hand then they
come to feel metameleia for what they have done.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tarzan, lord of
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Title: Tarzan, lord of the jungle

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Release date: February 12, 2024 [eBook #72938]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers,

1928

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TARZAN,

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 Tarzan

LORD OF THE JUNGLE

By EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK

Copyright 1928 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Copyright renewed 1956 by John Coleman Burroughs

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 Contents
I. Tantor the Elephant
II. Comrades of the Wild
III. The Apes of Toyat
IV. Bolgani the Gorilla
V. The Tarmangani
VI. Ara the Lightning
VII. The Cross
VIII. The Snake Strikes
IX. Sir Richard
X. The Return of Ulala
XI. Sir James
XII. "Tomorrow Thou Diest!"
XIII. In the Beyt of Zeyd
XIV. Sword and Buckler
XV. The Lonely Grave
XVI. The Great Tourney
XVII. "The Saracens!"
XVIII. The Black Knight
XIX. Lord Tarzan
XX. "I Love You!"
XXI. "For Every Jewel a Drop of Blood!"
XXII. Bride of the Ape
XXIII. Jad-bal-ja
XXIV. Where Trails Met
 TARZAN
Lord of the Jungle

CHAPTER I

Tantor the Elephant

His great bulk swaying to and fro as he threw his weight first upon
one side and then upon the other, Tantor the elephant lolled in the
shade of the father of forests. Almost omnipotent, he, in the realm of
his people. Dango, Sheeta, even Numa the mighty were as naught
to the pachyderm. For a hundred years he had come and gone up
and down the land that had trembled to the comings and the goings
of his forebears for countless ages.
In peace he had lived with Dango the hyena, Sheeta the leopard and
Numa the lion. Man alone had made war upon him. Man, who holds
the unique distinction among created things of making war on all
living creatures, even to his own kind. Man, the ruthless; man, the
pitiless; man, the most hated living organism that Nature has
evolved.
Always during the long hundred years of his life, Tantor had known
man. There had been black men, always. Big black warriors with
spears and arrows, little black warriors, swart Arabs with crude
muskets and white men with powerful express rifles and elephant
guns. The white men had been the last to come and were the worst.
Yet Tantor did not hate men—not even white men. Hate, vengeance,
envy, avarice, lust are a few of the delightful emotions reserved
exclusively for Nature's noblest work—the lower animals do not
know them. Neither do they know fear as man knows it, but rather a
certain bold caution that sends the antelope and the zebra, watchful
and wary, to the water hole with the lion.
Tantor shared this caution with his fellows and avoided men—
especially white men; and so had there been other eyes there that
day to see, their possessor might almost have questioned their
veracity, or attributed their error to the half-light of the forest as they
scanned the figure sprawling prone upon the rough back of the
elephant, half dozing in the heat to the swaying of the great body;
for, despite the sun-bronzed hide, the figure was quite evidently that
of a white man. But there were no other eyes to see and Tantor
drowsed in the heat of midday and Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, dozed
upon the back of his mighty friend. A sultry air current moved
sluggishly from the north, bringing to the keen nostrils of the ape-
man no disquieting perception. Peace lay upon the jungle and the
two beasts were content.
In the forest Fahd and Motlog, of the tribe el-Harb, hunted north from
the menzil of Sheik Ibn Jad of the Beny Salem fendy el-Guad. With
them were black slaves. They advanced warily and in silence upon
the fresh spoor of el-fil the elephant, the thoughts of the swart 'Aarab
dwelling upon ivory, those of the black slaves upon fresh meat. The
'abd Fejjuan, black Galla slave, sleek, ebon warrior, eater of raw
meat, famed hunter, led the others.
Fejjuan, as his comrades, thought of fresh meat, but also he thought
of el-Habash, the land from which he had been stolen as a boy. He
thought of coming again to the lonely Galla hut of his parents.
Perhaps el-Habash was not far off now. For months Ibn Jad had
been traveling south and now he had come east for a long distance.
El-Habash must be near. When he was sure of that his days of
slavery would be over and Ibn Jad would have lost his best Galla
slave.
Two marches to the north, in the southern extremity of Abyssinia,
stood the round dwelling of the father of Fejjuan, almost on the
roughly mapped route that Ibn Jad had planned nearly a year since
when he had undertaken this mad adventure upon the advice of a
learned Sahar, a magician of repute. But of either the exact location
of his father's house or the exact plans of Ibn Jad, Fejjuan was
equally ignorant. He but dreamed, and his dreams were flavored with
raw meat.
The leaves of the forest drowsed in the heat above the heads of the
hunters. Beneath the drowsing leaves of other trees a stone's throw
ahead of them Tarzan and Tantor slept, their perceptive faculties
momentarily dulled by the soothing influence of fancied security and
the somnolence that is a corollary of equatorial midday.
Fejjuan, the Galla slave, halted in his tracks, stopping those behind
him by the silent mandate of an upraised hand. Directly before him,
seen dimly between the boles and through the foliage, swayed the
giant bulk of el-fil. Fejjuan motioned to Fahd, who moved stealthily to
the side of the black. The Galla slave pointed through the foliage
toward a patch of gray hide. Fahd raised el-Lazzary, his ancient
matchlock, to his shoulder. There was a flash of flame, a burst of
smoke, a roar and el-fil, unhit, was bolting through the forest.
As Tantor surged forward at the sound of the report Tarzan started to
spring to an upright position, and at the same instant the pachyderm
passed beneath a low hanging limb which struck the ape-man's
head, sweeping him to the ground, where he lay stunned and
unconscious.
Terrified, Tantor thought only of escape as he ran north through the
forest, leaving in his wake felled trees, trampled or uptorn bushes.
Perhaps he did not know that his friend lay helpless and injured, at
the mercy of the common enemy, man. Tantor never thought of
Tarzan as one of the Tarmangani, for the white man was
synonymous with discomfort, pain, annoyance, whereas Tarzan of
the Apes meant to him restful companionship, peace, happiness. Of
all the jungle beasts, except his own kind, he fraternized with Tarzan
only.
"Billah! Thou missed," exclaimed Fejjuan.
"Gluck!" ejaculated Fahd. "Sheytan guided the bullet. But let us see
—perhaps el-fil is hit."
"Nay, thou missed."
The two men pushed forward, followed by their fellows, looking for
the hoped-for carmine spoor. Fahd suddenly stopped.
"Wellah! What have we here?" he cried. "I fired at el-fil and killed a
Nasrany."
The others crowded about. "It is indeed a Christian dog, and naked,
too," said Motlog.
"Or some wild man of the forest," suggested another. "Where didst
thy bullet strike him, Fahd?"
They stooped and rolled Tarzan over. "There is no mark of bullet
upon him."
"Is he dead? Perhaps he, too, hunted el-fil and was slain by the
great beast."
"He is not dead," announced Fejjuan, who had kneeled and placed
an ear above the ape-man's heart. "He lives and from the mark upon
his head I think but temporarily out of his wits from a blow. See, he
lies in the path that el-fil made when he ran away—he was struck
down in the brute's flight."
"I will finish him," said Fahd, drawing his khusa.
"By Ullah, no! Put back thy knife, Fahd," said Motlog. "Let the sheykh
say if he shall be killed. Thou art always too eager for blood."
"It is but a Nasrany," insisted Fahd. "Think thou to carry him back to
the menzil?"
"He moves," said Fejjuan. "Presently he will be able to walk there
without help. But perhaps he will not come with us, and look, he hath
the size and muscles of a giant. Wellah! What a man!"
"Bind him," commanded Fahd. So with thongs of camel hide they
made the ape-man's two wrists secure together across his belly, nor
was the work completed any too soon. They had scarce done when
Tarzan opened his eyes and looked them slowly over. He shook his
head, like some great lion, and presently his senses cleared. He
recognized the 'Aarab instantly for what they were.
"Why are my wrists bound?" he asked them in their own tongue.
"Remove the thongs!"
Fahd laughed. "Thinkest thou, Nasrany, that thou art some great
sheykh that thou canst order about the Beduw as they were dogs?"
"I am Tarzan," replied the ape-man, as one might say, "I am the
sheykh of sheykhs."
"Tarzan!" exclaimed Motlog. He drew Fahd aside. "Of all men," he
said, lowering his voice, "that it should be our ill fortune to offend this
one! In every village that we have entered in the past two weeks we
have heard his name. 'Wait,' they have said, 'until Tarzan, Lord of the
Jungle, returns. He will slay you when he learns that you have taken
slaves in his country'."
"When I drew my khusa thou shouldst not have stopped my hand,
Motlog," complained Fahd; "but it is not too late yet." He placed his
hand upon the hilt of his knife.
"Billah, nay!" cried Motlog. "We have taken slaves in this country.
They are with us now and some of them will escape. Suppose they
carry word to the fendy of this great sheykh that we have slain him?
Not one of us will live to return to Beled el-Guad."
"Let us then take him before Ibn Jad that the responsibility may be
his," said Fahd.
"Wellah, you speak wisely," replied Motlog. "What the sheykh doeth
with this man is the sheykh's business. Come!"
As they returned to where Tarzan stood he eyed them questioningly.
"What have you decided to do with me?" he demanded. "If you are
wise you will cut these bonds and lead me to your sheykh. I wish a
word with him."
"We are only poor men," said Motlog. "It is not for us to say what
shall be done, and so we shall take you to our sheykh who will
decide."
The Sheik Ibn Jad of the fendy el-Guad squatted in the open men's
compartment of his beyt es-sh'ar, and beside him in the mukaad of
his house of hair sat Tollog, his brother, and a young Beduin, Zeyd,
who, doubtless, found less attraction in the company of the shiek
than in the proximity of the sheik's hareem whose quarters were
separated from the mukaad only by a breast high curtain suspended
between the waist poles of the beyt, affording thus an occasional
glimpse of Ateja, the daughter of Ibn Jad. That it also afforded an
occasional glimpse of Hirfa, his wife, raised not the temperature of
Zeyd an iota.
As the men talked the two women were busy within their apartment
at their housewifely duties. In a great brazen jidda Hirfa was placing
mutton to be boiled for the next meal while Ateja fashioned sandals
from an old bag of camel leather impregnated with the juice of the
dates that it had borne upon many a rahla, and meanwhile they
missed naught of the conversation that passed in the mukaad.
"We have come a long way without mishap from our own beled," Ibn
Jad was remarking, "and the way has been longer because I wished
not to pass through el-Habash lest we be set upon or followed by the
people of that country. Now may we turn north again and enter el-
Habash close to the spot where the magician foretold we should find
the treasure city of Nimmr."
"And thinkest thou to find this fabled city easily, once we are within
the boundaries of el-Habash?" asked Tollog, his brother.
"Wellah, yes. It is known to the people of this far south Habash.
Fejjuan, himself an Habashy, though he has never been there, heard
of it as a boy. We shall take prisoners among them and, by the grace
of Ullah, we shall find the means to loose their tongues and have the
truth from them."
"By Ullah, I hope it does not prove like the treasure that lies upon the
great rock el-Howwara in the plain of Medain Salih," said Zeyd. "An
afrit guards it where it lays sealed in a stone tower and they say that
should it be removed disaster would befall man-kind; for men would
turn upon their friends, and even upon their brothers, the sons of
their fathers and mothers, and the kings of the world would give
battle, one against another."
"Yea," testified Tollog, "I had it from one of the fendy Hazim that a
wise Moghreby came by there in his travels and consulting the
cabalistic signs in his book of magic discovered that indeed the
treasure lay there."
"But none dared take it up," said Zeyd.
"Billah!" exclaimed Ibn Jad. "There be no afrit guarding the treasures
of Nimmr. Naught but flesh and blood Habash that may be laid low
with ball and powder. The treasure is ours for the taking."
"Ullah grant that it may be as easily found as the treasure of
Geryeh," said Zeyd, "which lays a journey north of Tebuk in the
ancient ruins of a walled city. There, each Friday, the pieces of
money roll out of the ground and run about over the desert until
sunset."
"Once we are come to Nimmr there will be no difficulty finding the
treasure," Ibn Jad assured them. "The difficulty will lie in getting out
of el-Habash with the treasure and the woman; and if she is as
beautiful as the sahar said, the men of Nimmr may protect her even
more savagely than they would the treasure."
"Often do magicians lie," said Tollog.
"Who comes?" exclaimed Ibn Jad, looking toward the jungle that
hemmed the menzil upon all sides.
"Billah! it is Fahd and Motlog returning from the hunt," said Tollog.
"Ullah grant that they bring ivory and meat."
"They return too soon," said Zeyd.
"But they do not come empty handed," and Ibn Jad pointed toward
the naked giant that accompanied the returning hunters.
The group surrounding Tarzan approached the sheik's beyt and
halted.
Wrapped in his soiled calico thob, his head kerchief drawn across
the lower part of his face, Ibn Jad exposed but two villainous eyes to
the intent scrutiny of the ape-man which simultaneously included the
pock-marked, shifty-eyed visage of Tollog, the sheik's brother, and
the not ill-favored countenance of the youthful Zeyd.
"Who is sheykh here?" demanded Tarzan in tones of authority that
belied the camel leather thongs about his wrists.
Ibn Jad permitted his thorrib to fall from before his face. "Wellah, I
am sheykh," he said, "and by what name art thou known, Nasrany?"
"They call me Tarzan of the Apes, Moslem."
"Tarzan of the Apes," mused Ibn Jad. "I have heard the name."
"Doubtless. It is not unknown to 'Aarab slave raiders. Why, then,
came you to my country, knowing I do not permit my people to be
taken into slavery?"
"We do not come for slaves," Ibn Jad assured him. "We do but trade
in peace for ivory."
"Thou liest in thy beard, Moslem," returned Tarzan, quietly. "I
recognize both Manyuema and Galla slaves in thy menzil, and I
know that they are not here of their own choosing. Then, too, was I
not present when your henchmen fired a shot at el-fil? Is that
peaceful trading for ivory? No! it is poaching, and that Tarzan of the
Apes does not permit in his country. You are raiders and poachers."
"By Ullah! we are honest men," cried Ibn Jad. "Fahd and Motlog did
but hunt for meat. If they shot el-fil it must be that they mistook him
for another beast."
"Enough!" cried Tarzan. "Remove the thongs that bind me and
prepare to return north from whence thou came. Thou shalt have an
escort and bearers to the Soudan. These will I arrange for."
"We have come a long way and wish only to trade in peace," insisted
Ibn Jad. "We shall pay our bearers for their labor and take no slaves,
nor shall we again fire upon el-fil. Let us go our way and when we
return we will pay you well for permission to pass through your
country."
Tarzan shook his head. "No! you shall go at once. Come, cut these
bonds!"
Ibn Jad's eyes narrowed. "We have offered thee peace and profits,
Nasrany," he said, "but if thou wouldst have war let it be war. Thou
art in our power and remember that dead enemies are harmless.
Think it over." And to Fahd: "Take him away and bind his feet."
"Be careful, Moslem," warned Tarzan, "the arms of the ape-man are
long—they may reach out even in death and their fingers encircle
your throat."
"Thou shalt have until dark to decide, Nasrany, and thou mayest
know that Ibn Jad will not turn back until he hath that for which he
came."
They took Tarzan then and at a distance from the beyt of Ibn Jad
they pushed him into a small hejra; but once within this tent it
required three men to throw him to the ground and bind his ankles,
even though his wrists were already bound.
In the beyt of the sheik the Beduins sipped their coffee, sickish with
clove, cinnamon and other spice, the while they discussed the ill
fortune that had befallen them; for, regardless of his bravado, Ibn
Jad knew full well that only speed and most propitious circumstances
could now place the seal of success upon his venture.
"But for Motlog," said Fahd, "we would now have no cause for worry
concerning the Nasrany, for I had my knife ready to slit the dog's
throat when Motlog interfered."
"And had word of his slaying spread broadcast over his country
before another sunset and all his people at our heels," countered
Motlog.
"Wellah," said Tollog, the sheik's brother. "I wish Fahd had done the
thing he wished. After all how much better off are we if we permit the
Nasrany to live? Should we free him we know that he will gather his
people and drive us from the country. If we keep him prisoner and an
escaped slave carries word of it to his people will they not be upon
us even more surely than as though we had slain him?"
"Tollog, thou speakest words of wisdom," said Ibn Jad, nodding
appreciatively.
"But wait," said Tollog, "I have within me, unspoken, words of even
greater worth." He leaned forward motioning the others closer and
lowered his voice. "Should this one whom they call Tarzan escape
during the night, or should we set him free, there would be no bad
word for an escaped slave to bear to his people."
"Billah!" exclaimed Fahd disgustedly. "There would be no need for an
escaped slave to bring word to his people—the Nasrany himself
would do that and lead them upon us in person. Bah! the brains of
Tollog are as camel's dung."
"Thou hast not heard all that I would say, brother," continued Tollog,
ignoring Fahd. "It would only seem to the slaves that this man had
escaped, for in the morning he would be gone and we would make
great lamentation over the matter, or we would say: 'Wellah, it is true
that Ibn Jad made peace with the stranger, who departed into the
jungle, blessing him'."
"I do not follow thee, brother," said Ibn Jad.
"The Nasrany lies bound in yonder hejra. The night will be dark. A
slim knife between his ribs were enough. There be faithful Habash
among us who will do our bidding, nor speak of the matter after.
They can prepare a trench from the bottom of which a dead Tarzan
may not reach out to harm us."
"By Ullah, it is plain that thou art of sheykhly blood, Tollog,"
exclaimed Ibn Jad. "The wisdom of thy words proclaims it. Thou
shalt attend to the whole matter. Then will it be done secretly and
well. The blessings of Ullah be upon thee!" and Ibn Jad arose and
entered the quarters of his hareem.

CHAPTER II

Comrades of the Wild

Darkness fell upon the menzil of Ibn Jad the sheik. Beneath the
small flitting tent where his captors had left him, Tarzan still struggled
with the bonds that secured his wrists, but the tough camel leather
withstood even the might of his giant thews. At times he lay listening
to the night noises of the jungle, many of them noises that no other
human ear could have heard, and always he interpreted each
correctly. He knew when Numa passed and Sheeta the leopard; and
then from afar and so faintly that it was but the shadow of a whisper,
there came down the wind the trumpeting of a bull elephant.
Without the beyt of Ibn Jad Ateja, the sheik's daughter, loitered, and
with her was Zeyd. They stood very close to one another and the
man held the maiden's hands in his.
"Tell me, Ateja," he said, "that you love no other than Zeyd."
"How many times must I tell you that?" whispered the girl.
"And you do not love Fahd?" insisted the man.
"Billah, no!" she ejaculated.
"Yet your father gives the impression that one day you will be
Fahd's."
"My father wishes me to be of the hareem of Fahd, but I mistrust the
man, and I could not belong to one whom I neither loved nor
trusted."
"I, too, mistrust Fahd," said Zeyd. "Listen Ateja! I doubt his loyalty to
thy father, and not his alone, but another whose name I durst not
even whisper. Upon occasions I have seen them muttering together
when they thought that there were no others about."
The girl nodded her head. "I know. It is not necessary even to
whisper the name to me—and I hate him even as I hate Fahd."
"But he is of thine own kin," the youth reminded her.
"What of that? Is he not also my father's brother? If that bond does
not hold him loyal to Ibn Jad, who hath treated him well, why should I
pretend loyalty for him? Nay, I think him a traitor to my father, but Ibn
Jad seems blind to the fact. We are a long way from our own country