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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Beasts of Tarzan
+    
+This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
+at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
+you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
+before using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Beasts of Tarzan
+
+Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+Release date: October 1, 1993 [eBook #85]
+                Most recently updated: June 21, 2022
+
+Language: English
+
+Credits: Judith Boss
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEASTS OF TARZAN ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Beasts of Tarzan
+
+by Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+To Joan Burroughs
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. Kidnapped
+ CHAPTER II. Marooned
+ CHAPTER III. Beasts at Bay
+ CHAPTER IV. Sheeta
+ CHAPTER V. Mugambi
+ CHAPTER VI. A Hideous Crew
+ CHAPTER VII. Betrayed
+ CHAPTER VIII. The Dance of Death
+ CHAPTER IX. Chivalry or Villainy
+ CHAPTER X. The Swede
+ CHAPTER XI. Tambudza
+ CHAPTER XII. A Black Scoundrel
+ CHAPTER XIII. Escape
+ CHAPTER XIV. Alone in the Jungle
+ CHAPTER XV. Down the Ugambi
+ CHAPTER XVI. In the Darkness of the Night
+ CHAPTER XVII. On the Deck of the “Kincaid”
+ CHAPTER XVIII. Paulvitch Plots Revenge
+ CHAPTER XIX. The Last of the “Kincaid”
+ CHAPTER XX. Jungle Island Again
+ CHAPTER XXI. The Law of the Jungle
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Kidnapped
+
+
+“The entire affair is shrouded in mystery,” said D’Arnot. “I have it on
+the best of authority that neither the police nor the special agents of
+the general staff have the faintest conception of how it was
+accomplished. All they know, all that anyone knows, is that Nikolas
+Rokoff has escaped.”
+
+John Clayton, Lord Greystoke—he who had been “Tarzan of the Apes”—sat
+in silence in the apartments of his friend, Lieutenant Paul D’Arnot, in
+Paris, gazing meditatively at the toe of his immaculate boot.
+
+His mind revolved many memories, recalled by the escape of his
+arch-enemy from the French military prison to which he had been
+sentenced for life upon the testimony of the ape-man.
+
+He thought of the lengths to which Rokoff had once gone to compass his
+death, and he realized that what the man had already done would
+doubtless be as nothing by comparison with what he would wish and plot
+to do now that he was again free.
+
+Tarzan had recently brought his wife and infant son to London to escape
+the discomforts and dangers of the rainy season upon their vast estate
+in Uziri—the land of the savage Waziri warriors whose broad African
+domains the ape-man had once ruled.
+
+He had run across the Channel for a brief visit with his old friend,
+but the news of the Russian’s escape had already cast a shadow upon his
+outing, so that though he had but just arrived he was already
+contemplating an immediate return to London.
+
+“It is not that I fear for myself, Paul,” he said at last. “Many times
+in the past have I thwarted Rokoff’s designs upon my life; but now
+there are others to consider. Unless I misjudge the man, he would more
+quickly strike at me through my wife or son than directly at me, for he
+doubtless realizes that in no other way could he inflict greater
+anguish upon me. I must go back to them at once, and remain with them
+until Rokoff is recaptured—or dead.”
+
+As these two talked in Paris, two other men were talking together in a
+little cottage upon the outskirts of London. Both were dark,
+sinister-looking men.
+
+One was bearded, but the other, whose face wore the pallor of long
+confinement within doors, had but a few days’ growth of black beard
+upon his face. It was he who was speaking.
+
+“You must needs shave off that beard of yours, Alexis,” he said to his
+companion. “With it he would recognize you on the instant. We must
+separate here in the hour, and when we meet again upon the deck of the
+Kincaid, let us hope that we shall have with us two honoured guests who
+little anticipate the pleasant voyage we have planned for them.
+
+“In two hours I should be upon my way to Dover with one of them, and by
+tomorrow night, if you follow my instructions carefully, you should
+arrive with the other, provided, of course, that he returns to London
+as quickly as I presume he will.
+
+“There should be both profit and pleasure as well as other good things
+to reward our efforts, my dear Alexis. Thanks to the stupidity of the
+French, they have gone to such lengths to conceal the fact of my escape
+for these many days that I have had ample opportunity to work out every
+detail of our little adventure so carefully that there is little chance
+of the slightest hitch occurring to mar our prospects. And now
+good-bye, and good luck!”
+
+Three hours later a messenger mounted the steps to the apartment of
+Lieutenant D’Arnot.
+
+“A telegram for Lord Greystoke,” he said to the servant who answered
+his summons. “Is he here?”
+
+The man answered in the affirmative, and, signing for the message,
+carried it within to Tarzan, who was already preparing to depart for
+London.
+
+Tarzan tore open the envelope, and as he read his face went white.
+
+“Read it, Paul,” he said, handing the slip of paper to D’Arnot. “It has
+come already.”
+
+The Frenchman took the telegram and read:
+
+“Jack stolen from the garden through complicity of new servant. Come at
+once.—JANE.”
+
+
+As Tarzan leaped from the roadster that had met him at the station and
+ran up the steps to his London town house he was met at the door by a
+dry-eyed but almost frantic woman.
+
+Quickly Jane Porter Clayton narrated all that she had been able to
+learn of the theft of the boy.
+
+The baby’s nurse had been wheeling him in the sunshine on the walk
+before the house when a closed taxicab drew up at the corner of the
+street. The woman had paid but passing attention to the vehicle, merely
+noting that it discharged no passenger, but stood at the kerb with the
+motor running as though waiting for a fare from the residence before
+which it had stopped.
+
+Almost immediately the new houseman, Carl, had come running from the
+Greystoke house, saying that the girl’s mistress wished to speak with
+her for a moment, and that she was to leave little Jack in his care
+until she returned.
+
+The woman said that she entertained not the slightest suspicion of the
+man’s motives until she had reached the doorway of the house, when it
+occurred to her to warn him not to turn the carriage so as to permit
+the sun to shine in the baby’s eyes.
+
+As she turned about to call this to him she was somewhat surprised to
+see that he was wheeling the carriage rapidly toward the corner, and at
+the same time she saw the door of the taxicab open and a swarthy face
+framed for a moment in the aperture.
+
+Intuitively, the danger to the child flashed upon her, and with a
+shriek she dashed down the steps and up the walk toward the taxicab,
+into which Carl was now handing the baby to the swarthy one within.
+
+Just before she reached the vehicle, Carl leaped in beside his
+confederate, slamming the door behind him. At the same time the
+chauffeur attempted to start his machine, but it was evident that
+something had gone wrong, as though the gears refused to mesh, and the
+delay caused by this, while he pushed the lever into reverse and backed
+the car a few inches before again attempting to go ahead, gave the
+nurse time to reach the side of the taxicab.
+
+Leaping to the running-board, she had attempted to snatch the baby from
+the arms of the stranger, and here, screaming and fighting, she had
+clung to her position even after the taxicab had got under way; nor was
+it until the machine had passed the Greystoke residence at good speed
+that Carl, with a heavy blow to her face, had succeeded in knocking her
+to the pavement.
+
+Her screams had attracted servants and members of the families from
+residences near by, as well as from the Greystoke home. Lady Greystoke
+had witnessed the girl’s brave battle, and had herself tried to reach
+the rapidly passing vehicle, but had been too late.
+
+That was all that anyone knew, nor did Lady Greystoke dream of the
+possible identity of the man at the bottom of the plot until her
+husband told her of the escape of Nikolas Rokoff from the French prison
+where they had hoped he was permanently confined.
+
+As Tarzan and his wife stood planning the wisest course to pursue, the
+telephone bell rang in the library at their right. Tarzan quickly
+answered the call in person.
+
+“Lord Greystoke?” asked a man’s voice at the other end of the line.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Your son has been stolen,” continued the voice, “and I alone may help
+you to recover him. I am conversant with the plot of those who took
+him. In fact, I was a party to it, and was to share in the reward, but
+now they are trying to ditch me, and to be quits with them I will aid
+you to recover him on condition that you will not prosecute me for my
+part in the crime. What do you say?”
+
+“If you lead me to where my son is hidden,” replied the ape-man, “you
+need fear nothing from me.”
+
+“Good,” replied the other. “But you must come alone to meet me, for it
+is enough that I must trust you. I cannot take the chance of permitting
+others to learn my identity.”
+
+“Where and when may I meet you?” asked Tarzan.
+
+The other gave the name and location of a public-house on the
+water-front at Dover—a place frequented by sailors.
+
+“Come,” he concluded, “about ten o’clock tonight. It would do no good
+to arrive earlier. Your son will be safe enough in the meantime, and I
+can then lead you secretly to where he is hidden. But be sure to come
+alone, and under no circumstances notify Scotland Yard, for I know you
+well and shall be watching for you.
+
+“Should any other accompany you, or should I see suspicious characters
+who might be agents of the police, I shall not meet you, and your last
+chance of recovering your son will be gone.”
+
+Without more words the man rang off.
+
+Tarzan repeated the gist of the conversation to his wife. She begged to
+be allowed to accompany him, but he insisted that it might result in
+the man’s carrying out his threat of refusing to aid them if Tarzan did
+not come alone, and so they parted, he to hasten to Dover, and she,
+ostensibly to wait at home until he should notify her of the outcome of
+his mission.
+
+Little did either dream of what both were destined to pass through
+before they should meet again, or the far-distant—but why anticipate?
+
+For ten minutes after the ape-man had left her Jane Clayton walked
+restlessly back and forth across the silken rugs of the library. Her
+mother heart ached, bereft of its first-born. Her mind was in an
+anguish of hopes and fears.
+
+Though her judgment told her that all would be well were her Tarzan to
+go alone in accordance with the mysterious stranger’s summons, her
+intuition would not permit her to lay aside suspicion of the gravest
+dangers to both her husband and her son.
+
+The more she thought of the matter, the more convinced she became that
+the recent telephone message might be but a ruse to keep them inactive
+until the boy was safely hidden away or spirited out of England. Or it
+might be that it had been simply a bait to lure Tarzan into the hands
+of the implacable Rokoff.
+
+With the lodgment of this thought she stopped in wide-eyed terror.
+Instantly it became a conviction. She glanced at the great clock
+ticking the minutes in the corner of the library.
+
+It was too late to catch the Dover train that Tarzan was to take. There
+was another, later, however, that would bring her to the Channel port
+in time to reach the address the stranger had given her husband before
+the appointed hour.
+
+Summoning her maid and chauffeur, she issued instructions rapidly. Ten
+minutes later she was being whisked through the crowded streets toward
+the railway station.
+
+It was nine-forty-five that night that Tarzan entered the squalid “pub”
+on the water-front in Dover. As he passed into the evil-smelling room a
+muffled figure brushed past him toward the street.
+
+“Come, my lord!” whispered the stranger.
+
+The ape-man wheeled about and followed the other into the ill-lit
+alley, which custom had dignified with the title of thoroughfare. Once
+outside, the fellow led the way into the darkness, nearer a wharf,
+where high-piled bales, boxes, and casks cast dense shadows. Here he
+halted.
+
+“Where is the boy?” asked Greystoke.
+
+“On that small steamer whose lights you can just see yonder,” replied
+the other.
+
+In the gloom Tarzan was trying to peer into the features of his
+companion, but he did not recognize the man as one whom he had ever
+before seen. Had he guessed that his guide was Alexis Paulvitch he
+would have realized that naught but treachery lay in the man’s heart,
+and that danger lurked in the path of every move.
+
+“He is unguarded now,” continued the Russian. “Those who took him feel
+perfectly safe from detection, and with the exception of a couple of
+members of the crew, whom I have furnished with enough gin to silence
+them effectually for hours, there is none aboard the Kincaid. We can go
+aboard, get the child, and return without the slightest fear.”
+
+Tarzan nodded.
+
+“Let’s be about it, then,” he said.
+
+His guide led him to a small boat moored alongside the wharf. The two
+men entered, and Paulvitch pulled rapidly toward the steamer. The black
+smoke issuing from her funnel did not at the time make any suggestion
+to Tarzan’s mind. All his thoughts were occupied with the hope that in
+a few moments he would again have his little son in his arms.
+
+At the steamer’s side they found a monkey-ladder dangling close above
+them, and up this the two men crept stealthily. Once on deck they
+hastened aft to where the Russian pointed to a hatch.
+
+“The boy is hidden there,” he said. “You had better go down after him,
+as there is less chance that he will cry in fright than should he find
+himself in the arms of a stranger. I will stand on guard here.”
+
+So anxious was Tarzan to rescue the child that he gave not the
+slightest thought to the strangeness of all the conditions surrounding
+the Kincaid. That her deck was deserted, though she had steam up, and
+from the volume of smoke pouring from her funnel was all ready to get
+under way made no impression upon him.
+
+With the thought that in another instant he would fold that precious
+little bundle of humanity in his arms, the ape-man swung down into the
+darkness below. Scarcely had he released his hold upon the edge of the
+hatch than the heavy covering fell clattering above him.
+
+Instantly he knew that he was the victim of a plot, and that far from
+rescuing his son he had himself fallen into the hands of his enemies.
+Though he immediately endeavoured to reach the hatch and lift the
+cover, he was unable to do so.
+
+Striking a match, he explored his surroundings, finding that a little
+compartment had been partitioned off from the main hold, with the hatch
+above his head the only means of ingress or egress. It was evident that
+the room had been prepared for the very purpose of serving as a cell
+for himself.
+
+There was nothing in the compartment, and no other occupant. If the
+child was on board the Kincaid he was confined elsewhere.
+
+For over twenty years, from infancy to manhood, the ape-man had roamed
+his savage jungle haunts without human companionship of any nature. He
+had learned at the most impressionable period of his life to take his
+pleasures and his sorrows as the beasts take theirs.
+
+So it was that he neither raved nor stormed against fate, but instead
+waited patiently for what might next befall him, though not by any
+means without an eye to doing the utmost to succour himself. To this
+end he examined his prison carefully, tested the heavy planking that
+formed its walls, and measured the distance of the hatch above him.
+
+And while he was thus occupied there came suddenly to him the vibration
+of machinery and the throbbing of the propeller.
+
+The ship was moving! Where to and to what fate was it carrying him?
+
+And even as these thoughts passed through his mind there came to his
+ears above the din of the engines that which caused him to go cold with
+apprehension.
+
+Clear and shrill from the deck above him rang the scream of a
+frightened woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Marooned
+
+
+As Tarzan and his guide had disappeared into the shadows upon the dark
+wharf the figure of a heavily veiled woman had hurried down the narrow
+alley to the entrance of the drinking-place the two men had just
+quitted.
+
+Here she paused and looked about, and then as though satisfied that she
+had at last reached the place she sought, she pushed bravely into the
+interior of the vile den.
+
+A score of half-drunken sailors and wharf-rats looked up at the
+unaccustomed sight of a richly gowned woman in their midst. Rapidly she
+approached the slovenly barmaid who stared half in envy, half in hate,
+at her more fortunate sister.
+
+“Have you seen a tall, well-dressed man here, but a minute since,” she
+asked, “who met another and went away with him?”
+
+The girl answered in the affirmative, but could not tell which way the
+two had gone. A sailor who had approached to listen to the conversation
+vouchsafed the information that a moment before as he had been about to
+enter the “pub” he had seen two men leaving it who walked toward the
+wharf.
+
+“Show me the direction they went,” cried the woman, slipping a coin
+into the man’s hand.
+
+The fellow led her from the place, and together they walked quickly
+toward the wharf and along it until across the water they saw a small
+boat just pulling into the shadows of a near-by steamer.
+
+“There they be,” whispered the man.
+
+“Ten pounds if you will find a boat and row me to that steamer,” cried
+the woman.
+
+“Quick, then,” he replied, “for we gotta go it if we’re goin’ to catch
+the Kincaid afore she sails. She’s had steam up for three hours an’
+jest been a-waitin’ fer that one passenger. I was a-talkin’ to one of
+her crew ’arf an hour ago.”
+
+As he spoke he led the way to the end of the wharf where he knew
+another boat lay moored, and, lowering the woman into it, he jumped in
+after and pushed off. The two were soon scudding over the water.
+
+At the steamer’s side the man demanded his pay and, without waiting to
+count out the exact amount, the woman thrust a handful of bank-notes
+into his outstretched hand. A single glance at them convinced the
+fellow that he had been more than well paid. Then he assisted her up
+the ladder, holding his skiff close to the ship’s side against the
+chance that this profitable passenger might wish to be taken ashore
+later.
+
+But presently the sound of the donkey engine and the rattle of a steel
+cable on the hoisting-drum proclaimed the fact that the Kincaid’s
+anchor was being raised, and a moment later the waiter heard the
+propellers revolving, and slowly the little steamer moved away from him
+out into the channel.
+
+As he turned to row back to shore he heard a woman’s shriek from the
+ship’s deck.
+
+“That’s wot I calls rotten luck,” he soliloquized. “I might jest as
+well of ’ad the whole bloomin’ wad.”
+
+When Jane Clayton climbed to the deck of the Kincaid she found the ship
+apparently deserted. There was no sign of those she sought nor of any
+other aboard, and so she went about her search for her husband and the
+child she hoped against hope to find there without interruption.
+
+Quickly she hastened to the cabin, which was half above and half below
+deck. As she hurried down the short companion-ladder into the main
+cabin, on either side of which were the smaller rooms occupied by the
+officers, she failed to note the quick closing of one of the doors
+before her. She passed the full length of the main room, and then
+retracing her steps stopped before each door to listen, furtively
+trying each latch.
+
+All was silence, utter silence there, in which the throbbing of her own
+frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to fill the ship
+with its thunderous alarm.
+
+One by one the doors opened before her touch, only to reveal empty
+interiors. In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity upon
+the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the propeller.
+She had reached the last door upon the right now, and as she pushed it
+open she was seized from within by a powerful, dark-visaged man, and
+drawn hastily into the stuffy, ill-smelling interior.
+
+The sudden shock of fright which the unexpected attack had upon her
+drew a single piercing scream from her throat; then the man clapped a
+hand roughly over the mouth.
+
+“Not until we are farther from land, my dear,” he said. “Then you may
+yell your pretty head off.”
+
+Lady Greystoke turned to look into the leering, bearded face so close
+to hers. The man relaxed the pressure of his fingers upon her lips, and
+with a little moan of terror as she recognized him the girl shrank away
+from her captor.
+
+“Nikolas Rokoff! M. Thuran!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Your devoted admirer,” replied the Russian, with a low bow.
+
+“My little boy,” she said next, ignoring the terms of endearment—“where
+is he? Let me have him. How could you be so cruel—even as you—Nikolas
+Rokoff—cannot be entirely devoid of mercy and compassion? Tell me where
+he is. Is he aboard this ship? Oh, please, if such a thing as a heart
+beats within your breast, take me to my baby!”
+
+“If you do as you are bid no harm will befall him,” replied Rokoff.
+“But remember that it is your own fault that you are here. You came
+aboard voluntarily, and you may take the consequences. I little
+thought,” he added to himself, “that any such good luck as this would
+come to me.”
+
+He went on deck then, locking the cabin-door upon his prisoner, and for
+several days she did not see him. The truth of the matter being that
+Nikolas Rokoff was so poor a sailor that the heavy seas the Kincaid
+encountered from the very beginning of her voyage sent the Russian to
+his berth with a bad attack of sea-sickness.
+
+During this time her only visitor was an uncouth Swede, the Kincaid’s
+unsavoury cook, who brought her meals to her. His name was Sven
+Anderssen, his one pride being that his patronymic was spelt with a
+double “s.”
+
+The man was tall and raw-boned, with a long yellow moustache, an
+unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails. The very sight of him with
+one grimy thumb buried deep in the lukewarm stew, that seemed, from the
+frequency of its repetition, to constitute the pride of his culinary
+art, was sufficient to take away the girl’s appetite.
+
+His small, blue, close-set eyes never met hers squarely. There was a
+shiftiness of his whole appearance that even found expression in the
+cat-like manner of his gait, and to it all a sinister suggestion was
+added by the long slim knife that always rested at his waist, slipped
+through the greasy cord that supported his soiled apron. Ostensibly it
+was but an implement of his calling; but the girl could never free
+herself of the conviction that it would require less provocation to
+witness it put to other and less harmless uses.
+
+His manner toward her was surly, yet she never failed to meet him with
+a pleasant smile and a word of thanks when he brought her food to her,
+though more often than not she hurled the bulk of it through the tiny
+cabin port the moment that the door closed behind him.
+
+During the days of anguish that followed Jane Clayton’s imprisonment,
+but two questions were uppermost in her mind—the whereabouts of her
+husband and her son. She fully believed that the baby was aboard the
+Kincaid, provided that he still lived, but whether Tarzan had been
+permitted to live after having been lured aboard the evil craft she
+could not guess.
+
+She knew, of course, the deep hatred that the Russian felt for the
+Englishman, and she could think of but one reason for having him
+brought aboard the ship—to dispatch him in comparative safety in
+revenge for his having thwarted Rokoff’s pet schemes, and for having
+been at last the means of landing him in a French prison.
+
+Tarzan, on his part, lay in the darkness of his cell, ignorant of the
+fact that his wife was a prisoner in the cabin almost above his head.
+
+The same Swede that served Jane brought his meals to him, but, though
+on several occasions Tarzan had tried to draw the man into
+conversation, he had been unsuccessful. He had hoped to learn through
+this fellow whether his little son was aboard the Kincaid, but to every
+question upon this or kindred subjects the fellow returned but one
+reply, “Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard.” So after several
+attempts Tarzan gave it up.
+
+For weeks that seemed months to the two prisoners the little steamer
+forged on they knew not where. Once the Kincaid stopped to coal, only
+immediately to take up the seemingly interminable voyage.
+
+Rokoff had visited Jane Clayton but once since he had locked her in the
+tiny cabin. He had come gaunt and hollow-eyed from a long siege of
+sea-sickness. The object of his visit was to obtain from her her
+personal cheque for a large sum in return for a guarantee of her
+personal safety and return to England.
+
+“When you set me down safely in any civilized port, together with my
+son and my husband,” she replied, “I will pay you in gold twice the
+amount you ask; but until then you shall not have a cent, nor the
+promise of a cent under any other conditions.”
+
+“You will give me the cheque I ask,” he replied with a snarl, “or
+neither you nor your child nor your husband will ever again set foot
+within any port, civilized or otherwise.”
+
+“I would not trust you,” she replied. “What guarantee have I that you
+would not take my money and then do as you pleased with me and mine
+regardless of your promise?”
+
+“I think you will do as I bid,” he said, turning to leave the cabin.
+“Remember that I have your son—if you chance to hear the agonized wail
+of a tortured child it may console you to reflect that it is because of
+your stubbornness that the baby suffers—and that it is your baby.”
+
+“You would not do it!” cried the girl. “You would not—could not be so
+fiendishly cruel!”
+
+“It is not I that am cruel, but you,” he returned, “for you permit a
+paltry sum of money to stand between your baby and immunity from
+suffering.”
+
+The end of it was that Jane Clayton wrote out a cheque of large
+denomination and handed it to Nikolas Rokoff, who left her cabin with a
+grin of satisfaction upon his lips.
+
+The following day the hatch was removed from Tarzan’s cell, and as he
+looked up he saw Paulvitch’s head framed in the square of light above
+him.
+
+“Come up,” commanded the Russian. “But bear in mind that you will be
+shot if you make a single move to attack me or any other aboard the
+ship.”
+
+The ape-man swung himself lightly to the deck. About him, but at a
+respectful distance, stood a half-dozen sailors armed with rifles and
+revolvers. Facing him was Paulvitch.
+
+Tarzan looked about for Rokoff, who he felt sure must be aboard, but
+there was no sign of him.
+
+“Lord Greystoke,” commenced the Russian, “by your continued and wanton
+interference with M. Rokoff and his plans you have at last brought
+yourself and your family to this unfortunate extremity. You have only
+yourself to thank. As you may imagine, it has cost M. Rokoff a large
+amount of money to finance this expedition, and, as you are the sole
+cause of it, he naturally looks to you for reimbursement.
+
+“Further, I may say that only by meeting M. Rokoff’s just demands may
+you avert the most unpleasant consequences to your wife and child, and
+at the same time retain your own life and regain your liberty.”
+
+“What is the amount?” asked Tarzan. “And what assurance have I that you
+will live up to your end of the agreement? I have little reason to
+trust two such scoundrels as you and Rokoff, you know.”
+
+The Russian flushed.
+
+“You are in no position to deliver insults,” he said. “You have no
+assurance that we will live up to our agreement other than my word, but
+you have before you the assurance that we can make short work of you if
+you do not write out the cheque we demand.
+
+“Unless you are a greater fool than I imagine, you should know that
+there is nothing that would give us greater pleasure than to order
+these men to fire. That we do not is because we have other plans for
+punishing you that would be entirely upset by your death.”
+
+“Answer one question,” said Tarzan. “Is my son on board this ship?”
+
+“No,” replied Alexis Paulvitch, “your son is quite safe elsewhere; nor
+will he be killed until you refuse to accede to our fair demands. If it
+becomes necessary to kill you, there will be no reason for not killing
+the child, since with you gone the one whom we wish to punish through
+the boy will be gone, and he will then be to us only a constant source
+of danger and embarrassment. You see, therefore, that you may only save
+the life of your son by saving your own, and you can only save your own
+by giving us the cheque we ask.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Tarzan, for he knew that he could trust them to
+carry out any sinister threat that Paulvitch had made, and there was a
+bare chance that by conceding their demands he might save the boy.
+
+That they would permit him to live after he had appended his name to
+the cheque never occurred to him as being within the realms of
+probability. But he was determined to give them such a battle as they
+would never forget, and possibly to take Paulvitch with him into
+eternity. He was only sorry that it was not Rokoff.
+
+He took his pocket cheque-book and fountain-pen from his pocket.
+
+“What is the amount?” he asked.
+
+Paulvitch named an enormous sum. Tarzan could scarce restrain a smile.
+
+Their very cupidity was to prove the means of their undoing, in the
+matter of the ransom at least. Purposely he hesitated and haggled over
+the amount, but Paulvitch was obdurate. Finally the ape-man wrote out
+his cheque for a larger sum than stood to his credit at the bank.
+
+As he turned to hand the worthless slip of paper to the Russian his
+glance chanced to pass across the starboard bow of the Kincaid. To his
+surprise he saw that the ship lay within a few hundred yards of land.
+Almost down to the water’s edge ran a dense tropical jungle, and behind
+was higher land clothed in forest.
+
+Paulvitch noted the direction of his gaze.
+
+“You are to be set at liberty here,” he said.
+
+Tarzan’s plan for immediate physical revenge upon the Russian vanished.
+He thought the land before him the mainland of Africa, and he knew that
+should they liberate him here he could doubtless find his way to
+civilization with comparative ease.
+
+Paulvitch took the cheque.
+
+“Remove your clothing,” he said to the ape-man. “Here you will not need
+it.”
+
+Tarzan demurred.
+
+Paulvitch pointed to the armed sailors. Then the Englishman slowly
+divested himself of his clothing.
+
+A boat was lowered, and, still heavily guarded, the ape-man was rowed
+ashore. Half an hour later the sailors had returned to the Kincaid, and
+the steamer was slowly getting under way.
+
+As Tarzan stood upon the narrow strip of beach watching the departure
+of the vessel he saw a figure appear at the rail and call aloud to
+attract his attention.
+
+The ape-man had been about to read a note that one of the sailors had
+handed him as the small boat that bore him to the shore was on the
+point of returning to the steamer, but at the hail from the vessel’s
+deck he looked up.
+
+He saw a black-bearded man who laughed at him in derision as he held
+high above his head the figure of a little child. Tarzan half started
+as though to rush through the surf and strike out for the already
+moving steamer; but realizing the futility of so rash an act he halted
+at the water’s edge.
+
+Thus he stood, his gaze riveted upon the Kincaid until it disappeared
+beyond a projecting promontory of the coast.
+
+From the jungle at his back fierce bloodshot eyes glared from beneath
+shaggy overhanging brows upon him.
+
+Little monkeys in the tree-tops chattered and scolded, and from the
+distance of the inland forest came the scream of a leopard.
+
+But still John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, stood deaf and unseeing,
+suffering the pangs of keen regret for the opportunity that he had
+wasted because he had been so gullible as to place credence in a single
+statement of the first lieutenant of his arch-enemy.
+
+“I have at least,” he thought, “one consolation—the knowledge that Jane
+is safe in London. Thank Heaven she, too, did not fall into the
+clutches of those villains.”
+
+Behind him the hairy thing whose evil eyes had been watching him as a
+cat watches a mouse was creeping stealthily toward him.
+
+Where were the trained senses of the savage ape-man?
+
+Where the acute hearing?
+
+Where the uncanny sense of scent?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+Beasts at Bay
+
+
+Slowly Tarzan unfolded the note the sailor had thrust into his hand,
+and read it. At first it made little impression on his sorrow-numbed
+senses, but finally the full purport of the hideous plot of revenge
+unfolded itself before his imagination.
+
+“This will explain to you” [the note read] “the exact nature of my
+intentions relative to your offspring and to you.
+
+“You were born an ape. You lived naked in the jungles—to your own we
+have returned you; but your son shall rise a step above his sire. It is
+the immutable law of evolution.
+
+“The father was a beast, but the son shall be a man—he shall take the
+next ascending step in the scale of progress. He shall be no naked
+beast of the jungle, but shall wear a loin-cloth and copper anklets,
+and, perchance, a ring in his nose, for he is to be reared by men—a
+tribe of savage cannibals.
+
+“I might have killed you, but that would have curtailed the full
+measure of the punishment you have earned at my hands.
+
+“Dead, you could not have suffered in the knowledge of your son’s
+plight; but living and in a place from which you may not escape to seek
+or succour your child, you shall suffer worse than death for all the
+years of your life in contemplation of the horrors of your son’s
+existence.
+
+“This, then, is to be a part of your punishment for having dared to pit
+yourself against
+
+N. R.
+
+“P.S.—The balance of your punishment has to do with what shall
+presently befall your wife—that I shall leave to your imagination.”
+
+As he finished reading, a slight sound behind him brought him back with
+a start to the world of present realities.
+
+Instantly his senses awoke, and he was again Tarzan of the Apes.
+
+As he wheeled about, it was a beast at bay, vibrant with the instinct
+of self-preservation, that faced a huge bull-ape that was already
+charging down upon him.
+
+The two years that had elapsed since Tarzan had come out of the savage
+forest with his rescued mate had witnessed slight diminution of the
+mighty powers that had made him the invincible lord of the jungle. His
+great estates in Uziri had claimed much of his time and attention, and
+there he had found ample field for the practical use and retention of
+his almost superhuman powers; but naked and unarmed to do battle with
+the shaggy, bull-necked beast that now confronted him was a test that
+the ape-man would scarce have welcomed at any period of his wild
+existence.
+
+But there was no alternative other than to meet the rage-maddened
+creature with the weapons with which nature had endowed him.
+
+Over the bull’s shoulder Tarzan could see now the heads and shoulders
+of perhaps a dozen more of these mighty fore-runners of primitive man.
+
+He knew, however, that there was little chance that they would attack
+him, since it is not within the reasoning powers of the anthropoid to
+be able to weigh or appreciate the value of concentrated action against
+an enemy—otherwise they would long since have become the dominant
+creatures of their haunts, so tremendous a power of destruction lies in
+their mighty thews and savage fangs.
+
+With a low snarl the beast now hurled himself at Tarzan, but the
+ape-man had found, among other things in the haunts of civilized man,
+certain methods of scientific warfare that are unknown to the jungle
+folk.
+
+Whereas, a few years since, he would have met the brute rush with brute
+force, he now sidestepped his antagonist’s headlong charge, and as the
+brute hurtled past him swung a mighty right to the pit of the ape’s
+stomach.
+
+With a howl of mingled rage and anguish the great anthropoid bent
+double and sank to the ground, though almost instantly he was again
+struggling to his feet.
+
+Before he could regain them, however, his white-skinned foe had wheeled
+and pounced upon him, and in the act there dropped from the shoulders
+of the English lord the last shred of his superficial mantle of
+civilization.
+
+Once again he was the jungle beast revelling in bloody conflict with
+his kind. Once again he was Tarzan, son of Kala the she-ape.
+
+His strong, white teeth sank into the hairy throat of his enemy as he
+sought the pulsing jugular.
+
+Powerful fingers held the mighty fangs from his own flesh, or clenched
+and beat with the power of a steam-hammer upon the snarling,
+foam-flecked face of his adversary.
+
+In a circle about them the balance of the tribe of apes stood watching
+and enjoying the struggle. They muttered low gutturals of approval as
+bits of white hide or hairy bloodstained skin were torn from one
+contestant or the other. But they were silent in amazement and
+expectation when they saw the mighty white ape wriggle upon the back of
+their king, and, with steel muscles tensed beneath the armpits of his
+antagonist, bear down mightily with his open palms upon the back of the
+thick bullneck, so that the king ape could but shriek in agony and
+flounder helplessly about upon the thick mat of jungle grass.
+
+As Tarzan had overcome the huge Terkoz that time years before when he
+had been about to set out upon his quest for human beings of his own
+kind and colour, so now he overcame this other great ape with the same
+wrestling hold upon which he had stumbled by accident during that other
+combat. The little audience of fierce anthropoids heard the creaking of
+their king’s neck mingling with his agonized shrieks and hideous
+roaring.
+
+Then there came a sudden crack, like the breaking of a stout limb
+before the fury of the wind. The bullet-head crumpled forward upon its
+flaccid neck against the great hairy chest—the roaring and the
+shrieking ceased.
+
+The little pig-eyes of the onlookers wandered from the still form of
+their leader to that of the white ape that was rising to its feet
+beside the vanquished, then back to their king as though in wonder that
+he did not arise and slay this presumptuous stranger.
+
+They saw the new-comer place a foot upon the neck of the quiet figure
+at his feet and, throwing back his head, give vent to the wild, uncanny
+challenge of the bull-ape that has made a kill. Then they knew that
+their king was dead.
+
+Across the jungle rolled the horrid notes of the victory cry. The
+little monkeys in the tree-tops ceased their chattering. The
+harsh-voiced, brilliant-plumed birds were still. From afar came the
+answering wail of a leopard and the deep roar of a lion.
+
+It was the old Tarzan who turned questioning eyes upon the little knot
+of apes before him. It was the old Tarzan who shook his head as though
+to toss back a heavy mane that had fallen before his face—an old habit
+dating from the days that his great shock of thick, black hair had
+fallen about his shoulders, and often tumbled before his eyes when it
+had meant life or death to him to have his vision unobstructed.
+
+The ape-man knew that he might expect an immediate attack on the part
+of that particular surviving bull-ape who felt himself best fitted to
+contend for the kingship of the tribe. Among his own apes he knew that
+it was not unusual for an entire stranger to enter a community and,
+after having dispatched the king, assume the leadership of the tribe
+himself, together with the fallen monarch’s mates.
+
+On the other hand, if he made no attempt to follow them, they might
+move slowly away from him, later to fight among themselves for the
+supremacy. That he could be king of them, if he so chose, he was
+confident; but he was not sure he cared to assume the sometimes irksome
+duties of that position, for he could see no particular advantage to be
+gained thereby.
+
+One of the younger apes, a huge, splendidly muscled brute, was edging
+threateningly closer to the ape-man. Through his bared fighting fangs
+there issued a low, sullen growl.
+
+Tarzan watched his every move, standing rigid as a statue. To have
+fallen back a step would have been to precipitate an immediate charge;
+to have rushed forward to meet the other might have had the same
+result, or it might have put the bellicose one to flight—it all
+depended upon the young bull’s stock of courage.
+
+To stand perfectly still, waiting, was the middle course. In this event
+the bull would, according to custom, approach quite close to the object
+of his attention, growling hideously and baring slavering fangs. Slowly
+he would circle about the other, as though with a chip upon his
+shoulder; and this he did, even as Tarzan had foreseen.
+
+It might be a bluff royal, or, on the other hand, so unstable is the
+mind of an ape, a passing impulse might hurl the hairy mass, tearing
+and rending, upon the man without an instant’s warning.
+
+As the brute circled him Tarzan turned slowly, keeping his eyes ever
+upon the eyes of his antagonist. He had appraised the young bull as one
+who had never quite felt equal to the task of overthrowing his former
+king, but who one day would have done so. Tarzan saw that the beast was
+of wondrous proportions, standing over seven feet upon his short, bowed
+legs.
+
+His great, hairy arms reached almost to the ground even when he stood
+erect, and his fighting fangs, now quite close to Tarzan’s face, were
+exceptionally long and sharp. Like the others of his tribe, he differed
+in several minor essentials from the apes of Tarzan’s boyhood.
+
+At first the ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at sight of the
+shaggy bodies of the anthropoids—a hope that by some strange freak of
+fate he had been again returned to his own tribe; but a closer
+inspection had convinced him that these were another species.
+
+As the threatening bull continued his stiff and jerky circling of the
+ape-man, much after the manner that you have noted among dogs when a
+strange canine comes among them, it occurred to Tarzan to discover if
+the language of his own tribe was identical with that of this other
+family, and so he addressed the brute in the language of the tribe of
+Kerchak.
+
+“Who are you,” he asked, “who threatens Tarzan of the Apes?”
+
+The hairy brute looked his surprise.
+
+“I am Akut,” replied the other in the same simple, primal tongue which
+is so low in the scale of spoken languages that, as Tarzan had
+surmised, it was identical with that of the tribe in which the first
+twenty years of his life had been spent.
+
+“I am Akut,” said the ape. “Molak is dead. I am king. Go away or I
+shall kill you!”
+
+“You saw how easily I killed Molak,” replied Tarzan. “So I could kill
+you if I cared to be king. But Tarzan of the Apes would not be king of
+the tribe of Akut. All he wishes is to live in peace in this country.
+Let us be friends. Tarzan of the Apes can help you, and you can help
+Tarzan of the Apes.”
+
+“You cannot kill Akut,” replied the other. “None is so great as Akut.
+Had you not killed Molak, Akut would have done so, for Akut was ready
+to be king.”
+
+For answer the ape-man hurled himself upon the great brute who during
+the conversation had slightly relaxed his vigilance.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye the man had seized the wrist of the great
+ape, and before the other could grapple with him had whirled him about
+and leaped upon his broad back.
+
+Down they went together, but so well had Tarzan’s plan worked out that
+before ever they touched the ground he had gained the same hold upon
+Akut that had broken Molak’s neck.
+
+Slowly he brought the pressure to bear, and then as in days gone by he
+had given Kerchak the chance to surrender and live, so now he gave to
+Akut—in whom he saw a possible ally of great strength and resource—the
+option of living in amity with him or dying as he had just seen his
+savage and heretofore invincible king die.
+
+“Ka-Goda?” whispered Tarzan to the ape beneath him.
+
+It was the same question that he had whispered to Kerchak, and in the
+language of the apes it means, broadly, “Do you surrender?”
+
+Akut thought of the creaking sound he had heard just before Molak’s
+thick neck had snapped, and he shuddered.
+
+He hated to give up the kingship, though, so again he struggled to free
+himself; but a sudden torturing pressure upon his vertebra brought an
+agonized “ka-goda!” from his lips.
+
+Tarzan relaxed his grip a trifle.
+
+“You may still be king, Akut,” he said. “Tarzan told you that he did
+not wish to be king. If any question your right, Tarzan of the Apes
+will help you in your battles.”
+
+The ape-man rose, and Akut came slowly to his feet. Shaking his bullet
+head and growling angrily, he waddled toward his tribe, looking first
+at one and then at another of the larger bulls who might be expected to
+challenge his leadership.
+
+But none did so; instead, they drew away as he approached, and
+presently the whole pack moved off into the jungle, and Tarzan was left
+alone once more upon the beach.
+
+The ape-man was sore from the wounds that Molak had inflicted upon him,
+but he was inured to physical suffering and endured it with the calm
+and fortitude of the wild beasts that had taught him to lead the jungle
+life after the manner of all those that are born to it.
+
+His first need, he realized, was for weapons of offence and defence,
+for his encounter with the apes, and the distant notes of the savage
+voices of Numa the lion, and Sheeta, the panther, warned him that his
+was to be no life of indolent ease and security.
+
+It was but a return to the old existence of constant bloodshed and
+danger—to the hunting and the being hunted. Grim beasts would stalk
+him, as they had stalked him in the past, and never would there be a
+moment, by savage day or by cruel night, that he might not have instant
+need of such crude weapons as he could fashion from the materials at
+hand.
+
+Upon the shore he found an out-cropping of brittle, igneous rock. By
+dint of much labour he managed to chip off a narrow sliver some twelve
+inches long by a quarter of an inch thick. One edge was quite thin for
+a few inches near the tip. It was the rudiment of a knife.
+
+With it he went into the jungle, searching until he found a fallen tree
+of a certain species of hardwood with which he was familiar. From this
+he cut a small straight branch, which he pointed at one end.
+
+Then he scooped a small, round hole in the surface of the prostrate
+trunk. Into this he crumbled a few bits of dry bark, minutely shredded,
+after which he inserted the tip of his pointed stick, and, sitting
+astride the bole of the tree, spun the slender rod rapidly between his
+palms.
+
+After a time a thin smoke rose from the little mass of tinder, and a
+moment later the whole broke into flame. Heaping some larger twigs and
+sticks upon the tiny fire, Tarzan soon had quite a respectable blaze
+roaring in the enlarging cavity of the dead tree.
+
+Into this he thrust the blade of his stone knife, and as it became
+superheated he would withdraw it, touching a spot near the thin edge
+with a drop of moisture. Beneath the wetted area a little flake of the
+glassy material would crack and scale away.
+
+Thus, very slowly, the ape-man commenced the tedious operation of
+putting a thin edge upon his primitive hunting-knife.
+
+He did not attempt to accomplish the feat all in one sitting. At first
+he was content to achieve a cutting edge of a couple of inches, with
+which he cut a long, pliable bow, a handle for his knife, a stout
+cudgel, and a goodly supply of arrows.
+
+These he cached in a tall tree beside a little stream, and here also he
+constructed a platform with a roof of palm-leaves above it.
+
+When all these things had been finished it was growing dusk, and Tarzan
+felt a strong desire to eat.
+
+He had noted during the brief incursion he had made into the forest
+that a short distance up-stream from his tree there was a much-used
+watering place, where, from the trampled mud of either bank, it was
+evident beasts of all sorts and in great numbers came to drink. To this
+spot the hungry ape-man made his silent way.
+
+Through the upper terrace of the tree-tops he swung with the grace and
+ease of a monkey. But for the heavy burden upon his heart he would have
+been happy in this return to the old free life of his boyhood.
+
+Yet even with that burden he fell into the little habits and manners of
+his early life that were in reality more a part of him than the thin
+veneer of civilization that the past three years of his association
+with the white men of the outer world had spread lightly over him—a
+veneer that only hid the crudities of the beast that Tarzan of the Apes
+had been.
+
+Could his fellow-peers of the House of Lords have seen him then they
+would have held up their noble hands in holy horror.
+
+Silently he crouched in the lower branches of a great forest giant that
+overhung the trail, his keen eyes and sensitive ears strained into the
+distant jungle, from which he knew his dinner would presently emerge.
+
+Nor had he long to wait.
+
+Scarce had he settled himself to a comfortable position, his lithe,
+muscular legs drawn well up beneath him as the panther draws his
+hindquarters in preparation for the spring, than Bara, the deer, came
+daintily down to drink.
+
+But more than Bara was coming. Behind the graceful buck came another
+which the deer could neither see nor scent, but whose movements were
+apparent to Tarzan of the Apes because of the elevated position of the
+ape-man’s ambush.
+
+He knew not yet exactly the nature of the thing that moved so
+stealthily through the jungle a few hundred yards behind the deer; but
+he was convinced that it was some great beast of prey stalking Bara for
+the selfsame purpose as that which prompted him to await the fleet
+animal. Numa, perhaps, or Sheeta, the panther.
+
+In any event, Tarzan could see his repast slipping from his grasp
+unless Bara moved more rapidly toward the ford than at present.
+
+Even as these thoughts passed through his mind some noise of the
+stalker in his rear must have come to the buck, for with a sudden start
+he paused for an instant, trembling, in his tracks, and then with a
+swift bound dashed straight for the river and Tarzan. It was his
+intention to flee through the shallow ford and escape upon the opposite
+side of the river.
+
+Not a hundred yards behind him came Numa.
+
+Tarzan could see him quite plainly now. Below the ape-man Bara was
+about to pass. Could he do it? But even as he asked himself the
+question the hungry man launched himself from his perch full upon the
+back of the startled buck.
+
+In another instant Numa would be upon them both, so if the ape-man were
+to dine that night, or ever again, he must act quickly.
+
+Scarcely had he touched the sleek hide of the deer with a momentum that
+sent the animal to its knees than he had grasped a horn in either hand,
+and with a single quick wrench twisted the animal’s neck completely
+round, until he felt the vertebrae snap beneath his grip.
+
+The lion was roaring in rage close behind him as he swung the deer
+across his shoulder, and, grasping a foreleg between his strong teeth,
+leaped for the nearest of the lower branches that swung above his head.
+
+With both hands he grasped the limb, and, at the instant that Numa
+sprang, drew himself and his prey out of reach of the animal’s cruel
+talons.
+
+There was a thud below him as the baffled cat fell back to earth, and
+then Tarzan of the Apes, drawing his dinner farther up to the safety of
+a higher limb, looked down with grinning face into the gleaming yellow
+eyes of the other wild beast that glared up at him from beneath, and
+with taunting insults flaunted the tender carcass of his kill in the
+face of him whom he had cheated of it.
+
+With his crude stone knife he cut a juicy steak from the hindquarters,
+and while the great lion paced, growling, back and forth below him,
+Lord Greystoke filled his savage belly, nor ever in the choicest of his
+exclusive London clubs had a meal tasted more palatable.
+
+The warm blood of his kill smeared his hands and face and filled his
+nostrils with the scent that the savage carnivora love best.
+
+And when he had finished he left the balance of the carcass in a high
+fork of the tree where he had dined, and with Numa trailing below him,
+still keen for revenge, he made his way back to his tree-top shelter,
+where he slept until the sun was high the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Sheeta
+
+
+The next few days were occupied by Tarzan in completing his weapons and
+exploring the jungle. He strung his bow with tendons from the buck upon
+which he had dined his first evening upon the new shore, and though he
+would have preferred the gut of Sheeta for the purpose, he was content
+to wait until opportunity permitted him to kill one of the great cats.
+
+He also braided a long grass rope—such a rope as he had used so many
+years before to tantalize the ill-natured Tublat, and which later had
+developed into a wondrous effective weapon in the practised hands of
+the little ape-boy.
+
+A sheath and handle for his hunting-knife he fashioned, and a quiver
+for arrows, and from the hide of Bara a belt and loin-cloth. Then he
+set out to learn something of the strange land in which he found
+himself. That it was not his old familiar west coast of the African
+continent he knew from the fact that it faced east—the rising sun came
+up out of the sea before the threshold of the jungle.
+
+But that it was not the east coast of Africa he was equally positive,
+for he felt satisfied that the Kincaid had not passed through the
+Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea, nor had she had time to
+round the Cape of Good Hope. So he was quite at a loss to know where he
+might be.
+
+Sometimes he wondered if the ship had crossed the broad Atlantic to
+deposit him upon some wild South American shore; but the presence of
+Numa, the lion, decided him that such could not be the case.
+
+As Tarzan made his lonely way through the jungle paralleling the shore,
+he felt strong upon him a desire for companionship, so that gradually
+he commenced to regret that he had not cast his lot with the apes. He
+had seen nothing of them since that first day, when the influences of
+civilization were still paramount within him.
+
+Now he was more nearly returned to the Tarzan of old, and though he
+appreciated the fact that there could be little in common between
+himself and the great anthropoids, still they were better than no
+company at all.
+
+Moving leisurely, sometimes upon the ground and again among the lower
+branches of the trees, gathering an occasional fruit or turning over a
+fallen log in search of the larger bugs, which he still found as
+palatable as of old, Tarzan had covered a mile or more when his
+attention was attracted by the scent of Sheeta up-wind ahead of him.
+
+Now Sheeta, the panther, was one whom Tarzan was exceptionally glad to
+fall in with, for he had it in mind not only to utilize the great cat’s
+strong gut for his bow, but also to fashion a new quiver and loin-cloth
+from pieces of his hide. So, whereas the ape-man had gone carelessly
+before, he now became the personification of noiseless stealth.
+
+Swiftly and silently he glided through the forest in the wake of the
+savage cat, nor was the pursuer, for all his noble birth, one whit less
+savage than the wild, fierce thing he stalked.
+
+As he came closer to Sheeta he became aware that the panther on his
+part was stalking game of his own, and even as he realized this fact
+there came to his nostrils, wafted from his right by a vagrant breeze,
+the strong odour of a company of great apes.
+
+The panther had taken to a large tree as Tarzan came within sight of
+him, and beyond and below him Tarzan saw the tribe of Akut lolling in a
+little, natural clearing. Some of them were dozing against the boles of
+trees, while others roamed about turning over bits of bark from beneath
+which they transferred the luscious grubs and beetles to their mouths.
+
+Akut was the closest to Sheeta.
+
+The great cat lay crouched upon a thick limb, hidden from the ape’s
+view by dense foliage, waiting patiently until the anthropoid should
+come within range of his spring.
+
+Tarzan cautiously gained a position in the same tree with the panther
+and a little above him. In his left hand he grasped his slim stone
+blade. He would have preferred to use his noose, but the foliage
+surrounding the huge cat precluded the possibility of an accurate throw
+with the rope.
+
+Akut had now wandered quite close beneath the tree wherein lay the
+waiting death. Sheeta slowly edged his hind paws along the branch still
+further beneath him, and then with a hideous shriek he launched himself
+toward the great ape. The barest fraction of a second before his spring
+another beast of prey above him leaped, its weird and savage cry
+mingling with his.
+
+As the startled Akut looked up he saw the panther almost above him, and
+already upon the panther’s back the white ape that had bested him that
+day near the great water.
+
+The teeth of the ape-man were buried in the back of Sheeta’s neck and
+his right arm was round the fierce throat, while the left hand,
+grasping a slender piece of stone, rose and fell in mighty blows upon
+the panther’s side behind the left shoulder.
+
+Akut had just time to leap to one side to avoid being pinioned beneath
+these battling monsters of the jungle.
+
+With a crash they came to earth at his feet. Sheeta was screaming,
+snarling, and roaring horribly; but the white ape clung tenaciously and
+in silence to the thrashing body of his quarry.
+
+Steadily and remorselessly the stone knife was driven home through the
+glossy hide—time and again it drank deep, until with a final agonized
+lunge and shriek the great feline rolled over upon its side and, save
+for the spasmodic jerking of its muscles, lay quiet and still in death.
+
+Then the ape-man raised his head, as he stood over the carcass of his
+kill, and once again through the jungle rang his wild and savage
+victory challenge.
+
+Akut and the apes of Akut stood looking in startled wonder at the dead
+body of Sheeta and the lithe, straight figure of the man who had slain
+him.
+
+Tarzan was the first to speak.
+
+He had saved Akut’s life for a purpose, and, knowing the limitations of
+the ape intellect, he also knew that he must make this purpose plain to
+the anthropoid if it were to serve him in the way he hoped.
+
+“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” he said, “Mighty hunter. Mighty fighter. By
+the great water I spared Akut’s life when I might have taken it and
+become king of the tribe of Akut. Now I have saved Akut from death
+beneath the rending fangs of Sheeta.
+
+“When Akut or the tribe of Akut is in danger, let them call to Tarzan
+thus”—and the ape-man raised the hideous cry with which the tribe of
+Kerchak had been wont to summon its absent members in times of peril.
+
+“And,” he continued, “when they hear Tarzan call to them, let them
+remember what he has done for Akut and come to him with great speed.
+Shall it be as Tarzan says?”
+
+“Huh!” assented Akut, and from the members of his tribe there rose a
+unanimous “Huh.”
+
+Then, presently, they went to feeding again as though nothing had
+happened, and with them fed John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
+
+He noticed, however, that Akut kept always close to him, and was often
+looking at him with a strange wonder in his little bloodshot eyes, and
+once he did a thing that Tarzan during all his long years among the
+apes had never before seen an ape do—he found a particularly tender
+morsel and handed it to Tarzan.
+
+As the tribe hunted, the glistening body of the ape-man mingled with
+the brown, shaggy hides of his companions. Oftentimes they brushed
+together in passing, but the apes had already taken his presence for
+granted, so that he was as much one of them as Akut himself.
+
+If he came too close to a she with a young baby, the former would bare
+her great fighting fangs and growl ominously, and occasionally a
+truculent young bull would snarl a warning if Tarzan approached while
+the former was eating. But in those things the treatment was no
+different from that which they accorded any other member of the tribe.
+
+Tarzan on his part felt very much at home with these fierce, hairy
+progenitors of primitive man. He skipped nimbly out of reach of each
+threatening female—for such is the way of apes, if they be not in one
+of their occasional fits of bestial rage—and he growled back at the
+truculent young bulls, baring his canine teeth even as they. Thus
+easily he fell back into the way of his early life, nor did it seem
+that he had ever tasted association with creatures of his own kind.
+
+For the better part of a week he roamed the jungle with his new
+friends, partly because of a desire for companionship and partially
+through a well-laid plan to impress himself indelibly upon their
+memories, which at best are none too long; for Tarzan from past
+experience knew that it might serve him in good stead to have a tribe
+of these powerful and terrible beasts at his call.
+
+When he was convinced that he had succeeded to some extent in fixing
+his identity upon them he decided to again take up his exploration. To
+this end he set out toward the north early one day, and, keeping
+parallel with the shore, travelled rapidly until almost nightfall.
+
+When the sun rose the next morning he saw that it lay almost directly
+to his right as he stood upon the beach instead of straight out across
+the water as heretofore, and so he reasoned that the shore line had
+trended toward the west. All the second day he continued his rapid
+course, and when Tarzan of the Apes sought speed, he passed through the
+middle terrace of the forest with the rapidity of a squirrel.
+
+That night the sun set straight out across the water opposite the land,
+and then the ape-man guessed at last the truth that he had been
+suspecting.
+
+Rokoff had set him ashore upon an island.
+
+He might have known it! If there was any plan that would render his
+position more harrowing he should have known that such would be the one
+adopted by the Russian, and what could be more terrible than to leave
+him to a lifetime of suspense upon an uninhabited island?
+
+Rokoff doubtless had sailed directly to the mainland, where it would be
+a comparatively easy thing for him to find the means of delivering the
+infant Jack into the hands of the cruel and savage foster-parents, who,
+as his note had threatened, would have the upbringing of the child.
+
+Tarzan shuddered as he thought of the cruel suffering the little one
+must endure in such a life, even though he might fall into the hands of
+individuals whose intentions toward him were of the kindest. The
+ape-man had had sufficient experience with the lower savages of Africa
+to know that even there may be found the cruder virtues of charity and
+humanity; but their lives were at best but a series of terrible
+privations, dangers, and sufferings.
+
+Then there was the horrid after-fate that awaited the child as he grew
+to manhood. The horrible practices that would form a part of his
+life-training would alone be sufficient to bar him forever from
+association with those of his own race and station in life.
+
+A cannibal! His little boy a savage man-eater! It was too horrible to
+contemplate.
+
+The filed teeth, the slit nose, the little face painted hideously.
+Tarzan groaned. Could he but feel the throat of the Russ fiend beneath
+his steel fingers!
+
+And Jane!
+
+What tortures of doubt and fear and uncertainty she must be suffering.
+He felt that his position was infinitely less terrible than hers, for
+he at least knew that one of his loved ones was safe at home, while she
+had no idea of the whereabouts of either her husband or her son.
+
+It is well for Tarzan that he did not guess the truth, for the
+knowledge would have but added a hundredfold to his suffering.
+
+As he moved slowly through the jungle his mind absorbed by his gloomy
+thoughts, there presently came to his ears a strange scratching sound
+which he could not translate.
+
+Cautiously he moved in the direction from which it emanated, presently
+coming upon a huge panther pinned beneath a fallen tree.
+
+As Tarzan approached, the beast turned, snarling, toward him,
+struggling to extricate itself; but one great limb across its back and
+the smaller entangling branches pinioning its legs prevented it from
+moving but a few inches in any direction.
+
+The ape-man stood before the helpless cat fitting an arrow to his bow
+that he might dispatch the beast that otherwise must die of starvation;
+but even as he drew back the shaft a sudden whim stayed his hand.
+
+Why rob the poor creature of life and liberty, when it would be so easy
+a thing to restore both to it! He was sure from the fact that the
+panther moved all its limbs in its futile struggle for freedom that its
+spine was uninjured, and for the same reason he knew that none of its
+limbs were broken.
+
+Relaxing his bowstring, he returned the arrow to the quiver and,
+throwing the bow about his shoulder, stepped closer to the pinioned
+beast.
+
+On his lips was the soothing, purring sound that the great cats
+themselves made when contented and happy. It was the nearest approach
+to a friendly advance that Tarzan could make in the language of Sheeta.
+
+The panther ceased his snarling and eyed the ape-man closely. To lift
+the tree’s great weight from the animal it was necessary to come within
+reach of those long, strong talons, and when the tree had been removed
+the man would be totally at the mercy of the savage beast; but to
+Tarzan of the Apes fear was a thing unknown.
+
+Having decided, he acted promptly.
+
+Unhesitatingly, he stepped into the tangle of branches close to the
+panther’s side, still voicing his friendly and conciliatory purr. The
+cat turned his head toward the man, eyeing him steadily—questioningly.
+The long fangs were bared, but more in preparedness than threat.
+
+Tarzan put a broad shoulder beneath the bole of the tree, and as he did
+so his bare leg pressed against the cat’s silken side, so close was the
+man to the great beast.
+
+Slowly Tarzan extended his giant thews.
+
+The great tree with its entangling branches rose gradually from the
+panther, who, feeling the encumbering weight diminish, quickly crawled
+from beneath. Tarzan let the tree fall back to earth, and the two
+beasts turned to look upon one another.
+
+A grim smile lay upon the ape-man’s lips, for he knew that he had taken
+his life in his hands to free this savage jungle fellow; nor would it
+have surprised him had the cat sprung upon him the instant that it had
+been released.
+
+But it did not do so. Instead, it stood a few paces from the tree
+watching the ape-man clamber out of the maze of fallen branches.
+
+Once outside, Tarzan was not three paces from the panther. He might
+have taken to the higher branches of the trees upon the opposite side,
+for Sheeta cannot climb to the heights to which the ape-man can go; but
+something, a spirit of bravado perhaps, prompted him to approach the
+panther as though to discover if any feeling of gratitude would prompt
+the beast to friendliness.
+
+As he approached the mighty cat the creature stepped warily to one
+side, and the ape-man brushed past him within a foot of the dripping
+jaws, and as he continued on through the forest the panther followed on
+behind him, as a hound follows at heel.
+
+For a long time Tarzan could not tell whether the beast was following
+out of friendly feelings or merely stalking him against the time he
+should be hungry; but finally he was forced to believe that the former
+incentive it was that prompted the animal’s action.
+
+Later in the day the scent of a deer sent Tarzan into the trees, and
+when he had dropped his noose about the animal’s neck he called to
+Sheeta, using a purr similar to that which he had utilized to pacify
+the brute’s suspicions earlier in the day, but a trifle louder and more
+shrill.
+
+It was similar to that which he had heard panthers use after a kill
+when they had been hunting in pairs.
+
+Almost immediately there was a crashing of the underbrush close at
+hand, and the long, lithe body of his strange companion broke into
+view.
+
+At sight of the body of Bara and the smell of blood the panther gave
+forth a shrill scream, and a moment later two beasts were feeding side
+by side upon the tender meat of the deer.
+
+For several days this strangely assorted pair roamed the jungle
+together.
+
+When one made a kill he called the other, and thus they fed well and
+often.
+
+On one occasion as they were dining upon the carcass of a boar that
+Sheeta had dispatched, Numa, the lion, grim and terrible, broke through
+the tangled grasses close beside them.
+
+With an angry, warning roar he sprang forward to chase them from their
+kill. Sheeta bounded into a near-by thicket, while Tarzan took to the
+low branches of an overhanging tree.
+
+Here the ape-man unloosed his grass rope from about his neck, and as
+Numa stood above the body of the boar, challenging head erect, he
+dropped the sinuous noose about the maned neck, drawing the stout
+strands taut with a sudden jerk. At the same time he called shrilly to
+Sheeta, as he drew the struggling lion upward until only his hind feet
+touched the ground.
+
+Quickly he made the rope fast to a stout branch, and as the panther, in
+answer to his summons, leaped into sight, Tarzan dropped to the earth
+beside the struggling and infuriated Numa, and with a long sharp knife
+sprang upon him at one side even as Sheeta did upon the other.
+
+The panther tore and rent Numa upon the right, while the ape-man struck
+home with his stone knife upon the other, so that before the mighty
+clawing of the king of beasts had succeeded in parting the rope he hung
+quite dead and harmless in the noose.
+
+And then upon the jungle air there rose in unison from two savage
+throats the victory cry of the bull-ape and the panther, blended into
+one frightful and uncanny scream.
+
+As the last notes died away in a long-drawn, fearsome wail, a score of
+painted warriors, drawing their long war-canoe upon the beach, halted
+to stare in the direction of the jungle and to listen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+Mugambi
+
+
+By the time that Tarzan had travelled entirely about the coast of the
+island, and made several trips inland from various points, he was sure
+that he was the only human being upon it.
+
+Nowhere had he found any sign that men had stopped even temporarily
+upon this shore, though, of course, he knew that so quickly does the
+rank vegetation of the tropics erase all but the most permanent of
+human monuments that he might be in error in his deductions.
+
+The day following the killing of Numa, Tarzan and Sheeta came upon the
+tribe of Akut. At sight of the panther the great apes took to flight,
+but after a time Tarzan succeeded in recalling them.
+
+It had occurred to him that it would be at least an interesting
+experiment to attempt to reconcile these hereditary enemies. He
+welcomed anything that would occupy his time and his mind beyond the
+filling of his belly and the gloomy thoughts to which he fell prey the
+moment that he became idle.
+
+To communicate his plan to the apes was not a particularly difficult
+matter, though their narrow and limited vocabulary was strained in the
+effort; but to impress upon the little, wicked brain of Sheeta that he
+was to hunt with and not for his legitimate prey proved a task almost
+beyond the powers of the ape-man.
+
+Tarzan, among his other weapons, possessed a long, stout cudgel, and
+after fastening his rope about the panther’s neck he used this
+instrument freely upon the snarling beast, endeavouring in this way to
+impress upon its memory that it must not attack the great, shaggy
+manlike creatures that had approached more closely once they had seen
+the purpose of the rope about Sheeta’s neck.
+
+That the cat did not turn and rend Tarzan is something of a miracle
+which may possibly be accounted for by the fact that twice when it
+turned growling upon the ape-man he had rapped it sharply upon its
+sensitive nose, inculcating in its mind thereby a most wholesome fear
+of the cudgel and the ape-beasts behind it.
+
+It is a question if the original cause of his attachment for Tarzan was
+still at all clear in the mind of the panther, though doubtless some
+subconscious suggestion, superinduced by this primary reason and aided
+and abetted by the habit of the past few days, did much to compel the
+beast to tolerate treatment at his hands that would have sent it at the
+throat of any other creature.
+
+Then, too, there was the compelling force of the manmind exerting its
+powerful influence over this creature of a lower order, and, after all,
+it may have been this that proved the most potent factor in Tarzan’s
+supremacy over Sheeta and the other beasts of the jungle that had from
+time to time fallen under his domination.
+
+Be that as it may, for days the man, the panther, and the great apes
+roamed their savage haunts side by side, making their kills together
+and sharing them with one another, and of all the fierce and savage
+band none was more terrible than the smooth-skinned, powerful beast
+that had been but a few short months before a familiar figure in many a
+London drawing room.
+
+Sometimes the beasts separated to follow their own inclinations for an
+hour or a day, and it was upon one of these occasions when the ape-man
+had wandered through the tree-tops toward the beach, and was stretched
+in the hot sun upon the sand, that from the low summit of a near-by
+promontory a pair of keen eyes discovered him.
+
+For a moment the owner of the eyes looked in astonishment at the figure
+of the savage white man basking in the rays of that hot, tropic sun;
+then he turned, making a sign to some one behind him. Presently another
+pair of eyes were looking down upon the ape-man, and then another and
+another, until a full score of hideously trapped, savage warriors were
+lying upon their bellies along the crest of the ridge watching the
+white-skinned stranger.
+
+They were down wind from Tarzan, and so their scent was not carried to
+him, and as his back was turned half toward them he did not see their
+cautious advance over the edge of the promontory and down through the
+rank grass toward the sandy beach where he lay.
+
+Big fellows they were, all of them, their barbaric headdresses and
+grotesquely painted faces, together with their many metal ornaments and
+gorgeously coloured feathers, adding to their wild, fierce appearance.
+
+Once at the foot of the ridge, they came cautiously to their feet, and,
+bent half-double, advanced silently upon the unconscious white man,
+their heavy war-clubs swinging menacingly in their brawny hands.
+
+The mental suffering that Tarzan’s sorrowful thoughts induced had the
+effect of numbing his keen, perceptive faculties, so that the advancing
+savages were almost upon him before he became aware that he was no
+longer alone upon the beach.
+
+So quickly, though, were his mind and muscles wont to react in unison
+to the slightest alarm that he was upon his feet and facing his
+enemies, even as he realized that something was behind him. As he
+sprang to his feet the warriors leaped toward him with raised clubs and
+savage yells, but the foremost went down to sudden death beneath the
+long, stout stick of the ape-man, and then the lithe, sinewy figure was
+among them, striking right and left with a fury, power, and precision
+that brought panic to the ranks of the blacks.
+
+For a moment they withdrew, those that were left of them, and consulted
+together at a short distance from the ape-man, who stood with folded
+arms, a half-smile upon his handsome face, watching them. Presently
+they advanced upon him once more, this time wielding their heavy
+war-spears. They were between Tarzan and the jungle, in a little
+semicircle that closed in upon him as they advanced.
+
+There seemed to the ape-man but slight chance to escape the final
+charge when all the great spears should be hurled simultaneously at
+him; but if he had desired to escape there was no way other than
+through the ranks of the savages except the open sea behind him.
+
+His predicament was indeed most serious when an idea occurred to him
+that altered his smile to a broad grin. The warriors were still some
+little distance away, advancing slowly, making, after the manner of
+their kind, a frightful din with their savage yells and the pounding of
+their naked feet upon the ground as they leaped up and down in a
+fantastic war dance.
+
+Then it was that the ape-man lifted his voice in a series of wild,
+weird screams that brought the blacks to a sudden, perplexed halt. They
+looked at one another questioningly, for here was a sound so hideous
+that their own frightful din faded into insignificance beside it. No
+human throat could have formed those bestial notes, they were sure, and
+yet with their own eyes they had seen this white man open his mouth to
+pour forth his awful cry.
+
+But only for a moment they hesitated, and then with one accord they
+again took up their fantastic advance upon their prey; but even then a
+sudden crashing in the jungle behind them brought them once more to a
+halt, and as they turned to look in the direction of this new noise
+there broke upon their startled visions a sight that may well have
+frozen the blood of braver men than the Wagambi.
+
+Leaping from the tangled vegetation of the jungle’s rim came a huge
+panther, with blazing eyes and bared fangs, and in his wake a score of
+mighty, shaggy apes lumbering rapidly toward them, half erect upon
+their short, bowed legs, and with their long arms reaching to the
+ground, where their horny knuckles bore the weight of their ponderous
+bodies as they lurched from side to side in their grotesque advance.
+
+The beasts of Tarzan had come in answer to his call.
+
+Before the Wagambi could recover from their astonishment the frightful
+horde was upon them from one side and Tarzan of the Apes from the
+other. Heavy spears were hurled and mighty war-clubs wielded, and
+though apes went down never to rise, so, too, went down the men of
+Ugambi.
+
+Sheeta’s cruel fangs and tearing talons ripped and tore at the black
+hides. Akut’s mighty yellow tusks found the jugular of more than one
+sleek-skinned savage, and Tarzan of the Apes was here and there and
+everywhere, urging on his fierce allies and taking a heavy toll with
+his long, slim knife.
+
+In a moment the blacks had scattered for their lives, but of the score
+that had crept down the grassy sides of the promontory only a single
+warrior managed to escape the horde that had overwhelmed his people.
+
+This one was Mugambi, chief of the Wagambi of Ugambi, and as he
+disappeared in the tangled luxuriousness of the rank growth upon the
+ridge’s summit only the keen eyes of the ape-man saw the direction of
+his flight.
+
+Leaving his pack to eat their fill upon the flesh of their
+victims—flesh that he could not touch—Tarzan of the Apes pursued the
+single survivor of the bloody fray. Just beyond the ridge he came
+within sight of the fleeing black, making with headlong leaps for a
+long war-canoe that was drawn well up upon the beach above the high
+tide surf.
+
+Noiseless as the fellow’s shadow, the ape-man raced after the
+terror-stricken black. In the white man’s mind was a new plan, awakened
+by sight of the war-canoe. If these men had come to his island from
+another, or from the mainland, why not utilize their craft to make his
+way to the country from which they had come? Evidently it was an
+inhabited country, and no doubt had occasional intercourse with the
+mainland, if it were not itself upon the continent of Africa.
+
+A heavy hand fell upon the shoulder of the escaping Mugambi before he
+was aware that he was being pursued, and as he turned to do battle with
+his assailant giant fingers closed about his wrists and he was hurled
+to earth with a giant astride him before he could strike a blow in his
+own defence.
+
+In the language of the West Coast, Tarzan spoke to the prostrate man
+beneath him.
+
+“Who are you?” he asked.
+
+“Mugambi, chief of the Wagambi,” replied the black.
+
+“I will spare your life,” said Tarzan, “if you will promise to help me
+to leave this island. What do you answer?”
+
+“I will help you,” replied Mugambi. “But now that you have killed all
+my warriors, I do not know that even I can leave your country, for
+there will be none to wield the paddles, and without paddlers we cannot
+cross the water.”
+
+Tarzan rose and allowed his prisoner to come to his feet. The fellow
+was a magnificent specimen of manhood—a black counterpart in physique
+of the splendid white man whom he faced.
+
+“Come!” said the ape-man, and started back in the direction from which
+they could hear the snarling and growling of the feasting pack. Mugambi
+drew back.
+
+“They will kill us,” he said.
+
+“I think not,” replied Tarzan. “They are mine.”
+
+Still the black hesitated, fearful of the consequences of approaching
+the terrible creatures that were dining upon the bodies of his
+warriors; but Tarzan forced him to accompany him, and presently the two
+emerged from the jungle in full view of the grisly spectacle upon the
+beach. At sight of the men the beasts looked up with menacing growls,
+but Tarzan strode in among them, dragging the trembling Wagambi with
+him.
+
+As he had taught the apes to accept Sheeta, so he taught them to adopt
+Mugambi as well, and much more easily; but Sheeta seemed quite unable
+to understand that though he had been called upon to devour Mugambi’s
+warriors he was not to be allowed to proceed after the same fashion
+with Mugambi. However, being well filled, he contented himself with
+walking round the terror-stricken savage, emitting low, menacing growls
+the while he kept his flaming, baleful eyes riveted upon the black.
+
+Mugambi, on his part, clung closely to Tarzan, so that the ape-man
+could scarce control his laughter at the pitiable condition to which
+the chief’s fear had reduced him; but at length the white took the
+great cat by the scruff of the neck and, dragging it quite close to the
+Wagambi, slapped it sharply upon the nose each time that it growled at
+the stranger.
+
+At the sight of the thing—a man mauling with his bare hands one of the
+most relentless and fierce of the jungle carnivora—Mugambi’s eyes
+bulged from their sockets, and from entertaining a sullen respect for
+the giant white man who had made him prisoner, the black felt an almost
+worshipping awe of Tarzan.
+
+The education of Sheeta progressed so well that in a short time Mugambi
+ceased to be the object of his hungry attention, and the black felt a
+degree more of safety in his society.
+
+To say that Mugambi was entirely happy or at ease in his new
+environment would not be to adhere strictly to the truth. His eyes were
+constantly rolling apprehensively from side to side as now one and now
+another of the fierce pack chanced to wander near him, so that for the
+most of the time it was principally the whites that showed.
+
+Together Tarzan and Mugambi, with Sheeta and Akut, lay in wait at the
+ford for a deer, and when at a word from the ape-man the four of them
+leaped out upon the affrighted animal the black was sure that the poor
+creature died of fright before ever one of the great beasts touched it.
+
+Mugambi built a fire and cooked his portion of the kill; but Tarzan,
+Sheeta, and Akut tore theirs, raw, with their sharp teeth, growling
+among themselves when one ventured to encroach upon the share of
+another.
+
+It was not, after all, strange that the white man’s ways should have
+been so much more nearly related to those of the beasts than were the
+savage blacks. We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the
+seeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist,
+we fall naturally and easily into the manners and customs which long
+usage has implanted ineradicably within us.
+
+Mugambi from childhood had eaten no meat until it had been cooked,
+while Tarzan, on the other hand, had never tasted cooked food of any
+sort until he had grown almost to manhood, and only within the past
+three or four years had he eaten cooked meat. Not only did the habit of
+a lifetime prompt him to eat it raw, but the craving of his palate as
+well; for to him cooked flesh was spoiled flesh when compared with the
+rich and juicy meat of a fresh, hot kill.
+
+That he could, with relish, eat raw meat that had been buried by
+himself weeks before, and enjoy small rodents and disgusting grubs,
+seems to us who have been always “civilized” a revolting fact; but had
+we learned in childhood to eat these things, and had we seen all those
+about us eat them, they would seem no more sickening to us now than do
+many of our greatest dainties, at which a savage African cannibal would
+look with repugnance and turn up his nose.
+
+For instance, there is a tribe in the vicinity of Lake Rudolph that
+will eat no sheep or cattle, though its next neighbors do so. Near by
+is another tribe that eats donkey-meat—a custom most revolting to the
+surrounding tribes that do not eat donkey. So who may say that it is
+nice to eat snails and frogs’ legs and oysters, but disgusting to feed
+upon grubs and beetles, or that a raw oyster, hoof, horns, and tail, is
+less revolting than the sweet, clean meat of a fresh-killed buck?
+
+The next few days Tarzan devoted to the weaving of a barkcloth sail
+with which to equip the canoe, for he despaired of being able to teach
+the apes to wield the paddles, though he did manage to get several of
+them to embark in the frail craft which he and Mugambi paddled about
+inside the reef where the water was quite smooth.
+
+During these trips he had placed paddles in their hands, when they
+attempted to imitate the movements of him and Mugambi, but so difficult
+is it for them long to concentrate upon a thing that he soon saw that
+it would require weeks of patient training before they would be able to
+make any effective use of these new implements, if, in fact, they
+should ever do so.
+
+There was one exception, however, and he was Akut. Almost from the
+first he showed an interest in this new sport that revealed a much
+higher plane of intelligence than that attained by any of his tribe. He
+seemed to grasp the purpose of the paddles, and when Tarzan saw that
+this was so he took much pains to explain in the meagre language of the
+anthropoid how they might be used to the best advantage.
+
+From Mugambi Tarzan learned that the mainland lay but a short distance
+from the island. It seemed that the Wagambi warriors had ventured too
+far out in their frail craft, and when caught by a heavy tide and a
+high wind from off-shore they had been driven out of sight of land.
+After paddling for a whole night, thinking that they were headed for
+home, they had seen this land at sunrise, and, still taking it for the
+mainland, had hailed it with joy, nor had Mugambi been aware that it
+was an island until Tarzan had told him that this was the fact.
+
+The Wagambi chief was quite dubious as to the sail, for he had never
+seen such a contrivance used. His country lay far up the broad Ugambi
+River, and this was the first occasion that any of his people had found
+their way to the ocean.
+
+Tarzan, however, was confident that with a good west wind he could
+navigate the little craft to the mainland. At any rate, he decided, it
+would be preferable to perish on the way than to remain indefinitely
+upon this evidently uncharted island to which no ships might ever be
+expected to come.
+
+And so it was that when the first fair wind rose he embarked upon his
+cruise, and with him he took as strange and fearsome a crew as ever
+sailed under a savage master.
+
+Mugambi and Akut went with him, and Sheeta, the panther, and a dozen
+great males of the tribe of Akut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A Hideous Crew
+
+
+The war-canoe with its savage load moved slowly toward the break in the
+reef through which it must pass to gain the open sea. Tarzan, Mugambi,
+and Akut wielded the paddles, for the shore kept the west wind from the
+little sail.
+
+Sheeta crouched in the bow at the ape-man’s feet, for it had seemed
+best to Tarzan always to keep the wicked beast as far from the other
+members of the party as possible, since it would require little or no
+provocation to send him at the throat of any than the white man, whom
+he evidently now looked upon as his master.
+
+In the stern was Mugambi, and just in front of him squatted Akut, while
+between Akut and Tarzan the twelve hairy apes sat upon their haunches,
+blinking dubiously this way and that, and now and then turning their
+eyes longingly back toward shore.
+
+All went well until the canoe had passed beyond the reef. Here the
+breeze struck the sail, sending the rude craft lunging among the waves
+that ran higher and higher as they drew away from the shore.
+
+With the tossing of the boat the apes became panic-stricken. They first
+moved uneasily about, and then commenced grumbling and whining. With
+difficulty Akut kept them in hand for a time; but when a particularly
+large wave struck the dugout simultaneously with a little squall of
+wind their terror broke all bounds, and, leaping to their feet, they
+all but overturned the boat before Akut and Tarzan together could quiet
+them. At last calm was restored, and eventually the apes became
+accustomed to the strange antics of their craft, after which no more
+trouble was experienced with them.
+
+The trip was uneventful, the wind held, and after ten hours’ steady
+sailing the black shadows of the coast loomed close before the
+straining eyes of the ape-man in the bow. It was far too dark to
+distinguish whether they had approached close to the mouth of the
+Ugambi or not, so Tarzan ran in through the surf at the closest point
+to await the dawn.
+
+The dugout turned broadside the instant that its nose touched the sand,
+and immediately it rolled over, with all its crew scrambling madly for
+the shore. The next breaker rolled them over and over, but eventually
+they all succeeded in crawling to safety, and in a moment more their
+ungainly craft had been washed up beside them.
+
+The balance of the night the apes sat huddled close to one another for
+warmth; while Mugambi built a fire close to them over which he
+crouched. Tarzan and Sheeta, however, were of a different mind, for
+neither of them feared the jungle night, and the insistent craving of
+their hunger sent them off into the Stygian blackness of the forest in
+search of prey.
+
+Side by side they walked when there was room for two abreast. At other
+times in single file, first one and then the other in advance. It was
+Tarzan who first caught the scent of meat—a bull buffalo—and presently
+the two came stealthily upon the sleeping beast in the midst of a dense
+jungle of reeds close to a river.
+
+Closer and closer they crept toward the unsuspecting beast, Sheeta upon
+his right side and Tarzan upon his left nearest the great heart. They
+had hunted together now for some time, so that they worked in unison,
+with only low, purring sounds as signals.
+
+For a moment they lay quite silent near their prey, and then at a sign
+from the ape-man Sheeta sprang upon the great back, burying his strong
+teeth in the bull’s neck. Instantly the brute sprang to his feet with a
+bellow of pain and rage, and at the same instant Tarzan rushed in upon
+his left side with the stone knife, striking repeatedly behind the
+shoulder.
+
+One of the ape-man’s hands clutched the thick mane, and as the bull
+raced madly through the reeds the thing striking at his life was
+dragged beside him. Sheeta but clung tenaciously to his hold upon the
+neck and back, biting deep in an effort to reach the spine.
+
+For several hundred yards the bellowing bull carried his two savage
+antagonists, until at last the blade found his heart, when with a final
+bellow that was half-scream he plunged headlong to the earth. Then
+Tarzan and Sheeta feasted to repletion.
+
+After the meal the two curled up together in a thicket, the man’s black
+head pillowed upon the tawny side of the panther. Shortly after dawn
+they awoke and ate again, and then returned to the beach that Tarzan
+might lead the balance of the pack to the kill.
+
+When the meal was done the brutes were for curling up to sleep, so
+Tarzan and Mugambi set off in search of the Ugambi River. They had
+proceeded scarce a hundred yards when they came suddenly upon a broad
+stream, which the Negro instantly recognized as that down which he and
+his warriors had paddled to the sea upon their ill-starred expedition.
+
+The two now followed the stream down to the ocean, finding that it
+emptied into a bay not over a mile from the point upon the beach at
+which the canoe had been thrown the night before.
+
+Tarzan was much elated by the discovery, as he knew that in the
+vicinity of a large watercourse he should find natives, and from some
+of these he had little doubt but that he should obtain news of Rokoff
+and the child, for he felt reasonably certain that the Russian would
+rid himself of the baby as quickly as possible after having disposed of
+Tarzan.
+
+He and Mugambi now righted and launched the dugout, though it was a
+most difficult feat in the face of the surf which rolled continuously
+in upon the beach; but at last they were successful, and soon after
+were paddling up the coast toward the mouth of the Ugambi. Here they
+experienced considerable difficulty in making an entrance against the
+combined current and ebb tide, but by taking advantage of eddies close
+in to shore they came about dusk to a point nearly opposite the spot
+where they had left the pack asleep.
+
+Making the craft fast to an overhanging bough, the two made their way
+into the jungle, presently coming upon some of the apes feeding upon
+fruit a little beyond the reeds where the buffalo had fallen. Sheeta
+was not anywhere to be seen, nor did he return that night, so that
+Tarzan came to believe that he had wandered away in search of his own
+kind.
+
+Early the next morning the ape-man led his band down to the river, and
+as he walked he gave vent to a series of shrill cries. Presently from a
+great distance and faintly there came an answering scream, and a
+half-hour later the lithe form of Sheeta bounded into view where the
+others of the pack were clambering gingerly into the canoe.
+
+The great beast, with arched back and purring like a contented tabby,
+rubbed his sides against the ape-man, and then at a word from the
+latter sprang lightly to his former place in the bow of the dugout.
+
+When all were in place it was discovered that two of the apes of Akut
+were missing, and though both the king ape and Tarzan called to them
+for the better part of an hour, there was no response, and finally the
+boat put off without them. As it happened that the two missing ones
+were the very same who had evinced the least desire to accompany the
+expedition from the island, and had suffered the most from fright
+during the voyage, Tarzan was quite sure that they had absented
+themselves purposely rather than again enter the canoe.
+
+As the party were putting in for the shore shortly after noon to search
+for food a slender, naked savage watched them for a moment from behind
+the dense screen of verdure which lined the river’s bank, then he
+melted away up-stream before any of those in the canoe discovered him.
+
+Like a deer he bounded along the narrow trail until, filled with the
+excitement of his news, he burst into a native village several miles
+above the point at which Tarzan and his pack had stopped to hunt.
+
+“Another white man is coming!” he cried to the chief who squatted
+before the entrance to his circular hut. “Another white man, and with
+him are many warriors. They come in a great war-canoe to kill and rob
+as did the black-bearded one who has just left us.”
+
+Kaviri leaped to his feet. He had but recently had a taste of the white
+man’s medicine, and his savage heart was filled with bitterness and
+hate. In another moment the rumble of the war-drums rose from the
+village, calling in the hunters from the forest and the tillers from
+the fields.
+
+Seven war-canoes were launched and manned by paint-daubed, befeathered
+warriors. Long spears bristled from the rude battle-ships, as they slid
+noiselessly over the bosom of the water, propelled by giant muscles
+rolling beneath glistening, ebony hides.
+
+There was no beating of tom-toms now, nor blare of native horn, for
+Kaviri was a crafty warrior, and it was in his mind to take no chances,
+if they could be avoided. He would swoop noiselessly down with his
+seven canoes upon the single one of the white man, and before the guns
+of the latter could inflict much damage upon his people he would have
+overwhelmed the enemy by force of numbers.
+
+Kaviri’s own canoe went in advance of the others a short distance, and
+as it rounded a sharp bend in the river where the swift current bore it
+rapidly on its way it came suddenly upon the thing that Kaviri sought.
+
+So close were the two canoes to one another that the black had only an
+opportunity to note the white face in the bow of the oncoming craft
+before the two touched and his own men were upon their feet, yelling
+like mad devils and thrusting their long spears at the occupants of the
+other canoe.
+
+But a moment later, when Kaviri was able to realize the nature of the
+crew that manned the white man’s dugout, he would have given all the
+beads and iron wire that he possessed to have been safely within his
+distant village. Scarcely had the two craft come together than the
+frightful apes of Akut rose, growling and barking, from the bottom of
+the canoe, and, with long, hairy arms far outstretched, grasped the
+menacing spears from the hands of Kaviri’s warriors.
+
+The blacks were overcome with terror, but there was nothing to do other
+than to fight. Now came the other war-canoes rapidly down upon the two
+craft. Their occupants were eager to join the battle, for they thought
+that their foes were white men and their native porters.
+
+They swarmed about Tarzan’s craft; but when they saw the nature of the
+enemy all but one turned and paddled swiftly up-river. That one came
+too close to the ape-man’s craft before its occupants realized that
+their fellows were pitted against demons instead of men. As it touched
+Tarzan spoke a few low words to Sheeta and Akut, so that before the
+attacking warriors could draw away there sprang upon them with a
+blood-freezing scream a huge panther, and into the other end of their
+canoe clambered a great ape.
+
+At one end the panther wrought fearful havoc with his mighty talons and
+long, sharp fangs, while Akut at the other buried his yellow canines in
+the necks of those that came within his reach, hurling the
+terror-stricken blacks overboard as he made his way toward the centre
+of the canoe.
+
+Kaviri was so busily engaged with the demons that had entered his own
+craft that he could offer no assistance to his warriors in the other. A
+giant of a white devil had wrested his spear from him as though he, the
+mighty Kaviri, had been but a new-born babe. Hairy monsters were
+overcoming his fighting men, and a black chieftain like himself was
+fighting shoulder to shoulder with the hideous pack that opposed him.
+
+Kaviri battled bravely against his antagonist, for he felt that death
+had already claimed him, and so the least that he could do would be to
+sell his life as dearly as possible; but it was soon evident that his
+best was quite futile when pitted against the superhuman brawn and
+agility of the creature that at last found his throat and bent him back
+into the bottom of the canoe.
+
+Presently Kaviri’s head began to whirl—objects became confused and dim
+before his eyes—there was a great pain in his chest as he struggled for
+the breath of life that the thing upon him was shutting off for ever.
+Then he lost consciousness.
+
+When he opened his eyes once more he found, much to his surprise, that
+he was not dead. He lay, securely bound, in the bottom of his own
+canoe. A great panther sat upon its haunches, looking down upon him.
+
+Kaviri shuddered and closed his eyes again, waiting for the ferocious
+creature to spring upon him and put him out of his misery of terror.
+
+After a moment, no rending fangs having buried themselves in his
+trembling body, he again ventured to open his eyes. Beyond the panther
+kneeled the white giant who had overcome him.
+
+The man was wielding a paddle, while directly behind him Kaviri saw
+some of his own warriors similarly engaged. Back of them again squatted
+several of the hairy apes.
+
+Tarzan, seeing that the chief had regained consciousness, addressed
+him.
+
+“Your warriors tell me that you are the chief of a numerous people, and
+that your name is Kaviri,” he said.
+
+“Yes,” replied the black.
+
+“Why did you attack me? I came in peace.”
+
+“Another white man ‘came in peace’ three moons ago,” replied Kaviri;
+“and after we had brought him presents of a goat and cassava and milk,
+he set upon us with his guns and killed many of my people, and then
+went on his way, taking all of our goats and many of our young men and
+women.”
+
+“I am not as this other white man,” replied Tarzan. “I should not have
+harmed you had you not set upon me. Tell me, what was the face of this
+bad white man like? I am searching for one who has wronged me. Possibly
+this may be the very one.”
+
+“He was a man with a bad face, covered with a great, black beard, and
+he was very, very wicked—yes, very wicked indeed.”
+
+“Was there a little white child with him?” asked Tarzan, his heart
+almost stopped as he awaited the black’s answer.
+
+“No, bwana,” replied Kaviri, “the white child was not with this man’s
+party—it was with the other party.”
+
+“Other party!” exclaimed Tarzan. “What other party?”
+
+“With the party that the very bad white man was pursuing. There was a
+white man, woman, and the child, with six Mosula porters. They passed
+up the river three days ahead of the very bad white man. I think that
+they were running away from him.”
+
+A white man, woman, and child! Tarzan was puzzled. The child must be
+his little Jack; but who could the woman be—and the man? Was it
+possible that one of Rokoff’s confederates had conspired with some
+woman—who had accompanied the Russian—to steal the baby from him?
+
+If this was the case, they had doubtless purposed returning the child
+to civilization and there either claiming a reward or holding the
+little prisoner for ransom.
+
+But now that Rokoff had succeeded in chasing them far inland, up the
+savage river, there could be little doubt but that he would eventually
+overhaul them, unless, as was still more probable, they should be
+captured and killed by the very cannibals farther up the Ugambi, to
+whom, Tarzan was now convinced, it had been Rokoff’s intention to
+deliver the baby.
+
+As he talked to Kaviri the canoes had been moving steadily up-river
+toward the chief’s village. Kaviri’s warriors plied the paddles in the
+three canoes, casting sidelong, terrified glances at their hideous
+passengers. Three of the apes of Akut had been killed in the encounter,
+but there were, with Akut, eight of the frightful beasts remaining, and
+there was Sheeta, the panther, and Tarzan and Mugambi.
+
+Kaviri’s warriors thought that they had never seen so terrible a crew
+in all their lives. Momentarily they expected to be pounced upon and
+torn asunder by some of their captors; and, in fact, it was all that
+Tarzan and Mugambi and Akut could do to keep the snarling, ill-natured
+brutes from snapping at the glistening, naked bodies that brushed
+against them now and then with the movements of the paddlers, whose
+very fear added incitement to the beasts.
+
+At Kaviri’s camp Tarzan paused only long enough to eat the food that
+the blacks furnished, and arrange with the chief for a dozen men to man
+the paddles of his canoe.
+
+Kaviri was only too glad to comply with any demands that the ape-man
+might make if only such compliance would hasten the departure of the
+horrid pack; but it was easier, he discovered, to promise men than to
+furnish them, for when his people learned his intentions those that had
+not already fled into the jungle proceeded to do so without loss of
+time, so that when Kaviri turned to point out those who were to
+accompany Tarzan, he discovered that he was the only member of his
+tribe left within the village.
+
+Tarzan could not repress a smile.
+
+“They do not seem anxious to accompany us,” he said; “but just remain
+quietly here, Kaviri, and presently you shall see your people flocking
+to your side.”
+
+Then the ape-man rose, and, calling his pack about him, commanded that
+Mugambi remain with Kaviri, and disappeared in the jungle with Sheeta
+and the apes at his heels.
+
+For half an hour the silence of the grim forest was broken only by the
+ordinary sounds of the teeming life that but adds to its lowering
+loneliness. Kaviri and Mugambi sat alone in the palisaded village,
+waiting.
+
+Presently from a great distance came a hideous sound. Mugambi
+recognized the weird challenge of the ape-man. Immediately from
+different points of the compass rose a horrid semicircle of similar
+shrieks and screams, punctuated now and again by the blood-curdling cry
+of a hungry panther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+Betrayed
+
+
+The two savages, Kaviri and Mugambi, squatting before the entrance to
+Kaviri’s hut, looked at one another—Kaviri with ill-concealed alarm.
+
+“What is it?” he whispered.
+
+“It is Bwana Tarzan and his people,” replied Mugambi. “But what they
+are doing I know not, unless it be that they are devouring your people
+who ran away.”
+
+Kaviri shuddered and rolled his eyes fearfully toward the jungle. In
+all his long life in the savage forest he had never heard such an
+awful, fearsome din.
+
+Closer and closer came the sounds, and now with them were mingled the
+terrified shrieks of women and children and of men. For twenty long
+minutes the blood-curdling cries continued, until they seemed but a
+stone’s throw from the palisade. Kaviri rose to flee, but Mugambi
+seized and held him, for such had been the command of Tarzan.
+
+A moment later a horde of terrified natives burst from the jungle,
+racing toward the shelter of their huts. Like frightened sheep they
+ran, and behind them, driving them as sheep might be driven, came
+Tarzan and Sheeta and the hideous apes of Akut.
+
+Presently Tarzan stood before Kaviri, the old quiet smile upon his
+lips.
+
+“Your people have returned, my brother,” he said, “and now you may
+select those who are to accompany me and paddle my canoe.”
+
+Tremblingly Kaviri tottered to his feet, calling to his people to come
+from their huts; but none responded to his summons.
+
+“Tell them,” suggested Tarzan, “that if they do not come I shall send
+my people in after them.”
+
+Kaviri did as he was bid, and in an instant the entire population of
+the village came forth, their wide and frightened eyes rolling from one
+to another of the savage creatures that wandered about the village
+street.
+
+Quickly Kaviri designated a dozen warriors to accompany Tarzan. The
+poor fellows went almost white with terror at the prospect of close
+contact with the panther and the apes in the narrow confines of the
+canoes; but when Kaviri explained to them that there was no escape—that
+Bwana Tarzan would pursue them with his grim horde should they attempt
+to run away from the duty—they finally went gloomily down to the river
+and took their places in the canoe.
+
+It was with a sigh of relief that their chieftain saw the party
+disappear about a headland a short distance up-river.
+
+For three days the strange company continued farther and farther into
+the heart of the savage country that lies on either side of the almost
+unexplored Ugambi. Three of the twelve warriors deserted during that
+time; but as several of the apes had finally learned the secret of the
+paddles, Tarzan felt no dismay because of the loss.
+
+As a matter of fact, he could have travelled much more rapidly on
+shore, but he believed that he could hold his own wild crew together to
+better advantage by keeping them to the boat as much as possible. Twice
+a day they landed to hunt and feed, and at night they slept upon the
+bank of the mainland or on one of the numerous little islands that
+dotted the river.
+
+Before them the natives fled in alarm, so that they found only deserted
+villages in their path as they proceeded. Tarzan was anxious to get in
+touch with some of the savages who dwelt upon the river’s banks, but so
+far he had been unable to do so.
+
+Finally he decided to take to the land himself, leaving his company to
+follow after him by boat. He explained to Mugambi the thing that he had
+in mind, and told Akut to follow the directions of the black.
+
+“I will join you again in a few days,” he said. “Now I go ahead to
+learn what has become of the very bad white man whom I seek.”
+
+At the next halt Tarzan took to the shore, and was soon lost to the
+view of his people.
+
+The first few villages he came to were deserted, showing that news of
+the coming of his pack had travelled rapidly; but toward evening he
+came upon a distant cluster of thatched huts surrounded by a rude
+palisade, within which were a couple of hundred natives.
+
+The women were preparing the evening meal as Tarzan of the Apes poised
+above them in the branches of a giant tree which overhung the palisade
+at one point.
+
+The ape-man was at a loss as to how he might enter into communication
+with these people without either frightening them or arousing their
+savage love of battle. He had no desire to fight now, for he was upon a
+much more important mission than that of battling with every chance
+tribe that he should happen to meet with.
+
+At last he hit upon a plan, and after seeing that he was concealed from
+the view of those below, he gave a few hoarse grunts in imitation of a
+panther. All eyes immediately turned upward toward the foliage above.
+
+It was growing dark, and they could not penetrate the leafy screen
+which shielded the ape-man from their view. The moment that he had won
+their attention he raised his voice to the shriller and more hideous
+scream of the beast he personated, and then, scarce stirring a leaf in
+his descent, dropped to the ground once again outside the palisade,
+and, with the speed of a deer, ran quickly round to the village gate.
+
+Here he beat upon the fibre-bound saplings of which the barrier was
+constructed, shouting to the natives in their own tongue that he was a
+friend who wished food and shelter for the night.
+
+Tarzan knew well the nature of the black man. He was aware that the
+grunting and screaming of Sheeta in the tree above them would set their
+nerves on edge, and that his pounding upon their gate after dark would
+still further add to their terror.
+
+That they did not reply to his hail was no surprise, for natives are
+fearful of any voice that comes out of the night from beyond their
+palisades, attributing it always to some demon or other ghostly
+visitor; but still he continued to call.
+
+“Let me in, my friends!” he cried. “I am a white man pursuing the very
+bad white man who passed this way a few days ago. I follow to punish
+him for the sins he has committed against you and me.
+
+“If you doubt my friendship, I will prove it to you by going into the
+tree above your village and driving Sheeta back into the jungle before
+he leaps among you. If you will not promise to take me in and treat me
+as a friend I shall let Sheeta stay and devour you.”
+
+For a moment there was silence. Then the voice of an old man came out
+of the quiet of the village street.
+
+“If you are indeed a white man and a friend, we will let you come in;
+but first you must drive Sheeta away.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Tarzan. “Listen, and you shall hear Sheeta fleeing
+before me.”
+
+The ape-man returned quickly to the tree, and this time he made a great
+noise as he entered the branches, at the same time growling ominously
+after the manner of the panther, so that those below would believe that
+the great beast was still there.
+
+When he reached a point well above the village street he made a great
+commotion, shaking the tree violently, crying aloud to the panther to
+flee or be killed, and punctuating his own voice with the screams and
+mouthings of an angry beast.
+
+Presently he raced toward the opposite side of the tree and off into
+the jungle, pounding loudly against the boles of trees as he went, and
+voicing the panther’s diminishing growls as he drew farther and farther
+away from the village.
+
+A few minutes later he returned to the village gate, calling to the
+natives within.
+
+“I have driven Sheeta away,” he said. “Now come and admit me as you
+promised.”
+
+For a time there was the sound of excited discussion within the
+palisade, but at length a half-dozen warriors came and opened the
+gates, peering anxiously out in evident trepidation as to the nature of
+the creature which they should find waiting there. They were not much
+relieved at sight of an almost naked white man; but when Tarzan had
+reassured them in quiet tones, protesting his friendship for them, they
+opened the barrier a trifle farther and admitted him.
+
+When the gates had been once more secured the self-confidence of the
+savages returned, and as Tarzan walked up the village street toward the
+chief’s hut he was surrounded by a host of curious men, women, and
+children.
+
+From the chief he learned that Rokoff had passed up the river a week
+previous, and that he had horns growing from his forehead, and was
+accompanied by a thousand devils. Later the chief said that the very
+bad white man had remained a month in his village.
+
+Though none of these statements agreed with Kaviri’s, that the Russian
+was but three days gone from the chieftain’s village and that his
+following was much smaller than now stated, Tarzan was in no manner
+surprised at the discrepancies, for he was quite familiar with the
+savage mind’s strange manner of functioning.
+
+What he was most interested in knowing was that he was upon the right
+trail, and that it led toward the interior. In this circumstance he
+knew that Rokoff could never escape him.
+
+After several hours of questioning and cross-questioning the ape-man
+learned that another party had preceded the Russian by several
+days—three whites—a man, a woman, and a little man-child, with several
+Mosulas.
+
+Tarzan explained to the chief that his people would follow him in a
+canoe, probably the next day, and that though he might go on ahead of
+them the chief was to receive them kindly and have no fear of them, for
+Mugambi would see that they did not harm the chief’s people, if they
+were accorded a friendly reception.
+
+“And now,” he concluded, “I shall lie down beneath this tree and sleep.
+I am very tired. Permit no one to disturb me.”
+
+The chief offered him a hut, but Tarzan, from past experience of native
+dwellings, preferred the open air, and, further, he had plans of his
+own that could be better carried out if he remained beneath the tree.
+He gave as his reason a desire to be close at hand should Sheeta
+return, and after this explanation the chief was very glad to permit
+him to sleep beneath the tree.
+
+Tarzan had always found that it stood him in good stead to leave with
+natives the impression that he was to some extent possessed of more or
+less miraculous powers. He might easily have entered their village
+without recourse to the gates, but he believed that a sudden and
+unaccountable disappearance when he was ready to leave them would
+result in a more lasting impression upon their childlike minds, and so
+as soon as the village was quiet in sleep he rose, and, leaping into
+the branches of the tree above him, faded silently into the black
+mystery of the jungle night.
+
+All the balance of that night the ape-man swung rapidly through the
+upper and middle terraces of the forest. When the going was good there
+he preferred the upper branches of the giant trees, for then his way
+was better lighted by the moon; but so accustomed were all his senses
+to the grim world of his birth that it was possible for him, even in
+the dense, black shadows near the ground, to move with ease and
+rapidity. You or I walking beneath the arcs of Main Street, or
+Broadway, or State Street, could not have moved more surely or with a
+tenth the speed of the agile ape-man through the gloomy mazes that
+would have baffled us entirely.
+
+At dawn he stopped to feed, and then he slept for several hours, taking
+up the pursuit again toward noon.
+
+Twice he came upon natives, and, though he had considerable difficulty
+in approaching them, he succeeded in each instance in quieting both
+their fears and bellicose intentions toward him, and learned from them
+that he was upon the trail of the Russian.
+
+Two days later, still following up the Ugambi, he came upon a large
+village. The chief, a wicked-looking fellow with the sharp-filed teeth
+that often denote the cannibal, received him with apparent
+friendliness.
+
+The ape-man was now thoroughly fatigued, and had determined to rest for
+eight or ten hours that he might be fresh and strong when he caught up
+with Rokoff, as he was sure he must do within a very short time.
+
+The chief told him that the bearded white man had left his village only
+the morning before, and that doubtless he would be able to overtake him
+in a short time. The other party the chief had not seen or heard of, so
+he said.
+
+Tarzan did not like the appearance or manner of the fellow, who seemed,
+though friendly enough, to harbour a certain contempt for this
+half-naked white man who came with no followers and offered no
+presents; but he needed the rest and food that the village would afford
+him with less effort than the jungle, and so, as he knew no fear of
+man, beast, or devil, he curled himself up in the shadow of a hut and
+was soon asleep.
+
+Scarcely had he left the chief than the latter called two of his
+warriors, to whom he whispered a few instructions. A moment later the
+sleek, black bodies were racing along the river path, up-stream, toward
+the east.
+
+In the village the chief maintained perfect quiet. He would permit no
+one to approach the sleeping visitor, nor any singing, nor loud
+talking. He was remarkably solicitous lest his guest be disturbed.
+
+Three hours later several canoes came silently into view from up the
+Ugambi. They were being pushed ahead rapidly by the brawny muscles of
+their black crews. Upon the bank before the river stood the chief, his
+spear raised in a horizontal position above his head, as though in some
+manner of predetermined signal to those within the boats.
+
+And such indeed was the purpose of his attitude—which meant that the
+white stranger within his village still slept peacefully.
+
+In the bows of two of the canoes were the runners that the chief had
+sent forth three hours earlier. It was evident that they had been
+dispatched to follow and bring back this party, and that the signal
+from the bank was one that had been determined upon before they left
+the village.
+
+In a few moments the dugouts drew up to the verdure-clad bank. The
+native warriors filed out, and with them a half-dozen white men.
+Sullen, ugly-looking customers they were, and none more so than the
+evil-faced, black-bearded man who commanded them.
+
+“Where is the white man your messengers report to be with you?” he
+asked of the chief.
+
+“This way, bwana,” replied the native. “Carefully have I kept silence
+in the village that he might be still asleep when you returned. I do
+not know that he is one who seeks you to do you harm, but he questioned
+me closely about your coming and your going, and his appearance is as
+that of the one you described, but whom you believed safe in the
+country which you called Jungle Island.
+
+“Had you not told me this tale I should not have recognized him, and
+then he might have gone after and slain you. If he is a friend and no
+enemy, then no harm has been done, bwana; but if he proves to be an
+enemy, I should like very much to have a rifle and some ammunition.”
+
+“You have done well,” replied the white man, “and you shall have the
+rifle and ammunition whether he be a friend or enemy, provided that you
+stand with me.”
+
+“I shall stand with you, bwana,” said the chief, “and now come and look
+upon the stranger, who sleeps within my village.”
+
+So saying, he turned and led the way toward the hut, in the shadow of
+which the unconscious Tarzan slept peacefully.
+
+Behind the two men came the remaining whites and a score of warriors;
+but the raised forefingers of the chief and his companion held them all
+to perfect silence.
+
+As they turned the corner of the hut, cautiously and upon tiptoe, an
+ugly smile touched the lips of the white as his eyes fell upon the
+giant figure of the sleeping ape-man.
+
+The chief looked at the other inquiringly. The latter nodded his head,
+to signify that the chief had made no mistake in his suspicions. Then
+he turned to those behind him and, pointing to the sleeping man,
+motioned for them to seize and bind him.
+
+A moment later a dozen brutes had leaped upon the surprised Tarzan, and
+so quickly did they work that he was securely bound before he could
+make half an effort to escape.
+
+Then they threw him down upon his back, and as his eyes turned toward
+the crowd that stood near, they fell upon the malign face of Nikolas
+Rokoff.
+
+A sneer curled the Russian’s lips. He stepped quite close to Tarzan.
+
+“Pig!” he cried. “Have you not learned sufficient wisdom to keep away
+from Nikolas Rokoff?”
+
+Then he kicked the prostrate man full in the face.
+
+“That for your welcome,” he said.
+
+“Tonight, before my Ethiop friends eat you, I shall tell you what has
+already befallen your wife and child, and what further plans I have for
+their futures.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+The Dance of Death
+
+
+Through the luxuriant, tangled vegetation of the Stygian jungle night a
+great lithe body made its way sinuously and in utter silence upon its
+soft padded feet. Only two blazing points of yellow-green flame shone
+occasionally with the reflected light of the equatorial moon that now
+and again pierced the softly sighing roof rustling in the night wind.
+
+Occasionally the beast would stop with high-held nose, sniffing
+searchingly. At other times a quick, brief incursion into the branches
+above delayed it momentarily in its steady journey toward the east. To
+its sensitive nostrils came the subtle unseen spoor of many a tender
+four-footed creature, bringing the slaver of hunger to the cruel,
+drooping jowl.
+
+But steadfastly it kept on its way, strangely ignoring the cravings of
+appetite that at another time would have sent the rolling, fur-clad
+muscles flying at some soft throat.
+
+All that night the creature pursued its lonely way, and the next day it
+halted only to make a single kill, which it tore to fragments and
+devoured with sullen, grumbling rumbles as though half famished for
+lack of food.
+
+It was dusk when it approached the palisade that surrounded a large
+native village. Like the shadow of a swift and silent death it circled
+the village, nose to ground, halting at last close to the palisade,
+where it almost touched the backs of several huts. Here the beast
+sniffed for a moment, and then, turning its head upon one side,
+listened with up-pricked ears.
+
+What it heard was no sound by the standards of human ears, yet to the
+highly attuned and delicate organs of the beast a message seemed to be
+borne to the savage brain. A wondrous transformation was wrought in the
+motionless mass of statuesque bone and muscle that had an instant
+before stood as though carved out of the living bronze.
+
+As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly released, it rose
+quickly and silently to the top of the palisade, disappearing,
+stealthily and cat-like, into the dark space between the wall and the
+back of an adjacent hut.
+
+In the village street beyond women were preparing many little fires and
+fetching cooking-pots filled with water, for a great feast was to be
+celebrated ere the night was many hours older. About a stout stake near
+the centre of the circling fires a little knot of black warriors stood
+conversing, their bodies smeared with white and blue and ochre in broad
+and grotesque bands. Great circles of colour were drawn about their
+eyes and lips, their breasts and abdomens, and from their
+clay-plastered coiffures rose gay feathers and bits of long, straight
+wire.
+
+The village was preparing for the feast, while in a hut at one side of
+the scene of the coming orgy the bound victim of their bestial
+appetites lay waiting for the end. And such an end!
+
+Tarzan of the Apes, tensing his mighty muscles, strained at the bonds
+that pinioned him; but they had been re-enforced many times at the
+instigation of the Russian, so that not even the ape-man’s giant brawn
+could budge them.
+
+Death!
+
+Tarzan had looked the Hideous Hunter in the face many a time, and
+smiled. And he would smile again tonight when he knew the end was
+coming quickly; but now his thoughts were not of himself, but of those
+others—the dear ones who must suffer most because of his passing.
+
+Jane would never know the manner of it. For that he thanked Heaven; and
+he was thankful also that she at least was safe in the heart of the
+world’s greatest city. Safe among kind and loving friends who would do
+their best to lighten her misery.
+
+But the boy!
+
+Tarzan writhed at the thought of him. His son! And now he—the mighty
+Lord of the Jungle—he, Tarzan, King of the Apes, the only one in all
+the world fitted to find and save the child from the horrors that
+Rokoff’s evil mind had planned—had been trapped like a silly, dumb
+creature. He was to die in a few hours, and with him would go the
+child’s last chance of succour.
+
+Rokoff had been in to see and revile and abuse him several times during
+the afternoon; but he had been able to wring no word of remonstrance or
+murmur of pain from the lips of the giant captive.
+
+So at last he had given up, reserving his particular bit of exquisite
+mental torture for the last moment, when, just before the savage spears
+of the cannibals should for ever make the object of his hatred immune
+to further suffering, the Russian planned to reveal to his enemy the
+true whereabouts of his wife whom he thought safe in England.
+
+Dusk had fallen upon the village, and the ape-man could hear the
+preparations going forward for the torture and the feast. The dance of
+death he could picture in his mind’s eye—for he had seen the thing many
+times in the past. Now he was to be the central figure, bound to the
+stake.
+
+The torture of the slow death as the circling warriors cut him to bits
+with the fiendish skill, that mutilated without bringing
+unconsciousness, had no terrors for him. He was inured to suffering and
+to the sight of blood and to cruel death; but the desire to live was no
+less strong within him, and until the last spark of life should flicker
+and go out, his whole being would remain quick with hope and
+determination. Let them relax their watchfulness but for an instant, he
+knew that his cunning mind and giant muscles would find a way to
+escape—escape and revenge.
+
+As he lay, thinking furiously on every possibility of self-salvation,
+there came to his sensitive nostrils a faint and a familiar scent.
+Instantly every faculty of his mind was upon the alert. Presently his
+trained ears caught the sound of the soundless presence without—behind
+the hut wherein he lay. His lips moved, and though no sound came forth
+that might have been appreciable to a human ear beyond the walls of his
+prison, yet he realized that the one beyond would hear. Already he knew
+who that one was, for his nostrils had told him as plainly as your eyes
+or mine tell us of the identity of an old friend whom we come upon in
+broad daylight.
+
+An instant later he heard the soft sound of a fur-clad body and padded
+feet scaling the outer wall behind the hut and then a tearing at the
+poles which formed the wall. Presently through the hole thus made slunk
+a great beast, pressing its cold muzzle close to his neck.
+
+It was Sheeta, the panther.
+
+The beast snuffed round the prostrate man, whining a little. There was
+a limit to the interchange of ideas which could take place between
+these two, and so Tarzan could not be sure that Sheeta understood all
+that he attempted to communicate to him. That the man was tied and
+helpless Sheeta could, of course, see; but that to the mind of the
+panther this would carry any suggestion of harm in so far as his master
+was concerned, Tarzan could not guess.
+
+What had brought the beast to him? The fact that he had come augured
+well for what he might accomplish; but when Tarzan tried to get Sheeta
+to gnaw his bonds asunder the great animal could not seem to understand
+what was expected of him, and, instead, but licked the wrists and arms
+of the prisoner.
+
+Presently there came an interruption. Some one was approaching the hut.
+Sheeta gave a low growl and slunk into the blackness of a far corner.
+Evidently the visitor did not hear the warning sound, for almost
+immediately he entered the hut—a tall, naked, savage warrior.
+
+He came to Tarzan’s side and pricked him with a spear. From the lips of
+the ape-man came a weird, uncanny sound, and in answer to it there
+leaped from the blackness of the hut’s farthermost corner a bolt of
+fur-clad death. Full upon the breast of the painted savage the great
+beast struck, burying sharp talons in the black flesh and sinking great
+yellow fangs in the ebon throat.
+
+There was a fearful scream of anguish and terror from the black, and
+mingled with it was the hideous challenge of the killing panther. Then
+came silence—silence except for the rending of bloody flesh and the
+crunching of human bones between mighty jaws.
+
+The noise had brought sudden quiet to the village without. Then there
+came the sound of voices in consultation.
+
+High-pitched, fear-filled voices, and deep, low tones of authority, as
+the chief spoke. Tarzan and the panther heard the approaching footsteps
+of many men, and then, to Tarzan’s surprise, the great cat rose from
+across the body of its kill, and slunk noiselessly from the hut through
+the aperture through which it had entered.
+
+The man heard the soft scraping of the body as it passed over the top
+of the palisade, and then silence. From the opposite side of the hut he
+heard the savages approaching to investigate.
+
+He had little hope that Sheeta would return, for had the great cat
+intended to defend him against all comers it would have remained by his
+side as it heard the approaching savages without.
+
+Tarzan knew how strange were the workings of the brains of the mighty
+carnivora of the jungle—how fiendishly fearless they might be in the
+face of certain death, and again how timid upon the slightest
+provocation. There was doubt in his mind that some note of the
+approaching blacks vibrating with fear had struck an answering chord in
+the nervous system of the panther, sending him slinking through the
+jungle, his tail between his legs.
+
+The man shrugged. Well, what of it? He had expected to die, and, after
+all, what might Sheeta have done for him other than to maul a couple of
+his enemies before a rifle in the hands of one of the whites should
+have dispatched him!
+
+If the cat could have released him! Ah! that would have resulted in a
+very different story; but it had proved beyond the understanding of
+Sheeta, and now the beast was gone and Tarzan must definitely abandon
+hope.
+
+The natives were at the entrance to the hut now, peering fearfully into
+the dark interior. Two in advance held lighted torches in their left
+hands and ready spears in their right. They held back timorously
+against those behind, who were pushing them forward.
+
+The shrieks of the panther’s victim, mingled with those of the great
+cat, had wrought mightily upon their poor nerves, and now the awful
+silence of the dark interior seemed even more terribly ominous than had
+the frightful screaming.
+
+Presently one of those who was being forced unwillingly within hit upon
+a happy scheme for learning first the precise nature of the danger
+which menaced him from the silent interior. With a quick movement he
+flung his lighted torch into the centre of the hut. Instantly all
+within was illuminated for a brief second before the burning brand was
+dashed out against the earth floor.
+
+There was the figure of the white prisoner still securely bound as they
+had last seen him, and in the centre of the hut another figure equally
+as motionless, its throat and breasts horribly torn and mangled.
+
+The sight that met the eyes of the foremost savages inspired more
+terror within their superstitious breasts than would the presence of
+Sheeta, for they saw only the result of a ferocious attack upon one of
+their fellows.
+
+Not seeing the cause, their fear-ridden minds were free to attribute
+the ghastly work to supernatural causes, and with the thought they
+turned, screaming, from the hut, bowling over those who stood directly
+behind them in the exuberance of their terror.
+
+For an hour Tarzan heard only the murmur of excited voices from the far
+end of the village. Evidently the savages were once more attempting to
+work up their flickering courage to a point that would permit them to
+make another invasion of the hut, for now and then came a savage yell,
+such as the warriors give to bolster up their bravery upon the field of
+battle.
+
+But in the end it was two of the whites who first entered, carrying
+torches and guns. Tarzan was not surprised to discover that neither of
+them was Rokoff. He would have wagered his soul that no power on earth
+could have tempted that great coward to face the unknown menace of the
+hut.
+
+When the natives saw that the white men were not attacked they, too,
+crowded into the interior, their voices hushed with terror as they
+looked upon the mutilated corpse of their comrade. The whites tried in
+vain to elicit an explanation from Tarzan; but to all their queries he
+but shook his head, a grim and knowing smile curving his lips.
+
+At last Rokoff came.
+
+His face grew very white as his eyes rested upon the bloody thing
+grinning up at him from the floor, the face set in a death mask of
+excruciating horror.
+
+“Come!” he said to the chief. “Let us get to work and finish this demon
+before he has an opportunity to repeat this thing upon more of your
+people.”
+
+The chief gave orders that Tarzan should be lifted and carried to the
+stake; but it was several minutes before he could prevail upon any of
+his men to touch the prisoner.
+
+At last, however, four of the younger warriors dragged Tarzan roughly
+from the hut, and once outside the pall of terror seemed lifted from
+the savage hearts.
+
+A score of howling blacks pushed and buffeted the prisoner down the
+village street and bound him to the post in the centre of the circle of
+little fires and boiling cooking-pots.
+
+When at last he was made fast and seemed quite helpless and beyond the
+faintest hope of succour, Rokoff’s shrivelled wart of courage swelled
+to its usual proportions when danger was not present.
+
+He stepped close to the ape-man, and, seizing a spear from the hands of
+one of the savages, was the first to prod the helpless victim. A little
+stream of blood trickled down the giant’s smooth skin from the wound in
+his side; but no murmur of pain passed his lips.
+
+The smile of contempt upon his face seemed to infuriate the Russian.
+With a volley of oaths he leaped at the helpless captive, beating him
+upon the face with his clenched fists and kicking him mercilessly about
+the legs.
+
+Then he raised the heavy spear to drive it through the mighty heart,
+and still Tarzan of the Apes smiled contemptuously upon him.
+
+Before Rokoff could drive the weapon home the chief sprang upon him and
+dragged him away from his intended victim.
+
+“Stop, white man!” he cried. “Rob us of this prisoner and our
+death-dance, and you yourself may have to take his place.”
+
+The threat proved most effective in keeping the Russian from further
+assaults upon the prisoner, though he continued to stand a little apart
+and hurl taunts at his enemy. He told Tarzan that he himself was going
+to eat the ape-man’s heart. He enlarged upon the horrors of the future
+life of Tarzan’s son, and intimated that his vengeance would reach as
+well to Jane Clayton.
+
+“You think your wife safe in England,” said Rokoff. “Poor fool! She is
+even now in the hands of one not even of decent birth, and far from the
+safety of London and the protection of her friends. I had not meant to
+tell you this until I could bring to you upon Jungle Island proof of
+her fate.
+
+“Now that you are about to die the most unthinkably horrid death that
+it is given a white man to die—let this word of the plight of your wife
+add to the torments that you must suffer before the last savage
+spear-thrust releases you from your torture.”
+
+The dance had commenced now, and the yells of the circling warriors
+drowned Rokoff’s further attempts to distress his victim.
+
+The leaping savages, the flickering firelight playing upon their
+painted bodies, circled about the victim at the stake.
+
+To Tarzan’s memory came a similar scene, when he had rescued D’Arnot
+from a like predicament at the last moment before the final
+spear-thrust should have ended his sufferings. Who was there now to
+rescue him? In all the world there was none able to save him from the
+torture and the death.
+
+The thought that these human fiends would devour him when the dance was
+done caused him not a single qualm of horror or disgust. It did not add
+to his sufferings as it would have to those of an ordinary white man,
+for all his life Tarzan had seen the beasts of the jungle devour the
+flesh of their kills.
+
+Had he not himself battled for the grisly forearm of a great ape at
+that long-gone Dum-Dum, when he had slain the fierce Tublat and won his
+niche in the respect of the Apes of Kerchak?
+
+The dancers were leaping more closely to him now. The spears were
+commencing to find his body in the first torturing pricks that prefaced
+the more serious thrusts.
+
+It would not be long now. The ape-man longed for the last savage lunge
+that would end his misery.
+
+And then, far out in the mazes of the weird jungle, rose a shrill
+scream.
+
+For an instant the dancers paused, and in the silence of the interval
+there rose from the lips of the fast-bound white man an answering
+shriek, more fearsome and more terrible than that of the jungle-beast
+that had roused it.
+
+For several minutes the blacks hesitated; then, at the urging of Rokoff
+and their chief, they leaped in to finish the dance and the victim; but
+ere ever another spear touched the brown hide a tawny streak of
+green-eyed hate and ferocity bounded from the door of the hut in which
+Tarzan had been imprisoned, and Sheeta, the panther, stood snarling
+beside his master.
+
+For an instant the blacks and the whites stood transfixed with terror.
+Their eyes were riveted upon the bared fangs of the jungle cat.
+
+Only Tarzan of the Apes saw what else there was emerging from the dark
+interior of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+Chivalry or Villainy
+
+
+From her cabin port upon the Kincaid, Jane Clayton had seen her husband
+rowed to the verdure-clad shore of Jungle Island, and then the ship
+once more proceeded upon its way.
+
+For several days she saw no one other than Sven Anderssen, the
+Kincaid’s taciturn and repellent cook. She asked him the name of the
+shore upon which her husband had been set.
+
+“Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard,” replied the Swede, and that
+was all that she could get out of him.
+
+She had come to the conclusion that he spoke no other English, and so
+she ceased to importune him for information; but never did she forget
+to greet him pleasantly or to thank him for the hideous, nauseating
+meals he brought her.
+
+Three days from the spot where Tarzan had been marooned the Kincaid
+came to anchor in the mouth of a great river, and presently Rokoff came
+to Jane Clayton’s cabin.
+
+“We have arrived, my dear,” he said, with a sickening leer. “I have
+come to offer you safety, liberty, and ease. My heart has been softened
+toward you in your suffering, and I would make amends as best I may.
+
+“Your husband was a brute—you know that best who found him naked in his
+native jungle, roaming wild with the savage beasts that were his
+fellows. Now I am a gentleman, not only born of noble blood, but raised
+gently as befits a man of quality.
+
+“To you, dear Jane, I offer the love of a cultured man and association
+with one of culture and refinement, which you must have sorely missed
+in your relations with the poor ape that through your girlish
+infatuation you married so thoughtlessly. I love you, Jane. You have
+but to say the word and no further sorrows shall afflict you—even your
+baby shall be returned to you unharmed.”
+
+Outside the door Sven Anderssen paused with the noonday meal he had
+been carrying to Lady Greystoke. Upon the end of his long, stringy neck
+his little head was cocked to one side, his close-set eyes were half
+closed, his ears, so expressive was his whole attitude of stealthy
+eavesdropping, seemed truly to be cocked forward—even his long, yellow,
+straggly moustache appeared to assume a sly droop.
+
+As Rokoff closed his appeal, awaiting the reply he invited, the look of
+surprise upon Jane Clayton’s face turned to one of disgust. She fairly
+shuddered in the fellow’s face.
+
+“I would not have been surprised, M. Rokoff,” she said, “had you
+attempted to force me to submit to your evil desires, but that you
+should be so fatuous as to believe that I, wife of John Clayton, would
+come to you willingly, even to save my life, I should never have
+imagined. I have known you for a scoundrel, M. Rokoff; but until now I
+had not taken you for a fool.”
+
+Rokoff’s eyes narrowed, and the red of mortification flushed out the
+pallor of his face. He took a step toward the girl, threateningly.
+
+“We shall see who is the fool at last,” he hissed, “when I have broken
+you to my will and your plebeian Yankee stubbornness has cost you all
+that you hold dear—even the life of your baby—for, by the bones of St.
+Peter, I’ll forego all that I had planned for the brat and cut its
+heart out before your very eyes. You’ll learn what it means to insult
+Nikolas Rokoff.”
+
+Jane Clayton turned wearily away.
+
+“What is the use,” she said, “of expatiating upon the depths to which
+your vengeful nature can sink? You cannot move me either by threats or
+deeds. My baby cannot judge yet for himself, but I, his mother, can
+foresee that should it have been given him to survive to man’s estate
+he would willingly sacrifice his life for the honour of his mother.
+Love him as I do, I would not purchase his life at such a price. Did I,
+he would execrate my memory to the day of his death.”
+
+Rokoff was now thoroughly angered because of his failure to reduce the
+girl to terror. He felt only hate for her, but it had come to his
+diseased mind that if he could force her to accede to his demands as
+the price of her life and her child’s, the cup of his revenge would be
+filled to brimming when he could flaunt the wife of Lord Greystoke in
+the capitals of Europe as his mistress.
+
+Again he stepped closer to her. His evil face was convulsed with rage
+and desire. Like a wild beast he sprang upon her, and with his strong
+fingers at her throat forced her backward upon the berth.
+
+At the same instant the door of the cabin opened noisily. Rokoff leaped
+to his feet, and, turning, faced the Swede cook.
+
+Into the fellow’s usually foxy eyes had come an expression of utter
+stupidity. His lower jaw drooped in vacuous harmony. He busied himself
+in arranging Lady Greystoke’s meal upon the tiny table at one side of
+her cabin.
+
+The Russian glared at him.
+
+“What do you mean,” he cried, “by entering here without permission? Get
+out!”
+
+The cook turned his watery blue eyes upon Rokoff and smiled vacuously.
+
+“Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard,” he said, and then he began
+rearranging the few dishes upon the little table.
+
+“Get out of here, or I’ll throw you out, you miserable blockhead!”
+roared Rokoff, taking a threatening step toward the Swede.
+
+Anderssen continued to smile foolishly in his direction, but one
+ham-like paw slid stealthily to the handle of the long, slim knife that
+protruded from the greasy cord supporting his soiled apron.
+
+Rokoff saw the move and stopped short in his advance. Then he turned
+toward Jane Clayton.
+
+“I will give you until tomorrow,” he said, “to reconsider your answer
+to my offer. All will be sent ashore upon one pretext or another except
+you and the child, Paulvitch and myself. Then without interruption you
+will be able to witness the death of the baby.”
+
+He spoke in French that the cook might not understand the sinister
+portent of his words. When he had done he banged out of the cabin
+without another look at the man who had interrupted him in his sorry
+work.
+
+When he had gone, Sven Anderssen turned toward Lady Greystoke—the
+idiotic expression that had masked his thoughts had fallen away, and in
+its place was one of craft and cunning.
+
+“Hay tank Ay ban a fool,” he said. “Hay ben the fool. Ay savvy Franch.”
+
+Jane Clayton looked at him in surprise.
+
+“You understood all that he said, then?”
+
+Anderssen grinned.
+
+“You bat,” he said.
+
+“And you heard what was going on in here and came to protect me?”
+
+“You bane good to me,” explained the Swede. “Hay treat me like darty
+dog. Ay help you, lady. You yust vait—Ay help you. Ay ban Vast Coast
+lots times.”
+
+“But how can you help me, Sven,” she asked, “when all these men will be
+against us?”
+
+“Ay tank,” said Sven Anderssen, “it blow purty soon purty hard,” and
+then he turned and left the cabin.
+
+Though Jane Clayton doubted the cook’s ability to be of any material
+service to her, she was nevertheless deeply grateful to him for what he
+already had done. The feeling that among these enemies she had one
+friend brought the first ray of comfort that had come to lighten the
+burden of her miserable apprehensions throughout the long voyage of the
+Kincaid.
+
+She saw no more of Rokoff that day, nor of any other until Sven came
+with her evening meal. She tried to draw him into conversation relative
+to his plans to aid her, but all that she could get from him was his
+stereotyped prophecy as to the future state of the wind. He seemed
+suddenly to have relapsed into his wonted state of dense stupidity.
+
+However, when he was leaving her cabin a little later with the empty
+dishes he whispered very low, “Leave on your clothes an’ roll up your
+blankets. Ay come back after you purty soon.”
+
+He would have slipped from the room at once, but Jane laid her hand
+upon his sleeve.
+
+“My baby?” she asked. “I cannot go without him.”
+
+“You do wot Ay tal you,” said Anderssen, scowling. “Ay ban halpin’ you,
+so don’t you gat too fonny.”
+
+When he had gone Jane Clayton sank down upon her berth in utter
+bewilderment. What was she to do? Suspicions as to the intentions of
+the Swede swarmed her brain. Might she not be infinitely worse off if
+she gave herself into his power than she already was?
+
+No, she could be no worse off in company with the devil himself than
+with Nikolas Rokoff, for the devil at least bore the reputation of
+being a gentleman.
+
+She swore a dozen times that she would not leave the Kincaid without
+her baby, and yet she remained clothed long past her usual hour for
+retiring, and her blankets were neatly rolled and bound with stout
+cord, when about midnight there came a stealthy scratching upon the
+panels of her door.
+
+Swiftly she crossed the room and drew the bolt. Softly the door swung
+open to admit the muffled figure of the Swede. On one arm he carried a
+bundle, evidently his blankets. His other hand was raised in a gesture
+commanding silence, a grimy forefinger upon his lips.
+
+He came quite close to her.
+
+“Carry this,” he said. “Do not make some noise when you see it. It ban
+your kid.”
+
+Quick hands snatched the bundle from the cook, and hungry mother arms
+folded the sleeping infant to her breast, while hot tears of joy ran
+down her cheeks and her whole frame shook with the emotion of the
+moment.
+
+“Come!” said Anderssen. “We got no time to vaste.”
+
+He snatched up her bundle of blankets, and outside the cabin door his
+own as well. Then he led her to the ship’s side, steadied her descent
+of the monkey-ladder, holding the child for her as she climbed to the
+waiting boat below. A moment later he had cut the rope that held the
+small boat to the steamer’s side, and, bending silently to the muffled
+oars, was pulling toward the black shadows up the Ugambi River.
+
+Anderssen rowed on as though quite sure of his ground, and when after
+half an hour the moon broke through the clouds there was revealed upon
+their left the mouth of a tributary running into the Ugambi. Up this
+narrow channel the Swede turned the prow of the small boat.
+
+Jane Clayton wondered if the man knew where he was bound. She did not
+know that in his capacity as cook he had that day been rowed up this
+very stream to a little village where he had bartered with the natives
+for such provisions as they had for sale, and that he had there
+arranged the details of his plan for the adventure upon which they were
+now setting forth.
+
+Even though the moon was full, the surface of the small river was quite
+dark. The giant trees overhung its narrow banks, meeting in a great
+arch above the centre of the river. Spanish moss dropped from the
+gracefully bending limbs, and enormous creepers clambered in riotous
+profusion from the ground to the loftiest branch, falling in curving
+loops almost to the water’s placid breast.
+
+Now and then the river’s surface would be suddenly broken ahead of them
+by a huge crocodile, startled by the splashing of the oars, or,
+snorting and blowing, a family of hippos would dive from a sandy bar to
+the cool, safe depths of the bottom.
+
+From the dense jungles upon either side came the weird night cries of
+the carnivora—the maniacal voice of the hyena, the coughing grunt of
+the panther, the deep and awful roar of the lion. And with them
+strange, uncanny notes that the girl could not ascribe to any
+particular night prowler—more terrible because of their mystery.
+
+Huddled in the stern of the boat she sat with her baby strained close
+to her bosom, and because of that little tender, helpless thing she was
+happier tonight than she had been for many a sorrow-ridden day.
+
+Even though she knew not to what fate she was going, or how soon that
+fate might overtake her, still was she happy and thankful for the
+moment, however brief, that she might press her baby tightly in her
+arms. She could scarce wait for the coming of the day that she might
+look again upon the bright face of her little, black-eyed Jack.
+
+Again and again she tried to strain her eyes through the blackness of
+the jungle night to have but a tiny peep at those beloved features, but
+only the dim outline of the baby face rewarded her efforts. Then once
+more she would cuddle the warm, little bundle close to her throbbing
+heart.
+
+It must have been close to three o’clock in the morning that Anderssen
+brought the boat’s nose to the shore before a clearing where could be
+dimly seen in the waning moonlight a cluster of native huts encircled
+by a thorn boma.
+
+At the village gate they were admitted by a native woman, the wife of
+the chief whom Anderssen had paid to assist him. She took them to the
+chief’s hut, but Anderssen said that they would sleep without upon the
+ground, and so, her duty having been completed, she left them to their
+own devices.
+
+The Swede, after explaining in his gruff way that the huts were
+doubtless filthy and vermin-ridden, spread Jane’s blankets on the
+ground for her, and at a little distance unrolled his own and lay down
+to sleep.
+
+It was some time before the girl could find a comfortable position upon
+the hard ground, but at last, the baby in the hollow of her arm, she
+dropped asleep from utter exhaustion. When she awoke it was broad
+daylight.
+
+About her were clustered a score of curious natives—mostly men, for
+among the aborigines it is the male who owns this characteristic in its
+most exaggerated form. Instinctively Jane Clayton drew the baby more
+closely to her, though she soon saw that the blacks were far from
+intending her or the child any harm.
+
+In fact, one of them offered her a gourd of milk—a filthy,
+smoke-begrimed gourd, with the ancient rind of long-curdled milk caked
+in layers within its neck; but the spirit of the giver touched her
+deeply, and her face lightened for a moment with one of those almost
+forgotten smiles of radiance that had helped to make her beauty famous
+both in Baltimore and London.
+
+She took the gourd in one hand, and rather than cause the giver pain
+raised it to her lips, though for the life of her she could scarce
+restrain the qualm of nausea that surged through her as the malodorous
+thing approached her nostrils.
+
+It was Anderssen who came to her rescue, and taking the gourd from her,
+drank a portion himself, and then returned it to the native with a gift
+of blue beads.
+
+The sun was shining brightly now, and though the baby still slept, Jane
+could scarce restrain her impatient desire to have at least a brief
+glance at the beloved face. The natives had withdrawn at a command from
+their chief, who now stood talking with Anderssen, a little apart from
+her.
+
+As she debated the wisdom of risking disturbing the child’s slumber by
+lifting the blanket that now protected its face from the sun, she noted
+that the cook conversed with the chief in the language of the Negro.
+
+What a remarkable man the fellow was, indeed! She had thought him
+ignorant and stupid but a short day before, and now, within the past
+twenty-four hours, she had learned that he spoke not only English but
+French as well, and the primitive dialect of the West Coast.
+
+She had thought him shifty, cruel, and untrustworthy, yet in so far as
+she had reason to believe he had proved himself in every way the
+contrary since the day before. It scarce seemed credible that he could
+be serving her from motives purely chivalrous. There must be something
+deeper in his intentions and plans than he had yet disclosed.
+
+She wondered, and when she looked at him—at his close-set, shifty eyes
+and repulsive features, she shuddered, for she was convinced that no
+lofty characteristics could be hid behind so foul an exterior.
+
+As she was thinking of these things the while she debated the wisdom of
+uncovering the baby’s face, there came a little grunt from the wee
+bundle in her lap, and then a gurgling coo that set her heart in
+raptures.
+
+The baby was awake! Now she might feast her eyes upon him.
+
+Quickly she snatched the blanket from before the infant’s face;
+Anderssen was looking at her as she did so.
+
+He saw her stagger to her feet, holding the baby at arm’s length from
+her, her eyes glued in horror upon the little chubby face and twinkling
+eyes.
+
+Then he heard her piteous cry as her knees gave beneath her, and she
+sank to the ground in a swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+The Swede
+
+
+As the warriors, clustered thick about Tarzan and Sheeta, realized that
+it was a flesh-and-blood panther that had interrupted their dance of
+death, they took heart a trifle, for in the face of all those circling
+spears even the mighty Sheeta would be doomed.
+
+Rokoff was urging the chief to have his spearmen launch their missiles,
+and the black was upon the instant of issuing the command, when his
+eyes strayed beyond Tarzan, following the gaze of the ape-man.
+
+With a yell of terror the chief turned and fled toward the village
+gate, and as his people looked to see the cause of his fright, they too
+took to their heels—for there, lumbering down upon them, their huge
+forms exaggerated by the play of moonlight and camp fire, came the
+hideous apes of Akut.
+
+The instant the natives turned to flee the ape-man’s savage cry rang
+out above the shrieks of the blacks, and in answer to it Sheeta and the
+apes leaped growling after the fugitives. Some of the warriors turned
+to battle with their enraged antagonists, but before the fiendish
+ferocity of the fierce beasts they went down to bloody death.
+
+Others were dragged down in their flight, and it was not until the
+village was empty and the last of the blacks had disappeared into the
+bush that Tarzan was able to recall his savage pack to his side. Then
+it was that he discovered to his chagrin that he could not make one of
+them, not even the comparatively intelligent Akut, understand that he
+wished to be freed from the bonds that held him to the stake.
+
+In time, of course, the idea would filter through their thick skulls,
+but in the meanwhile many things might happen—the blacks might return
+in force to regain their village; the whites might readily pick them
+all off with their rifles from the surrounding trees; he might even
+starve to death before the dull-witted apes realized that he wished
+them to gnaw through his bonds.
+
+As for Sheeta—the great cat understood even less than the apes; but yet
+Tarzan could not but marvel at the remarkable characteristics this
+beast had evidenced. That it felt real affection for him there seemed
+little doubt, for now that the blacks were disposed of it walked slowly
+back and forth about the stake, rubbing its sides against the ape-man’s
+legs and purring like a contented tabby. That it had gone of its own
+volition to bring the balance of the pack to his rescue, Tarzan could
+not doubt. His Sheeta was indeed a jewel among beasts.
+
+Mugambi’s absence worried the ape-man not a little. He attempted to
+learn from Akut what had become of the black, fearing that the beasts,
+freed from the restraint of Tarzan’s presence, might have fallen upon
+the man and devoured him; but to all his questions the great ape but
+pointed back in the direction from which they had come out of the
+jungle.
+
+The night passed with Tarzan still fast bound to the stake, and shortly
+after dawn his fears were realized in the discovery of naked black
+figures moving stealthily just within the edge of the jungle about the
+village. The blacks were returning.
+
+With daylight their courage would be equal to the demands of a charge
+upon the handful of beasts that had routed them from their rightful
+abodes. The result of the encounter seemed foregone if the savages
+could curb their superstitious terror, for against their overwhelming
+numbers, their long spears and poisoned arrows, the panther and the
+apes could not be expected to survive a really determined attack.
+
+That the blacks were preparing for a charge became apparent a few
+moments later, when they commenced to show themselves in force upon the
+edge of the clearing, dancing and jumping about as they waved their
+spears and shouted taunts and fierce warcries toward the village.
+
+These manoeuvres Tarzan knew would continue until the blacks had worked
+themselves into a state of hysterical courage sufficient to sustain
+them for a short charge toward the village, and even though he doubted
+that they would reach it at the first attempt, he believed that at the
+second or the third they would swarm through the gateway, when the
+outcome could not be aught than the extermination of Tarzan’s bold, but
+unarmed and undisciplined, defenders.
+
+Even as he had guessed, the first charge carried the howling warriors
+but a short distance into the open—a shrill, weird challenge from the
+ape-man being all that was necessary to send them scurrying back to the
+bush. For half an hour they pranced and yelled their courage to the
+sticking-point, and again essayed a charge.
+
+This time they came quite to the village gate, but when Sheeta and the
+hideous apes leaped among them they turned screaming in terror, and
+again fled to the jungle.
+
+Again was the dancing and shouting repeated. This time Tarzan felt no
+doubt they would enter the village and complete the work that a handful
+of determined white men would have carried to a successful conclusion
+at the first attempt.
+
+To have rescue come so close only to be thwarted because he could not
+make his poor, savage friends understand precisely what he wanted of
+them was most irritating, but he could not find it in his heart to
+place blame upon them. They had done their best, and now he was sure
+they would doubtless remain to die with him in a fruitless effort to
+defend him.
+
+The blacks were already preparing for the charge. A few individuals had
+advanced a short distance toward the village and were exhorting the
+others to follow them. In a moment the whole savage horde would be
+racing across the clearing.
+
+Tarzan thought only of the little child somewhere in this cruel,
+relentless wilderness. His heart ached for the son that he might no
+longer seek to save—that and the realization of Jane’s suffering were
+all that weighed upon his brave spirit in these that he thought his
+last moments of life. Succour, all that he could hope for, had come to
+him in the instant of his extremity—and failed. There was nothing
+further for which to hope.
+
+The blacks were half-way across the clearing when Tarzan’s attention
+was attracted by the actions of one of the apes. The beast was glaring
+toward one of the huts. Tarzan followed his gaze. To his infinite
+relief and delight he saw the stalwart form of Mugambi racing toward
+him.
+
+The huge black was panting heavily as though from strenuous physical
+exertion and nervous excitement. He rushed to Tarzan’s side, and as the
+first of the savages reached the village gate the native’s knife
+severed the last of the cords that bound Tarzan to the stake.
+
+In the street lay the corpses of the savages that had fallen before the
+pack the night before. From one of these Tarzan seized a spear and knob
+stick, and with Mugambi at his side and the snarling pack about him, he
+met the natives as they poured through the gate.
+
+Fierce and terrible was the battle that ensued, but at last the savages
+were routed, more by terror, perhaps, at sight of a black man and a
+white fighting in company with a panther and the huge fierce apes of
+Akut, than because of their inability to overcome the relatively small
+force that opposed them.
+
+One prisoner fell into the hands of Tarzan, and him the ape-man
+questioned in an effort to learn what had become of Rokoff and his
+party. Promised his liberty in return for the information, the black
+told all he knew concerning the movements of the Russian.
+
+It seemed that early in the morning their chief had attempted to
+prevail upon the whites to return with him to the village and with
+their guns destroy the ferocious pack that had taken possession of it,
+but Rokoff appeared to entertain even more fears of the giant white man
+and his strange companions than even the blacks themselves.
+
+Upon no conditions would he consent to returning even within sight of
+the village. Instead, he took his party hurriedly to the river, where
+they stole a number of canoes the blacks had hidden there. The last
+that had been seen of them they had been paddling strongly up-stream,
+their porters from Kaviri’s village wielding the blades.
+
+So once more Tarzan of the Apes with his hideous pack took up his
+search for the ape-man’s son and the pursuit of his abductor.
+
+For weary days they followed through an almost uninhabited country,
+only to learn at last that they were upon the wrong trail. The little
+band had been reduced by three, for three of Akut’s apes had fallen in
+the fighting at the village. Now, with Akut, there were five great
+apes, and Sheeta was there—and Mugambi and Tarzan.
+
+The ape-man no longer heard rumors even of the three who had preceded
+Rokoff—the white man and woman and the child. Who the man and woman
+were he could not guess, but that the child was his was enough to keep
+him hot upon the trail. He was sure that Rokoff would be following this
+trio, and so he felt confident that so long as he could keep upon the
+Russian’s trail he would be winning so much nearer to the time he might
+snatch his son from the dangers and horrors that menaced him.
+
+In retracing their way after losing Rokoff’s trail Tarzan picked it up
+again at a point where the Russian had left the river and taken to the
+brush in a northerly direction. He could only account for this change
+on the ground that the child had been carried away from the river by
+the two who now had possession of it.
+
+Nowhere along the way, however, could he gain definite information that
+might assure him positively that the child was ahead of him. Not a
+single native they questioned had seen or heard of this other party,
+though nearly all had had direct experience with the Russian or had
+talked with others who had.
+
+It was with difficulty that Tarzan could find means to communicate with
+the natives, as the moment their eyes fell upon his companions they
+fled precipitately into the bush. His only alternative was to go ahead
+of his pack and waylay an occasional warrior whom he found alone in the
+jungle.
+
+One day as he was thus engaged, tracking an unsuspecting savage, he
+came upon the fellow in the act of hurling a spear at a wounded white
+man who crouched in a clump of bush at the trail’s side. The white was
+one whom Tarzan had often seen, and whom he recognized at once.
+
+Deep in his memory was implanted those repulsive features—the close-set
+eyes, the shifty expression, the drooping yellow moustache.
+
+Instantly it occurred to the ape-man that this fellow had not been
+among those who had accompanied Rokoff at the village where Tarzan had
+been a prisoner. He had seen them all, and this fellow had not been
+there. There could be but one explanation—he it was who had fled ahead
+of the Russian with the woman and the child—and the woman had been Jane
+Clayton. He was sure now of the meaning of Rokoff’s words.
+
+The ape-man’s face went white as he looked upon the pasty, vice-marked
+countenance of the Swede. Across Tarzan’s forehead stood out the broad
+band of scarlet that marked the scar where, years before, Terkoz had
+torn a great strip of the ape-man’s scalp from his skull in the fierce
+battle in which Tarzan had sustained his fitness to the kingship of the
+apes of Kerchak.
+
+The man was his prey—the black should not have him, and with the
+thought he leaped upon the warrior, striking down the spear before it
+could reach its mark. The black, whipping out his knife, turned to do
+battle with this new enemy, while the Swede, lying in the bush,
+witnessed a duel, the like of which he had never dreamed to see—a
+half-naked white man battling with a half-naked black, hand to hand
+with the crude weapons of primeval man at first, and then with hands
+and teeth like the primordial brutes from whose loins their forebears
+sprung.
+
+For a time Anderssen did not recognize the white, and when at last it
+dawned upon him that he had seen this giant before, his eyes went wide
+in surprise that this growling, rending beast could ever have been the
+well-groomed English gentleman who had been a prisoner aboard the
+Kincaid.
+
+An English nobleman! He had learned the identity of the Kincaid’s
+prisoners from Lady Greystoke during their flight up the Ugambi.
+Before, in common with the other members of the crew of the steamer, he
+had not known who the two might be.
+
+The fight was over. Tarzan had been compelled to kill his antagonist,
+as the fellow would not surrender.
+
+The Swede saw the white man leap to his feet beside the corpse of his
+foe, and placing one foot upon the broken neck lift his voice in the
+hideous challenge of the victorious bull-ape.
+
+Anderssen shuddered. Then Tarzan turned toward him. His face was cold
+and cruel, and in the grey eyes the Swede read murder.
+
+“Where is my wife?” growled the ape-man. “Where is the child?”
+
+Anderssen tried to reply, but a sudden fit of coughing choked him.
+There was an arrow entirely through his chest, and as he coughed the
+blood from his wounded lung poured suddenly from his mouth and
+nostrils.
+
+Tarzan stood waiting for the paroxysm to pass. Like a bronze
+image—cold, hard, and relentless—he stood over the helpless man,
+waiting to wring such information from him as he needed, and then to
+kill.
+
+Presently the coughing and haemorrhage ceased, and again the wounded
+man tried to speak. Tarzan knelt near the faintly moving lips.
+
+“The wife and child!” he repeated. “Where are they?”
+
+Anderssen pointed up the trail.
+
+“The Russian—he got them,” he whispered.
+
+“How did you come here?” continued Tarzan. “Why are you not with
+Rokoff?”
+
+“They catch us,” replied Anderssen, in a voice so low that the ape-man
+could just distinguish the words. “They catch us. Ay fight, but my men
+they all run away. Then they get me when Ay ban vounded. Rokoff he say
+leave me here for the hyenas. That vas vorse than to kill. He tak your
+vife and kid.”
+
+“What were you doing with them—where were you taking them?” asked
+Tarzan, and then fiercely, leaping close to the fellow with fierce eyes
+blazing with the passion of hate and vengeance that he had with
+difficulty controlled, “What harm did you do to my wife or child? Speak
+quick before I kill you! Make your peace with God! Tell me the worst,
+or I will tear you to pieces with my hands and teeth. You have seen
+that I can do it!”
+
+A look of wide-eyed surprise overspread Anderssen’s face.
+
+“Why,” he whispered, “Ay did not hurt them. Ay tried to save them from
+that Russian. Your vife was kind to me on the Kincaid, and Ay hear that
+little baby cry sometimes. Ay got a vife an’ kid for my own by
+Christiania an’ Ay couldn’t bear for to see them separated an’ in
+Rokoff’s hands any more. That vas all. Do Ay look like Ay ban here to
+hurt them?” he continued after a pause, pointing to the arrow
+protruding from his breast.
+
+There was something in the man’s tone and expression that convinced
+Tarzan of the truth of his assertions. More weighty than anything else
+was the fact that Anderssen evidently seemed more hurt than frightened.
+He knew he was going to die, so Tarzan’s threats had little effect upon
+him; but it was quite apparent that he wished the Englishman to know
+the truth and not to wrong him by harbouring the belief that his words
+and manner indicated that he had entertained.
+
+The ape-man instantly dropped to his knees beside the Swede.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said very simply. “I had looked for none but knaves in
+company with Rokoff. I see that I was wrong. That is past now, and we
+will drop it for the more important matter of getting you to a place of
+comfort and looking after your wounds. We must have you on your feet
+again as soon as possible.”
+
+The Swede, smiling, shook his head.
+
+“You go on an’ look for the vife an’ kid,” he said. “Ay ban as gude as
+dead already; but”—he hesitated—“Ay hate to think of the hyenas. Von’t
+you finish up this job?”
+
+Tarzan shuddered. A moment ago he had been upon the point of killing
+this man. Now he could no more have taken his life than he could have
+taken the life of any of his best friends.
+
+He lifted the Swede’s head in his arms to change and ease his position.
+
+Again came a fit of coughing and the terrible haemorrhage. After it was
+over Anderssen lay with closed eyes.
+
+Tarzan thought that he was dead, until he suddenly raised his eyes to
+those of the ape-man, sighed, and spoke—in a very low, weak whisper.
+
+“Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard!” he said, and died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Tambudza
+
+
+Tarzan scooped a shallow grave for the Kincaid’s cook, beneath whose
+repulsive exterior had beaten the heart of a chivalrous gentleman. That
+was all he could do in the cruel jungle for the man who had given his
+life in the service of his little son and his wife.
+
+Then Tarzan took up again the pursuit of Rokoff. Now that he was
+positive that the woman ahead of him was indeed Jane, and that she had
+again fallen into the hands of the Russian, it seemed that with all the
+incredible speed of his fleet and agile muscles he moved at but a
+snail’s pace.
+
+It was with difficulty that he kept the trail, for there were many
+paths through the jungle at this point—crossing and crisscrossing,
+forking and branching in all directions, and over them all had passed
+natives innumerable, coming and going. The spoor of the white men was
+obliterated by that of the native carriers who had followed them, and
+over all was the spoor of other natives and of wild beasts.
+
+It was most perplexing; yet Tarzan kept on assiduously, checking his
+sense of sight against his sense of smell, that he might more surely
+keep to the right trail. But, with all his care, night found him at a
+point where he was positive that he was on the wrong trail entirely.
+
+He knew that the pack would follow his spoor, and so he had been
+careful to make it as distinct as possible, brushing often against the
+vines and creepers that walled the jungle-path, and in other ways
+leaving his scent-spoor plainly discernible.
+
+As darkness settled a heavy rain set in, and there was nothing for the
+baffled ape-man to do but wait in the partial shelter of a huge tree
+until morning; but the coming of dawn brought no cessation of the
+torrential downpour.
+
+For a week the sun was obscured by heavy clouds, while violent rain and
+wind storms obliterated the last remnants of the spoor Tarzan
+constantly though vainly sought.
+
+During all this time he saw no signs of natives, nor of his own pack,
+the members of which he feared had lost his trail during the terrific
+storm. As the country was strange to him, he had been unable to judge
+his course accurately, since he had had neither sun by day nor moon nor
+stars by night to guide him.
+
+When the sun at last broke through the clouds in the fore-noon of the
+seventh day, it looked down upon an almost frantic ape-man.
+
+For the first time in his life, Tarzan of the Apes had been lost in the
+jungle. That the experience should have befallen him at such a time
+seemed cruel beyond expression. Somewhere in this savage land his wife
+and son lay in the clutches of the arch-fiend Rokoff.
+
+What hideous trials might they not have undergone during those seven
+awful days that nature had thwarted him in his endeavours to locate
+them? Tarzan knew the Russian, in whose power they were, so well that
+he could not doubt but that the man, filled with rage that Jane had
+once escaped him, and knowing that Tarzan might be close upon his
+trail, would wreak without further loss of time whatever vengeance his
+polluted mind might be able to conceive.
+
+But now that the sun shone once more, the ape-man was still at a loss
+as to what direction to take. He knew that Rokoff had left the river in
+pursuit of Anderssen, but whether he would continue inland or return to
+the Ugambi was a question.
+
+The ape-man had seen that the river at the point he had left it was
+growing narrow and swift, so that he judged that it could not be
+navigable even for canoes to any great distance farther toward its
+source. However, if Rokoff had not returned to the river, in what
+direction had he proceeded?
+
+From the direction of Anderssen’s flight with Jane and the child Tarzan
+was convinced that the man had purposed attempting the tremendous feat
+of crossing the continent to Zanzibar; but whether Rokoff would dare so
+dangerous a journey or not was a question.
+
+Fear might drive him to the attempt now that he knew the manner of
+horrible pack that was upon his trail, and that Tarzan of the Apes was
+following him to wreak upon him the vengeance that he deserved.
+
+At last the ape-man determined to continue toward the northeast in the
+general direction of German East Africa until he came upon natives from
+whom he might gain information as to Rokoff’s whereabouts.
+
+The second day following the cessation of the rain Tarzan came upon a
+native village the inhabitants of which fled into the bush the instant
+their eyes fell upon him. Tarzan, not to be thwarted in any such manner
+as this, pursued them, and after a brief chase caught up with a young
+warrior. The fellow was so badly frightened that he was unable to
+defend himself, dropping his weapons and falling upon the ground,
+wide-eyed and screaming as he gazed on his captor.
+
+It was with considerable difficulty that the ape-man quieted the
+fellow’s fears sufficiently to obtain a coherent statement from him as
+to the cause of his uncalled-for terror.
+
+From him Tarzan learned, by dint of much coaxing, that a party of
+whites had passed through the village several days before. These men
+had told them of a terrible white devil that pursued them, warning the
+natives against it and the frightful pack of demons that accompanied
+it.
+
+The black had recognized Tarzan as the white devil from the
+descriptions given by the whites and their black servants. Behind him
+he had expected to see a horde of demons disguised as apes and
+panthers.
+
+In this Tarzan saw the cunning hand of Rokoff. The Russian was
+attempting to make travel as difficult as possible for him by turning
+the natives against him in superstitious fear.
+
+The native further told Tarzan that the white man who had led the
+recent expedition had promised them a fabulous reward if they would
+kill the white devil. This they had fully intended doing should the
+opportunity present itself; but the moment they had seen Tarzan their
+blood had turned to water, as the porters of the white men had told
+them would be the case.
+
+Finding the ape-man made no attempt to harm him, the native at last
+recovered his grasp upon his courage, and, at Tarzan’s suggestion,
+accompanied the white devil back to the village, calling as he went for
+his fellows to return also, as “the white devil has promised to do you
+no harm if you come back right away and answer his questions.”
+
+One by one the blacks straggled into the village, but that their fears
+were not entirely allayed was evident from the amount of white that
+showed about the eyes of the majority of them as they cast constant and
+apprehensive sidelong glances at the ape-man.
+
+The chief was among the first to return to the village, and as it was
+he that Tarzan was most anxious to interview, he lost no time in
+entering into a palaver with the black.
+
+The fellow was short and stout, with an unusually low and degraded
+countenance and apelike arms. His whole expression denoted
+deceitfulness.
+
+Only the superstitious terror engendered in him by the stories poured
+into his ears by the whites and blacks of the Russian’s party kept him
+from leaping upon Tarzan with his warriors and slaying him forthwith,
+for he and his people were inveterate maneaters. But the fear that he
+might indeed be a devil, and that out there in the jungle behind him
+his fierce demons waited to do his bidding, kept M’ganwazam from
+putting his desires into action.
+
+Tarzan questioned the fellow closely, and by comparing his statements
+with those of the young warrior he had first talked with he learned
+that Rokoff and his safari were in terror-stricken retreat in the
+direction of the far East Coast.
+
+Many of the Russian’s porters had already deserted him. In that very
+village he had hanged five for theft and attempted desertion. Judging,
+however, from what the Waganwazam had learned from those of the
+Russian’s blacks who were not too far gone in terror of the brutal
+Rokoff to fear even to speak of their plans, it was apparent that he
+would not travel any great distance before the last of his porters,
+cooks, tent-boys, gun-bearers, askari, and even his headman, would have
+turned back into the bush, leaving him to the mercy of the merciless
+jungle.
+
+M’ganwazam denied that there had been any white woman or child with the
+party of whites; but even as he spoke Tarzan was convinced that he
+lied. Several times the ape-man approached the subject from different
+angles, but never was he successful in surprising the wily cannibal
+into a direct contradiction of his original statement that there had
+been no women or children with the party.
+
+Tarzan demanded food of the chief, and after considerable haggling on
+the part of the monarch succeeded in obtaining a meal. He then tried to
+draw out others of the tribe, especially the young man whom he had
+captured in the bush, but M’ganwazam’s presence sealed their lips.
+
+At last, convinced that these people knew a great deal more than they
+had told him concerning the whereabouts of the Russian and the fate of
+Jane and the child, Tarzan determined to remain overnight among them in
+the hope of discovering something further of importance.
+
+When he had stated his decision to the chief he was rather surprised to
+note the sudden change in the fellow’s attitude toward him. From
+apparent dislike and suspicion M’ganwazam became a most eager and
+solicitous host.
+
+Nothing would do but that the ape-man should occupy the best hut in the
+village, from which M’ganwazam’s oldest wife was forthwith summarily
+ejected, while the chief took up his temporary abode in the hut of one
+of his younger consorts.
+
+Had Tarzan chanced to recall the fact that a princely reward had been
+offered the blacks if they should succeed in killing him, he might have
+more quickly interpreted M’ganwazam’s sudden change in front.
+
+To have the white giant sleeping peacefully in one of his own huts
+would greatly facilitate the matter of earning the reward, and so the
+chief was urgent in his suggestions that Tarzan, doubtless being very
+much fatigued after his travels, should retire early to the comforts of
+the anything but inviting palace.
+
+As much as the ape-man detested the thought of sleeping within a native
+hut, he had determined to do so this night, on the chance that he might
+be able to induce one of the younger men to sit and chat with him
+before the fire that burned in the centre of the smoke-filled dwelling,
+and from him draw the truths he sought. So Tarzan accepted the
+invitation of old M’ganwazam, insisting, however, that he much
+preferred sharing a hut with some of the younger men rather than
+driving the chief’s old wife out in the cold.
+
+The toothless old hag grinned her appreciation of this suggestion, and
+as the plan still better suited the chief’s scheme, in that it would
+permit him to surround Tarzan with a gang of picked assassins, he
+readily assented, so that presently Tarzan had been installed in a hut
+close to the village gate.
+
+As there was to be a dance that night in honour of a band of recently
+returned hunters, Tarzan was left alone in the hut, the young men, as
+M’ganwazam explained, having to take part in the festivities.
+
+As soon as the ape-man was safely installed in the trap, M’Ganwazam
+called about him the young warriors whom he had selected to spend the
+night with the white devil!
+
+None of them was overly enthusiastic about the plan, since deep in
+their superstitious hearts lay an exaggerated fear of the strange white
+giant; but the word of M’ganwazam was law among his people, so not one
+dared refuse the duty he was called upon to perform.
+
+As M’ganwazam unfolded his plan in whispers to the savages squatting
+about him the old, toothless hag, to whom Tarzan had saved her hut for
+the night, hovered about the conspirators ostensibly to replenish the
+supply of firewood for the blaze about which the men sat, but really to
+drink in as much of their conversation as possible.
+
+Tarzan had slept for perhaps an hour or two despite the savage din of
+the revellers when his keen senses came suddenly alert to a
+suspiciously stealthy movement in the hut in which he lay. The fire had
+died down to a little heap of glowing embers, which accentuated rather
+than relieved the darkness that shrouded the interior of the
+evil-smelling dwelling, yet the trained senses of the ape-man warned
+him of another presence creeping almost silently toward him through the
+gloom.
+
+He doubted that it was one of his hut mates returning from the
+festivities, for he still heard the wild cries of the dancers and the
+din of the tom-toms in the village street without. Who could it be that
+took such pains to conceal his approach?
+
+As the presence came within reach of him the ape-man bounded lightly to
+the opposite side of the hut, his spear poised ready at his side.
+
+“Who is it,” he asked, “that creeps upon Tarzan of the Apes, like a
+hungry lion out of the darkness?”
+
+“Silence, bwana!” replied an old cracked voice. “It is Tambudza—she
+whose hut you would not take, and thus drive an old woman out into the
+cold night.”
+
+“What does Tambudza want of Tarzan of the Apes?” asked the ape-man.
+
+“You were kind to me to whom none is now kind, and I have come to warn
+you in payment of your kindness,” answered the old hag.
+
+“Warn me of what?”
+
+“M’ganwazam has chosen the young men who are to sleep in the hut with
+you,” replied Tambudza. “I was near as he talked with them, and heard
+him issuing his instructions to them. When the dance is run well into
+the morning they are to come to the hut.
+
+“If you are awake they are to pretend that they have come to sleep, but
+if you sleep it is M’ganwazam’s command that you be killed. If you are
+not then asleep they will wait quietly beside you until you do sleep,
+and then they will all fall upon you together and slay you. M’ganwazam
+is determined to win the reward the white man has offered.”
+
+“I had forgotten the reward,” said Tarzan, half to himself, and then he
+added, “How may M’ganwazam hope to collect the reward now that the
+white men who are my enemies have left his country and gone he knows
+not where?”
+
+“Oh, they have not gone far,” replied Tambudza. “M’ganwazam knows where
+they camp. His runners could quickly overtake them—they move slowly.”
+
+“Where are they?” asked Tarzan.
+
+“Do you wish to come to them?” asked Tambudza in way of reply.
+
+Tarzan nodded.
+
+“I cannot tell you where they lie so that you could come to the place
+yourself, but I could lead you to them, bwana.”
+
+In their interest in the conversation neither of the speakers had
+noticed the little figure which crept into the darkness of the hut
+behind them, nor did they see it when it slunk noiselessly out again.
+
+It was little Buulaoo, the chief’s son by one of his younger wives—a
+vindictive, degenerate little rascal who hated Tambudza, and was ever
+seeking opportunities to spy upon her and report her slightest breach
+of custom to his father.
+
+“Come, then,” said Tarzan quickly, “let us be on our way.”
+
+This Buulaoo did not hear, for he was already legging it up the village
+street to where his hideous sire guzzled native beer, and watched the
+evolutions of the frantic dancers leaping high in the air and cavorting
+wildly in their hysterical capers.
+
+So it happened that as Tarzan and Tambudza sneaked warily from the
+village and melted into the Stygian darkness of the jungle two lithe
+runners took their way in the same direction, though by another trail.
+
+When they had come sufficiently far from the village to make it safe
+for them to speak above a whisper, Tarzan asked the old woman if she
+had seen aught of a white woman and a little child.
+
+“Yes, bwana,” replied Tambudza, “there was a woman with them and a
+little child—a little white piccaninny. It died here in our village of
+the fever and they buried it!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+A Black Scoundrel
+
+
+When Jane Clayton regained consciousness she saw Anderssen standing
+over her, holding the baby in his arms. As her eyes rested upon them an
+expression of misery and horror overspread her countenance.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked. “You ban sick?”
+
+“Where is my baby?” she cried, ignoring his questions.
+
+Anderssen held out the chubby infant, but she shook her head.
+
+“It is not mine,” she said. “You knew that it was not mine. You are a
+devil like the Russian.”
+
+Anderssen’s blue eyes stretched in surprise.
+
+“Not yours!” he exclaimed. “You tole me the kid aboard the Kincaid ban
+your kid.”
+
+“Not this one,” replied Jane dully. “The other. Where is the other?
+There must have been two. I did not know about this one.”
+
+“There vasn’t no other kid. Ay tank this ban yours. Ay am very sorry.”
+
+Anderssen fidgeted about, standing first on one foot and then upon the
+other. It was perfectly evident to Jane that he was honest in his
+protestations of ignorance of the true identity of the child.
+
+Presently the baby commenced to crow, and bounce up and down in the
+Swede’s arms, at the same time leaning forward with little hands
+out-reaching toward the young woman.
+
+She could not withstand the appeal, and with a low cry she sprang to
+her feet and gathered the baby to her breast.
+
+For a few minutes she wept silently, her face buried in the baby’s
+soiled little dress. The first shock of disappointment that the tiny
+thing had not been her beloved Jack was giving way to a great hope that
+after all some miracle had occurred to snatch her baby from Rokoff’s
+hands at the last instant before the Kincaid sailed from England.
+
+Then, too, there was the mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved
+in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought
+more than any other that had sent her mother’s heart out to the
+innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she
+had been deceived in its identity.
+
+“Have you no idea whose child this is?” she asked Anderssen.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+“Not now,” he said. “If he ain’t ban your kid, Ay don’ know whose kid
+he do ban. Rokoff said it was yours. Ay tank he tank so, too.
+
+“What do we do with it now? Ay can’t go back to the Kincaid. Rokoff
+would have me shot; but you can go back. Ay take you to the sea, and
+then some of these black men they take you to the ship—eh?”
+
+“No! no!” cried Jane. “Not for the world. I would rather die than fall
+into the hands of that man again. No, let us go on and take this poor
+little creature with us. If God is willing we shall be saved in one way
+or another.”
+
+So they again took up their flight through the wilderness, taking with
+them a half-dozen of the Mosulas to carry provisions and the tents that
+Anderssen had smuggled aboard the small boat in preparation for the
+attempted escape.
+
+The days and nights of torture that the young woman suffered were so
+merged into one long, unbroken nightmare of hideousness that she soon
+lost all track of time. Whether they had been wandering for days or
+years she could not tell. The one bright spot in that eternity of fear
+and suffering was the little child whose tiny hands had long since
+fastened their softly groping fingers firmly about her heart.
+
+In a way the little thing took the place and filled the aching void
+that the theft of her own baby had left. It could never be the same, of
+course, but yet, day by day, she found her mother-love, enveloping the
+waif more closely until she sometimes sat with closed eyes lost in the
+sweet imagining that the little bundle of humanity at her breast was
+truly her own.
+
+For some time their progress inland was extremely slow. Word came to
+them from time to time through natives passing from the coast on
+hunting excursions that Rokoff had not yet guessed the direction of
+their flight. This, and the desire to make the journey as light as
+possible for the gently bred woman, kept Anderssen to a slow advance of
+short and easy marches with many rests.
+
+The Swede insisted upon carrying the child while they travelled, and in
+countless other ways did what he could to help Jane Clayton conserve
+her strength. He had been terribly chagrined on discovering the mistake
+he had made in the identity of the baby, but once the young woman
+became convinced that his motives were truly chivalrous she would not
+permit him longer to upbraid himself for the error that he could not by
+any means have avoided.
+
+At the close of each day’s march Anderssen saw to the erection of a
+comfortable shelter for Jane and the child. Her tent was always pitched
+in the most favourable location. The thorn boma round it was the
+strongest and most impregnable that the Mosula could construct.
+
+Her food was the best that their limited stores and the rifle of the
+Swede could provide, but the thing that touched her heart the closest
+was the gentle consideration and courtesy which the man always accorded
+her.
+
+That such nobility of character could lie beneath so repulsive an
+exterior never ceased to be a source of wonder and amazement to her,
+until at last the innate chivalry of the man, and his unfailing
+kindliness and sympathy transformed his appearance in so far as Jane
+was concerned until she saw only the sweetness of his character
+mirrored in his countenance.
+
+They had commenced to make a little better progress when word reached
+them that Rokoff was but a few marches behind them, and that he had at
+last discovered the direction of their flight. It was then that
+Anderssen took to the river, purchasing a canoe from a chief whose
+village lay a short distance from the Ugambi upon the bank of a
+tributary.
+
+Thereafter the little party of fugitives fled up the broad Ugambi, and
+so rapid had their flight become that they no longer received word of
+their pursuers. At the end of canoe navigation upon the river, they
+abandoned their canoe and took to the jungle. Here progress became at
+once arduous, slow, and dangerous.
+
+The second day after leaving the Ugambi the baby fell ill with fever.
+Anderssen knew what the outcome must be, but he had not the heart to
+tell Jane Clayton the truth, for he had seen that the young woman had
+come to love the child almost as passionately as though it had been her
+own flesh and blood.
+
+As the baby’s condition precluded farther advance, Anderssen withdrew a
+little from the main trail he had been following and built a camp in a
+natural clearing on the bank of a little river.
+
+Here Jane devoted her every moment to caring for the tiny sufferer, and
+as though her sorrow and anxiety were not all that she could bear, a
+further blow came with the sudden announcement of one of the Mosula
+porters who had been foraging in the jungle adjacent that Rokoff and
+his party were camped quite close to them, and were evidently upon
+their trail to this little nook which all had thought so excellent a
+hiding-place.
+
+This information could mean but one thing, and that they must break
+camp and fly onward regardless of the baby’s condition. Jane Clayton
+knew the traits of the Russian well enough to be positive that he would
+separate her from the child the moment that he recaptured them, and she
+knew that separation would mean the immediate death of the baby.
+
+As they stumbled forward through the tangled vegetation along an old
+and almost overgrown game trail the Mosula porters deserted them one by
+one.
+
+The men had been staunch enough in their devotion and loyalty as long
+as they were in no danger of being overtaken by the Russian and his
+party. They had heard, however, so much of the atrocious disposition of
+Rokoff that they had grown to hold him in mortal terror, and now that
+they knew he was close upon them their timid hearts would fortify them
+no longer, and as quickly as possible they deserted the three whites.
+
+Yet on and on went Anderssen and the girl. The Swede went ahead, to hew
+a way through the brush where the path was entirely overgrown, so that
+on this march it was necessary that the young woman carry the child.
+
+All day they marched. Late in the afternoon they realized that they had
+failed. Close behind them they heard the noise of a large safari
+advancing along the trail which they had cleared for their pursuers.
+
+When it became quite evident that they must be overtaken in a short
+time Anderssen hid Jane behind a large tree, covering her and the child
+with brush.
+
+“There is a village about a mile farther on,” he said to her. “The
+Mosula told me its location before they deserted us. Ay try to lead the
+Russian off your trail, then you go on to the village. Ay tank the
+chief ban friendly to white men—the Mosula tal me he ban. Anyhow, that
+was all we can do.
+
+“After while you get chief to tak you down by the Mosula village at the
+sea again, an’ after a while a ship is sure to put into the mouth of
+the Ugambi. Then you be all right. Gude-by an’ gude luck to you, lady!”
+
+“But where are you going, Sven?” asked Jane. “Why can’t you hide here
+and go back to the sea with me?”
+
+“Ay gotta tal the Russian you ban dead, so that he don’t luke for you
+no more,” and Anderssen grinned.
+
+“Why can’t you join me then after you have told him that?” insisted the
+girl.
+
+Anderssen shook his head.
+
+“Ay don’t tank Ay join anybody any more after Ay tal the Russian you
+ban dead,” he said.
+
+“You don’t mean that you think he will kill you?” asked Jane, and yet
+in her heart she knew that that was exactly what the great scoundrel
+would do in revenge for his having been thwarted by the Swede.
+Anderssen did not reply, other than to warn her to silence and point
+toward the path along which they had just come.
+
+“I don’t care,” whispered Jane Clayton. “I shall not let you die to
+save me if I can prevent it in any way. Give me your revolver. I can
+use that, and together we may be able to hold them off until we can
+find some means of escape.”
+
+“It won’t work, lady,” replied Anderssen. “They would only get us both,
+and then Ay couldn’t do you no good at all. Think of the kid, lady, and
+what it would be for you both to fall into Rokoff’s hands again. For
+his sake you must do what Ay say. Here, take my rifle and ammunition;
+you may need them.”
+
+He shoved the gun and bandoleer into the shelter beside Jane. Then he
+was gone.
+
+She watched him as he returned along the path to meet the oncoming
+safari of the Russian. Soon a turn in the trail hid him from view.
+
+Her first impulse was to follow. With the rifle she might be of
+assistance to him, and, further, she could not bear the terrible
+thought of being left alone at the mercy of the fearful jungle without
+a single friend to aid her.
+
+She started to crawl from her shelter with the intention of running
+after Anderssen as fast as she could. As she drew the baby close to her
+she glanced down into its little face.
+
+How red it was! How unnatural the little thing looked. She raised the
+cheek to hers. It was fiery hot with fever!
+
+With a little gasp of terror Jane Clayton rose to her feet in the
+jungle path. The rifle and bandoleer lay forgotten in the shelter
+beside her. Anderssen was forgotten, and Rokoff, and her great peril.
+
+All that rioted through her fear-mad brain was the fearful fact that
+this little, helpless child was stricken with the terrible
+jungle-fever, and that she was helpless to do aught to allay its
+sufferings—sufferings that were sure to come during ensuing intervals
+of partial consciousness.
+
+Her one thought was to find some one who could help her—some woman who
+had had children of her own—and with the thought came recollection of
+the friendly village of which Anderssen had spoken. If she could but
+reach it—in time!
+
+There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and
+fled up the trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated.
+
+From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots,
+and then silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian.
+
+A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched
+village. Instantly she was surrounded by men, women, and children.
+Eager, curious, excited natives plied her with a hundred questions, no
+one of which she could understand or answer.
+
+All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing
+piteously in her arms, and repeat over and over, “Fever—fever—fever.”
+
+The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her
+trouble, and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with
+several others was doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its
+agony.
+
+The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon
+which he boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making
+weird passes above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants.
+Presently he dipped a zebra’s tail into the brew, and with further
+mutterings and incantations sprinkled a few drops of the liquid over
+the baby’s face.
+
+After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane
+thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it
+all out of the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful
+waking nightmare of those awful hours in dumb and patient suffering.
+
+It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a
+sudden commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives
+raised in controversy, but she could not understand the words.
+
+Presently she heard footsteps approaching the hut in which she squatted
+before a bright fire with the baby on her lap. The little thing lay
+very still now, its lids, half-raised, showed the pupils horribly
+upturned.
+
+Jane Clayton looked into the little face with fear-haunted eyes. It was
+not her baby—not her flesh and blood—but how close, how dear the tiny,
+helpless thing had become to her. Her heart, bereft of its own, had
+gone out to this poor, little, nameless waif, and lavished upon it all
+the love that had been denied her during the long, bitter weeks of her
+captivity aboard the Kincaid.
+
+She saw that the end was near, and though she was terrified at
+contemplation of her loss, still she hoped that it would come quickly
+now and end the sufferings of the little victim.
+
+The footsteps she had heard without the hut now halted before the door.
+There was a whispered colloquy, and a moment later M’ganwazam, chief of
+the tribe, entered. She had seen but little of him, as the women had
+taken her in hand almost as soon as she had entered the village.
+
+M’ganwazam, she now saw, was an evil-appearing savage with every mark
+of brutal degeneracy writ large upon his bestial countenance. To Jane
+Clayton he looked more gorilla than human. He tried to converse with
+her, but without success, and finally he called to some one without.
+
+In answer to his summons another Negro entered—a man of very different
+appearance from M’ganwazam—so different, in fact, that Jane Clayton
+immediately decided that he was of another tribe. This man acted as
+interpreter, and almost from the first question that M’ganwazam put to
+her, Jane felt an intuitive conviction that the savage was attempting
+to draw information from her for some ulterior motive.
+
+She thought it strange that the fellow should so suddenly have become
+interested in her plans, and especially in her intended destination
+when her journey had been interrupted at his village.
+
+Seeing no reason for withholding the information, she told him the
+truth; but when he asked if she expected to meet her husband at the end
+of the trip, she shook her head negatively.
+
+Then he told her the purpose of his visit, talking through the
+interpreter.
+
+“I have just learned,” he said, “from some men who live by the side of
+the great water, that your husband followed you up the Ugambi for
+several marches, when he was at last set upon by natives and killed.
+Therefore I have told you this that you might not waste your time in a
+long journey if you expected to meet your husband at the end of it; but
+instead could turn and retrace your steps to the coast.”
+
+Jane thanked M’ganwazam for his kindness, though her heart was numb
+with suffering at this new blow. She who had suffered so much was at
+last beyond reach of the keenest of misery’s pangs, for her senses were
+numbed and calloused.
+
+With bowed head she sat staring with unseeing eyes upon the face of the
+baby in her lap. M’ganwazam had left the hut. Sometime later she heard
+a noise at the entrance—another had entered. One of the women sitting
+opposite her threw a faggot upon the dying embers of the fire between
+them.
+
+With a sudden flare it burst into renewed flame, lighting up the hut’s
+interior as though by magic.
+
+The flame disclosed to Jane Clayton’s horrified gaze that the baby was
+quite dead. How long it had been so she could not guess.
+
+A choking lump rose to her throat, her head drooped in silent misery
+upon the little bundle that she had caught suddenly to her breast.
+
+For a moment the silence of the hut was unbroken. Then the native woman
+broke into a hideous wail.
+
+A man coughed close before Jane Clayton and spoke her name.
+
+With a start she raised her eyes to look into the sardonic countenance
+of Nikolas Rokoff.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+Escape
+
+
+For a moment Rokoff stood sneering down upon Jane Clayton, then his
+eyes fell to the little bundle in her lap. Jane had drawn one corner of
+the blanket over the child’s face, so that to one who did not know the
+truth it seemed but to be sleeping.
+
+“You have gone to a great deal of unnecessary trouble,” said Rokoff,
+“to bring the child to this village. If you had attended to your own
+affairs I should have brought it here myself.
+
+“You would have been spared the dangers and fatigue of the journey. But
+I suppose I must thank you for relieving me of the inconvenience of
+having to care for a young infant on the march.
+
+“This is the village to which the child was destined from the first.
+M’ganwazam will rear him carefully, making a good cannibal of him, and
+if you ever chance to return to civilization it will doubtless afford
+you much food for thought as you compare the luxuries and comforts of
+your life with the details of the life your son is living in the
+village of the Waganwazam.
+
+“Again I thank you for bringing him here for me, and now I must ask you
+to surrender him to me, that I may turn him over to his foster
+parents.” As he concluded Rokoff held out his hands for the child, a
+nasty grin of vindictiveness upon his lips.
+
+To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest, laid
+the little bundle in his arms.
+
+“Here is the child,” she said. “Thank God he is beyond your power to
+harm.”
+
+Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanket from the
+child’s face to seek confirmation of his fears. Jane Clayton watched
+his expression closely.
+
+She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the question of Rokoff’s
+knowledge of the child’s identity. If she had been in doubt before the
+last shred of that doubt was wiped away as she witnessed the terrible
+anger of the Russian as he looked upon the dead face of the baby and
+realized that at the last moment his dearest wish for vengeance had
+been thwarted by a higher power.
+
+Almost throwing the body of the child back into Jane Clayton’s arms,
+Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with his clenched
+fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in front of the young
+woman, bringing his face down close to hers.
+
+“You are laughing at me,” he shrieked. “You think that you have beaten
+me—eh? I’ll show you, as I have shown the miserable ape you call
+‘husband,’ what it means to interfere with the plans of Nikolas Rokoff.
+
+“You have robbed me of the child. I cannot make him the son of a
+cannibal chief, but”—and he paused as though to let the full meaning of
+his threat sink deep—“I can make the mother the wife of a cannibal, and
+that I shall do—after I have finished with her myself.”
+
+If he had thought to wring from Jane Clayton any sign of terror he
+failed miserably. She was beyond that. Her brain and nerves were numb
+to suffering and shock.
+
+To his surprise a faint, almost happy smile touched her lips. She was
+thinking with thankful heart that this poor little corpse was not that
+of her own wee Jack, and that—best of all—Rokoff evidently did not know
+the truth.
+
+She would have liked to have flaunted the fact in his face, but she
+dared not. If he continued to believe that the child had been hers, so
+much safer would be the real Jack wherever he might be. She had, of
+course, no knowledge of the whereabouts of her little son—she did not
+know, even, that he still lived, and yet there was the chance that he
+might.
+
+It was more than possible that without Rokoff’s knowledge this child
+had been substituted for hers by one of the Russian’s confederates, and
+that even now her son might be safe with friends in London, where there
+were many, both able and willing, to have paid any ransom which the
+traitorous conspirator might have asked for the safe release of Lord
+Greystoke’s son.
+
+She had thought it all out a hundred times since she had discovered
+that the baby which Anderssen had placed in her arms that night upon
+the Kincaid was not her own, and it had been a constant and gnawing
+source of happiness to her to dream the whole fantasy through in its
+every detail.
+
+No, the Russian must never know that this was not her baby. She
+realized that her position was hopeless—with Anderssen and her husband
+dead there was no one in all the world with a desire to succour her who
+knew where she might be found.
+
+Rokoff’s threat, she realized, was no idle one. That he would do, or
+attempt to do, all that he had promised, she was perfectly sure; but at
+the worst it meant but a little earlier release from the hideous
+anguish that she had been enduring. She must find some way to take her
+own life before the Russian could harm her further.
+
+Just now she wanted time—time to think and prepare herself for the end.
+She felt that she could not take the last, awful step until she had
+exhausted every possibility of escape. She did not care to live unless
+she might find her way back to her own child, but slight as such a hope
+appeared she would not admit its impossibility until the last moment
+had come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing between the
+final alternatives—Nikolas Rokoff on one hand and self-destruction upon
+the other.
+
+“Go away!” she said to the Russian. “Go away and leave me in peace with
+my dead. Have you not brought sufficient misery and anguish upon me
+without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I ever done you
+that you should persist in persecuting me?”
+
+“You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chose when you might
+have had the love of a gentleman—of Nikolas Rokoff,” he replied. “But
+where is the use in discussing the matter? We shall bury the child
+here, and you will return with me at once to my own camp. Tomorrow I
+shall bring you back and turn you over to your new husband—the lovely
+M’ganwazam. Come!”
+
+He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feet now, turned
+away from him.
+
+“I shall bury the body,” she said. “Send some men to dig a grave
+outside the village.”
+
+Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back to his camp with
+his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy a resignation to her fate.
+Stepping outside the hut, he motioned her to follow him, and a moment
+later, with his men, he escorted Jane beyond the village, where beneath
+a great tree the blacks scooped a shallow grave.
+
+Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderly in the black
+hole, and, turning her head that she might not see the mouldy earth
+falling upon the pitiful little bundle, she breathed a prayer beside
+the grave of the nameless waif that had won its way to the innermost
+recesses of her heart.
+
+Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russian through
+the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding, leafy corridor
+that led from the village of M’ganwazam, the black cannibal, to the
+camp of Nikolas Rokoff, the white fiend.
+
+Beside them, in the impenetrable thickets that fringed the path, rising
+to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl could hear the
+stealthy, muffled footfalls of great beasts, and ever round about them
+rose the deafening roars of hunting lions, until the earth trembled to
+the mighty sound.
+
+The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon either hand to
+frighten off the beasts of prey. Rokoff urged them to greater speed,
+and from the quavering note in his voice Jane Clayton knew that he was
+weak from terror.
+
+The sounds of the jungle night recalled most vividly the days and
+nights that she had spent in a similar jungle with her forest god—with
+the fearless and unconquerable Tarzan of the Apes. Then there had been
+no thoughts of terror, though the jungle noises were new to her, and
+the roar of a lion had seemed the most awe-inspiring sound upon the
+great earth.
+
+How different would it be now if she knew that he was somewhere there
+in the wilderness, seeking her! Then, indeed, would there be that for
+which to live, and every reason to believe that succour was close at
+hand—but he was dead! It was incredible that it should be so.
+
+There seemed no place in death for that great body and those mighty
+thews. Had Rokoff been the one to tell her of her lord’s passing she
+would have known that he lied. There could be no reason, she thought,
+why M’ganwazam should have deceived her. She did not know that the
+Russian had talked with the savage a few minutes before the chief had
+come to her with his tale.
+
+At last they reached the rude boma that Rokoff’s porters had thrown up
+round the Russian’s camp. Here they found all in turmoil. She did not
+know what it was all about, but she saw that Rokoff was very angry, and
+from bits of conversation which she could translate she gleaned that
+there had been further desertions while he had been absent, and that
+the deserters had taken the bulk of his food and ammunition.
+
+When he had done venting his rage upon those who remained he returned
+to where Jane stood under guard of a couple of his white sailors. He
+grasped her roughly by the arm and started to drag her toward his tent.
+The girl struggled and fought to free herself, while the two sailors
+stood by, laughing at the rare treat.
+
+Rokoff did not hesitate to use rough methods when he found that he was
+to have difficulty in carrying out his designs. Repeatedly he struck
+Jane Clayton in the face, until at last, half-conscious, she was
+dragged within his tent.
+
+Rokoff’s boy had lighted the Russian’s lamp, and now at a word from his
+master he made himself scarce. Jane had sunk to the floor in the middle
+of the enclosure. Slowly her numbed senses were returning to her and
+she was commencing to think very fast indeed. Quickly her eyes ran
+round the interior of the tent, taking in every detail of its equipment
+and contents.
+
+Now the Russian was lifting her to her feet and attempting to drag her
+to the camp cot that stood at one side of the tent. At his belt hung a
+heavy revolver. Jane Clayton’s eyes riveted themselves upon it. Her
+palm itched to grasp the huge butt. She feigned again to swoon, but
+through her half-closed lids she waited her opportunity.
+
+It came just as Rokoff was lifting her upon the cot. A noise at the
+tent door behind him brought his head quickly about and away from the
+girl. The butt of the gun was not an inch from her hand. With a single,
+lightning-like move she snatched the weapon from its holster, and at
+the same instant Rokoff turned back toward her, realizing his peril.
+
+She did not dare fire for fear the shot would bring his people about
+him, and with Rokoff dead she would fall into hands no better than his
+and to a fate probably even worse than he alone could have imagined.
+The memory of the two brutes who stood and laughed as Rokoff struck her
+was still vivid.
+
+As the rage and fear-filled countenance of the Slav turned toward her
+Jane Clayton raised the heavy revolver high above the pasty face and
+with all her strength dealt the man a terrific blow between the eyes.
+
+Without a sound he sank, limp and unconscious, to the ground. A moment
+later the girl stood beside him—for a moment at least free from the
+menace of his lust.
+
+Outside the tent she again heard the noise that had distracted Rokoff’s
+attention. What it was she did not know, but, fearing the return of the
+servant and the discovery of her deed, she stepped quickly to the camp
+table upon which burned the oil lamp and extinguished the smudgy,
+evil-smelling flame.
+
+In the total darkness of the interior she paused for a moment to
+collect her wits and plan for the next step in her venture for freedom.
+
+About her was a camp of enemies. Beyond these foes a black wilderness
+of savage jungle peopled by hideous beasts of prey and still more
+hideous human beasts.
+
+There was little or no chance that she could survive even a few days of
+the constant dangers that would confront her there; but the knowledge
+that she had already passed through so many perils unscathed, and that
+somewhere out in the faraway world a little child was doubtless at that
+very moment crying for her, filled her with determination to make the
+effort to accomplish the seemingly impossible and cross that awful land
+of horror in search of the sea and the remote chance of succour she
+might find there.
+
+Rokoff’s tent stood almost exactly in the centre of the boma.
+Surrounding it were the tents and shelters of his white companions and
+the natives of his safari. To pass through these and find egress
+through the boma seemed a task too fraught with insurmountable
+obstacles to warrant even the slightest consideration, and yet there
+was no other way.
+
+To remain in the tent until she should be discovered would be to set at
+naught all that she had risked to gain her freedom, and so with
+stealthy step and every sense alert she approached the back of the tent
+to set out upon the first stage of her adventure.
+
+Groping along the rear of the canvas wall, she found that there was no
+opening there. Quickly she returned to the side of the unconscious
+Russian. In his belt her groping fingers came upon the hilt of a long
+hunting-knife, and with this she cut a hole in the back wall of the
+tent.
+
+Silently she stepped without. To her immense relief she saw that the
+camp was apparently asleep. In the dim and flickering light of the
+dying fires she saw but a single sentry, and he was dozing upon his
+haunches at the opposite side of the enclosure.
+
+Keeping the tent between him and herself, she crossed between the small
+shelters of the native porters to the boma wall beyond.
+
+Outside, in the darkness of the tangled jungle, she could hear the
+roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas, and the countless, nameless
+noises of the midnight jungle.
+
+For a moment she hesitated, trembling. The thought of the prowling
+beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a sudden
+brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny boma wall with her
+delicate hands. Torn and bleeding though they were, she worked on
+breathlessly until she had made an opening through which she could worm
+her body, and at last she stood outside the enclosure.
+
+Behind her lay a fate worse than death, at the hands of human beings.
+
+Before her lay an almost certain fate—but it was only death—sudden,
+merciful, and honourable death.
+
+Without a tremor and without regret she darted away from the camp, and
+a moment later the mysterious jungle had closed about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+Alone in the Jungle
+
+
+Tambudza, leading Tarzan of the Apes toward the camp of the Russian,
+moved very slowly along the winding jungle path, for she was old and
+her legs stiff with rheumatism.
+
+So it was that the runners dispatched by M’ganwazam to warn Rokoff that
+the white giant was in his village and that he would be slain that
+night reached the Russian’s camp before Tarzan and his ancient guide
+had covered half the distance.
+
+The guides found the white man’s camp in a turmoil. Rokoff had that
+morning been discovered stunned and bleeding within his tent. When he
+had recovered his senses and realized that Jane Clayton had escaped,
+his rage was boundless.
+
+Rushing about the camp with his rifle, he had sought to shoot down the
+native sentries who had allowed the young woman to elude their
+vigilance, but several of the other whites, realizing that they were
+already in a precarious position owing to the numerous desertions that
+Rokoff’s cruelty had brought about, seized and disarmed him.
+
+Then came the messengers from M’ganwazam, but scarce had they told
+their story and Rokoff was preparing to depart with them for their
+village when other runners, panting from the exertions of their swift
+flight through the jungle, rushed breathless into the firelight, crying
+that the great white giant had escaped from M’ganwazam and was already
+on his way to wreak vengeance against his enemies.
+
+Instantly confusion reigned within the encircling boma. The blacks
+belonging to Rokoff’s safari were terror-stricken at the thought of the
+proximity of the white giant who hunted through the jungle with a
+fierce pack of apes and panthers at his heels.
+
+Before the whites realized what had happened the superstitious fears of
+the natives had sent them scurrying into the bush—their own carriers as
+well as the messengers from M’ganwazam—but even in their haste they had
+not neglected to take with them every article of value upon which they
+could lay their hands.
+
+Thus Rokoff and the seven white sailors found themselves deserted and
+robbed in the midst of a wilderness.
+
+The Russian, following his usual custom, berated his companions, laying
+all the blame upon their shoulders for the events which had led up to
+the almost hopeless condition in which they now found themselves; but
+the sailors were in no mood to brook his insults and his cursing.
+
+In the midst of this tirade one of them drew a revolver and fired
+point-blank at the Russian. The fellow’s aim was poor, but his act so
+terrified Rokoff that he turned and fled for his tent.
+
+As he ran his eyes chanced to pass beyond the boma to the edge of the
+forest, and there he caught a glimpse of that which sent his craven
+heart cold with a fear that almost expunged his terror of the seven men
+at his back, who by this time were all firing in hate and revenge at
+his retreating figure.
+
+What he saw was the giant figure of an almost naked white man emerging
+from the bush.
+
+Darting into his tent, the Russian did not halt in his flight, but kept
+right on through the rear wall, taking advantage of the long slit that
+Jane Clayton had made the night before.
+
+The terror-stricken Muscovite scurried like a hunted rabbit through the
+hole that still gaped in the boma’s wall at the point where his own
+prey had escaped, and as Tarzan approached the camp upon the opposite
+side Rokoff disappeared into the jungle in the wake of Jane Clayton.
+
+As the ape-man entered the boma with old Tambudza at his elbow the
+seven sailors, recognizing him, turned and fled in the opposite
+direction. Tarzan saw that Rokoff was not among them, and so he let
+them go their way—his business was with the Russian, whom he expected
+to find in his tent. As to the sailors, he was sure that the jungle
+would exact from them expiation for their villainies, nor, doubtless,
+was he wrong, for his were the last white man’s eyes to rest upon any
+of them.
+
+Finding Rokoff’s tent empty, Tarzan was about to set out in search of
+the Russian when Tambudza suggested to him that the departure of the
+white man could only have resulted from word reaching him from
+M’ganwazam that Tarzan was in his village.
+
+“He has doubtless hastened there,” argued the old woman. “If you would
+find him let us return at once.”
+
+Tarzan himself thought that this would probably prove to be the fact,
+so he did not waste time in an endeavour to locate the Russian’s trail,
+but, instead, set out briskly for the village of M’ganwazam, leaving
+Tambudza to plod slowly in his wake.
+
+His one hope was that Jane was still safe and with Rokoff. If this was
+the case, it would be but a matter of an hour or more before he should
+be able to wrest her from the Russian.
+
+He knew now that M’ganwazam was treacherous and that he might have to
+fight to regain possession of his wife. He wished that Mugambi, Sheeta,
+Akut, and the balance of the pack were with him, for he realized that
+single-handed it would be no child’s play to bring Jane safely from the
+clutches of two such scoundrels as Rokoff and the wily M’ganwazam.
+
+To his surprise he found no sign of either Rokoff or Jane in the
+village, and as he could not trust the word of the chief, he wasted no
+time in futile inquiry. So sudden and unexpected had been his return,
+and so quickly had he vanished into the jungle after learning that
+those he sought were not among the Waganwazam, that old M’ganwazam had
+no time to prevent his going.
+
+Swinging through the trees, he hastened back to the deserted camp he
+had so recently left, for here, he knew, was the logical place to take
+up the trail of Rokoff and Jane.
+
+Arrived at the boma, he circled carefully about the outside of the
+enclosure until, opposite a break in the thorny wall, he came to
+indications that something had recently passed into the jungle. His
+acute sense of smell told him that both of those he sought had fled
+from the camp in this direction, and a moment later he had taken up the
+trail and was following the faint spoor.
+
+Far ahead of him a terror-stricken young woman was slinking along a
+narrow game-trail, fearful that the next moment would bring her face to
+face with some savage beast or equally savage man. As she ran on,
+hoping against hope that she had hit upon the direction that would lead
+her eventually to the great river, she came suddenly upon a familiar
+spot.
+
+At one side of the trail, beneath a giant tree, lay a little heap of
+loosely piled brush—to her dying day that little spot of jungle would
+be indelibly impressed upon her memory. It was where Anderssen had
+hidden her—where he had given up his life in the vain effort to save
+her from Rokoff.
+
+At sight of it she recalled the rifle and ammunition that the man had
+thrust upon her at the last moment. Until now she had forgotten them
+entirely. Still clutched in her hand was the revolver she had snatched
+from Rokoff’s belt, but that could contain at most not over six
+cartridges—not enough to furnish her with food and protection both on
+the long journey to the sea.
+
+With bated breath she groped beneath the little mound, scarce daring to
+hope that the treasure remained where she had left it; but, to her
+infinite relief and joy, her hand came at once upon the barrel of the
+heavy weapon and then upon the bandoleer of cartridges.
+
+As she threw the latter about her shoulder and felt the weight of the
+big game-gun in her hand a sudden sense of security suffused her. It
+was with new hope and a feeling almost of assured success that she
+again set forward upon her journey.
+
+That night she slept in the crotch of a tree, as Tarzan had so often
+told her that he was accustomed to doing, and early the next morning
+was upon her way again. Late in the afternoon, as she was about to
+cross a little clearing, she was startled at the sight of a huge ape
+coming from the jungle upon the opposite side.
+
+The wind was blowing directly across the clearing between them, and
+Jane lost no time in putting herself downwind from the huge creature.
+Then she hid in a clump of heavy bush and watched, holding the rifle
+ready for instant use.
+
+To her consternation she saw that the apes were pausing in the centre
+of the clearing. They came together in a little knot, where they stood
+looking backward, as though in expectation of the coming of others of
+their tribe. Jane wished that they would go on, for she knew that at
+any moment some little, eddying gust of wind might carry her scent down
+to their nostrils, and then what would the protection of her rifle
+amount to in the face of those gigantic muscles and mighty fangs?
+
+Her eyes moved back and forth between the apes and the edge of the
+jungle toward which they were gazing until at last she perceived the
+object of their halt and the thing that they awaited. They were being
+stalked.
+
+Of this she was positive, as she saw the lithe, sinewy form of a
+panther glide noiselessly from the jungle at the point at which the
+apes had emerged but a moment before.
+
+Quickly the beast trotted across the clearing toward the anthropoids.
+Jane wondered at their apparent apathy, and a moment later her wonder
+turned to amazement as she saw the great cat come quite close to the
+apes, who appeared entirely unconcerned by its presence, and, squatting
+down in their midst, fell assiduously to the business of preening,
+which occupies most of the waking hours of the cat family.
+
+If the young woman was surprised by the sight of these natural enemies
+fraternizing, it was with emotions little short of fear for her own
+sanity that she presently saw a tall, muscular warrior enter the
+clearing and join the group of savage beasts assembled there.
+
+At first sight of the man she had been positive that he would be torn
+to pieces, and she had half risen from her shelter, raising her rifle
+to her shoulder to do what she could to avert the man’s terrible fate.
+
+Now she saw that he seemed actually conversing with the beasts—issuing
+orders to them.
+
+Presently the entire company filed on across the clearing and
+disappeared in the jungle upon the opposite side.
+
+With a gasp of mingled incredulity and relief Jane Clayton staggered to
+her feet and fled on away from the terrible horde that had just passed
+her, while a half-mile behind her another individual, following the
+same trail as she, lay frozen with terror behind an ant-hill as the
+hideous band passed quite close to him.
+
+This one was Rokoff; but he had recognized the members of the awful
+aggregation as allies of Tarzan of the Apes. No sooner, therefore, had
+the beasts passed him than he rose and raced through the jungle as fast
+as he could go, in order that he might put as much distance as possible
+between himself and these frightful beasts.
+
+So it happened that as Jane Clayton came to the bank of the river, down
+which she hoped to float to the ocean and eventual rescue, Nikolas
+Rokoff was but a short distance in her rear.
+
+Upon the bank the girl saw a great dugout drawn half-way from the water
+and tied securely to a near-by tree.
+
+This, she felt, would solve the question of transportation to the sea
+could she but launch the huge, unwieldy craft. Unfastening the rope
+that had moored it to the tree, Jane pushed frantically upon the bow of
+the heavy canoe, but for all the results that were apparent she might
+as well have been attempting to shove the earth out of its orbit.
+
+She was about winded when it occurred to her to try working the dugout
+into the stream by loading the stern with ballast and then rocking the
+bow back and forth along the bank until the craft eventually worked
+itself into the river.
+
+There were no stones or rocks available, but along the shore she found
+quantities of driftwood deposited by the river at a slightly higher
+stage. These she gathered and piled far in the stern of the boat, until
+at last, to her immense relief, she saw the bow rise gently from the
+mud of the bank and the stern drift slowly with the current until it
+again lodged a few feet farther down-stream.
+
+Jane found that by running back and forth between the bow and stern she
+could alternately raise and lower each end of the boat as she shifted
+her weight from one end to the other, with the result that each time
+she leaped to the stern the canoe moved a few inches farther into the
+river.
+
+As the success of her plan approached more closely to fruition she
+became so wrapped in her efforts that she failed to note the figure of
+a man standing beneath a huge tree at the edge of the jungle from which
+he had just emerged.
+
+He watched her and her labours with a cruel and malicious grin upon his
+swarthy countenance.
+
+The boat at last became so nearly free of the retarding mud and of the
+bank that Jane felt positive that she could pole it off into deeper
+water with one of the paddles which lay in the bottom of the rude
+craft. With this end in view she seized upon one of these implements
+and had just plunged it into the river bottom close to the shore when
+her eyes happened to rise to the edge of the jungle.
+
+As her gaze fell upon the figure of the man a little cry of terror rose
+to her lips. It was Rokoff.
+
+He was running toward her now and shouting to her to wait or he would
+shoot—though as he was entirely unarmed it was difficult to discover
+just how he intended making good his threat.
+
+Jane Clayton knew nothing of the various misfortunes that had befallen
+the Russian since she had escaped from his tent, so she believed that
+his followers must be close at hand.
+
+However, she had no intention of falling again into the man’s clutches.
+She would rather die at once than that that should happen to her.
+Another minute and the boat would be free.
+
+Once in the current of the river she would be beyond Rokoff’s power to
+stop her, for there was no other boat upon the shore, and no man, and
+certainly not the cowardly Rokoff, would dare to attempt to swim the
+crocodile-infested water in an effort to overtake her.
+
+Rokoff, on his part, was bent more upon escape than aught else. He
+would gladly have forgone any designs he might have had upon Jane
+Clayton would she but permit him to share this means of escape that she
+had discovered. He would promise anything if she would let him come
+aboard the dugout, but he did not think that it was necessary to do so.
+
+He saw that he could easily reach the bow of the boat before it cleared
+the shore, and then it would not be necessary to make promises of any
+sort. Not that Rokoff would have felt the slightest compunction in
+ignoring any promises he might have made the girl, but he disliked the
+idea of having to sue for favour with one who had so recently assaulted
+and escaped him.
+
+Already he was gloating over the days and nights of revenge that would
+be his while the heavy dugout drifted its slow way to the ocean.
+
+Jane Clayton, working furiously to shove the boat beyond his reach,
+suddenly realized that she was to be successful, for with a little
+lurch the dugout swung quickly into the current, just as the Russian
+reached out to place his hand upon its bow.
+
+His fingers did not miss their goal by a half-dozen inches. The girl
+almost collapsed with the reaction from the terrific mental, physical,
+and nervous strain under which she had been labouring for the past few
+minutes. But, thank Heaven, at last she was safe!
+
+Even as she breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving, she saw a sudden
+expression of triumph lighten the features of the cursing Russian, and
+at the same instant he dropped suddenly to the ground, grasping firmly
+upon something which wriggled through the mud toward the water.
+
+Jane Clayton crouched, wide-eyed and horror-stricken, in the bottom of
+the boat as she realized that at the last instant success had been
+turned to failure, and that she was indeed again in the power of the
+malignant Rokoff.
+
+For the thing that the man had seen and grasped was the end of the
+trailing rope with which the dugout had been moored to the tree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+Down the Ugambi
+
+
+Halfway between the Ugambi and the village of the Waganwazam, Tarzan
+came upon the pack moving slowly along his old spoor. Mugambi could
+scarce believe that the trail of the Russian and the mate of his savage
+master had passed so close to that of the pack.
+
+It seemed incredible that two human beings should have come so close to
+them without having been detected by some of the marvellously keen and
+alert beasts; but Tarzan pointed out the spoor of the two he trailed,
+and at certain points the black could see that the man and the woman
+must have been in hiding as the pack passed them, watching every move
+of the ferocious creatures.
+
+It had been apparent to Tarzan from the first that Jane and Rokoff were
+not travelling together. The spoor showed distinctly that the young
+woman had been a considerable distance ahead of the Russian at first,
+though the farther the ape-man continued along the trail the more
+obvious it became that the man was rapidly overhauling his quarry.
+
+At first there had been the spoor of wild beasts over the footprints of
+Jane Clayton, while upon the top of all Rokoff’s spoor showed that he
+had passed over the trail after the animals had left their records upon
+the ground. But later there were fewer and fewer animal imprints
+occurring between those of Jane’s and the Russian’s feet, until as he
+approached the river the ape-man became aware that Rokoff could not
+have been more than a few hundred yards behind the girl.
+
+He felt they must be close ahead of him now, and, with a little thrill
+of expectation, he leaped rapidly forward ahead of the pack. Swinging
+swiftly through the trees, he came out upon the river-bank at the very
+point at which Rokoff had overhauled Jane as she endeavoured to launch
+the cumbersome dugout.
+
+In the mud along the bank the ape-man saw the footprints of the two he
+sought, but there was neither boat nor people there when he arrived,
+nor, at first glance, any sign of their whereabouts.
+
+It was plain that they had shoved off a native canoe and embarked upon
+the bosom of the stream, and as the ape-man’s eye ran swiftly down the
+course of the river beneath the shadows of the overarching trees he saw
+in the distance, just as it rounded a bend that shut it off from his
+view, a drifting dugout in the stern of which was the figure of a man.
+
+Just as the pack came in sight of the river they saw their agile leader
+racing down the river’s bank, leaping from hummock to hummock of the
+swampy ground that spread between them and a little promontory which
+rose just where the river curved inward from their sight.
+
+To follow him it was necessary for the heavy, cumbersome apes to make a
+wide detour, and Sheeta, too, who hated water. Mugambi followed after
+them as rapidly as he could in the wake of the great white master.
+
+A half-hour of rapid travelling across the swampy neck of land and over
+the rising promontory brought Tarzan, by a short cut, to the inward
+bend of the winding river, and there before him upon the bosom of the
+stream he saw the dugout, and in its stern Nikolas Rokoff.
+
+Jane was not with the Russian.
+
+At sight of his enemy the broad scar upon the ape-man’s brow burned
+scarlet, and there rose to his lips the hideous, bestial challenge of
+the bull-ape.
+
+Rokoff shuddered as the weird and terrible alarm fell upon his ears.
+Cowering in the bottom of the boat, his teeth chattering in terror, he
+watched the man he feared above all other creatures upon the face of
+the earth as he ran quickly to the edge of the water.
+
+Even though the Russian knew that he was safe from his enemy, the very
+sight of him threw him into a frenzy of trembling cowardice, which
+became frantic hysteria as he saw the white giant dive fearlessly into
+the forbidding waters of the tropical river.
+
+With steady, powerful strokes the ape-man forged out into the stream
+toward the drifting dugout. Now Rokoff seized one of the paddles lying
+in the bottom of the craft, and, with terrorwide eyes still glued upon
+the living death that pursued him, struck out madly in an effort to
+augment the speed of the unwieldy canoe.
+
+And from the opposite bank a sinister ripple, unseen by either man,
+moved steadily toward the half-naked swimmer.
+
+Tarzan had reached the stern of the craft at last. One hand upstretched
+grasped the gunwale. Rokoff sat frozen with fear, unable to move a hand
+or foot, his eyes riveted upon the face of his Nemesis.
+
+Then a sudden commotion in the water behind the swimmer caught his
+attention. He saw the ripple, and he knew what caused it.
+
+At the same instant Tarzan felt mighty jaws close upon his right leg.
+He tried to struggle free and raise himself over the side of the boat.
+His efforts would have succeeded had not this unexpected interruption
+galvanized the malign brain of the Russian into instant action with its
+sudden promise of deliverance and revenge.
+
+Like a venomous snake the man leaped toward the stern of the boat, and
+with a single swift blow struck Tarzan across the head with the heavy
+paddle. The ape-man’s fingers slipped from their hold upon the gunwale.
+
+There was a short struggle at the surface, and then a swirl of waters,
+a little eddy, and a burst of bubbles soon smoothed out by the flowing
+current marked for the instant the spot where Tarzan of the Apes, Lord
+of the Jungle, disappeared from the sight of men beneath the gloomy
+waters of the dark and forbidding Ugambi.
+
+Weak from terror, Rokoff sank shuddering into the bottom of the dugout.
+For a moment he could not realize the good fortune that had befallen
+him—all that he could see was the figure of a silent, struggling white
+man disappearing beneath the surface of the river to unthinkable death
+in the slimy mud of the bottom.
+
+Slowly all that it meant to him filtered into the mind of the Russian,
+and then a cruel smile of relief and triumph touched his lips; but it
+was short-lived, for just as he was congratulating himself that he was
+now comparatively safe to proceed upon his way to the coast unmolested,
+a mighty pandemonium rose from the river-bank close by.
+
+As his eyes sought the authors of the frightful sound he saw standing
+upon the shore, glaring at him with hate-filled eyes, a devil-faced
+panther surrounded by the hideous apes of Akut, and in the forefront of
+them a giant black warrior who shook his fist at him, threatening him
+with terrible death.
+
+The nightmare of that flight down the Ugambi with the hideous horde
+racing after him by day and by night, now abreast of him, now lost in
+the mazes of the jungle far behind for hours and once for a whole day,
+only to reappear again upon his trail grim, relentless, and terrible,
+reduced the Russian from a strong and robust man to an emaciated,
+white-haired, fear-gibbering thing before ever the bay and the ocean
+broke upon his hopeless vision.
+
+Past populous villages he had fled. Time and again warriors had put out
+in their canoes to intercept him, but each time the hideous horde had
+swept into view to send the terrified natives shrieking back to the
+shore to lose themselves in the jungle.
+
+Nowhere in his flight had he seen aught of Jane Clayton. Not once had
+his eyes rested upon her since that moment at the river’s brim his hand
+had closed upon the rope attached to the bow of her dugout and he had
+believed her safely in his power again, only to be thwarted an instant
+later as the girl snatched up a heavy express rifle from the bottom of
+the craft and levelled it full at his breast.
+
+Quickly he had dropped the rope then and seen her float away beyond his
+reach, but a moment later he had been racing up-stream toward a little
+tributary in the mouth of which was hidden the canoe in which he and
+his party had come thus far upon their journey in pursuit of the girl
+and Anderssen.
+
+What had become of her?
+
+There seemed little doubt in the Russian’s mind, however, but that she
+had been captured by warriors from one of the several villages she
+would have been compelled to pass on her way down to the sea. Well, he
+was at least rid of most of his human enemies.
+
+But at that he would gladly have had them all back in the land of the
+living could he thus have been freed from the menace of the frightful
+creatures who pursued him with awful relentlessness, screaming and
+growling at him every time they came within sight of him. The one that
+filled him with the greatest terror was the panther—the flaming-eyed,
+devil-faced panther whose grinning jaws gaped wide at him by day, and
+whose fiery orbs gleamed wickedly out across the water from the
+Cimmerian blackness of the jungle nights.
+
+The sight of the mouth of the Ugambi filled Rokoff with renewed hope,
+for there, upon the yellow waters of the bay, floated the Kincaid at
+anchor. He had sent the little steamer away to coal while he had gone
+up the river, leaving Paulvitch in charge of her, and he could have
+cried aloud in his relief as he saw that she had returned in time to
+save him.
+
+Frantically he alternately paddled furiously toward her and rose to his
+feet waving his paddle and crying aloud in an attempt to attract the
+attention of those on board. But loud as he screamed his cries awakened
+no answering challenge from the deck of the silent craft.
+
+Upon the shore behind him a hurried backward glance revealed the
+presence of the snarling pack. Even now, he thought, these manlike
+devils might yet find a way to reach him even upon the deck of the
+steamer unless there were those there to repel them with firearms.
+
+What could have happened to those he had left upon the Kincaid? Where
+was Paulvitch? Could it be that the vessel was deserted, and that,
+after all, he was doomed to be overtaken by the terrible fate that he
+had been flying from through all these hideous days and nights? He
+shivered as might one upon whose brow death has already laid his clammy
+finger.
+
+Yet he did not cease to paddle frantically toward the steamer, and at
+last, after what seemed an eternity, the bow of the dugout bumped
+against the timbers of the Kincaid. Over the ship’s side hung a
+monkey-ladder, but as the Russian grasped it to ascend to the deck he
+heard a warning challenge from above, and, looking up, gazed into the
+cold, relentless muzzle of a rifle.
+
+After Jane Clayton, with rifle levelled at the breast of Rokoff, had
+succeeded in holding him off until the dugout in which she had taken
+refuge had drifted out upon the bosom of the Ugambi beyond the man’s
+reach, she had lost no time in paddling to the swiftest sweep of the
+channel, nor did she for long days and weary nights cease to hold her
+craft to the most rapidly moving part of the river, except when during
+the hottest hours of the day she had been wont to drift as the current
+would take her, lying prone in the bottom of the canoe, her face
+sheltered from the sun with a great palm leaf.
+
+Thus only did she gain rest upon the voyage; at other times she
+continually sought to augment the movement of the craft by wielding the
+heavy paddle.
+
+Rokoff, on the other hand, had used little or no intelligence in his
+flight along the Ugambi, so that more often than not his craft had
+drifted in the slow-going eddies, for he habitually hugged the bank
+farthest from that along which the hideous horde pursued and menaced
+him.
+
+Thus it was that, though he had put out upon the river but a short time
+subsequent to the girl, yet she had reached the bay fully two hours
+ahead of him. When she had first seen the anchored ship upon the quiet
+water, Jane Clayton’s heart had beat fast with hope and thanksgiving,
+but as she drew closer to the craft and saw that it was the Kincaid,
+her pleasure gave place to the gravest misgivings.
+
+It was too late, however, to turn back, for the current that carried
+her toward the ship was much too strong for her muscles. She could not
+have forced the heavy dugout up-stream against it, and all that was
+left her was to attempt either to make the shore without being seen by
+those upon the deck of the Kincaid, or to throw herself upon their
+mercy—otherwise she must be swept out to sea.
+
+She knew that the shore held little hope of life for her, as she had no
+knowledge of the location of the friendly Mosula village to which
+Anderssen had taken her through the darkness of the night of their
+escape from the Kincaid.
+
+With Rokoff away from the steamer it might be possible that by offering
+those in charge a large reward they could be induced to carry her to
+the nearest civilized port. It was worth risking—if she could make the
+steamer at all.
+
+The current was bearing her swiftly down the river, and she found that
+only by dint of the utmost exertion could she direct the awkward craft
+toward the vicinity of the Kincaid. Having reached the decision to
+board the steamer, she now looked to it for aid, but to her surprise
+the decks appeared to be empty and she saw no sign of life aboard the
+ship.
+
+The dugout was drawing closer and closer to the bow of the vessel, and
+yet no hail came over the side from any lookout aboard. In a moment
+more, Jane realized, she would be swept beyond the steamer, and then,
+unless they lowered a boat to rescue her, she would be carried far out
+to sea by the current and the swift ebb tide that was running.
+
+The young woman called loudly for assistance, but there was no reply
+other than the shrill scream of some savage beast upon the
+jungle-shrouded shore. Frantically Jane wielded the paddle in an effort
+to carry her craft close alongside the steamer.
+
+For a moment it seemed that she should miss her goal by but a few feet,
+but at the last moment the canoe swung close beneath the steamer’s bow
+and Jane barely managed to grasp the anchor chain.
+
+Heroically she clung to the heavy iron links, almost dragged from the
+canoe by the strain of the current upon her craft. Beyond her she saw a
+monkey-ladder dangling over the steamer’s side. To release her hold
+upon the chain and chance clambering to the ladder as her canoe was
+swept beneath it seemed beyond the pale of possibility, yet to remain
+clinging to the anchor chain appeared equally as futile.
+
+Finally her glance chanced to fall upon the rope in the bow of the
+dugout, and, making one end of this fast to the chain, she succeeded in
+drifting the canoe slowly down until it lay directly beneath the
+ladder. A moment later, her rifle slung about her shoulders, she had
+clambered safely to the deserted deck.
+
+Her first task was to explore the ship, and this she did, her rifle
+ready for instant use should she meet with any human menace aboard the
+Kincaid. She was not long in discovering the cause of the apparently
+deserted condition of the steamer, for in the forecastle she found the
+sailors, who had evidently been left to guard the ship, deep in drunken
+slumber.
+
+With a shudder of disgust she clambered above, and to the best of her
+ability closed and made fast the hatch above the heads of the sleeping
+guard. Next she sought the galley and food, and, having appeased her
+hunger, she took her place on deck, determined that none should board
+the Kincaid without first having agreed to her demands.
+
+For an hour or so nothing appeared upon the surface of the river to
+cause her alarm, but then, about a bend up-stream, she saw a canoe
+appear in which sat a single figure. It had not proceeded far in her
+direction before she recognized the occupant as Rokoff, and when the
+fellow attempted to board he found a rifle staring him in the face.
+
+When the Russian discovered who it was that repelled his advance he
+became furious, cursing and threatening in a most horrible manner; but,
+finding that these tactics failed to frighten or move the girl, he at
+last fell to pleading and promising.
+
+Jane had but a single reply for his every proposition, and that was
+that nothing would ever persuade her to permit Rokoff upon the same
+vessel with her. That she would put her threats into action and shoot
+him should he persist in his endeavour to board the ship he was
+convinced.
+
+So, as there was no other alternative, the great coward dropped back
+into his dugout and, at imminent risk of being swept to sea, finally
+succeeded in making the shore far down the bay and upon the opposite
+side from that on which the horde of beasts stood snarling and roaring.
+
+Jane Clayton knew that the fellow could not alone and unaided bring his
+heavy craft back up-stream to the Kincaid, and so she had no further
+fear of an attack by him. The hideous crew upon the shore she thought
+she recognized as the same that had passed her in the jungle far up the
+Ugambi several days before, for it seemed quite beyond reason that
+there should be more than one such a strangely assorted pack; but what
+had brought them down-stream to the mouth of the river she could not
+imagine.
+
+Toward the day’s close the girl was suddenly alarmed by the shouting of
+the Russian from the opposite bank of the stream, and a moment later,
+following the direction of his gaze, she was terrified to see a ship’s
+boat approaching from up-stream, in which, she felt assured, there
+could be only members of the Kincaid’s missing crew—only heartless
+ruffians and enemies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+In the Darkness of the Night
+
+
+When Tarzan of the Apes realized that he was in the grip of the great
+jaws of a crocodile he did not, as an ordinary man might have done,
+give up all hope and resign himself to his fate.
+
+Instead, he filled his lungs with air before the huge reptile dragged
+him beneath the surface, and then, with all the might of his great
+muscles, fought bitterly for freedom. But out of his native element the
+ape-man was too greatly handicapped to do more than excite the monster
+to greater speed as it dragged its prey swiftly through the water.
+
+Tarzan’s lungs were bursting for a breath of pure fresh air. He knew
+that he could survive but a moment more, and in the last paroxysm of
+his suffering he did what he could to avenge his own death.
+
+His body trailed out beside the slimy carcass of his captor, and into
+the tough armour the ape-man attempted to plunge his stone knife as he
+was borne to the creature’s horrid den.
+
+His efforts but served to accelerate the speed of the crocodile, and
+just as the ape-man realized that he had reached the limit of his
+endurance he felt his body dragged to a muddy bed and his nostrils rise
+above the water’s surface. All about him was the blackness of the
+pit—the silence of the grave.
+
+For a moment Tarzan of the Apes lay gasping for breath upon the slimy,
+evil-smelling bed to which the animal had borne him. Close at his side
+he could feel the cold, hard plates of the creature’s coat rising and
+falling as though with spasmodic efforts to breathe.
+
+For several minutes the two lay thus, and then a sudden convulsion of
+the giant carcass at the man’s side, a tremor, and a stiffening brought
+Tarzan to his knees beside the crocodile. To his utter amazement he
+found that the beast was dead. The slim knife had found a vulnerable
+spot in the scaly armour.
+
+Staggering to his feet, the ape-man groped about the reeking, oozy den.
+He found that he was imprisoned in a subterranean chamber amply large
+enough to have accommodated a dozen or more of the huge animals such as
+the one that had dragged him thither.
+
+He realized that he was in the creature’s hidden nest far under the
+bank of the stream, and that doubtless the only means of ingress or
+egress lay through the submerged opening through which the crocodile
+had brought him.
+
+His first thought, of course, was of escape, but that he could make his
+way to the surface of the river beyond and then to the shore seemed
+highly improbable. There might be turns and windings in the neck of the
+passage, or, most to be feared, he might meet another of the slimy
+inhabitants of the retreat upon his journey outward.
+
+Even should he reach the river in safety, there was still the danger of
+his being again attacked before he could effect a safe landing. Still
+there was no alternative, and, filling his lungs with the close and
+reeking air of the chamber, Tarzan of the Apes dived into the dark and
+watery hole which he could not see but had felt out and found with his
+feet and legs.
+
+The leg which had been held within the jaws of the crocodile was badly
+lacerated, but the bone had not been broken, nor were the muscles or
+tendons sufficiently injured to render it useless. It gave him
+excruciating pain, that was all.
+
+But Tarzan of the Apes was accustomed to pain, and gave it no further
+thought when he found that the use of his legs was not greatly impaired
+by the sharp teeth of the monster.
+
+Rapidly he crawled and swam through the passage which inclined downward
+and finally upward to open at last into the river bottom but a few feet
+from the shore line. As the ape-man reached the surface he saw the
+heads of two great crocodiles but a short distance from him. They were
+making rapidly in his direction, and with a superhuman effort the man
+struck out for the overhanging branches of a near-by tree.
+
+Nor was he a moment too soon, for scarcely had he drawn himself to the
+safety of the limb than two gaping mouths snapped venomously below him.
+For a few minutes Tarzan rested in the tree that had proved the means
+of his salvation. His eyes scanned the river as far down-stream as the
+tortuous channel would permit, but there was no sign of the Russian or
+his dugout.
+
+When he had rested and bound up his wounded leg he started on in
+pursuit of the drifting canoe. He found himself upon the opposite of
+the river to that at which he had entered the stream, but as his quarry
+was upon the bosom of the water it made little difference to the
+ape-man upon which side he took up the pursuit.
+
+To his intense chagrin he soon found that his leg was more badly
+injured than he had thought, and that its condition seriously impeded
+his progress. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he could
+proceed faster than a walk upon the ground, and in the trees he
+discovered that it not only impeded his progress, but rendered
+travelling distinctly dangerous.
+
+From the old negress, Tambudza, Tarzan had gathered a suggestion that
+now filled his mind with doubts and misgivings. When the old woman had
+told him of the child’s death she had also added that the white woman,
+though grief-stricken, had confided to her that the baby was not hers.
+
+Tarzan could see no reason for believing that Jane could have found it
+advisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the only
+explanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all, the
+white woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the jungle
+fastness of the interior had not been Jane at all.
+
+The more he gave thought to the problem, the more firmly convinced he
+became that his son was dead and his wife still safe in London, and in
+ignorance of the terrible fate that had overtaken her first-born.
+
+After all, then, his interpretation of Rokoff’s sinister taunt had been
+erroneous, and he had been bearing the burden of a double apprehension
+needlessly—at least so thought the ape-man. From this belief he
+garnered some slight surcease from the numbing grief that the death of
+his little son had thrust upon him.
+
+And such a death! Even the savage beast that was the real Tarzan,
+inured to the sufferings and horrors of the grim jungle, shuddered as
+he contemplated the hideous fate that had overtaken the innocent child.
+
+As he made his way painfully towards the coast, he let his mind dwell
+so constantly upon the frightful crimes which the Russian had
+perpetrated against his loved ones that the great scar upon his
+forehead stood out almost continuously in the vivid scarlet that marked
+the man’s most relentless and bestial moods of rage. At times he
+startled even himself and sent the lesser creatures of the wild jungle
+scampering to their hiding places as involuntary roars and growls
+rumbled from his throat.
+
+Could he but lay his hand upon the Russian!
+
+Twice upon the way to the coast bellicose natives ran threateningly
+from their villages to bar his further progress, but when the awful cry
+of the bull-ape thundered upon their affrighted ears, and the great
+white giant charged bellowing upon them, they had turned and fled into
+the bush, nor ventured thence until he had safely passed.
+
+Though his progress seemed tantalizingly slow to the ape-man whose idea
+of speed had been gained by such standards as the lesser apes attain,
+he made, as a matter of fact, almost as rapid progress as the drifting
+canoe that bore Rokoff on ahead of him, so that he came to the bay and
+within sight of the ocean just after darkness had fallen upon the same
+day that Jane Clayton and the Russian ended their flights from the
+interior.
+
+The darkness lowered so heavily upon the black river and the encircling
+jungle that Tarzan, even with eyes accustomed to much use after dark,
+could make out nothing a few yards from him. His idea was to search the
+shore that night for signs of the Russian and the woman who he was
+certain must have preceded Rokoff down the Ugambi. That the Kincaid or
+other ship lay at anchor but a hundred yards from him he did not dream,
+for no light showed on board the steamer.
+
+Even as he commenced his search his attention was suddenly attracted by
+a noise that he had not at first perceived—the stealthy dip of paddles
+in the water some distance from the shore, and about opposite the point
+at which he stood. Motionless as a statue he stood listening to the
+faint sound.
+
+Presently it ceased, to be followed by a shuffling noise that the
+ape-man’s trained ears could interpret as resulting from but a single
+cause—the scraping of leather-shod feet upon the rounds of a ship’s
+monkey-ladder. And yet, as far as he could see, there was no ship
+there—nor might there be one within a thousand miles.
+
+As he stood thus, peering out into the darkness of the cloud-enshrouded
+night, there came to him from across the water, like a slap in the
+face, so sudden and unexpected was it, the sharp staccato of an
+exchange of shots and then the scream of a woman.
+
+Wounded though he was, and with the memory of his recent horrible
+experience still strong upon him, Tarzan of the Apes did not hesitate
+as the notes of that frightened cry rose shrill and piercing upon the
+still night air. With a bound he cleared the intervening bush—there was
+a splash as the water closed about him—and then, with powerful strokes,
+he swam out into the impenetrable night with no guide save the memory
+of an illusive cry, and for company the hideous denizens of an
+equatorial river.
+
+The boat that had attracted Jane’s attention as she stood guard upon
+the deck of the Kincaid had been perceived by Rokoff upon one bank and
+Mugambi and the horde upon the other. The cries of the Russian had
+brought the dugout first to him, and then, after a conference, it had
+been turned toward the Kincaid, but before ever it covered half the
+distance between the shore and the steamer a rifle had spoken from the
+latter’s deck and one of the sailors in the bow of the canoe had
+crumpled and fallen into the water.
+
+After that they went more slowly, and presently, when Jane’s rifle had
+found another member of the party, the canoe withdrew to the shore,
+where it lay as long as daylight lasted.
+
+The savage, snarling pack upon the opposite shore had been directed in
+their pursuit by the black warrior, Mugambi, chief of the Wagambi. Only
+he knew which might be foe and which friend of their lost master.
+
+Could they have reached either the canoe or the Kincaid they would have
+made short work of any whom they found there, but the gulf of black
+water intervening shut them off from farther advance as effectually as
+though it had been the broad ocean that separated them from their prey.
+
+Mugambi knew something of the occurrences which had led up to the
+landing of Tarzan upon Jungle Island and the pursuit of the whites up
+the Ugambi. He knew that his savage master sought his wife and child
+who had been stolen by the wicked white man whom they had followed far
+into the interior and now back to the sea.
+
+He believed also that this same man had killed the great white giant
+whom he had come to respect and love as he had never loved the greatest
+chiefs of his own people. And so in the wild breast of Mugambi burned
+an iron resolve to win to the side of the wicked one and wreak
+vengeance upon him for the murder of the ape-man.
+
+But when he saw the canoe come down the river and take in Rokoff, when
+he saw it make for the Kincaid, he realized that only by possessing
+himself of a canoe could he hope to transport the beasts of the pack
+within striking distance of the enemy.
+
+So it happened that even before Jane Clayton fired the first shot into
+Rokoff’s canoe the beasts of Tarzan had disappeared into the jungle.
+
+After the Russian and his party, which consisted of Paulvitch and the
+several men he had left upon the Kincaid to attend to the matter of
+coaling, had retreated before her fire, Jane realized that it would be
+but a temporary respite from their attentions which she had gained, and
+with the conviction came a determination to make a bold and final
+stroke for freedom from the menacing threat of Rokoff’s evil purpose.
+
+With this idea in view she opened negotiations with the two sailors she
+had imprisoned in the forecastle, and having forced their consent to
+her plans, upon pain of death should they attempt disloyalty, she
+released them just as darkness closed about the ship.
+
+With ready revolver to compel obedience, she let them up one by one,
+searching them carefully for concealed weapons as they stood with hands
+elevated above their heads. Once satisfied that they were unarmed, she
+set them to work cutting the cable which held the Kincaid to her
+anchorage, for her bold plan was nothing less than to set the steamer
+adrift and float with her out into the open sea, there to trust to the
+mercy of the elements, which she was confident would be no more
+merciless than Nikolas Rokoff should he again capture her.
+
+There was, too, the chance that the Kincaid might be sighted by some
+passing ship, and as she was well stocked with provisions and water—the
+men had assured her of this fact—and as the season of storm was well
+over, she had every reason to hope for the eventual success of her
+plan.
+
+The night was deeply overcast, heavy clouds riding low above the jungle
+and the water—only to the west, where the broad ocean spread beyond the
+river’s mouth, was there a suggestion of lessening gloom.
+
+It was a perfect night for the purposes of the work in hand.
+
+Her enemies could not see the activity aboard the ship nor mark her
+course as the swift current bore her outward into the ocean. Before
+daylight broke the ebb-tide would have carried the Kincaid well into
+the Benguela current which flows northward along the coast of Africa,
+and, as a south wind was prevailing, Jane hoped to be out of sight of
+the mouth of the Ugambi before Rokoff could become aware of the
+departure of the steamer.
+
+Standing over the labouring seamen, the young woman breathed a sigh of
+relief as the last strand of the cable parted and she knew that the
+vessel was on its way out of the maw of the savage Ugambi.
+
+With her two prisoners still beneath the coercing influence of her
+rifle, she ordered them upon deck with the intention of again
+imprisoning them in the forecastle; but at length she permitted herself
+to be influenced by their promises of loyalty and the arguments which
+they put forth that they could be of service to her, and permitted them
+to remain above.
+
+For a few minutes the Kincaid drifted rapidly with the current, and
+then, with a grinding jar, she stopped in midstream. The ship had run
+upon a low-lying bar that splits the channel about a quarter of a mile
+from the sea.
+
+For a moment she hung there, and then, swinging round until her bow
+pointed toward the shore, she broke adrift once more.
+
+At the same instant, just as Jane Clayton was congratulating herself
+that the ship was once more free, there fell upon her ears from a point
+up the river about where the Kincaid had been anchored the rattle of
+musketry and a woman’s scream—shrill, piercing, fear-laden.
+
+The sailors heard the shots with certain conviction that they announced
+the coming of their employer, and as they had no relish for the plan
+that would consign them to the deck of a drifting derelict, they
+whispered together a hurried plan to overcome the young woman and hail
+Rokoff and their companions to their rescue.
+
+It seemed that fate would play into their hands, for with the reports
+of the guns Jane Clayton’s attention had been distracted from her
+unwilling assistants, and instead of keeping one eye upon them as she
+had intended doing, she ran to the bow of the Kincaid to peer through
+the darkness toward the source of the disturbance upon the river’s
+bosom.
+
+Seeing that she was off her guard, the two sailors crept stealthily
+upon her from behind.
+
+The scraping upon the deck of the shoes of one of them startled the
+girl to a sudden appreciation of her danger, but the warning had come
+too late.
+
+As she turned, both men leaped upon her and bore her to the deck, and
+as she went down beneath them she saw, outlined against the lesser
+gloom of the ocean, the figure of another man clamber over the side of
+the Kincaid.
+
+After all her pains her heroic struggle for freedom had failed. With a
+stifled sob she gave up the unequal battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+On the Deck of the “Kincaid”
+
+
+When Mugambi had turned back into the jungle with the pack he had a
+definite purpose in view. It was to obtain a dugout wherewith to
+transport the beasts of Tarzan to the side of the Kincaid. Nor was he
+long in coming upon the object which he sought.
+
+Just at dusk he found a canoe moored to the bank of a small tributary
+of the Ugambi at a point where he had felt certain that he should find
+one.
+
+Without loss of time he piled his hideous fellows into the craft and
+shoved out into the stream. So quickly had they taken possession of the
+canoe that the warrior had not noticed that it was already occupied.
+The huddled figure sleeping in the bottom had entirely escaped his
+observation in the darkness of the night that had now fallen.
+
+But no sooner were they afloat than a savage growling from one of the
+apes directly ahead of him in the dugout attracted his attention to a
+shivering and cowering figure that trembled between him and the great
+anthropoid. To Mugambi’s astonishment he saw that it was a native
+woman. With difficulty he kept the ape from her throat, and after a
+time succeeded in quelling her fears.
+
+It seemed that she had been fleeing from marriage with an old man she
+loathed and had taken refuge for the night in the canoe she had found
+upon the river’s edge.
+
+Mugambi did not wish her presence, but there she was, and rather than
+lose time by returning her to the shore the black permitted her to
+remain on board the canoe.
+
+As quickly as his awkward companions could paddle the dugout
+down-stream toward the Ugambi and the Kincaid they moved through the
+darkness. It was with difficulty that Mugambi could make out the
+shadowy form of the steamer, but as he had it between himself and the
+ocean it was much more apparent than to one upon either shore of the
+river.
+
+As he approached it he was amazed to note that it seemed to be receding
+from him, and finally he was convinced that the vessel was moving
+down-stream. Just as he was about to urge his creatures to renewed
+efforts to overtake the steamer the outline of another canoe burst
+suddenly into view not three yards from the bow of his own craft.
+
+At the same instant the occupants of the stranger discovered the
+proximity of Mugambi’s horde, but they did not at first recognize the
+nature of the fearful crew. A man in the bow of the oncoming boat
+challenged them just as the two dugouts were about to touch.
+
+For answer came the menacing growl of a panther, and the fellow found
+himself gazing into the flaming eyes of Sheeta, who had raised himself
+with his forepaws upon the bow of the boat, ready to leap in upon the
+occupants of the other craft.
+
+Instantly Rokoff realized the peril that confronted him and his
+fellows. He gave a quick command to fire upon the occupants of the
+other canoe, and it was this volley and the scream of the terrified
+native woman in the canoe with Mugambi that both Tarzan and Jane had
+heard.
+
+Before the slower and less skilled paddlers in Mugambi’s canoe could
+press their advantage and effect a boarding of the enemy the latter had
+turned swiftly down-stream and were paddling for their lives in the
+direction of the Kincaid, which was now visible to them.
+
+The vessel after striking upon the bar had swung loose again into a
+slow-moving eddy, which returns up-stream close to the southern shore
+of the Ugambi only to circle out once more and join the downward flow a
+hundred yards or so farther up. Thus the Kincaid was returning Jane
+Clayton directly into the hands of her enemies.
+
+It so happened that as Tarzan sprang into the river the vessel was not
+visible to him, and as he swam out into the night he had no idea that a
+ship drifted so close at hand. He was guided by the sounds which he
+could hear coming from the two canoes.
+
+As he swam he had vivid recollections of the last occasion upon which
+he had swum in the waters of the Ugambi, and with them a sudden shudder
+shook the frame of the giant.
+
+But, though he twice felt something brush his legs from the slimy
+depths below him, nothing seized him, and of a sudden he quite forgot
+about crocodiles in the astonishment of seeing a dark mass loom
+suddenly before him where he had still expected to find the open river.
+
+So close was it that a few strokes brought him up to the thing, when to
+his amazement his outstretched hand came in contact with a ship’s side.
+
+As the agile ape-man clambered over the vessel’s rail there came to his
+sensitive ears the sound of a struggle at the opposite side of the
+deck.
+
+Noiselessly he sped across the intervening space.
+
+The moon had risen now, and, though the sky was still banked with
+clouds, a lesser darkness enveloped the scene than that which had
+blotted out all sight earlier in the night. His keen eyes, therefore,
+saw the figures of two men grappling with a woman.
+
+That it was the woman who had accompanied Anderssen toward the interior
+he did not know, though he suspected as much, as he was now quite
+certain that this was the deck of the Kincaid upon which chance had led
+him.
+
+But he wasted little time in idle speculation. There was a woman in
+danger of harm from two ruffians, which was enough excuse for the
+ape-man to project his giant thews into the conflict without further
+investigation.
+
+The first that either of the sailors knew that there was a new force at
+work upon the ship was the falling of a mighty hand upon a shoulder of
+each. As if they had been in the grip of a fly-wheel, they were jerked
+suddenly from their prey.
+
+“What means this?” asked a low voice in their ears.
+
+They were given no time to reply, however, for at the sound of that
+voice the young woman had sprung to her feet and with a little cry of
+joy leaped toward their assailant.
+
+“Tarzan!” she cried.
+
+The ape-man hurled the two sailors across the deck, where they rolled,
+stunned and terrified, into the scuppers upon the opposite side, and
+with an exclamation of incredulity gathered the girl into his arms.
+
+Brief, however, were the moments for their greeting.
+
+Scarcely had they recognized one another than the clouds above them
+parted to show the figures of a half-dozen men clambering over the side
+of the Kincaid to the steamer’s deck.
+
+Foremost among them was the Russian. As the brilliant rays of the
+equatorial moon lighted the deck, and he realized that the man before
+him was Lord Greystoke, he screamed hysterical commands to his
+followers to fire upon the two.
+
+Tarzan pushed Jane behind the cabin near which they had been standing,
+and with a quick bound started for Rokoff. The men behind the Russian,
+at least two of them, raised their rifles and fired at the charging
+ape-man; but those behind them were otherwise engaged—for up the
+monkey-ladder in their rear was thronging a hideous horde.
+
+First came five snarling apes, huge, manlike beasts, with bared fangs
+and slavering jaws; and after them a giant black warrior, his long
+spear gleaming in the moonlight.
+
+Behind him again scrambled another creature, and of all the horrid
+horde it was this they most feared—Sheeta, the panther, with gleaming
+jaws agape and fiery eyes blazing at them in the mightiness of his hate
+and of his blood lust.
+
+The shots that had been fired at Tarzan missed him, and he would have
+been upon Rokoff in another instant had not the great coward dodged
+backward between his two henchmen, and, screaming in hysterical terror,
+bolted forward toward the forecastle.
+
+For the moment Tarzan’s attention was distracted by the two men before
+him, so that he could not at the time pursue the Russian. About him the
+apes and Mugambi were battling with the balance of the Russian’s party.
+
+Beneath the terrible ferocity of the beasts the men were soon
+scampering in all directions—those who still lived to scamper, for the
+great fangs of the apes of Akut and the tearing talons of Sheeta
+already had found more than a single victim.
+
+Four, however, escaped and disappeared into the forecastle, where they
+hoped to barricade themselves against further assault. Here they found
+Rokoff, and, enraged at his desertion of them in their moment of peril,
+no less than at the uniformly brutal treatment it had been his wont to
+accord them, they gloated upon the opportunity now offered them to
+revenge themselves in part upon their hated employer.
+
+Despite his prayers and grovelling pleas, therefore, they hurled him
+bodily out upon the deck, delivering him to the mercy of the fearful
+things from which they had themselves just escaped.
+
+Tarzan saw the man emerge from the forecastle—saw and recognized his
+enemy; but another saw him even as soon.
+
+It was Sheeta, and with grinning jaws the mighty beast slunk silently
+toward the terror-stricken man.
+
+When Rokoff saw what it was that stalked him his shrieks for help
+filled the air, as with trembling knees he stood, as one paralyzed,
+before the hideous death that was creeping upon him.
+
+Tarzan took a step toward the Russian, his brain burning with a raging
+fire of vengeance. At last he had the murderer of his son at his mercy.
+His was the right to avenge.
+
+Once Jane had stayed his hand that time that he sought to take the law
+into his own power and mete to Rokoff the death that he had so long
+merited; but this time none should stay him.
+
+His fingers clenched and unclenched spasmodically as he approached the
+trembling Russ, beastlike and ominous as a brute of prey.
+
+Presently he saw that Sheeta was about to forestall him, robbing him of
+the fruits of his great hate.
+
+He called sharply to the panther, and the words, as if they had broken
+a hideous spell that had held the Russian, galvanized him into sudden
+action. With a scream he turned and fled toward the bridge.
+
+After him pounced Sheeta the panther, unmindful of his master’s warning
+voice.
+
+Tarzan was about to leap after the two when he felt a light touch upon
+his arm. Turning, he found Jane at his elbow.
+
+“Do not leave me,” she whispered. “I am afraid.”
+
+Tarzan glanced behind her.
+
+All about were the hideous apes of Akut. Some, even, were approaching
+the young woman with bared fangs and menacing guttural warnings.
+
+The ape-man warned them back. He had forgotten for the moment that
+these were but beasts, unable to differentiate his friends and his
+foes. Their savage natures were roused by their recent battle with the
+sailors, and now all flesh outside the pack was meat to them.
+
+Tarzan turned again toward the Russian, chagrined that he should have
+to forgo the pleasure of personal revenge—unless the man should escape
+Sheeta. But as he looked he saw that there could be no hope of that.
+The fellow had retreated to the end of the bridge, where he now stood
+trembling and wide-eyed, facing the beast that moved slowly toward him.
+
+The panther crawled with belly to the planking, uttering uncanny
+mouthings. Rokoff stood as though petrified, his eyes protruding from
+their sockets, his mouth agape, and the cold sweat of terror clammy
+upon his brow.
+
+Below him, upon the deck, he had seen the great anthropoids, and so had
+not dared to seek escape in that direction. In fact, even now one of
+the brutes was leaping to seize the bridge-rail and draw himself up to
+the Russian’s side.
+
+Before him was the panther, silent and crouched.
+
+Rokoff could not move. His knees trembled. His voice broke in
+inarticulate shrieks. With a last piercing wail he sank to his
+knees—and then Sheeta sprang.
+
+Full upon the man’s breast the tawny body hurtled, tumbling the Russian
+to his back.
+
+As the great fangs tore at the throat and chest, Jane Clayton turned
+away in horror; but not so Tarzan of the Apes. A cold smile of
+satisfaction touched his lips. The scar upon his forehead that had
+burned scarlet faded to the normal hue of his tanned skin and
+disappeared.
+
+Rokoff fought furiously but futilely against the growling, rending fate
+that had overtaken him. For all his countless crimes he was punished in
+the brief moment of the hideous death that claimed him at the last.
+
+After his struggles ceased Tarzan approached, at Jane’s suggestion, to
+wrest the body from the panther and give what remained of it decent
+human burial; but the great cat rose snarling above its kill,
+threatening even the master it loved in its savage way, so that rather
+than kill his friend of the jungle, Tarzan was forced to relinquish his
+intentions.
+
+All that night Sheeta, the panther, crouched upon the grisly thing that
+had been Nikolas Rokoff. The bridge of the Kincaid was slippery with
+blood. Beneath the brilliant tropic moon the great beast feasted until,
+when the sun rose the following morning, there remained of Tarzan’s
+great enemy only gnawed and broken bones.
+
+Of the Russian’s party, all were accounted for except Paulvitch. Four
+were prisoners in the Kincaid’s forecastle. The rest were dead.
+
+With these men Tarzan got up steam upon the vessel, and with the
+knowledge of the mate, who happened to be one of those surviving, he
+planned to set out in quest of Jungle Island; but as the morning dawned
+there came with it a heavy gale from the west which raised a sea into
+which the mate of the Kincaid dared not venture. All that day the ship
+lay within the shelter of the mouth of the river; for, though night
+witnessed a lessening of the wind, it was thought safer to wait for
+daylight before attempting the navigation of the winding channel to the
+sea.
+
+Upon the deck of the steamer the pack wandered without let or hindrance
+by day, for they had soon learned through Tarzan and Mugambi that they
+must harm no one upon the Kincaid; but at night they were confined
+below.
+
+Tarzan’s joy had been unbounded when he learned from his wife that the
+little child who had died in the village of M’ganwazam was not their
+son. Who the baby could have been, or what had become of their own,
+they could not imagine, and as both Rokoff and Paulvitch were gone,
+there was no way of discovering.
+
+There was, however, a certain sense of relief in the knowledge that
+they might yet hope. Until positive proof of the baby’s death reached
+them there was always that to buoy them up.
+
+It seemed quite evident that their little Jack had not been brought
+aboard the Kincaid. Anderssen would have known of it had such been the
+case, but he had assured Jane time and time again that the little one
+he had brought to her cabin the night he aided her to escape was the
+only one that had been aboard the Kincaid since she lay at Dover.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+Paulvitch Plots Revenge
+
+
+As Jane and Tarzan stood upon the vessel’s deck recounting to one
+another the details of the various adventures through which each had
+passed since they had parted in their London home, there glared at them
+from beneath scowling brows a hidden watcher upon the shore.
+
+Through the man’s brain passed plan after plan whereby he might thwart
+the escape of the Englishman and his wife, for so long as the vital
+spark remained within the vindictive brain of Alexander Paulvitch none
+who had aroused the enmity of the Russian might be entirely safe.
+
+Plan after plan he formed only to discard each either as impracticable,
+or unworthy the vengeance his wrongs demanded. So warped by faulty
+reasoning was the criminal mind of Rokoff’s lieutenant that he could
+not grasp the real truth of that which lay between himself and the
+ape-man and see that always the fault had been, not with the English
+lord, but with himself and his confederate.
+
+And at the rejection of each new scheme Paulvitch arrived always at the
+same conclusion—that he could accomplish naught while half the breadth
+of the Ugambi separated him from the object of his hatred.
+
+But how was he to span the crocodile-infested waters? There was no
+canoe nearer than the Mosula village, and Paulvitch was none too sure
+that the Kincaid would still be at anchor in the river when he returned
+should he take the time to traverse the jungle to the distant village
+and return with a canoe. Yet there was no other way, and so, convinced
+that thus alone might he hope to reach his prey, Paulvitch, with a
+parting scowl at the two figures upon the Kincaid’s deck, turned away
+from the river.
+
+Hastening through the dense jungle, his mind centred upon his one
+fetich—revenge—the Russian forgot even his terror of the savage world
+through which he moved.
+
+Baffled and beaten at every turn of Fortune’s wheel, reacted upon time
+after time by his own malign plotting, the principal victim of his own
+criminality, Paulvitch was yet so blind as to imagine that his greatest
+happiness lay in a continuation of the plottings and schemings which
+had ever brought him and Rokoff to disaster, and the latter finally to
+a hideous death.
+
+As the Russian stumbled on through the jungle toward the Mosula village
+there presently crystallized within his brain a plan which seemed more
+feasible than any that he had as yet considered.
+
+He would come by night to the side of the Kincaid, and once aboard,
+would search out the members of the ship’s original crew who had
+survived the terrors of this frightful expedition, and enlist them in
+an attempt to wrest the vessel from Tarzan and his beasts.
+
+In the cabin were arms and ammunition, and hidden in a secret
+receptacle in the cabin table was one of those infernal machines, the
+construction of which had occupied much of Paulvitch’s spare time when
+he had stood high in the confidence of the Nihilists of his native
+land.
+
+That was before he had sold them out for immunity and gold to the
+police of Petrograd. Paulvitch winced as he recalled the denunciation
+of him that had fallen from the lips of one of his former comrades ere
+the poor devil expiated his political sins at the end of a hempen rope.
+
+But the infernal machine was the thing to think of now. He could do
+much with that if he could but get his hands upon it. Within the little
+hardwood case hidden in the cabin table rested sufficient potential
+destructiveness to wipe out in the fraction of a second every enemy
+aboard the Kincaid.
+
+Paulvitch licked his lips in anticipatory joy, and urged his tired legs
+to greater speed that he might not be too late to the ship’s anchorage
+to carry out his designs.
+
+All depended, of course, upon when the Kincaid departed. The Russian
+realized that nothing could be accomplished beneath the light of day.
+Darkness must shroud his approach to the ship’s side, for should he be
+sighted by Tarzan or Lady Greystoke he would have no chance to board
+the vessel.
+
+The gale that was blowing was, he believed, the cause of the delay in
+getting the Kincaid under way, and if it continued to blow until night
+then the chances were all in his favour, for he knew that there was
+little likelihood of the ape-man attempting to navigate the tortuous
+channel of the Ugambi while darkness lay upon the surface of the water,
+hiding the many bars and the numerous small islands which are scattered
+over the expanse of the river’s mouth.
+
+It was well after noon when Paulvitch came to the Mosula village upon
+the bank of the tributary of the Ugambi. Here he was received with
+suspicion and unfriendliness by the native chief, who, like all those
+who came in contact with Rokoff or Paulvitch, had suffered in some
+manner from the greed, the cruelty, or the lust of the two Muscovites.
+
+When Paulvitch demanded the use of a canoe the chief grumbled a surly
+refusal and ordered the white man from the village. Surrounded by
+angry, muttering warriors who seemed to be but waiting some slight
+pretext to transfix him with their menacing spears the Russian could do
+naught else than withdraw.
+
+A dozen fighting men led him to the edge of the clearing, leaving him
+with a warning never to show himself again in the vicinity of their
+village.
+
+Stifling his anger, Paulvitch slunk into the jungle; but once beyond
+the sight of the warriors he paused and listened intently. He could
+hear the voices of his escort as the men returned to the village, and
+when he was sure that they were not following him he wormed his way
+through the bushes to the edge of the river, still determined some way
+to obtain a canoe.
+
+Life itself depended upon his reaching the Kincaid and enlisting the
+survivors of the ship’s crew in his service, for to be abandoned here
+amidst the dangers of the African jungle where he had won the enmity of
+the natives was, he well knew, practically equivalent to a sentence of
+death.
+
+A desire for revenge acted as an almost equally powerful incentive to
+spur him into the face of danger to accomplish his design, so that it
+was a desperate man that lay hidden in the foliage beside the little
+river searching with eager eyes for some sign of a small canoe which
+might be easily handled by a single paddle.
+
+Nor had the Russian long to wait before one of the awkward little
+skiffs which the Mosula fashion came in sight upon the bosom of the
+river. A youth was paddling lazily out into midstream from a point
+beside the village. When he reached the channel he allowed the sluggish
+current to carry him slowly along while he lolled indolently in the
+bottom of his crude canoe.
+
+All ignorant of the unseen enemy upon the river’s bank the lad floated
+slowly down the stream while Paulvitch followed along the jungle path a
+few yards behind him.
+
+A mile below the village the black boy dipped his paddle into the water
+and forced his skiff toward the bank. Paulvitch, elated by the chance
+which had drawn the youth to the same side of the river as that along
+which he followed rather than to the opposite side where he would have
+been beyond the stalker’s reach, hid in the brush close beside the
+point at which it was evident the skiff would touch the bank of the
+slow-moving stream, which seemed jealous of each fleeting instant which
+drew it nearer to the broad and muddy Ugambi where it must for ever
+lose its identity in the larger stream that would presently cast its
+waters into the great ocean.
+
+Equally indolent were the motions of the Mosula youth as he drew his
+skiff beneath an overhanging limb of a great tree that leaned down to
+implant a farewell kiss upon the bosom of the departing water,
+caressing with green fronds the soft breast of its languorous love.
+
+And, snake-like, amidst the concealing foliage lay the malevolent Russ.
+Cruel, shifty eyes gloated upon the outlines of the coveted canoe, and
+measured the stature of its owner, while the crafty brain weighed the
+chances of the white man should physical encounter with the black
+become necessary.
+
+Only direct necessity could drive Alexander Paulvitch to personal
+conflict; but it was indeed dire necessity which goaded him on to
+action now.
+
+There was time, just time enough, to reach the Kincaid by nightfall.
+Would the black fool never quit his skiff? Paulvitch squirmed and
+fidgeted. The lad yawned and stretched. With exasperating
+deliberateness he examined the arrows in his quiver, tested his bow,
+and looked to the edge upon the hunting-knife in his loin-cloth.
+
+Again he stretched and yawned, glanced up at the river-bank, shrugged
+his shoulders, and lay down in the bottom of his canoe for a little nap
+before he plunged into the jungle after the prey he had come forth to
+hunt.
+
+Paulvitch half rose, and with tensed muscles stood glaring down upon
+his unsuspecting victim. The boy’s lids drooped and closed. Presently
+his breast rose and fell to the deep breaths of slumber. The time had
+come!
+
+The Russian crept stealthily nearer. A branch rustled beneath his
+weight and the lad stirred in his sleep. Paulvitch drew his revolver
+and levelled it upon the black. For a moment he remained in rigid
+quiet, and then again the youth relapsed into undisturbed slumber.
+
+The white man crept closer. He could not chance a shot until there was
+no risk of missing. Presently he leaned close above the Mosula. The
+cold steel of the revolver in his hand insinuated itself nearer and
+nearer to the breast of the unconscious lad. Now it stopped but a few
+inches above the strongly beating heart.
+
+But the pressure of a finger lay between the harmless boy and eternity.
+The soft bloom of youth still lay upon the brown cheek, a smile half
+parted the beardless lips. Did any qualm of conscience point its
+disquieting finger of reproach at the murderer?
+
+To all such was Alexander Paulvitch immune. A sneer curled his bearded
+lip as his forefinger closed upon the trigger of his revolver. There
+was a loud report. A little hole appeared above the heart of the
+sleeping boy, a little hole about which lay a blackened rim of
+powder-burned flesh.
+
+The youthful body half rose to a sitting posture. The smiling lips
+tensed to the nervous shock of a momentary agony which the conscious
+mind never apprehended, and then the dead sank limply back into that
+deepest of slumbers from which there is no awakening.
+
+The killer dropped quickly into the skiff beside the killed. Ruthless
+hands seized the dead boy heartlessly and raised him to the low
+gunwale. A little shove, a splash, some widening ripples broken by the
+sudden surge of a dark, hidden body from the slimy depths, and the
+coveted canoe was in the sole possession of the white man—more savage
+than the youth whose life he had taken.
+
+Casting off the tie rope and seizing the paddle, Paulvitch bent
+feverishly to the task of driving the skiff downward toward the Ugambi
+at top speed.
+
+Night had fallen when the prow of the bloodstained craft shot out into
+the current of the larger stream. Constantly the Russian strained his
+eyes into the increasing darkness ahead in vain endeavour to pierce the
+black shadows which lay between him and the anchorage of the Kincaid.
+
+Was the ship still riding there upon the waters of the Ugambi, or had
+the ape-man at last persuaded himself of the safety of venturing forth
+into the abating storm? As Paulvitch forged ahead with the current he
+asked himself these questions, and many more beside, not the least
+disquieting of which were those which related to his future should it
+chance that the Kincaid had already steamed away, leaving him to the
+merciless horrors of the savage wilderness.
+
+In the darkness it seemed to the paddler that he was fairly flying over
+the water, and he had become convinced that the ship had left her
+moorings and that he had already passed the spot at which she had lain
+earlier in the day, when there appeared before him beyond a projecting
+point which he had but just rounded the flickering light from a ship’s
+lantern.
+
+Alexander Paulvitch could scarce restrain an exclamation of triumph.
+The Kincaid had not departed! Life and vengeance were not to elude him
+after all.
+
+He stopped paddling the moment that he descried the gleaming beacon of
+hope ahead of him. Silently he drifted down the muddy waters of the
+Ugambi, occasionally dipping his paddle’s blade gently into the current
+that he might guide his primitive craft to the vessel’s side.
+
+As he approached more closely the dark bulk of a ship loomed before him
+out of the blackness of the night. No sound came from the vessel’s
+deck. Paulvitch drifted, unseen, close to the Kincaid’s side. Only the
+momentary scraping of his canoe’s nose against the ship’s planking
+broke the silence of the night.
+
+Trembling with nervous excitement, the Russian remained motionless for
+several minutes; but there was no sound from the great bulk above him
+to indicate that his coming had been noted.
+
+Stealthily he worked his craft forward until the stays of the bowsprit
+were directly above him. He could just reach them. To make his canoe
+fast there was the work of but a minute or two, and then the man raised
+himself quietly aloft.
+
+A moment later he dropped softly to the deck. Thoughts of the hideous
+pack which tenanted the ship induced cold tremors along the spine of
+the cowardly prowler; but life itself depended upon the success of his
+venture, and so he was enabled to steel himself to the frightful
+chances which lay before him.
+
+No sound or sign of watch appeared upon the ship’s deck. Paulvitch
+crept stealthily toward the forecastle. All was silence. The hatch was
+raised, and as the man peered downward he saw one of the Kincaid’s crew
+reading by the light of the smoky lantern depending from the ceiling of
+the crew’s quarters.
+
+Paulvitch knew the man well, a surly cut-throat upon whom he figured
+strongly in the carrying out of the plan which he had conceived. Gently
+the Russ lowered himself through the aperture to the rounds of the
+ladder which led into the forecastle.
+
+He kept his eyes turned upon the reading man, ready to warn him to
+silence the moment that the fellow discovered him; but so deeply
+immersed was the sailor in the magazine that the Russian came,
+unobserved, to the forecastle floor.
+
+There he turned and whispered the reader’s name. The man raised his
+eyes from the magazine—eyes that went wide for a moment as they fell
+upon the familiar countenance of Rokoff’s lieutenant, only to narrow
+instantly in a scowl of disapproval.
+
+“The devil!” he ejaculated. “Where did you come from? We all thought
+you were done for and gone where you ought to have gone a long time
+ago. His lordship will be mighty pleased to see you.”
+
+Paulvitch crossed to the sailor’s side. A friendly smile lay on the
+Russian’s lips, and his right hand was extended in greeting, as though
+the other might have been a dear and long lost friend. The sailor
+ignored the proffered hand, nor did he return the other’s smile.
+
+“I’ve come to help you,” explained Paulvitch. “I’m going to help you
+get rid of the Englishman and his beasts—then there will be no danger
+from the law when we get back to civilization. We can sneak in on them
+while they sleep—that is Greystoke, his wife, and that black scoundrel,
+Mugambi. Afterward it will be a simple matter to clean up the beasts.
+Where are they?”
+
+“They’re below,” replied the sailor; “but just let me tell you
+something, Paulvitch. You haven’t got no more show to turn us men
+against the Englishman than nothing. We had all we wanted of you and
+that other beast. He’s dead, an’ if I don’t miss my guess a whole lot
+you’ll be dead too before long. You two treated us like dogs, and if
+you think we got any love for you you better forget it.”
+
+“You mean to say that you’re going to turn against me?” demanded
+Paulvitch.
+
+The other nodded, and then after a momentary pause, during which an
+idea seemed to have occurred to him, he spoke again.
+
+“Unless,” he said, “you can make it worth my while to let you go before
+the Englishman finds you here.”
+
+“You wouldn’t turn me away in the jungle, would you?” asked Paulvitch.
+“Why, I’d die there in a week.”
+
+“You’d have a chance there,” replied the sailor. “Here, you wouldn’t
+have no chance. Why, if I woke up my maties here they’d probably cut
+your heart out of you before the Englishman got a chance at you at all.
+It’s mighty lucky for you that I’m the one to be awake now and not none
+of the others.”
+
+“You’re crazy,” cried Paulvitch. “Don’t you know that the Englishman
+will have you all hanged when he gets you back where the law can get
+hold of you?”
+
+“No, he won’t do nothing of the kind,” replied the sailor. “He’s told
+us as much, for he says that there wasn’t nobody to blame but you and
+Rokoff—the rest of us was just tools. See?”
+
+For half an hour the Russian pleaded or threatened as the mood seized
+him. Sometimes he was upon the verge of tears, and again he was
+promising his listener either fabulous rewards or condign punishment;
+but the other was obdurate. [condign: of equal value]
+
+He made it plain to the Russian that there were but two plans open to
+him—either he must consent to being turned over immediately to Lord
+Greystoke, or he must pay to the sailor, as a price for permission to
+quit the Kincaid unmolested, every cent of money and article of value
+upon his person and in his cabin.
+
+“And you’ll have to make up your mind mighty quick,” growled the man,
+“for I want to turn in. Come now, choose—his lordship or the jungle?”
+
+“You’ll be sorry for this,” grumbled the Russian.
+
+“Shut up,” admonished the sailor. “If you get funny I may change my
+mind, and keep you here after all.”
+
+Now Paulvitch had no intention of permitting himself to fall into the
+hands of Tarzan of the Apes if he could possibly avoid it, and while
+the terrors of the jungle appalled him they were, to his mind,
+infinitely preferable to the certain death which he knew he merited and
+for which he might look at the hands of the ape-man.
+
+“Is anyone sleeping in my cabin?” he asked.
+
+The sailor shook his head. “No,” he said; “Lord and Lady Greystoke have
+the captain’s cabin. The mate is in his own, and there ain’t no one in
+yours.”
+
+“I’ll go and get my valuables for you,” said Paulvitch.
+
+“I’ll go with you to see that you don’t try any funny business,” said
+the sailor, and he followed the Russian up the ladder to the deck.
+
+At the cabin entrance the sailor halted to watch, permitting Paulvitch
+to go alone to his cabin. Here he gathered together his few belongings
+that were to buy him the uncertain safety of escape, and as he stood
+for a moment beside the little table on which he had piled them he
+searched his brain for some feasible plan either to ensure his safety
+or to bring revenge upon his enemies.
+
+And presently as he thought there recurred to his memory the little
+black box which lay hidden in a secret receptacle beneath a false top
+upon the table where his hand rested.
+
+The Russian’s face lighted to a sinister gleam of malevolent
+satisfaction as he stooped and felt beneath the table top. A moment
+later he withdrew from its hiding-place the thing he sought. He had
+lighted the lantern swinging from the beams overhead that he might see
+to collect his belongings, and now he held the black box well in the
+rays of the lamplight, while he fingered at the clasp that fastened its
+lid.
+
+The lifted cover revealed two compartments within the box. In one was a
+mechanism which resembled the works of a small clock. There also was a
+little battery of two dry cells. A wire ran from the clockwork to one
+of the poles of the battery, and from the other pole through the
+partition into the other compartment, a second wire returning directly
+to the clockwork.
+
+Whatever lay within the second compartment was not visible, for a cover
+lay over it and appeared to be sealed in place by asphaltum. In the
+bottom of the box, beside the clockwork, lay a key, and this Paulvitch
+now withdrew and fitted to the winding stem.
+
+Gently he turned the key, muffling the noise of the winding operation
+by throwing a couple of articles of clothing over the box. All the time
+he listened intently for any sound which might indicate that the sailor
+or another were approaching his cabin; but none came to interrupt his
+work.
+
+When the winding was completed the Russian set a pointer upon a small
+dial at the side of the clockwork, then he replaced the cover upon the
+black box, and returned the entire machine to its hiding-place in the
+table.
+
+A sinister smile curled the man’s bearded lips as he gathered up his
+valuables, blew out the lamp, and stepped from his cabin to the side of
+the waiting sailor.
+
+“Here are my things,” said the Russian; “now let me go.”
+
+“I’ll first take a look in your pockets,” replied the sailor. “You
+might have overlooked some trifling thing that won’t be of no use to
+you in the jungle, but that’ll come in mighty handy to a poor sailorman
+in London. Ah! just as I feared,” he ejaculated an instant later as he
+withdrew a roll of bank-notes from Paulvitch’s inside coat pocket.
+
+The Russian scowled, muttering an imprecation; but nothing could be
+gained by argument, and so he did his best to reconcile himself to his
+loss in the knowledge that the sailor would never reach London to enjoy
+the fruits of his thievery.
+
+It was with difficulty that Paulvitch restrained a consuming desire to
+taunt the man with a suggestion of the fate that would presently
+overtake him and the other members of the Kincaid’s company; but
+fearing to arouse the fellow’s suspicions, he crossed the deck and
+lowered himself in silence into his canoe.
+
+A minute or two later he was paddling toward the shore to be swallowed
+up in the darkness of the jungle night, and the terrors of a hideous
+existence from which, could he have had even a slight foreknowledge of
+what awaited him in the long years to come, he would have fled to the
+certain death of the open sea rather than endure it.
+
+The sailor, having made sure that Paulvitch had departed, returned to
+the forecastle, where he hid away his booty and turned into his bunk,
+while in the cabin that had belonged to the Russian there ticked on and
+on through the silences of the night the little mechanism in the small
+black box which held for the unconscious sleepers upon the ill-starred
+Kincaid the coming vengeance of the thwarted Russian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+The Last of the “Kincaid”
+
+
+Shortly after the break of day Tarzan was on deck noting the condition
+of the weather. The wind had abated. The sky was cloudless. Every
+condition seemed ideal for the commencement of the return voyage to
+Jungle Island, where the beasts were to be left. And then—home!
+
+The ape-man aroused the mate and gave instructions that the Kincaid
+sail at the earliest possible moment. The remaining members of the
+crew, safe in Lord Greystoke’s assurance that they would not be
+prosecuted for their share in the villainies of the two Russians,
+hastened with cheerful alacrity to their several duties.
+
+The beasts, liberated from the confinement of the hold, wandered about
+the deck, not a little to the discomfiture of the crew in whose minds
+there remained a still vivid picture of the savagery of the beasts in
+conflict with those who had gone to their deaths beneath the fangs and
+talons which even now seemed itching for the soft flesh of further
+prey.
+
+Beneath the watchful eyes of Tarzan and Mugambi, however, Sheeta and
+the apes of Akut curbed their desires, so that the men worked about the
+deck amongst them in far greater security than they imagined.
+
+At last the Kincaid slipped down the Ugambi and ran out upon the
+shimmering waters of the Atlantic. Tarzan and Jane Clayton watched the
+verdure-clad shore-line receding in the ship’s wake, and for once the
+ape-man left his native soil without one single pang of regret.
+
+No ship that sailed the seven seas could have borne him away from
+Africa to resume his search for his lost boy with half the speed that
+the Englishman would have desired, and the slow-moving Kincaid seemed
+scarce to move at all to the impatient mind of the bereaved father.
+
+Yet the vessel made progress even when she seemed to be standing still,
+and presently the low hills of Jungle Island became distinctly visible
+upon the western horizon ahead.
+
+In the cabin of Alexander Paulvitch the thing within the black box
+ticked, ticked, ticked, with apparently unending monotony; but yet,
+second by second, a little arm which protruded from the periphery of
+one of its wheels came nearer and nearer to another little arm which
+projected from the hand which Paulvitch had set at a certain point upon
+the dial beside the clockwork. When those two arms touched one another
+the ticking of the mechanism would cease—for ever.
+
+Jane and Tarzan stood upon the bridge looking out toward Jungle Island.
+The men were forward, also watching the land grow upward out of the
+ocean. The beasts had sought the shade of the galley, where they were
+curled up in sleep. All was quiet and peace upon the ship, and upon the
+waters.
+
+Suddenly, without warning, the cabin roof shot up into the air, a cloud
+of dense smoke puffed far above the Kincaid, there was a terrific
+explosion which shook the vessel from stem to stern.
+
+Instantly pandemonium broke loose upon the deck. The apes of Akut,
+terrified by the sound, ran hither and thither, snarling and growling.
+Sheeta leaped here and there, screaming out his startled terror in
+hideous cries that sent the ice of fear straight to the hearts of the
+Kincaid’s crew.
+
+Mugambi, too, was trembling. Only Tarzan of the Apes and his wife
+retained their composure. Scarce had the debris settled than the
+ape-man was among the beasts, quieting their fears, talking to them in
+low, pacific tones, stroking their shaggy bodies, and assuring them, as
+only he could, that the immediate danger was over.
+
+An examination of the wreckage showed that their greatest danger, now,
+lay in fire, for the flames were licking hungrily at the splintered
+wood of the wrecked cabin, and had already found a foothold upon the
+lower deck through a great jagged hole which the explosion had opened.
+
+By a miracle no member of the ship’s company had been injured by the
+blast, the origin of which remained for ever a total mystery to all but
+one—the sailor who knew that Paulvitch had been aboard the Kincaid and
+in his cabin the previous night. He guessed the truth; but discretion
+sealed his lips. It would, doubtless, fare none too well for the man
+who had permitted the arch enemy of them all aboard the ship in the
+watches of the night, where later he might set an infernal machine to
+blow them all to kingdom come. No, the man decided that he would keep
+this knowledge to himself.
+
+As the flames gained headway it became apparent to Tarzan that whatever
+had caused the explosion had scattered some highly inflammable
+substance upon the surrounding woodwork, for the water which they
+poured in from the pump seemed rather to spread than to extinguish the
+blaze.
+
+Fifteen minutes after the explosion great, black clouds of smoke were
+rising from the hold of the doomed vessel. The flames had reached the
+engine-room, and the ship no longer moved toward the shore. Her fate
+was as certain as though the waters had already closed above her
+charred and smoking remains.
+
+“It is useless to remain aboard her longer,” remarked the ape-man to
+the mate. “There is no telling but there may be other explosions, and
+as we cannot hope to save her, the safest thing which we can do is to
+take to the boats without further loss of time and make land.”
+
+Nor was there other alternative. Only the sailors could bring away any
+belongings, for the fire, which had not yet reached the forecastle, had
+consumed all in the vicinity of the cabin which the explosion had not
+destroyed.
+
+Two boats were lowered, and as there was no sea the landing was made
+with infinite ease. Eager and anxious, the beasts of Tarzan sniffed the
+familiar air of their native island as the small boats drew in toward
+the beach, and scarce had their keels grated upon the sand than Sheeta
+and the apes of Akut were over the bows and racing swiftly toward the
+jungle. A half-sad smile curved the lips of the ape-man as he watched
+them go.
+
+“Good-bye, my friends,” he murmured. “You have been good and faithful
+allies, and I shall miss you.”
+
+“They will return, will they not, dear?” asked Jane Clayton, at his
+side.
+
+“They may and they may not,” replied the ape-man. “They have been ill
+at ease since they were forced to accept so many human beings into
+their confidence. Mugambi and I alone affected them less, for he and I
+are, at best, but half human. You, however, and the members of the crew
+are far too civilized for my beasts—it is you whom they are fleeing.
+Doubtless they feel that they cannot trust themselves in the close
+vicinity of so much perfectly good food without the danger that they
+may help themselves to a mouthful some time by mistake.”
+
+Jane laughed. “I think they are just trying to escape you,” she
+retorted. “You are always making them stop something which they see no
+reason why they should not do. Like little children they are doubtless
+delighted at this opportunity to flee from the zone of parental
+discipline. If they come back, though, I hope they won’t come by
+night.”
+
+“Or come hungry, eh?” laughed Tarzan.
+
+For two hours after landing the little party stood watching the burning
+ship which they had abandoned. Then there came faintly to them from
+across the water the sound of a second explosion. The Kincaid settled
+rapidly almost immediately thereafter, and sank within a few minutes.
+
+The cause of the second explosion was less a mystery than that of the
+first, the mate attributing it to the bursting of the boilers when the
+flames had finally reached them; but what had caused the first
+explosion was a subject of considerable speculation among the stranded
+company.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+Jungle Island Again
+
+
+The first consideration of the party was to locate fresh water and make
+camp, for all knew that their term of existence upon Jungle Island
+might be drawn out to months, or even years.
+
+Tarzan knew the nearest water, and to this he immediately led the
+party. Here the men fell to work to construct shelters and rude
+furniture while Tarzan went into the jungle after meat, leaving the
+faithful Mugambi and the Mosula woman to guard Jane, whose safety he
+would never trust to any member of the Kincaid’s cut-throat crew.
+
+Lady Greystoke suffered far greater anguish than any other of the
+castaways, for the blow to her hopes and her already cruelly lacerated
+mother-heart lay not in her own privations but in the knowledge that
+she might now never be able to learn the fate of her first-born or do
+aught to discover his whereabouts, or ameliorate his condition—a
+condition which imagination naturally pictured in the most frightful
+forms.
+
+For two weeks the party divided the time amongst the various duties
+which had been allotted to each. A daylight watch was maintained from
+sunrise to sunset upon a bluff near the camp—a jutting shoulder of rock
+which overlooked the sea. Here, ready for instant lighting, was
+gathered a huge pile of dry branches, while from a lofty pole which
+they had set in the ground there floated an improvised distress signal
+fashioned from a red undershirt which belonged to the mate of the
+Kincaid.
+
+But never a speck upon the horizon that might be sail or smoke rewarded
+the tired eyes that in their endless, hopeless vigil strained daily out
+across the vast expanse of ocean.
+
+It was Tarzan who suggested, finally, that they attempt to construct a
+vessel that would bear them back to the mainland. He alone could show
+them how to fashion rude tools, and when the idea had taken root in the
+minds of the men they were eager to commence their labours.
+
+But as time went on and the Herculean nature of their task became more
+and more apparent they fell to grumbling, and to quarrelling among
+themselves, so that to the other dangers were now added dissension and
+suspicion.
+
+More than before did Tarzan now fear to leave Jane among the half
+brutes of the Kincaid’s crew; but hunting he must do, for none other
+could so surely go forth and return with meat as he. Sometimes Mugambi
+spelled him at the hunting; but the black’s spear and arrows were never
+so sure of results as the rope and knife of the ape-man.
+
+Finally the men shirked their work, going off into the jungle by twos
+to explore and to hunt. All this time the camp had had no sight of
+Sheeta, or Akut and the other great apes, though Tarzan had sometimes
+met them in the jungle as he hunted.
+
+And as matters tended from bad to worse in the camp of the castaways
+upon the east coast of Jungle Island, another camp came into being upon
+the north coast.
+
+Here, in a little cove, lay a small schooner, the Cowrie, whose decks
+had but a few days since run red with the blood of her officers and the
+loyal members of her crew, for the Cowrie had fallen upon bad days when
+it had shipped such men as Gust and Momulla the Maori and that
+arch-fiend Kai Shang of Fachan.
+
+There were others, too, ten of them all told, the scum of the South Sea
+ports; but Gust and Momulla and Kai Shang were the brains and cunning
+of the company. It was they who had instigated the mutiny that they
+might seize and divide the catch of pearls which constituted the wealth
+of the Cowrie’s cargo.
+
+It was Kai Shang who had murdered the captain as he lay asleep in his
+berth, and it had been Momulla the Maori who had led the attack upon
+the officer of the watch.
+
+Gust, after his own peculiar habit, had found means to delegate to the
+others the actual taking of life. Not that Gust entertained any
+scruples on the subject, other than those which induced in him a rare
+regard for his own personal safety. There is always a certain element
+of risk to the assassin, for victims of deadly assault are seldom prone
+to die quietly and considerately. There is always a certain element of
+risk to go so far as to dispute the issue with the murderer. It was
+this chance of dispute which Gust preferred to forgo.
+
+But now that the work was done the Swede aspired to the position of
+highest command among the mutineers. He had even gone so far as to
+appropriate and wear certain articles belonging to the murdered captain
+of the Cowrie—articles of apparel which bore upon them the badges and
+insignia of authority.
+
+Kai Shang was peeved. He had no love for authority, and certainly not
+the slightest intention of submitting to the domination of an ordinary
+Swede sailor.
+
+The seeds of discontent were, therefore, already planted in the camp of
+the mutineers of the Cowrie at the north edge of Jungle Island. But Kai
+Shang realized that he must act with circumspection, for Gust alone of
+the motley horde possessed sufficient knowledge of navigation to get
+them out of the South Atlantic and around the cape into more congenial
+waters where they might find a market for their ill-gotten wealth, and
+no questions asked.
+
+The day before they sighted Jungle Island and discovered the little
+land-locked harbour upon the bosom of which the Cowrie now rode quietly
+at anchor, the watch had discovered the smoke and funnels of a warship
+upon the southern horizon.
+
+The chance of being spoken to and investigated by a man-of-war appealed
+not at all to any of them, so they put into hiding for a few days until
+the danger should have passed.
+
+And now Gust did not wish to venture out to sea again. There was no
+telling, he insisted, but that the ship they had seen was actually
+searching for them. Kai Shang pointed out that such could not be the
+case since it was impossible for any human being other than themselves
+to have knowledge of what had transpired aboard the Cowrie.
+
+But Gust was not to be persuaded. In his wicked heart he nursed a
+scheme whereby he might increase his share of the booty by something
+like one hundred per cent. He alone could sail the Cowrie, therefore
+the others could not leave Jungle Island without him; but what was
+there to prevent Gust, with just sufficient men to man the schooner,
+slipping away from Kai Shang, Momulla the Maori, and some half of the
+crew when opportunity presented?
+
+It was for this opportunity that Gust waited. Some day there would come
+a moment when Kai Shang, Momulla, and three or four of the others would
+be absent from camp, exploring or hunting. The Swede racked his brain
+for some plan whereby he might successfully lure from the sight of the
+anchored ship those whom he had determined to abandon.
+
+To this end he organized hunting party after hunting party, but always
+the devil of perversity seemed to enter the soul of Kai Shang, so that
+wily celestial would never hunt except in the company of Gust himself.
+
+One day Kai Shang spoke secretly with Momulla the Maori, pouring into
+the brown ear of his companion the suspicions which he harboured
+concerning the Swede. Momulla was for going immediately and running a
+long knife through the heart of the traitor.
+
+It is true that Kai Shang had no other evidence than the natural
+cunning of his own knavish soul—but he imagined in the intentions of
+Gust what he himself would have been glad to accomplish had the means
+lain at hand.
+
+But he dared not let Momulla slay the Swede, upon whom they depended to
+guide them to their destination. They decided, however, that it would
+do no harm to attempt to frighten Gust into acceding to their demands,
+and with this purpose in mind the Maori sought out the self-constituted
+commander of the party.
+
+When he broached the subject of immediate departure Gust again raised
+his former objection—that the warship might very probably be patrolling
+the sea directly in their southern path, waiting for them to make the
+attempt to reach other waters.
+
+Momulla scoffed at the fears of his fellow, pointing out that as no one
+aboard any warship knew of their mutiny there could be no reason why
+they should be suspected.
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Gust, “there is where you are wrong. There is where you
+are lucky that you have an educated man like me to tell you what to do.
+You are an ignorant savage, Momulla, and so you know nothing of
+wireless.”
+
+The Maori leaped to his feet and laid his hand upon the hilt of his
+knife.
+
+“I am no savage,” he shouted.
+
+“I was only joking,” the Swede hastened to explain. “We are old
+friends, Momulla; we cannot afford to quarrel, at least not while old
+Kai Shang is plotting to steal all the pearls from us. If he could find
+a man to navigate the Cowrie he would leave us in a minute. All his
+talk about getting away from here is just because he has some scheme in
+his head to get rid of us.”
+
+“But the wireless,” asked Momulla. “What has the wireless to do with
+our remaining here?”
+
+“Oh yes,” replied Gust, scratching his head. He was wondering if the
+Maori were really so ignorant as to believe the preposterous lie he was
+about to unload upon him. “Oh yes! You see every warship is equipped
+with what they call a wireless apparatus. It lets them talk to other
+ships hundreds of miles away, and it lets them listen to all that is
+said on these other ships. Now, you see, when you fellows were shooting
+up the Cowrie you did a whole lot of loud talking, and there isn’t any
+doubt but that that warship was a-lyin’ off south of us listenin’ to it
+all. Of course they might not have learned the name of the ship, but
+they heard enough to know that the crew of some ship was mutinying and
+killin’ her officers. So you see they’ll be waiting to search every
+ship they sight for a long time to come, and they may not be far away
+now.”
+
+When he had ceased speaking the Swede strove to assume an air of
+composure that his listener might not have his suspicions aroused as to
+the truth of the statements that had just been made.
+
+Momulla sat for some time in silence, eyeing Gust. At last he rose.
+
+“You are a great liar,” he said. “If you don’t get us on our way by
+tomorrow you’ll never have another chance to lie, for I heard two of
+the men saying that they’d like to run a knife into you and that if you
+kept them in this hole any longer they’d do it.”
+
+“Go and ask Kai Shang if there is not a wireless,” replied Gust. “He
+will tell you that there is such a thing and that vessels can talk to
+one another across hundreds of miles of water. Then say to the two men
+who wish to kill me that if they do so they will never live to spend
+their share of the swag, for only I can get you safely to any port.”
+
+So Momulla went to Kai Shang and asked him if there was such an
+apparatus as a wireless by means of which ships could talk with each
+other at great distances, and Kai Shang told him that there was.
+
+Momulla was puzzled; but still he wished to leave the island, and was
+willing to take his chances on the open sea rather than to remain
+longer in the monotony of the camp.
+
+“If we only had someone else who could navigate a ship!” wailed Kai
+Shang.
+
+That afternoon Momulla went hunting with two other Maoris. They hunted
+toward the south, and had not gone far from camp when they were
+surprised by the sound of voices ahead of them in the jungle.
+
+They knew that none of their own men had preceded them, and as all were
+convinced that the island was uninhabited, they were inclined to flee
+in terror on the hypothesis that the place was haunted—possibly by the
+ghosts of the murdered officers and men of the Cowrie.
+
+But Momulla was even more curious than he was superstitious, and so he
+quelled his natural desire to flee from the supernatural. Motioning his
+companions to follow his example, he dropped to his hands and knees,
+crawling forward stealthily and with quakings of heart through the
+jungle in the direction from which came the voices of the unseen
+speakers.
+
+Presently, at the edge of a little clearing, he halted, and there he
+breathed a deep sigh of relief, for plainly before him he saw two
+flesh-and-blood men sitting upon a fallen log and talking earnestly
+together.
+
+One was Schneider, mate of the Kincaid, and the other was a seaman
+named Schmidt.
+
+“I think we can do it, Schmidt,” Schneider was saying. “A good canoe
+wouldn’t be hard to build, and three of us could paddle it to the
+mainland in a day if the wind was right and the sea reasonably calm.
+There ain’t no use waiting for the men to build a big enough boat to
+take the whole party, for they’re sore now and sick of working like
+slaves all day long. It ain’t none of our business anyway to save the
+Englishman. Let him look out for himself, says I.” He paused for a
+moment, and then eyeing the other to note the effect of his next words,
+he continued, “But we might take the woman. It would be a shame to
+leave a nice-lookin’ piece like she is in such a Gott-forsaken hole as
+this here island.”
+
+Schmidt looked up and grinned.
+
+“So that’s how she’s blowin’, is it?” he asked. “Why didn’t you say so
+in the first place? Wot’s in it for me if I help you?”
+
+“She ought to pay us well to get her back to civilization,” explained
+Schneider, “an’ I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll just whack up with the
+two men that helps me. I’ll take half an’ they can divide the other
+half—you an’ whoever the other bloke is. I’m sick of this place, an’
+the sooner I get out of it the better I’ll like it. What do you say?”
+
+“Suits me,” replied Schmidt. “I wouldn’t know how to reach the mainland
+myself, an’ know that none o’ the other fellows would, so’s you’re the
+only one that knows anything of navigation you’re the fellow I’ll tie
+to.”
+
+Momulla the Maori pricked up his ears. He had a smattering of every
+tongue that is spoken upon the seas, and more than a few times had he
+sailed on English ships, so that he understood fairly well all that had
+passed between Schneider and Schmidt since he had stumbled upon them.
+
+He rose to his feet and stepped into the clearing. Schneider and his
+companion started as nervously as though a ghost had risen before them.
+Schneider reached for his revolver. Momulla raised his right hand, palm
+forward, as a sign of his pacific intentions.
+
+“I am a friend,” he said. “I heard you; but do not fear that I will
+reveal what you have said. I can help you, and you can help me.” He was
+addressing Schneider. “You can navigate a ship, but you have no ship.
+We have a ship, but no one to navigate it. If you will come with us and
+ask no questions we will let you take the ship where you will after you
+have landed us at a certain port, the name of which we will give you
+later. You can take the woman of whom you speak, and we will ask no
+questions either. Is it a bargain?”
+
+Schneider desired more information, and got as much as Momulla thought
+best to give him. Then the Maori suggested that they speak with Kai
+Shang. The two members of the Kincaid’s company followed Momulla and
+his fellows to a point in the jungle close by the camp of the
+mutineers. Here Momulla hid them while he went in search of Kai Shang,
+first admonishing his Maori companions to stand guard over the two
+sailors lest they change their minds and attempt to escape. Schneider
+and Schmidt were virtually prisoners, though they did not know it.
+
+Presently Momulla returned with Kai Shang, to whom he had briefly
+narrated the details of the stroke of good fortune that had come to
+them. The Chinaman spoke at length with Schneider, until,
+notwithstanding his natural suspicion of the sincerity of all men, he
+became quite convinced that Schneider was quite as much a rogue as
+himself and that the fellow was anxious to leave the island.
+
+These two premises accepted there could be little doubt that Schneider
+would prove trustworthy in so far as accepting the command of the
+Cowrie was concerned; after that Kai Shang knew that he could find
+means to coerce the man into submission to his further wishes.
+
+When Schneider and Schmidt left them and set out in the direction of
+their own camp, it was with feelings of far greater relief than they
+had experienced in many a day. Now at last they saw a feasible plan for
+leaving the island upon a seaworthy craft. There would be no more hard
+labour at ship-building, and no risking their lives upon a crudely
+built makeshift that would be quite as likely to go to the bottom as it
+would to reach the mainland.
+
+Also, they were to have assistance in capturing the woman, or rather
+women, for when Momulla had learned that there was a black woman in the
+other camp he had insisted that she be brought along as well as the
+white woman.
+
+As Kai Shang and Momulla entered their camp, it was with a realization
+that they no longer needed Gust. They marched straight to the tent in
+which they might expect to find him at that hour of the day, for though
+it would have been more comfortable for the entire party to remain
+aboard the ship, they had mutually decided that it would be safer for
+all concerned were they to pitch their camp ashore.
+
+Each knew that in the heart of the others was sufficient treachery to
+make it unsafe for any member of the party to go ashore leaving the
+others in possession of the Cowrie, so not more than two or three men
+at a time were ever permitted aboard the vessel unless all the balance
+of the company was there too.
+
+As the two crossed toward Gust’s tent the Maori felt the edge of his
+long knife with one grimy, calloused thumb. The Swede would have felt
+far from comfortable could he have seen this significant action, or
+read what was passing amid the convolutions of the brown man’s cruel
+brain.
+
+Now it happened that Gust was at that moment in the tent occupied by
+the cook, and this tent stood but a few feet from his own. So that he
+heard the approach of Kai Shang and Momulla, though he did not, of
+course, dream that it had any special significance for him.
+
+Chance had it, though, that he glanced out of the doorway of the cook’s
+tent at the very moment that Kai Shang and Momulla approached the
+entrance to his, and he thought that he noted a stealthiness in their
+movements that comported poorly with amicable or friendly intentions,
+and then, just as they two slunk within the interior, Gust caught a
+glimpse of the long knife which Momulla the Maori was then carrying
+behind his back.
+
+The Swede’s eyes opened wide, and a funny little sensation assailed the
+roots of his hairs. Also he turned almost white beneath his tan. Quite
+precipitately he left the cook’s tent. He was not one who required a
+detailed exposition of intentions that were quite all too obvious.
+
+As surely as though he had heard them plotting, he knew that Kai Shang
+and Momulla had come to take his life. The knowledge that he alone
+could navigate the Cowrie had, up to now, been sufficient assurance of
+his safety; but quite evidently something had occurred of which he had
+no knowledge that would make it quite worth the while of his
+co-conspirators to eliminate him.
+
+Without a pause Gust darted across the beach and into the jungle. He
+was afraid of the jungle; uncanny noises that were indeed frightful
+came forth from its recesses—the tangled mazes of the mysterious
+country back of the beach.
+
+But if Gust was afraid of the jungle he was far more afraid of Kai
+Shang and Momulla. The dangers of the jungle were more or less
+problematical, while the danger that menaced him at the hands of his
+companions was a perfectly well-known quantity, which might be
+expressed in terms of a few inches of cold steel, or the coil of a
+light rope. He had seen Kai Shang garrotte a man at Pai-sha in a dark
+alleyway back of Loo Kotai’s place. He feared the rope, therefore, more
+than he did the knife of the Maori; but he feared them both too much to
+remain within reach of either. Therefore he chose the pitiless jungle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+The Law of the Jungle
+
+
+In Tarzan’s camp, by dint of threats and promised rewards, the ape-man
+had finally succeeded in getting the hull of a large skiff almost
+completed. Much of the work he and Mugambi had done with their own
+hands in addition to furnishing the camp with meat.
+
+Schneider, the mate, had been doing considerable grumbling, and had at
+last openly deserted the work and gone off into the jungle with Schmidt
+to hunt. He said that he wanted a rest, and Tarzan, rather than add to
+the unpleasantness which already made camp life almost unendurable, had
+permitted the two men to depart without a remonstrance.
+
+Upon the following day, however, Schneider affected a feeling of
+remorse for his action, and set to work with a will upon the skiff.
+Schmidt also worked good-naturedly, and Lord Greystoke congratulated
+himself that at last the men had awakened to the necessity for the
+labour which was being asked of them and to their obligations to the
+balance of the party.
+
+It was with a feeling of greater relief than he had experienced for
+many a day that he set out that noon to hunt deep in the jungle for a
+herd of small deer which Schneider reported that he and Schmidt had
+seen there the day before.
+
+The direction in which Schneider had reported seeing the deer was
+toward the south-west, and to that point the ape-man swung easily
+through the tangled verdure of the forest.
+
+And as he went there approached from the north a half-dozen
+ill-featured men who went stealthily through the jungle as go men bent
+upon the commission of a wicked act.
+
+They thought that they travelled unseen; but behind them, almost from
+the moment they quitted their own camp, a tall man crept upon their
+trail. In the man’s eyes were hate and fear, and a great curiosity. Why
+went Kai Shang and Momulla and the others thus stealthily toward the
+south? What did they expect to find there? Gust shook his low-browed
+head in perplexity. But he would know. He would follow them and learn
+their plans, and then if he could thwart them he would—that went
+without question.
+
+At first he had thought that they searched for him; but finally his
+better judgment assured him that such could not be the case, since they
+had accomplished all they really desired by chasing him out of camp.
+Never would Kai Shang or Momulla go to such pains to slay him or
+another unless it would put money into their pockets, and as Gust had
+no money it was evident that they were searching for someone else.
+
+Presently the party he trailed came to a halt. Its members concealed
+themselves in the foliage bordering the game trail along which they had
+come. Gust, that he might the better observe, clambered into the
+branches of a tree to the rear of them, being careful that the leafy
+fronds hid him from the view of his erstwhile mates.
+
+He had not long to wait before he saw a strange white man approach
+carefully along the trail from the south.
+
+At sight of the new-comer Momulla and Kai Shang arose from their places
+of concealment and greeted him. Gust could not overhear what passed
+between them. Then the man returned in the direction from which he had
+come.
+
+He was Schneider. Nearing his camp he circled to the opposite side of
+it, and presently came running in breathlessly. Excitedly he hastened
+to Mugambi.
+
+“Quick!” he cried. “Those apes of yours have caught Schmidt and will
+kill him if we do not hasten to his aid. You alone can call them off.
+Take Jones and Sullivan—you may need help—and get to him as quick as
+you can. Follow the game trail south for about a mile. I will remain
+here. I am too spent with running to go back with you,” and the mate of
+the Kincaid threw himself upon the ground, panting as though he was
+almost done for.
+
+Mugambi hesitated. He had been left to guard the two women. He did not
+know what to do, and then Jane Clayton, who had heard Schneider’s
+story, added her pleas to those of the mate.
+
+“Do not delay,” she urged. “We shall be all right here. Mr. Schneider
+will remain with us. Go, Mugambi. The poor fellow must be saved.”
+
+Schmidt, who lay hidden in a bush at the edge of the camp, grinned.
+Mugambi, heeding the commands of his mistress, though still doubtful of
+the wisdom of his action, started off toward the south, with Jones and
+Sullivan at his heels.
+
+No sooner had he disappeared than Schmidt rose and darted north into
+the jungle, and a few minutes later the face of Kai Shang of Fachan
+appeared at the edge of the clearing. Schneider saw the Chinaman, and
+motioned to him that the coast was clear.
+
+Jane Clayton and the Mosula woman were sitting at the opening of the
+former’s tent, their backs toward the approaching ruffians. The first
+intimation that either had of the presence of strangers in camp was the
+sudden appearance of a half-dozen ragged villains about them.
+
+“Come!” said Kai Shang, motioning that the two arise and follow him.
+
+Jane Clayton sprang to her feet and looked about for Schneider, only to
+see him standing behind the newcomers, a grin upon his face. At his
+side stood Schmidt. Instantly she saw that she had been made the victim
+of a plot.
+
+“What is the meaning of this?” she asked, addressing the mate.
+
+“It means that we have found a ship and that we can now escape from
+Jungle Island,” replied the man.
+
+“Why did you send Mugambi and the others into the jungle?” she
+inquired.
+
+“They are not coming with us—only you and I, and the Mosula woman.”
+
+“Come!” repeated Kai Shang, and seized Jane Clayton’s wrist.
+
+One of the Maoris grasped the black woman by the arm, and when she
+would have screamed struck her across the mouth.
+
+Mugambi raced through the jungle toward the south. Jones and Sullivan
+trailed far behind. For a mile he continued upon his way to the relief
+of Schmidt, but no signs saw he of the missing man or of any of the
+apes of Akut.
+
+At last he halted and called aloud the summons which he and Tarzan had
+used to hail the great anthropoids. There was no response. Jones and
+Sullivan came up with the black warrior as the latter stood voicing his
+weird call. For another half-mile the black searched, calling
+occasionally.
+
+Finally the truth flashed upon him, and then, like a frightened deer,
+he wheeled and dashed back toward camp. Arriving there, it was but a
+moment before full confirmation of his fears was impressed upon him.
+Lady Greystoke and the Mosula woman were gone. So, likewise, was
+Schneider.
+
+When Jones and Sullivan joined Mugambi he would have killed them in his
+anger, thinking them parties to the plot; but they finally succeeded in
+partially convincing him that they had known nothing of it.
+
+As they stood speculating upon the probable whereabouts of the women
+and their abductor, and the purpose which Schneider had in mind in
+taking them from camp, Tarzan of the Apes swung from the branches of a
+tree and crossed the clearing toward them.
+
+His keen eyes detected at once that something was radically wrong, and
+when he had heard Mugambi’s story his jaws clicked angrily together as
+he knitted his brows in thought.
+
+What could the mate hope to accomplish by taking Jane Clayton from a
+camp upon a small island from which there was no escape from the
+vengeance of Tarzan? The ape-man could not believe the fellow such a
+fool, and then a slight realization of the truth dawned upon him.
+
+Schneider would not have committed such an act unless he had been
+reasonably sure that there was a way by which he could quit Jungle
+Island with his prisoners. But why had he taken the black woman as
+well? There must have been others, one of whom wanted the dusky female.
+
+“Come,” said Tarzan, “there is but one thing to do now, and that is to
+follow the trail.”
+
+As he finished speaking a tall, ungainly figure emerged from the jungle
+north of the camp. He came straight toward the four men. He was an
+entire stranger to all of them, not one of whom had dreamed that
+another human being than those of their own camp dwelt upon the
+unfriendly shores of Jungle Island.
+
+It was Gust. He came directly to the point.
+
+“Your women were stolen,” he said. “If you want ever to see them again,
+come quickly and follow me. If we do not hurry the Cowrie will be
+standing out to sea by the time we reach her anchorage.”
+
+“Who are you?” asked Tarzan. “What do you know of the theft of my wife
+and the black woman?”
+
+“I heard Kai Shang and Momulla the Maori plot with two men of your
+camp. They had chased me from our camp, and would have killed me. Now I
+will get even with them. Come!”
+
+Gust led the four men of the Kincaid’s camp at a rapid trot through the
+jungle toward the north. Would they come to the sea in time? But a few
+more minutes would answer the question.
+
+And when at last the little party did break through the last of the
+screening foliage, and the harbour and the ocean lay before them, they
+realized that fate had been most cruelly unkind, for the Cowrie was
+already under sail and moving slowly out of the mouth of the harbour
+into the open sea.
+
+What were they to do? Tarzan’s broad chest rose and fell to the force
+of his pent emotions. The last blow seemed to have fallen, and if ever
+in all his life Tarzan of the Apes had had occasion to abandon hope it
+was now that he saw the ship bearing his wife to some frightful fate
+moving gracefully over the rippling water, so very near and yet so
+hideously far away.
+
+In silence he stood watching the vessel. He saw it turn toward the east
+and finally disappear around a headland on its way he knew not whither.
+Then he dropped upon his haunches and buried his face in his hands.
+
+It was after dark that the five men returned to the camp on the east
+shore. The night was hot and sultry. No slightest breeze ruffled the
+foliage of the trees or rippled the mirror-like surface of the ocean.
+Only a gentle swell rolled softly in upon the beach.
+
+Never had Tarzan seen the great Atlantic so ominously at peace. He was
+standing at the edge of the beach gazing out to sea in the direction of
+the mainland, his mind filled with sorrow and hopelessness, when from
+the jungle close behind the camp came the uncanny wail of a panther.
+
+There was a familiar note in the weird cry, and almost mechanically
+Tarzan turned his head and answered. A moment later the tawny figure of
+Sheeta slunk out into the half-light of the beach. There was no moon,
+but the sky was brilliant with stars. Silently the savage brute came to
+the side of the man. It had been long since Tarzan had seen his old
+fighting companion, but the soft purr was sufficient to assure him that
+the animal still recalled the bonds which had united them in the past.
+
+The ape-man let his fingers fall upon the beast’s coat, and as Sheeta
+pressed close against his leg he caressed and fondled the wicked head
+while his eyes continued to search the blackness of the waters.
+
+Presently he started. What was that? He strained his eyes into the
+night. Then he turned and called aloud to the men smoking upon their
+blankets in the camp. They came running to his side; but Gust hesitated
+when he saw the nature of Tarzan’s companion.
+
+“Look!” cried Tarzan. “A light! A ship’s light! It must be the Cowrie.
+They are becalmed.” And then with an exclamation of renewed hope, “We
+can reach them! The skiff will carry us easily.”
+
+Gust demurred. “They are well armed,” he warned. “We could not take the
+ship—just five of us.”
+
+“There are six now,” replied Tarzan, pointing to Sheeta, “and we can
+have more still in a half-hour. Sheeta is the equivalent of twenty men,
+and the few others I can bring will add full a hundred to our fighting
+strength. You do not know them.”
+
+The ape-man turned and raised his head toward the jungle, while there
+pealed from his lips, time after time, the fearsome cry of the bull-ape
+who would summon his fellows.
+
+Presently from the jungle came an answering cry, and then another and
+another. Gust shuddered. Among what sort of creatures had fate thrown
+him? Were not Kai Shang and Momulla to be preferred to this great white
+giant who stroked a panther and called to the beasts of the jungle?
+
+In a few minutes the apes of Akut came crashing through the underbrush
+and out upon the beach, while in the meantime the five men had been
+struggling with the unwieldy bulk of the skiff’s hull.
+
+By dint of Herculean efforts they had managed to get it to the water’s
+edge. The oars from the two small boats of the Kincaid, which had been
+washed away by an off-shore wind the very night that the party had
+landed, had been in use to support the canvas of the sailcloth tents.
+These were hastily requisitioned, and by the time Akut and his
+followers came down to the water all was ready for embarkation.
+
+Once again the hideous crew entered the service of their master, and
+without question took up their places in the skiff. The four men, for
+Gust could not be prevailed upon to accompany the party, fell to the
+oars, using them paddle-wise, while some of the apes followed their
+example, and presently the ungainly skiff was moving quietly out to sea
+in the direction of the light which rose and fell gently with the
+swell.
+
+A sleepy sailor kept a poor vigil upon the Cowrie’s deck, while in the
+cabin below Schneider paced up and down arguing with Jane Clayton. The
+woman had found a revolver in a table drawer in the room in which she
+had been locked, and now she kept the mate of the Kincaid at bay with
+the weapon.
+
+The Mosula woman kneeled behind her, while Schneider paced up and down
+before the door, threatening and pleading and promising, but all to no
+avail. Presently from the deck above came a shout of warning and a
+shot. For an instant Jane Clayton relaxed her vigilance, and turned her
+eyes toward the cabin skylight. Simultaneously Schneider was upon her.
+
+The first intimation the watch had that there was another craft within
+a thousand miles of the Cowrie came when he saw the head and shoulders
+of a man poked over the ship’s side. Instantly the fellow sprang to his
+feet with a cry and levelled his revolver at the intruder. It was his
+cry and the subsequent report of the revolver which threw Jane Clayton
+off her guard.
+
+Upon deck the quiet of fancied security soon gave place to the wildest
+pandemonium. The crew of the Cowrie rushed above armed with revolvers,
+cutlasses, and the long knives that many of them habitually wore; but
+the alarm had come too late. Already the beasts of Tarzan were upon the
+ship’s deck, with Tarzan and the two men of the Kincaid’s crew.
+
+In the face of the frightful beasts the courage of the mutineers
+wavered and broke. Those with revolvers fired a few scattering shots
+and then raced for some place of supposed safety. Into the shrouds went
+some; but the apes of Akut were more at home there than they.
+
+Screaming with terror the Maoris were dragged from their lofty perches.
+The beasts, uncontrolled by Tarzan who had gone in search of Jane,
+loosed the full fury of their savage natures upon the unhappy wretches
+who fell into their clutches.
+
+Sheeta, in the meanwhile, had felt his great fangs sink into but a
+single jugular. For a moment he mauled the corpse, and then he spied
+Kai Shang darting down the companionway toward his cabin.
+
+With a shrill scream Sheeta was after him—a scream which awoke an
+almost equally uncanny cry in the throat of the terror-stricken
+Chinaman.
+
+But Kai Shang reached his cabin a fraction of a second ahead of the
+panther, and leaping within slammed the door—just too late. Sheeta’s
+great body hurtled against it before the catch engaged, and a moment
+later Kai Shang was gibbering and shrieking in the back of an upper
+berth.
+
+Lightly Sheeta sprang after his victim, and presently the wicked days
+of Kai Shang of Fachan were ended, and Sheeta was gorging himself upon
+tough and stringy flesh.
+
+A moment scarcely had elapsed after Schneider leaped upon Jane Clayton
+and wrenched the revolver from her hand, when the door of the cabin
+opened and a tall and half-naked white man stood framed within the
+portal.
+
+Silently he leaped across the cabin. Schneider felt sinewy fingers at
+his throat. He turned his head to see who had attacked him, and his
+eyes went wide when he saw the face of the ape-man close above his own.
+
+Grimly the fingers tightened upon the mate’s throat. He tried to
+scream, to plead, but no sound came forth. His eyes protruded as he
+struggled for freedom, for breath, for life.
+
+Jane Clayton seized her husband’s hands and tried to drag them from the
+throat of the dying man; but Tarzan only shook his head.
+
+“Not again,” he said quietly. “Before have I permitted scoundrels to
+live, only to suffer and to have you suffer for my mercy. This time we
+shall make sure of one scoundrel—sure that he will never again harm us
+or another,” and with a sudden wrench he twisted the neck of the
+perfidious mate until there was a sharp crack, and the man’s body lay
+limp and motionless in the ape-man’s grasp. With a gesture of disgust
+Tarzan tossed the corpse aside. Then he returned to the deck, followed
+by Jane and the Mosula woman.
+
+The battle there was over. Schmidt and Momulla and two others alone
+remained alive of all the company of the Cowrie, for they had found
+sanctuary in the forecastle. The others had died, horribly, and as they
+deserved, beneath the fangs and talons of the beasts of Tarzan, and in
+the morning the sun rose on a grisly sight upon the deck of the unhappy
+Cowrie; but this time the blood which stained her white planking was
+the blood of the guilty and not of the innocent.
+
+Tarzan brought forth the men who had hidden in the forecastle, and
+without promises of immunity from punishment forced them to help work
+the vessel—the only alternative was immediate death.
+
+A stiff breeze had risen with the sun, and with canvas spread the
+Cowrie set in toward Jungle Island, where a few hours later, Tarzan
+picked up Gust and bid farewell to Sheeta and the apes of Akut, for
+here he set the beasts ashore to pursue the wild and natural life they
+loved so well; nor did they lose a moment’s time in disappearing into
+the cool depths of their beloved jungle.
+
+That they knew that Tarzan was to leave them may be doubted—except
+possibly in the case of the more intelligent Akut, who alone of all the
+others remained upon the beach as the small boat drew away toward the
+schooner, carrying his savage lord and master from him.
+
+And as long as their eyes could span the distance, Jane and Tarzan,
+standing upon the deck, saw the lonely figure of the shaggy anthropoid
+motionless upon the surf-beaten sands of Jungle Island.
+
+It was three days later that the Cowrie fell in with H.M. sloop-of-war
+Shorewater, through whose wireless Lord Greystoke soon got in
+communication with London. Thus he learned that which filled his and
+his wife’s heart with joy and thanksgiving—little Jack was safe at Lord
+Greystoke’s town house.
+
+It was not until they reached London that they learned the details of
+the remarkable chain of circumstances that had preserved the infant
+unharmed.
+
+It developed that Rokoff, fearing to take the child aboard the Kincaid
+by day, had hidden it in a low den where nameless infants were
+harboured, intending to carry it to the steamer after dark.
+
+His confederate and chief lieutenant, Paulvitch, true to the long years
+of teaching of his wily master, had at last succumbed to the treachery
+and greed that had always marked his superior, and, lured by the
+thoughts of the immense ransom that he might win by returning the child
+unharmed, had divulged the secret of its parentage to the woman who
+maintained the foundling asylum. Through her he had arranged for the
+substitution of another infant, knowing full well that never until it
+was too late would Rokoff suspect the trick that had been played upon
+him.
+
+The woman had promised to keep the child until Paulvitch returned to
+England; but she, in turn, had been tempted to betray her trust by the
+lure of gold, and so had opened negotiations with Lord Greystoke’s
+solicitors for the return of the child.
+
+Esmeralda, the old Negro nurse whose absence on a vacation in America
+at the time of the abduction of little Jack had been attributed by her
+as the cause of the calamity, had returned and positively identified
+the infant.
+
+The ransom had been paid, and within ten days of the date of his
+kidnapping the future Lord Greystoke, none the worse for his
+experience, had been returned to his father’s home.
+
+And so that last and greatest of Nikolas Rokoff’s many rascalities had
+not only miserably miscarried through the treachery he had taught his
+only friend, but it had resulted in the arch-villain’s death, and given
+to Lord and Lady Greystoke a peace of mind that neither could ever have
+felt so long as the vital spark remained in the body of the Russian and
+his malign mind was free to formulate new atrocities against them.
+
+Rokoff was dead, and while the fate of Paulvitch was unknown, they had
+every reason to believe that he had succumbed to the dangers of the
+jungle where last they had seen him—the malicious tool of his master.
+
+And thus, in so far as they might know, they were to be freed for ever
+from the menace of these two men—the only enemies which Tarzan of the
+Apes ever had had occasion to fear, because they struck at him cowardly
+blows, through those he loved.
+
+It was a happy family party that were reunited in Greystoke House the
+day that Lord Greystoke and his lady landed upon English soil from the
+deck of the Shorewater.
+
+Accompanying them were Mugambi and the Mosula woman whom he had found
+in the bottom of the canoe that night upon the bank of the little
+tributary of the Ugambi.
+
+The woman had preferred to cling to her new lord and master rather than
+return to the marriage she had tried to escape.
+
+Tarzan had proposed to them that they might find a home upon his vast
+African estates in the land of the Waziri, where they were to be sent
+as soon as opportunity presented itself.
+
+Possibly we shall see them all there amid the savage romance of the
+grim jungle and the great plains where Tarzan of the Apes loves best to
+be.
+
+Who knows?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEASTS OF TARZAN ***
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