The Beasts of Tarzan

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.