 CHAPTER XI John Caldwell, London As Numael Adria launched himself with widespread pause and bared fangs, he looked to find this puny man as easy prey as the score who had gone down beneath him in the past. To him man was a clumsy, slow-moving, defenceless creature, he had little respect for him. But this time he found that he was pitted against a creature as agile and as quick as himself. When his mighty frame struck the spot where the man had been, he was no longer there. The watching girl was transfixed by astonishment at ease with which the crouching man eluded the great pause. And now, Oala, he had rushed in behind L. Adria's shoulder even before the beast could turn and had grasped him by the mane. The lion reared upon his hind legs like a horse, Tarzan had known that he would do this, and he was ready. A giant arm encircled the black mane throat, and once, twice, a dozen times a sharp blade darted in and out of the bay black side behind the left shoulder. Frantic were the leaps of Numa, awful his roars of rage and pain, but the giant upon his back could not be dislodged or brought within reach of fangs or talons in the brief interval of life that remained to the Lord with the large head. He was quite dead when Tarzan of the Apes released his hold and arose. Then the daughter of the desert witnessed a thing that terrified her even more than had the presence of L. Adria, the man placed a foot upon the carcass of his kill and with his handsome face raised toward the full moon gave voice to the most frightful cry that ever had smote upon her ears. With a little cry of fear she shrank away from him. She thought that the fearful strain of the encounter had driven him mad. As the last note of that fiendish chalengs died out in the diminishing echoes of the distance, the man dropped his eyes until they rested upon the girl. Instantly his face was lighted by the kindly smile that was ample assurance of his sanity and the girl breathed freely once again, smiling in response. "'What manner of man are you?' she asked. "'The thing you have done is unheard of. Even now I cannot believe that it is possible for a lone man armed only with a knife to have fought hand to hand with L. Adria and conquered him and scabed to have conquered him at all. And that cry, it was not human. Why did you do that?' Tarzan flashed. "'It is because I forget, sometimes, that I am a civilized man,' he said. "'When I kill it must be that I am another creature.' He did not try to explain further, for it always seemed to him that a woman must look with loathing upon one who was yet so nearly a beast. Together they continued their journey. The sun was an hour high when they came out into the desert again beyond the mountains. Beside a little rivulet they found the girl's horses grazing. They had come this far on their way home, and with the cause of their fear no longer present had stopped to feed. With little trouble Tarzan and the girl caught them and, mounting, rode out into the desert toward the duar of Sheikh Adur ben Sadun. No sign of pursuit developed, and they came in safely about nine o'clock to their destination. The Sheikh had but just returned. He was frantic with grief at the absence of his daughter, whom he thought had been again abducted by the marauders. With fifty men he was already mounted to go in search of her when the two rode into the duar. His joy at the safe return of his daughter was only equalled by his gratitude to Tarzan for bringing her safely to him through the dangers of the night, and his thankfulness that she had been in time to save the man who had once saved her. No honor that Adur ben Sadun could heap upon the ape-man in acknowledgment of his esteem and friendship was neglected. When the girl had recited the story of the slaying of El Adria Tarzan was surrounded by a mob of worshipping Arabs. It was a sure road to their admiration and respect. The old Sheikh insisted that Tarzan remain indefinitely as his guest. Even wished to adopt him as a member of the tribe, and there was for some time a half-formed resolution in the ape-man's mind to accept and remain forever with these wild people whom he understood and who seemed to understand him. His friendship and liking for the girl were potent factors in urging him toward an affirmative decision. Had she been a man, he argued, he should not have hesitated, for it would have meant a friend after his own heart, with whom he could ride and hunt at will. But as it was they would be hedged by the conventionalities that are even more strictly observed by the wild nomads of the desert than by their more civilized brothers and sisters, and in a little while she would be married to one of these swarthy warriors, and there would be an end to their friendship. So he decided against the Sheikh's proposal, though he remained a week as his guest. When he left, Qador Ben-Saidan and fifty white-robed warriors rode with him to Boo Sa'eda. While they were mounting in the duar of Qador Ben-Saidan the morning of their departure, the girl came to bid farewell to Tarzan. I have prayed that you would remain with us, she said simply as he leaned from his saddle to clasp her hand in farewell, and now I shall pray that you will return. There was an expression of wistfulness in her beautiful eyes, and a pathetic group at the corners of her mouth. Tarzan was touched, who knows, and then he turned and rode after the departing A-Rabs. Outside Boo Sa'eda he bade Qador Ben-Saidan and his men goodbye, for there were reasons which made him wish to make his entry into the town as secret as possible, and when he had explained them to the sheikh, the latter concurred in his decision. The A-Rabs were to enter Boo Sa'eda ahead of him, saying nothing as to his presence with them. Later Tarzan would come in alone and go directly to an obscure native inn. Thus, making his entrance after dark as he did, he was not seen by any one who knew him, and reached the inn unobserved. After dining with Qador Ben-Saidan as his guest he went to his former hotel by a roundabout way, and coming in by a rear entrance sought the proprietor who seemed much surprised to see him alive. Yes, there was mail for M. He would fetch it. No, he would mention M.'s return to no one. Presently he returned with a packet of letters. One was an order from his superior to lay off on his present work and hastened to Cape Town by the first steamer he could get. His further instructions would be awaiting him there in the hands of another agent whose name and address were given. That was all. Brief, but explicit. Tarzan arranged to leave Boo Sa'eda early the next morning. Then he started for the garrison to see Captain Girard, whom a hotel man had told him had returned with his detachment the previous day. He found the officer in his quarters. He was filled with surprise and pleasure at seeing Tarzan alive and well. When Lieutenant Genois returned and reported that he had not found you at the spot that you had chosen to remain while the detachment was scouting, I was filled with alarm. We searched the mountain for days. Then came word that you had been killed and eaten by a lion. As proof your gun was brought to us. Your horse had returned to camp the second day after your disappearance we could not doubt. Lieutenant Genois was grief-stricken. He took all the blame upon himself. It was he who insisted on carrying on the search himself. It was he who found the A-Rab with your gun. He will be delighted to know that you are safe. Doubtless, said Tarzan, with a grim smile. He is down in the town now, or I should send for him, continued Captain Girard. I shall tell him as soon as he returns. Tarzan let the officer think that he had been lost, wandering finally into the duar of Kador Ben-Saden, who had escorted him back to Bousa Eda. As soon as possible he bade the good officer adieu and hastened back into the town. At the native inn he had learned through Kador Ben-Saden a piece of interesting information. It told of a black-bearded white man who went always disguised as an A-Rab, for a time he had nursed a broken wrist. More recently he had been away from Bousa Eda, but now he was back, and Tarzan knew his place of concealment. It was for there he headed, through narrow, stinking alleys, black as Erebus he groped, and been up a rickety stairway, at the end of which was a closed door and a tiny unglazed window. The window was high under the low eaves of the mud-building. Tarzan could just reach the cell. He raised himself slowly until his eyes topped it. The room within was lighted, and at a table sat Rokov and Gernois. Gernois was speaking. Rokov! You are a devil! he was saying. You have hounded me until I have lost the last shred of my honour. You have driven me to murder, for the blood of that man Tarzan is on my hands, if it were not that that other devil's spawn, Pulvitch, still knew my secret, I should kill you here tonight with my bare hands. Rokov laughed. You would not do that, my dear Lieutenant, he said. The moment I am reported dead by assassination, that dear Alexis will forward to the Minister of War full proof of the affair you so ardently long to conceal, and further will charge you with my murder. Come, be sensible, I am your best friend. Have I not protected your honour, as though it were my own? Gernois sneered and spat out an oath. Just one more little payment, continued Rokov, and the papers I wish, and you have my word of honour that I shall never ask another cent from you, or further information. And a good reason why, growled Gernois, what you ask will take my last cent, and the only valuable military secret I hold. You ought to be paying me for the information, instead of taking both it and money too. I am paying you by keeping a still tongue in my head, retorted Rokov. But let's have done. Will you or will you not? I give you three minutes to decide. If you are not agreeable, I shall send a note to your commandant tonight that will end in the degradation that Dreyfus suffered, the only difference being that he did not deserve it. For a moment Gernois sat with bowed head. At length he arose. He drew two pieces of paper from his blouse. Here, he said hopelessly, I had them ready, for I knew that there could be but one outcome. He held them toward the Russian. Rokov's cruel face lighted in malignant gloating. He seized the bits of paper. You have done well, Gernois. He said, I shall not trouble you again, unless you happen to accumulate some more money or information, and he grinned. You never shall again, you dog, hissed Gernois. That next time I shall kill you, I came near doing it to-night. For an hour I sat with these two pieces of paper on my table before me ere I came near, beside them lay my loaded revolver. I was trying to decide which I should bring. Next time the choice shall be easier, for I already have decided. You had a close call to-night, Rokov. Do not tempt fate a second time. Then Gernois rose to leave. Tarzan barely had time to drop to the landing and shrink back into the shadows on the far side of the door. Even then he scarcely hoped to elude detection. The landing was very small, and though he flattened himself against the wall at its far edge he was scarcely more than a foot from the doorway. Almost immediately he had opened and Gernois stepped out. Rokov was behind him. Neither spoke. Gernois had taken perhaps three steps down the stairway when he halted and half turned as though to retrace his steps. Tarzan knew that discovery would be inevitable. Rokov still stood on the threshold, a foot from him, but he was looking in the opposite direction, toward Gernois. Then the officer evidently reconsidered his decision and resumed his downward course. Tarzan could hear Rokov sigh of relief. A moment later the Russian went back into the room and closed the door. Tarzan waited until Gernois had had time to get well out of hearing. Then he pushed open the door and stepped into the room. He was on top of Rokov before the man could rise from the chair where he sat scanning the paper Gernois had given him. As his eyes turned and fell upon the eight man's face his own went livid. You! he gasped. I replied Tarzan. What do you want? whispered Rokov, with a look in the eight man's eyes frightened him. Have you come to kill me? You do not dare. They would guillotine you. You do not dare kill me. I dare kill you, Rokov, replied Tarzan, for no one knows that you are here or that I am here, and Pavic would tell them that it was Gernois. I heard you tell Gernois so, but that would not influence me, Rokov. I would not care who knew that I had killed you. The pleasure of killing you would more than compensate for any punishment they might inflict upon me. You are the most despicable cur of a coward, Rokov. I have ever heard of. You should be killed. I should love to kill you." And Tarzan approached closer to the man. Rokov's nerves were keyed to the breaking point, with a shrieky sprang toward an adjoining room, but the eight man was upon his back while his leap was yet but half completed. Iron fingers sought his throat. The great coward squealed like a stuck pig until Tarzan had shut off his wind. Then the eight man dragged him to his feet, still choking him. The Russian struggled futilely. He was like a babe in the mighty grasp of Tarzan of the apes. Tarzan sat him in a chair, and long before there was danger of the man's dying, he released his hold upon his throat. When the Russian's coughing spell had abated, Tarzan spoke to him again. I have given you a taste of the suffering of death, he said, but I shall not kill this time. I am sparing you solely for the sake of a very good woman whose great misfortune it was to have been born of the same woman who gave birth to you. But I shall spare you only this once on her account. Should I ever learn that you have again annoyed her or her husband? Should you ever annoy me again? Should I hear that you have returned to France or to any French possession? I shall make it my sole business to hunt you down and complete the choking I commenced to-night. Then he turned to the table, on which the two pieces of paper still lay. As he picked them up, Rockoff gasped in horror. Tarzan examined both the check and the other. He was amazed at the information the latter contained. Rockoff had partially read it, but Tarzan knew that no one could remember the salient facts and figures it held which made it of real value to an enemy of France. These will interest the chief of staff, he said, as he slipped them into his pocket. Rockoff groaned. He did not dare curse aloud. The next morning Tarzan rode north on his way to Buaira and Algiers. As he rode past the hotel, Lieutenant Genois was standing on the veranda. As his eyes discovered Tarzan, he went white as chalk. The ape-man would have been glad had the meeting not occurred, but he could not avoid it. He saluted the officer as he rode past. Mechanically Genois returned the salute, but those terrible wide eyes followed the horseman, expressionless except for horror. It was as though a dead man looked upon a ghost. At Sidi Issa Tarzan met a French officer with whom he had become acquainted on the occasion of his recent sojourn in the town. You left Boussaida early, questioned the officer. Then you have not heard about poor Genois. He was the last man I saw as I rode away, replied Tarzan. What about him? He is dead. He shot himself about eight o'clock this morning. Two days later Tarzan reached Algiers. There he found that he would have had two days' wait before he could catch a ship bound for Cape Town. He occupied his time in writing out a full report of his mission. The secret papers he had taken from Rock-Off he did not enclose, for he did not dare trust them out of his own possession until he had been authorized to turn them over to another agent, or himself return to Paris with them. As Tarzan boarded his ship, after what seemed a most tedious wait to him, two men watched him from an upper deck. Both were fashionably dressed and smooth-shaven. The taller of the two had sandy hair, but his eyebrows were very black. Later in the day they chanced to meet Tarzan on deck, but as one hurriedly called his companion's attention to something at sea, their faces were turned from Tarzan as he passed, so that he did not notice their features. In fact he had paid no attention to them at all. Following the instructions of his chief, Tarzan had booked his passage under an assumed name, John Caldwell, London. He did not understand the necessity of this, and it caused him considerable speculation. He wondered what role he was to play in Cape Town. Well, he thought, thank heaven that I am rid of Rock-off. He was commencing to annoy me. I wonder if I am really becoming so civilized that presently I shall develop a set of nerves. He would give them to me, if any one could, for he does not fight fair. One never knows through what new agency he is going to strike. It is as though Numa the Lion had induced Tantor the Elephant and Hista the Snake to join him in attempting to kill me. I would then never have known what minute or by whom I was to be attacked next. But the brutes are more chivalrous than man. They do not stoop to cowardly intrigue. At dinner that night Tarzan sat next to a young woman whose place was at the captain's left. The officer introduced them. Miss Strong! Where had he heard the name before? It was very familiar. And then the girl's mother gave in the clue. For when she addressed her daughter she called her Hazel. Hazel Strong! What memories the name inspired! It had been a letter to this girl penned by the fair hand of Jane Porter that had carried to him the first message from the woman he loved. How vividly he recalled the night he had stolen it from the desk in the cabin of his long dead father, where Jane Porter had sat writing it late into the night, while he crouched in the darkness without. How terror-stricken she would have been that night had she known that the wild jungle beasts squatted outside her window, watching her every move. And this was Hazel Strong! Jane Porter's Best Friend. Let us go back a few months to the little windswept platform of a railway station in northern Wisconsin. The smoke of forest fires hangs low over the surrounding landscape. Its acward fumes smarten the eyes of a little party of six, who stand waiting the coming of the train, that is to bear them away toward the south. Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his hands clasped beneath the tails of his long coat, paces back and forth under the ever-wattful eye of his faithful secretary, Mr. Samuel T. Philander. Twice within the past few minutes he has started absentmindedly across the tracks in the direction of a nearby swamp, only to be rescued and dragged back by the tireless Mr. Philander. Jane Porter, the professor's daughter, is in strained and lifeless conversation with William Cecil Clayton and Tarzan of the Apes. In the little waiting room, but a bare moment before, a confession of love and a renunciation had taken place that had blighted the lives and happiness of two of the party, but William Cecil Clayton, Lord Grey Stoke, was not one of them. Behind Miss Porter hovered the motherly Esmeralda. She too was happy, for was she not returning to her beloved Maryland? Already she could see dimly through the fog of smoke, the murky headlight of the oncoming engine. The men began to gather up the hand-baggage. Suddenly Clayton exclaimed, "'Bye, Joe, I've left my Ulster in the waiting room,' and hastened off to fetch it. "'Good-bye, Jane,' said Tarzan, extending his hand. "'God bless you.' "'Good-bye,' replied the girl faintly. "'Try to forget me.' "'No, not that. I could not bear to think that you had forgotten me. There is no danger of that, dear,' he answered. "'I wish to heaven that I might forget. It would be so much easier than to go through life always remembering what might have been. You will be happy, though. I am sure you shall. You must be. You may tell the others of my decision to drive my car on to New York. I don't feel equal to bidding Clayton good-bye. I want always to remember him kindly. But I fear that I am too much of a wild beast yet to be trusted too long with the man who stands between me and the one person in all the world I want.' As Clayton stooped to pick up his coat in the waiting room his eyes fell on a telegraph blank lying face down upon the floor. He stooped to pick it up, thinking it might be a message of importance which someone had dropped. He glanced at it hastily, and then suddenly he forgot his coat, the approaching train, everything but that terrible little piece of yellow paper in his hand. He read it twice before he could fully grasp the terrific weight of meaning that it bore to him. When he had picked it up he had been an English nobleman, the proud and wealthy possessor of vast estates. A moment later he had read it and he knew that he was an untitled and penniless beggar. It was Darno's cable-gram to Tarzan, and it read, Fingerprints Prove You Gray Stoke. Congratulations, Darno. He staggered as though he had received a mortal blow. Just then he heard the others calling to him to hurry. The train was coming to a stop at the little platform. Like a man dazed he gathered up his ulster. He would tell them about the cable-gram when they were all on board the train. Then he ran out upon the platform just as the engine whistled twice in the final warning that precedes the first rumbling jerk of coupling pins. The others were on board, leaning out from the platform of a pullman, crying to him to hurry. Quite five minutes he lapsed before they were settled in their seats, nor was it until then that Clayton discovered that Tarzan was not with them. Where is Tarzan? he asked Jane Porter. In another car? No, she replied. At the last minute he determined to drive his machine back to New York. He is anxious to see more of America than is possible from a car window. He is returning to France, you know. Clayton did not reply. He was trying to find the right words to explain to Jane Porter the calamity that had befallen him and her. He wondered just what the effect of his knowledge would be on her. Would she still wish to marry him, to be playing Mrs. Clayton? Suddenly the awful sacrifice which one of them must make loomed large before his imagination. Then came the question. Will Tarzan claim his own? The ape-man had known the contents of the message before he calmly denied knowledge of his parentage. He had admitted that Caleb the ape was his mother. Could it have been for love of Jane Porter? There was no other explanation which seemed reasonable. Then having ignored the evidence of the message, was it not reasonable to assume that he meant never to claim his birth right? If this were so, what right did he, William Cecil Clayton, to thwart the wishes, to balk the self-sacrifice of this strange man? If Tarzan of the apes could do this thing to save Jane Porter from unhappiness, why should he, to whose care she was entrusting her whole future, do ought to jeopardize her interests? And so he reasoned until the first generous impulse to proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates to their right-blower was forgotten beneath the mass of sophistries which self-interest had advanced. But during the balance of the trip, and for many days thereafter, he was moody and distraught. Occasionally the thought obtruded itself that possibly at some later day Tarzan would regret his magnanimity and claim his rights. Several days after they reached Baltimore, Clayton broached the subject of an early marriage to Jane. What do you mean by early, she asked? Within the next few days I must return to England at once. I want you to return with me, dear. I can't get ready so soon as that, replied Jane. It will take a whole month at least. She was glad, for she hoped that whatever called him to England might still further delay the wedding. She had made a bad bargain, but she intended to carry her part loyally to the bitter end. If she could manage to secure a temporary reprieve, though, she felt that she was warranted in doing so. His reply disconcerted her. Very well, Jane, he said. I am disappointed, but I shall let my trip to England wait a month, then we can go back together. But when the month was drawing to a close she found still another excuse upon which to hang a postponement, until at last, discouraged and doubting, Clayton was forced to go back to England alone. The several letters that passed between them brought Clayton no nearer to a consummation of his hopes than he had been before, and so it was that he wrote directly to Professor Porter and enlisted his services. The old man had always favoured the match. He liked Clayton, and being of an old southern family he put rather an exaggerated value on the advantages of a title, which meant little or nothing to his daughter. Clayton urged that the Professor accept his invitation to be his guest in London, an invitation which included the Professor's entire little family, Mr. Philander, Esmeralda, and all. The Englishman argued that once Jane was there, and home ties had been broken, she would not so dread the step which she had so long hesitated to take. So the evening that he received Clayton's letter, Professor Porter announced that they would leave for London the following week. But once in London Jane Porter was no more tractable than she had been in Baltimore. She found one excuse after another, and when finally Lord Tennington invited the party to cruise around Africa in his yacht, she expressed the greatest delight in the idea, but absolutely refused to be married until they had returned to London. As the cruise was to consume a year at least, for they were to stop for indefinite periods at various points of interest, Clayton mentally anathematized Tennington for ever suggesting such a ridiculous trip. It was Lord Tennington's plan to cruise through the Mediterranean, at the Red Sea, to the Indian Ocean, and thus down the East Coast, putting in at every port that was worth the seeing. And so it happened that on a certain day two vessels passed in the Strait of Gibraltar. The smaller, a trim white yacht was speeding toward the East, and on her deck sat a young woman who gazed with sad eyes upon a diamond-studded locket which she idly fingered. Her thoughts were far away in the dim leafy fatness of a tropical jungle, and her heart was with her thoughts. She wondered if the man who had given her the beautiful bobble that had meant so much more to him than the intrinsic value which he had not even known could ever have meant to him, was back in his savage forest. And upon the deck of the larger vessel, a passenger steamer passing toward the East, the man sat with another young woman, and the two idly speculated upon the identity of the dainty craft gliding so gracefully through the gentle swell of the lazy sea. When the yacht had passed, the man resumed the conversation that her appearance had broken off. Yes, he said, I like America very much, and that means, of course, that I like Americans, for a country is only what its people make it. I met some very delightful people while I was there. I recall one family from your own city, Miss Strong, whom I liked particularly, Professor Porter and his daughter. Jane Porter? exclaimed the girl. Do you mean to tell me that you know Jane Porter? Why, she is the very best friend I have in the world. We were little children together. We have known each other for ages. Indeed, he answered, smiling, you would have difficulty in persuading any one of the fact who had seen either of you. I'll qualify the statement, then, she answered with a laugh. We have known each other for two ages, hers and mine. But seriously, we are as dear to each other as sisters. And now that I'm going to lose her, I'm almost heartbroken. Going to lose her, exclaimed Tarzan. Why, what do you mean? Oh, yes, I understand. You mean that now that she is married and living in England, you will seldom, if ever, see her? Yes, she replied, and the saddest part of it all is that she is not marrying the man she loves. Oh, it is terrible, marrying from a sense of duty. I think it is perfectly wicked, and I told her so. I have felt so strongly on the subject that although I was the only person outside of blood relations who was to have been asked to the wedding, I would not let her invite me, for I should not have gone to witness the terrible mockery. But Jane Porter is peculiarly positive. She has convinced herself that she is doing the only honorable thing that she can do, and nothing in the world will ever prevent her from marrying Lord Grey Stoke, except Grey Stoke himself, or death. I am sorry for her, said Tarzan. And I am sorry for the man she loves, said the girl, for he loves her. I never met him, but from what Jane tells me he must be a very wonderful person. It seems that he was born in an African jungle and brought up by fierce anthropoid apes. He had never seen a white man or woman until Professor Porter and his party were marooned on the coast right at the threshold of his tiny cabin. He saved them from all manner of terrible beasts and accomplished the most wonderful feats imaginable, and then decap the climax he fell in love with Jane and she with him, though she never really knew it for sure until she had promised herself to Lord Grey Stoke. Most remarkable, murmured Tarzan, cajoling his brain for some pretext upon which to turn the subject. He delighted in hearing Hazel's strong talk of Jane, but when he was the subject of the conversation he was bored and embarrassed. But he was soon given a respite, for the girl's mother joined them, and the talk became general. The next few days passed uneventfully. The sea was quiet, the sky was clear, the steamer plowed steadily on toward the south without pause. Tarzan spent quite a little time with Miss Strong and her mother. They whiled away their hours on deck reading, talking, or taking pictures with Miss Strong's camera when the sun had set they walked. One day Tarzan found Miss Strong in conversation with a stranger, a man he had not seen on board before. As he approached the couple the man bowed to the girl and turned, walk away. Wait, Mr. Thuron, said Miss Strong, you must meet Mr. Caldwell. We are all fellow-passengers and should be acquainted. The two men shook hands. As Tarzan looked into the eyes of Mr. Thuron he was struck by the strange familiarity of their expression. I have had the honour of Missure's acquaintance in the past, I am sure, said Tarzan, though I cannot recall the circumstances. Mr. Thuron appeared ill at ease. I cannot say, Missure, he replied, it may be so. I have had that identical sensation myself when meeting a stranger. Mr. Thuron has been explaining some of the mysteries of navigation to me, explained the girl. Tarzan paid little heed to the conversation that ensued. He was attempting to recall where he had met Missure Thuron before, that it had been under peculiar circumstances he was positive. Presently the sun reached them and the girl asked Missure Thuron to move her chair farther back into the shade. Tarzan happened to be watching the man at the time and noticed the awkward manner in which he handled the chair. His left wrist was stiff, that clue was sufficient. A sudden train of associated ideas did the rest. Missure Thuron had been trying to find an excuse to make a graceful departure. The lull in the conversation following the moving of their position gave him an opportunity to make his excuses. Bowing low to Miss Strong and inclining his head to Tarzan, he turned to leave them. Just a moment, said Tarzan. If Miss Strong will pardon me, I will accompany you. I shall return in a moment, Miss Strong. Missure Thuron looked uncomfortable. When the two men had passed out of the girl's sight, Tarzan stopped, laying a heavy hand on the other's shoulder. What is your game now, Rock-Off? he asked. I am leaving France, as I promised you, replied the other in a surly voice. I see you are, said Tarzan, but I know you so well that I can scarcely believe that you are being on the same boat with me as purely a coincidence. If I could believe it, the fact that you are in disguise would immediately disabuse my mind of any such idea. Well, growl, Rock-Off, with a shrug. I cannot see what you are going to do about it. This vessel flies the English flag. I have as much right on board her as you, and from the fact that you are booked under an assumed name, I imagine that I have more right. We will not discuss it, Rock-Off. All I wanted to say to you is that you must keep away from Miss Strong. She is a decent woman. Rock-Off turns scarlet. If you don't, I shall pit you overboard, continued Tarzan. Do not forget that I am just waiting for some excuse. Then he turned on his heel and left Rock-Off standing there, trembling with suppressed rage. He did not see the man again for days, but Rock-Off was not idle. In his stateroom with Pulvitch he fumed and swore, threatening the most terrible of revenges. I would throw him overboard to-night, he cried. Were I sure that those papers were not on his person? I cannot chance pitching them into the ocean with him. If you were not such a stupid coward, Alexis, you would find a way to enter his stateroom and search for the documents. Pulvitch smiled. You are supposed to be the brains of this partnership, my dear Nicholas, he replied. Why do you not find the means to search, Monsieur Caldwell's stateroom? Eh? Two hours later fate was kind to them. For Pulvitch, who was ever on the watch, saw Tarzan leave his room without locking the door. Five minutes later Rock-Off was stationed, where he could give the alarm in case Tarzan returned, and Pulvitch was deftly searching the contents of the ape-man's luggage. He was about to give up in despair when he saw a coat which Tarzan had just removed. A moment later he grasped an official envelope in his hand. A quick glance at its contents brought a broad smile to the Russian's face. When Pulvitch left the stateroom, Tarzan himself could not have told that an article in it had been touched since he left it. Pulvitch was a past master in his chosen field. When he handed the packet to Rock-Off in the seclusion of their stateroom, the larger man rang for a steward and ordered a pint of champagne. We must celebrate, my dear Alexis, he said. It was luck, Nicholas, explained Pulvitch. It is evident that he carries these papers always upon his person. Just by chance he neglected to transfer them when he changed coats a few minutes since, but there will be the deuce to pay when he discovers his loss. I am afraid that he will immediately connect you with it. Now that he knows that you are on board, he will suspect you at once. It will make no difference whom he suspects. After to-night, said Rock-Off with a nasty grin. After Miss Strong had gone below that night, Tarzan stood leaning over the rail, looking far out to sea. Every night he had done this since he had come on board. Sometimes he stood thus for an hour, and the eyes that had been watching his every movement since he had boarded the ship at Algiers knew that this was his habit. Even as he stood there this night, those eyes were upon him. Presently the last straggler had left the deck. It was a clear night, but there was no moon. Objects on deck were barely discernable. From the shadows of the cabin two figures crept stealthily upon the eight-man from behind. The lapping of the waves against the ship's sides, the whirring of the propeller, the throbbing of the engines, drowned the almost soundless approach of the two. They were quite close to him now, and crouching low, like tacklers on a gridiron. One of them raised his hand and lured it as though counting off seconds. One, two, three. As one man the two leaped for their victim, each grasped the leg, and before Tarzan of the Apes, lightening though he was, could turn to save himself he had been pitched over the low rail and was falling into the Atlantic. Hazel Strong was looking from her darkened port across the dark sea. Suddenly a body shot past her eyes from the deck above. It dropped so quickly into the dark waters below that she could not be sure of what it was. It might have been a man, she could not say. She listened for some outcry from above, for the always fearsome call, man overboard, but it did not come. All was silence on the ship above. All was silence in the sea below. The girl decided that she had but seen a bundle of refuse thrown overboard by one of the ship's crew, and a moment later sought her birth. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Of the Return of Tarzan This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs Chapter 13 The Wreck of the Lady Alice The next morning at breakfast Tarzan's place was vacant. Miss Strong was mildly curious, for Mr. Caldwell had always made it a point to wait that he might breakfast with her and her mother. As she was sitting on deck later, Mr. Thuron paused to exchange a half-dozen pleasant words with her. He seemed in most excellent spirits. His manner was the extreme of affability. As he passed on, Miss Strong thought what a very delightful man was Mr. Thuron. The day dragged heavily. She missed the quiet companionship of Mr. Caldwell. There had been something about him that had made the girl like him from the first. He had talked so entertainingly of the places he had seen, the peoples and their customs, the wild bees, and he had always had a droll way of drawing striking comparisons between savage animals and civilized men that showed a considerable knowledge of the former and the keen, though somewhat cynical, estimate of the latter. When Mr. Thuron stopped again to chat with her in the afternoon, she welcomed the break in the day's monotony. But she had begun to become seriously concerned in Mr. Caldwell's continued absence. Somehow she constantly associated it with the start she had had the night before when the dark object fell past her port into the sea. Presently she broached the subject to Mr. Thuron. Had he seen Mr. Caldwell today? He had not. Why? He was not at breakfast as usual, nor have I seen him once since yesterday explained the girl. Mr. Thuron was extremely solicitous. I did not have the pleasure of intimate acquaintance with Mr. Caldwell, he said. He seemed a most estimable gentleman, however. Can it be that he is indisposed and has remained in his state room? It would not be strange? No, replied the girl. It would not be strange, of course. But for some inexplicable reason I have one of those foolish feminine presentiments that all is not right with Mr. Caldwell. It is the strangest feeling. It is as though I knew that he was not on board the ship. Mr. Thuron laughed pleasantly. Merci, my dear Miss Strong, he said. Where in the world could he be then? We have not been within sight of land for days. Of course it is ridiculous of me, she admitted. And then, but I am not going to worry about it any longer. I am going to find out where Mr. Caldwell is. And she motioned to a passing steward. That may be more difficult than you imagine, my dear girl, thought Mr. Thuron, but aloud he said, by all means. Find Mr. Caldwell, please, she said to the steward, and tell him that his friends are much worried by his continued absence. You are very fond of Mr. Caldwell, suggested Mr. Thuron. I think he has splendid, replied the girl. And Mama is perfectly infatuated with him. He is the sort of man with whom one has a feeling of perfect security. No one could help but have confidence in Mr. Caldwell. A moment later the steward returned to say that Mr. Caldwell was not in a stateroom. I cannot find him, Miss Strong, and, he hesitated, I have learned that his birth was not occupied last night. I think that I had better report the matter to the captain. Most assuredly, exclaimed Miss Strong, I shall go with you to the captain myself. It is terrible! I know that something awful has happened. My presentiments were not false after all. It was a very frightened young woman, and an excited steward who presented themselves before the captain a few moments later. He listened to their stories in silence. A look of concern marking his expression as the steward assured him that he had sought for the missing passenger in every part of the ship that a passenger might be expected to frequent. And are you sure, Miss Strong, that you saw a body fall overboard last night, he asked? There is not the slightest doubt about it, she answered. I cannot say that it was a human body. There was no outcry. It might have been only what I thought it was, a bundle of refuse. But if Mr. Caldwell is not found on board I shall always be positive that it was he whom I saw fall past my port. The captain ordered an immediate and thorough search of the entire ship, from stem to stern. No nook or cranny was to be overlooked. Miss Strong remained in his cabin, waiting the outcome of the quest. The captain asked her many questions, but she could tell him nothing about the missing man other than what she had herself seen during their brief acquaintance on shipboard. For the first time she suddenly realized how very little, indeed, Mr. Caldwell had told her about himself or his past life. That he had been born in Africa and educated in Paris was about all she knew, and this meager information had been the result of her surprise that an Englishman should speak English with such a marked French accent. Did he ever speak of any enemies? asked the captain. Never was he acquainted with any of the other passengers. Only as he had been with me through the circumstance of casual meeting as fellow shipmates. Was he, in your opinion, Miss Strong, a man who drank to excess? I do not know that he drank at all. He certainly had not been drinking up to half an hour before I saw that body fall overboard, she answered, for I was with him on deck up to that time. It is very strange, said the captain. He did not look to me like a man who was subject to fainting spells or anything of that sort. And even had he been, it is scarcely credible that he should have fallen completely over the rail had he been taken with an attack while leaning upon it. He would rather have fallen inside upon the deck, if he is not on board, Miss Strong, he was thrown overboard, and the fact that you heard no outcry would lead to the assumption that he was dead before he left the ship's deck. Murdered, the girl shuddered. It was a full hour later that the first officer returned to report the outcome of the search. Mr. Caldwell is not on board, sir, he said. I fear that there is something more serious than accident here, Mr. Brentley, said the captain. I wish that you would make a personal and very clever examination of Mr. Caldwell's effects to ascertain if there is any clue to a motive either for suicide or murder. Sift the thing to the bottom. I-I saw, responded Mr. Brentley, and left to commence his investigation. Hazel Strong was prostrated. For two days she did not leave her cabin, and when she finally ventured on deck she was very wan and white, with great dark circles beneath her eyes. Waking or sleeping it seemed that she constantly saw that dark body dropping, swift and silent into the cold, grim sea. Shortly after her first appearance on deck, following the tragedy, Mr. Thuron joined her with many expressions of kindly solicitude. Oh, but it is terrible, Miss Strong, he said. I cannot rid my mind of it. Nor I, said the girl wirrily. I feel that he might have been saved had I but given the alarm. You must not reproach yourself, my dear Miss Strong, urged Mr. Thuron. It was in no way your fault. Another would have done as you did. Who would think that because something fell into the sea from a ship, that it must necessarily be a man? Nor would the outcome have been different had you given an alarm. For a while they would have doubted your story, thinking it but the nervous hallucination of a woman. Had you insisted it would have been too late to have rescued him by the time the ship could have been brought to a stop and the boat's lord and rode back miles in search of the unknown spot where the tragedy had occurred. No, you must not censure yourself. You have done more than any other of us for poor Mr. Caldwell. You were the only one to miss him. It was you who instituted the search. The girl could not help but feel grateful to him for his kind and encouraging words. He was with her often, almost constantly for the remainder of the voyage, and she grew to like him very much indeed. Mr. Thuron had learned that the beautiful Miss Strong of Baltimore was an American heiress, a very wealthy girl in her own right, and with future prospects that quite took his breath away when he contemplated them, and since he spent most of his time in that delectable pastime, it is a wonder that he breathed at all. It had been Mr. Thuron's intention to leave the ship at the first port they touched after the disappearance of Tarzan. Did he not have in his coat pocket the thing he had taken passage upon this very boat to obtain? There was nothing more to detain him here. He could not return to the continent fast enough that he might board the first express for St. Petersburg. But now another idea had intruded itself and was rapidly crowding his original intentions into the background. That American fortune was not to be sneezed at, nor was its possessor a wit less attractive. Sapristik but she would cause a sensation in St. Petersburg, and he would, too, with the assistance of her inheritance. After Mr. Thuron had squandered a few million dollars, he discovered that the vocation was so entirely to his liking that he would continue on down to Cape Town, where he suddenly decided that he had pressing engagements that might detain him there for some time. Miss Strong had told him that she and her mother were to visit the latter's brother there. They had not decided upon the duration of their stay, and it would probably run into months. She was delighted when she found that Mr. Thuron was to be there also. I hope that we shall be able to continue our acquaintance, she said. You must call upon Mama and me as soon as we are settled. Mr. Thuron was delighted at the prospect and lost no time in saying so. Mrs. Strong was not quite so favorably impressed by him as her daughter. I do not know why I should distrust him, she said hazel one day, as they were discussing him. He seems a perfect gentleman in every respect. But sometimes there is something about his eyes, a fleeting expression which I cannot describe, but which when I see it gives me a very uncanny feeling. The girl laughed. You are a silly dear, Mama, she said. I suppose so, but I am sorry that we have not poor Mr. Caldwell for company instead. And I too, replied her daughter. Mr. Thuron became a frequent visitor at the home of Hazel Strong's uncle in Cape Town. His attentions were very marked, but they were so punctiliously arranged to meet the girl's every wish that she came to depend upon him more and more. Did she or her mother or a cousin require an escort? Was there a little friendly service to be rendered? The genial and ubiquitous Mr. Thuron was always available. Her uncle and his family grew to like him for his unfailing courtesy and willingness to be of service. Mr. Thuron was becoming indispensable. At length, feeling the moment propitious, he proposed. Miss Strong was startled. She did not know what to say. I had never thought that you cared for me in any such way, she told him. I have looked upon you always as a very dear friend. I shall not give you my answer now. Forget that you have asked me to be your wife. Let us go on as we have been. Then I can consider you from an entirely different angle for a time. It may be that I shall discover that my feeling for you is more than friendship. I certainly have not thought for a moment that I loved you. This arrangement was perfectly satisfactory to Mr. Thuron. He deeply regretted that he had been hasty, but he had loved her for so long a time, and so devotedly, that he thought that everyone must know it. From the first time I saw you, Hazel, he said, I have loved you. I am willing to wait, for I am certain that so great and pure a love as mine will be rewarded. All that I care to know is that you do not love another. Will you tell me? I have never been in love in my life, she replied, and he was quite satisfied. On the way home that night he purchased a steamy yacht and built a million-dollar villa on the Black Sea. The next day Hazel Strong enjoyed one of the happiest surprises of her life. She ran face to face upon Jane Porter as she was coming out of a jeweler's shop. Why, Jane Porter, she exclaimed, where in the world did you drop from? Why, I can't believe my own eyes. Well, of all things, cried the equally astonished Jane, and here I have been wasting whole reams of perfectly good imagination picturing you in Baltimore, the very idea. And she threw her arms about her friend once more and kissed her a dozen times. By the time mutual explanations had been made Hazel knew that Lord Tennington's yacht had put in at Cape Town for at least a week's stay, and at the end of that time was to continue on her voyage, this time up the West Coast and so back to England, where, concluded Jane, I am to be married. Then you are not married yet, asked Hazel. Not yet, replied Jane, and then quite irrelevantly, I wish England were a million miles from here. Visits were exchanged between the yacht and Hazel's relatives, dinners were arranged and trips into the surrounding country to entertain the visitors. Mr. Thuron was a welcome guest at every function. He gave a dinner himself to the men of the party, and managed to ingratiate himself in the goodwill of Lord Tennington by many little acts of hospitality. Mr. Thuron had heard dropped a hint of something which might result from this unexpected visit of Lord Tennington's yacht, and he wanted to be counted in on it. Once when he was alone with the Englishman he took occasion to make it quite plain that his engagement to Miss Strong was to be announced immediately upon their return to America, but not a word of it, my dear Tennington, not a word of it. Certainly I quite understand, my dear fellow, Tennington had replied, but you are to be congratulated. Ripping girl, don't you know, really? The next day it came. Mrs. Strong, Hazel, and Mr. Thuron were Lord Tennington's guests aboard his yacht. Mrs. Strong had been telling them how much she had enjoyed her visit at Cape Town, and that she regretted that a letter just received from her attorneys in Baltimore had necessitated her cutting her visit shorter than they had intended. When do you sail? asked Tennington. The first of the week, I think, she replied. Indeed, exclaimed Mr. Thuron, I am very fortunate. I too have found that I must return at once, and now I shall have the honour of accompanying and serving you. That is nice of you, Mr. Thuron, replied Mrs. Strong. I am sure that we shall be glad to place ourselves under your protection, but in the bottom of her heart was the wish that they might escape him. Why, she could not have told. By Jove! ejaculated Lord Tennington a moment later. Bully idea! By Jove! Yes, Tennington, of course, ventured Clayton. It must be a bully idea, if you had it. But what the deuce is it? Going to steam to China via the South Pole? Oh, I say now, Clayton, returned Tennington, you needn't be so rough on a fellow just because you didn't happen to suggest this trip yourself. You've acted a regular pounder ever since we sailed. No, sir, he continued. It's a bully idea, and you'll all say so. It's to take Mrs. Strong and Mrs. Strong and Thuron too, if he'll come, as far as England with us on the yacht. Now, isn't that a corker? Forgive me, Tennie old boy, cried Clayton. It certainly is a corking idea. I never should have suspected you of it. You're quite sure it's original, are you? And we'll sail the first of the week or any other time that suits your convenience, Mrs. Strong, concluded the big-hearted Englishman as though the thing were all ranged except the sailing date. Merci, Lord Tennington. You haven't even given us an opportunity to thank you, much less decide whether we shall be able to accept your generous invitation, said Mrs. Strong. Why, of course you'll come, responded Tennington. We'll make as good time as any passenger boat, and you'll be fully as comfortable, and anyway we all want you and won't take no for an answer, and so it was settled that they should sail the following Monday. Two days out the girls were sitting in Hazel's cabin, looking at some prints she had had finished in Cape Town. They represented all the pictures she had taken since she had left America, and the girls were both engrossed in them, Jane asking many questions and Hazel keeping up a perfect torrent of comment and explanation of the various scenes and people. And here, she said suddenly, here's a man you know, pork fellow, I have so often intended asking you about him, but I never have been able to think of it when we were together. She was holding the little print so that Jane did not see the face of the man it portrayed. His name was John Caldwell, continued Hazel. Do you recall him? He said that he met you in America. He is an Englishman. I do not recollect the name, replied Jane. Let me see the picture. The poor fellow was lost overboard on our trip down the coast, she said, as she handed the print to Jane. Lost over? Why, Hazel, Hazel, don't tell me that he is dead, drowned at sea. Hazel, why don't you say that you are joking? And before the Estonys Miss Strong could catch her, Jane Porter had slipped to the floor in a swoon. After Hazel had restored her chum to consciousness, she sat looking at her for a long time before either spoke. I did not know Jane, said Hazel in a constrained voice, that you knew Mr. Caldwell so intimately that his death should prove such a shock to you. John Caldwell, questioned Miss Porter, you do not mean to tell me that you do not know who this man was, Hazel? Why, yes, Jane, I know perfectly well who he was. His name was John Caldwell. He was from London. Oh, Hazel, I wish I could believe it, moaned the girl. I wish I could believe it, but those features are burned so deep into my memory and my heart that I should recognize them anywhere in the world from among a thousand others who might appear identical to any one but me. What do you mean, Jane? cried Hazel, now thoroughly alarmed. Who do you think it is? I don't think, Hazel. I know that that is a picture of Tarzan of the Apes. Jane, I cannot be mistaken. Oh, Hazel, are you sure that he is dead? Can there be no mistake? I am afraid not, dear, answered Hazel sadly. I wish I could think that you are mistaken, but now a hundred and one little pieces of corroborative evidence occur to me that meant nothing to me while I thought that he was John Caldwell of London. He said that he had been born in Africa and educated in France. Yes, that would be true, murmured Jane Porter, Dolly. The first officer who searched his luggage found nothing to identify John Caldwell of London. Practically all his belongings had been made or purchased in Paris. Everything that bore an initial was marked either with a T alone or with J.C.T. We thought that he was traveling incognito under his first two names, the J.C., standing for John Caldwell. Tarzan of the Apes took the name Jean C. Tarzan, said Jane, in the same lifeless monotone. And he is dead. Oh, Hazel, it is horrible. He died all alone in this terrible ocean. It is unbelievable that that brave heart should have ceased to beat, that those mighty muscles are quiet and cold forever, that he who was the personification of life and health and manly strength should be the prey of slimy, crawling things that— But she could go no further, and with a little moan she buried her head in her arms and sank sobbing to the floor. For days Miss Porter was ill and would see no one except Hazel and the faithful Esmeralda. When at last she came on deck all were struck by the sad change that had taken place in her. She was no longer the alert, vivacious American beauty who had charmed and delighted all who came in contact with her. Instead she was a very quiet and sad little girl, with an expression of hopeless wistfulness that none but Hazel's strong could interpret. The entire party strove their utmost to cheer and amuse her, but all to no avail. Occasionally the jolly Lord Tennington would ring a wan's smile from her, but for the most part she sat with wide eyes looking out across the sea. With Jane Porter's illness one misfortune after another seemed to attack the yacht. First an engine broke down and they drifted for two days while temporary repairs were being made. Then a squall struck them unaware that carried overboard nearly everything above deck that was portable. Later two of the seamen fell to fighting in the forecastle, with the result that one of them was badly wounded with a knife and the other had to be put in irons. Then to cap the climax the mate fell overboard at night and was drowned before help could reach him. The yacht cruised about the spot for ten hours, but no sign of the man was seen after he disappeared from the deck into the sea. Every member of the crew and guests were gloomy and depressed after these series of misfortunes. All were apprehensive of worse to come, and this was especially true of the seamen who recalled all sorts of terrible omens and warnings that had occurred during the early part of the voyage and which they could now clearly translate into the precursors of some grim and terrible tragedy to come. Nor did the croakers have long to wait. The second night after the drowning of the mate, the little yacht was suddenly wracked from stem to stern. About one o'clock in the morning there was a terrific impact that threw the slumbering guests and crew from berth and bunk. A mighty shutter ran through the frail craft. She lay far over to starboard. The engine stopped. For a moment she hung there with her decks at an angle of 45 degrees, then with a sullen, rending sound she slipped back into the sea and righted. Instantly the men rushed upon deck, followed closely by the women. Though the night was cloudy there was little wind or sea, nor was it so dark but that just off the port bow a black mass could be discerned floating low in the water. A derelict was the terse explanation of the officer on the watch. Presently the engineer hurried on deck in search of the captain. That patch we put on the cylinder heads blown out, sir, he reported, and she's making water fast forward on the port bow. An instant later a seaman rushed up from below. My God! he cried. Her whole bleeding bottoms ripped out. She can't float twenty minutes. Shut up! roared Tennington. Ladies, go below and get some of your things together. It may not be so bad as that, but we may have to take to the boats. It will be safer to be prepared. Go at once, please. And Captain Gerald sends some competent man below, please, to ascertain the exact extent of the damage. In the meantime I might suggest that you have the boat's provision. The calm low voice of the owner did much to reassure the entire party, and a moment later all were occupied with the duties he had suggested. By the time the ladies had returned to the deck the rapid provisioning of the boats had been about completed, and a moment later the officer who had gone below had returned to report, but his opinion was scarcely needed to assure the huddled group of men and women that the end of the Lady Alice was at hand. Well, sir, said the Captain, as his officer hesitated. I decide to frighten the ladies, sir, he said, but she can't float a dozen minutes, in my opinion. There's a hole in her you could drive a bolly cow through, sir. For five minutes the Lady Alice had been settling rapidly by the bow. Already her stern loomed high in the air, and foothold on the deck was of the most precarious nature. She carried four boats, and these were all filled and lured away in safety. As they pulled rapidly from the stricken little vessel, Jane Porter turned to have one last look at her. Just then there came a loud crash, and an ominous rumbling and pounding from the heart of the ship. Her machinery had broken loose and was dashing its way toward the bow, tearing out partitions and bulkheads as it went. The stern rose rapidly high above them, for a moment she seemed to pause there, a vertical shaft protruding from the bosom of the sea, and then swiftly she dove head foremost beneath the waves. In one of the boats the brave Lord Tennington wiped a tear from his eye. He had not seen a fortune in money go down forever into the sea, but a dear, beautiful friend whom he had loved. At last the long night broke, and a tropical sun smoked down upon the rolling water. Jane Porter had dropped into a fitful slumber. The fierce light of the sun upon her upturned face awoke her, she looked about her. In the boat with her were three sailors, Clayton and Monsieur Thuron. Then she looked for the other boats, but as far as the eye could reach there was nothing to break the fearful monotony of that waste of waters. They were alone in a small boat, upon the broad Atlantic. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 OF THE RETURN OF TARSEN This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE RETURN OF TARSEN By Edgar Rice Burroughs Chapter 14 BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE As Tarzan struck the water, his first impulse was to swim clear of the ship and possible danger from her propellers. He knew whom to thank for his present predicament, and as he lay in the sea just supporting himself by a gentle movement of his hands, his chief emotion was one of chagrin that he had been so easily bested by Rockoff. He lay thus for some time watching the receding and rapidly diminishing lights of the steamer without it ever once occurring to him to call for help. He never had called for help in his life, and so it is not strange that he did not think of it now. Always had he depended upon his own prowess and resourcefulness, nor had there ever been since the days of Kayla any to answer an appeal for sucker. When it did occur to him, it was too late. There was, thought Tarzan, a possible one chance in a hundred thousand that he might be picked up, and an even smaller chance that he would reach land. So he determined that to combine what slight chances there were, he would swim slowly in the direction of the coast. The ship might have been closer in than he had known. His strokes were long and easy. It would be many hours before those giant muscles would commence to feel fatigue. As he swam, guided toward the east by the stars, he noticed that he felt the weight of his shoes, and so he removed them. His trousers went next, and he would have removed his coat at the same time, but for the precious papers in its pocket. To assure himself that he still had them he slipped his hand in to feel, but to his consternation they were gone. Now he knew that something more than revenge had prompted Rock- off to pitch him overboard. The Russian had managed to obtain possession of the papers Tarzan had rested from him at Buse-eda. The ape-man swore softly and let his coat and shirt sink into the Atlantic. Before many hours he had divested himself of his remaining garments, and was swimming easily and unencumbered toward the east. The first faint evidence of dawn was pailing the stars ahead of him when the dim outlines of a low-lying black mass loomed up directly in his track, a few strong strokes brought into its side. It was the bottom of a wave-washed derelict. Tarzan clamored upon it. He would rest there until daylight at least. He had no intention to remain there inactive, a prey to hunger and thirst. If he must die he preferred dying in action, while making some semblance of an attempt to save himself. The sea was quiet so that the wreck had only a gently undulating motion that was nothing to the swimmer who had had no sleep for twenty hours. Tarzan of the apes curled up upon the slimy timbers and was soon asleep. The heat of the sun awoke him early in the forenoon. His first conscious sensation was of thirst which grew almost to the proportions of suffering with full returning consciousness, but a moment later it was forgotten in the joy of two almost simultaneous discoveries. The first was a mass of wreckage floating beside the derelict in the midst of which, bottom up, rose and fell an overturned lifeboat. The other was the faint, dim line of a far distant shore showing on the horizon in the east. Tarzan dove into the water and swam around the wreck to the lifeboat. The cool ocean refreshed him almost as much as would a draft of water, so that it was with renewed vigor that he brought the smaller boat alongside the derelict, and after many herculean efforts succeeded in dragging it onto the slimy ship's bottom. There he writed and examined it. The boat was quite sound, and a moment later floated upright alongside the wreck. Then Tarzan selected several pieces of wreckage that might answer him as paddles, and presently was making good headway toward the far offshore. It was late in the afternoon by the time he came close enough to distinguish objects on land or to make out the contour of the shoreline. Before him lay what appeared to be the entrance to a little landlocked harbor. The wooded point to the north was strangely familiar. Could it be possible that fate had thrown him up at the very threshold of his own beloved jungle? But as the bow of his boat entered the mouth of the harbor the last shred of doubt was cleared away, for there before him upon the farther shore under the shadows of his primeval forest stood his own cabin, built before his birth by the hand of his long dead father, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. With long sweeps of his giant muscles Tarzan sent the little craft speeding toward the beach. Its prowl had scarcely touched when the eight man leaped to shore. His heart beat fast in joy and exaltation as each long familiar object came beneath his roving eyes. The cabin, the beach, the little brook, the dense jungle, the black impenetrable forest, the myriad birds and their brilliant plumage, the gorgeous tropical blooms upon the festoon creepers falling in great loops from the giant trees. Tarzan of the apes had come into his own again, and that all the world might know it he threw back his young head and gave voice to the fierce wild challenge of his tribe. For a moment silence reigned upon the jungle, and then low and weird came an answering challenge. It was the deep roar of Numa the Lion, and from a great distance faintly the fearsome answering bellow of a bull ape. Tarzan went to the brook first and slayed his thirst. Then he approached his cabin. The door was still closed and latched as he and Darneau had left it. He raised the latch and entered. Nothing had been disturbed. There were the table, the bed, and the little crib built by his father. The shelves and cupboards just as they had stood for over 23 years, just as he had left them nearly two years before. His eyes satisfied. Tarzan's stomach began to call aloud for attention. The pangs of hunger suggested a search for food. There was nothing in the cabin, nor had he any weapons. But upon a wall hung one of his old grass ropes. It had been many times broken and spliced so that he had discarded it for a better one long before. Tarzan wished that he had a knife. Well, unless he was mistaken he should have that and a spear and bows and arrows before another son had set. The rope would take care of that. And in the meantime it must be made to procure food for him. He coiled it carefully, and throwing it about his shoulder went out, closing the door behind him. Close to the cabin the jungle commenced, and into it Tarzan of the apes plunged wary and noiseless, once more a savage beast hunting its food. For a time he kept to the ground, but finally discovering no spore indicative of nearby meat he took to the trees. With the first dizzy swing from tree to tree, all the old joy of living swept over him. Vane regrets and dull heartache were forgotten. Now was he living. Now indeed was the true happiness of perfect freedom his. Who would go back to the stifling, wicked cities of civilized man when the mighty reaches of the great jungle offered peace and liberty, not he? While it was yet light Tarzan came to a drinking place by the side of a jungle river. There was a fort there, and for countless ages the beasts of the forest had come down to drink at this spot. Here, of a night, might always be found either Sabor or Numa, crouching in the dense foliage of the surrounding jungle, awaiting an antelope or a water-back for their meal. Here came Horta the boar to water, and here came Tarzan of the apes to make a kill, for he was very empty. On a low branch he squatted above the trail. For an hour he waited. It was growing dark, a little to one side of the ford in the densest thicket he heard the faint sound of padded feet and the brushing of a huge body against tall grasses and tangled creepers. None other than Tarzan might have heard it, but the ape man heard and translated. It was Numa the lion on the same errand as himself. Tarzan smiled. Presently he heard an animal approaching warily along the trail toward the drinking-place. A moment more, and it came in view. It was Horta the boar. Here was delicious meat, and Tarzan's mouth watered. The grasses where Numa lay were very still now, ominously still. Horta passed beneath Tarzan a few more steps, and he would be within the radius of Numa's spring. Tarzan could imagine how old Numa's eyes were shining, how he was already sucking in his breath for the awful roar which would freeze his prey for the brief instant between the moment of the spring and the sinking of terrible fangs into splintering bones. But as Numa gathered himself a slender rope flew through the air from the low branches of a nearby tree. A noose settled about Horta's neck, there was a frightened grunt, a squeal, and then Numa saw his query drag backward up the trail, and as he sprang, Horta the boar soared upward beyond his clutches into the tree above, and a mocking face looked down and laughed into his own. Then indeed did Numa roar. Angry, threatening, hungry, he paced back and forth beneath the taunting ape-man. Now he stopped, and rising on his hind legs against the stem of the tree that held his enemy sharpened his huge claws upon the bark, tearing out great pieces that laid bare the white wood beneath. And in the meantime Tarzan had dragged the struggling Horta to the limb beside him. Sinui fingers completed the work the choking noose had commenced. The ape-man had no knife, but nature had equipped him with the means of tearing his food from the quivering flank of his prey, and gleaming teeth sank into the succulent flesh, while the raging lion looked on from below as another enjoyed the dinner that he had thought already his. It was quite dark by the time Tarzan had gorged himself. Ah, but it had been delicious! Never had he quite accustomed himself to the ruined flesh that civilized men had served him, and in the bottom of his savage heart there had constantly been the craving for the warm meat of the fresh kill and the rich red blood. He wiped his bloody hands upon a bunch of leaves, slung the remains of his kill across his shoulder, and swung off through the middle terrace of the forest toward his cabin, and at the same instant Jane Porter and William Cecil Clayton arose from a sumptuous dinner upon the Lady Alice thousands of miles to the east in the Indian Ocean. Beneath Tarzan walked Numa the Lion, and when the ape-man deigned to glance downward he caught occasional glimpses of the baleful green eyes following through the darkness. Numa did not roar now, instead he moved stealthily like the shadow of a great cat, but yet he took no step that did not reach the sensitive ears of the ape-man. Tarzan wondered if he would stalk him to his cabin door. He hoped not, for that would mean a night's sleep curled in the crotch of a tree, and he much preferred the bed of grasses within his own abode, but he knew just the tree and the most comfortable crotch if necessity demanded that he sleep out. A hundred times in the past some great jungle cat had followed him home and compelled him to seek shelter in this same tree until another mood or the rising sun had sent his enemy away, but presently Numa gave up the chase and with a series of blood curdling moans and roars turned angrily back in search of another and an easier dinner. So Tarzan came to his cabin unattended, and a few moments later was curled up in the mildewed remnants of what once had been a bed of grasses. Thus easily did Monsieur Jean C. Tarzan slough the thin skin of his artificial civilization and sink happy and contented into the deep sleep of the wild beast that has fed to Repletion, yet a woman's yes would have bound him to that other life forever and made the thought of this savage existence repulsive. Tarzan slept late into the following forenoon, for he had been very tired from the labors and exertion of the long night and day upon the ocean and the jungle jaunt that had brought into play mussels that he had scarce used for nearly two years. When he awoke he ran to the brook first to drink. Then he took a plunge into the sea, swimming about for a quarter of an hour. Afterward he returned to his cabin and breakfasted off the flesh of Horta. This done he buried the balance of the carcass in the soft earth outside the cabin, for his evening meal. Once more he took his rope and vanished into the jungle. This time he hunted nobler quarry, man. Although had you asked him his own opinion he could have named a dozen other denizens of the jungle which he considered far the superior's in nobility of the men he hunted. Today Tarzan was in quest of weapons. He wondered if the women and children had remained in Mabonga's village after the punitive expedition from the French cruiser had massacred all the warriors in revenge for Darno's supposed death. He hoped that he should find warriors there, for he knew not how long a quest he should have to make were the village deserted. The eight men travelled swiftly through the forest and about noon came to the side of the village, but to his disappointment found that the jungle had overgrown the plantain fields and that the thatched huts had fallen in decay. There was no sign of man. He clamoured about among the ruins for half an hour, hoping that he might discover some forgotten weapon. But his cert was without fruit and so he took up his quest once more, following up the stream which flowed from a south-easterly direction. He knew that near fresh water he would be most likely to find another settlement. As he travelled he hunted as he had hunted with his eight people in the past as Kayla had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet the better. And Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce brutal anthropoid that Kayla had taught him to be, and that he had been for the first twenty years of his life. Occasionally he smiled as he recalled some friend who might even at the moment be sitting placid and immaculate within the precincts of his select Parisian club, just as Tarzan had sat but a few months before. And then he would stop as though turned suddenly to stone as the gentle breeze carried to his train nostrils the scent of some new prey or a formidable enemy. That night he slept far inland from his cabin, securely wedged into the crotch of a giant tree, swaying a hundred feet above the ground. He had eaten hardly again, this time from the flesh of bearer the deer who had fallen prey to his quick noose. Early the next morning he resumed his journey, always following the course of the stream. For three days he continued each quest until he had come to a part of the jungle in which he never before had been. Occasionally upon the higher ground the forest was much thinner, and in the far distance through the trees he could see ranges of mighty mountains, with wide plains in the foreground. Here in the open spaces were new game, countless antelope and vast herds of zebra. Tarzan was entranced. He would make a long visit to this new world. On the morning of the fourth day his nostrils were suddenly surprised by a faint new scent. It was the scent of man, but yet a long way off. The ape-man thrilled with pleasure. Every sense was on the alert as with crafty stealth he moved quickly through the trees upwind in the direction of his prey. Presently he came upon it, a lone warrior treading softly through the jungle. Tarzan followed close above his quarry, waiting for a clearer space in which to hurl his rope. As he stalked the unconscious man, new thoughts presented themselves to the ape-man. Thoughts born of the refining influences of civilization and of its cruelties. It came to him that seldom, if ever, did civilized man kill a fellow being without some pretext, however slight. It was true that Tarzan wished this man's weapons and ornaments, but was it necessary to take his life to obtain them? The longer he thought about it, the more repugnant became the thought of taking human life needlessly. And thus it happened that while he was trying to decide just what to do, they had come to a little clearing at the far side of which lay a palisaded village of beehive huts. As the warrior emerged from the forest, Tarzan caught a fleeting glimpse of a tawny hide worming its way through the matted jungle grasses in his wake. It was Numa the Lion. He too was stalking the black man. With the instant that Tarzan realized the native's danger, his attitude toward his erstwhile prey altered completely. Now he was a fellow man threatened by a common enemy. Numa was about to charge. There was little time in which to compare various methods or weigh the probable results of any. And then a number of things happened almost simultaneously. The Lion sprang from his ambush toward the retreating black. Tarzan cried out in mourning, and the black turned just in time to see Numa halted in mid-flight by a slender strand of grass rope, the noose end of which had fallen cleanly about his neck. The ape man had acted so quickly that he had been unable to prepare himself to withstand the strain and shock of Numa's great weight upon the rope. And so it was that though the rope stopped the beast before his mighty talons could fasten themselves in the flesh of the black, the strain overbalanced Tarzan, who came tumbling to the ground, not six paces from the infuriated animal. Like lightning Numa turned upon the new enemy, and defenseless as he was, Tarzan of the apes was nearer to death that instant than he ever before had been. It was the black who saved him, the warrior realized in an instant that he owed his life to this strange white man, and he also saw that only a miracle could save his preserver from those fierce yellow fangs that had been so near to his own flesh. With the quickness of thought his spear arm flew back and then shot forward with all the force of the sinewy muscles that rolled beneath the shimmering ebb and the hide. True to its mark the iron-shod weapon flew, transfixing Numa's sleek carcass from the right groin to beneath the left shoulder. With a hideous scream of rage and pain, the brute turned again upon the black, a dozen paces he had gone when Tarzan's rope brought him to a stand once more. Then he wheeled again upon the ape man, only to feel the painful prick of a barbed arrow as it sank half its length in his quivering flesh. Again he stopped, and by this time Tarzan had run twice around the stem of a great tree with his rope and made the end fast. The black saw the trek and grinned, but Tarzan knew that Numa must be quickly finished before those mighty teeth had found and parted the slender cord that held him. It was a matter of but an instant to reach the black side and drag his long knife from its scabbard. Then he signed the warrior to continue to shoot arrows into the great beast while he attempted to close in upon him with the knife. So as one tantalized upon one side, the other sneaked cautiously in upon the other. Numa was furious. He raised his voice in a perfect frenzy of shrieks, growls, and hideous moans, the while he reared upon his hind legs in futile attempt to reach first one and then the other of his tormentors. But at length the agile ape-man saw his chance and rushed in upon the beast's left side, behind the mighty shoulder. A giant arm encircled the tawny throat and a long blade sank once, true as a die, into the fierce heart. Then Tarzan arose, and the black man and the white looked into each other's eyes across the body of their kill, and the black made the sign of peace and friendship, and Tarzan of the apes answered in kind. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of The Return of Tarzan This Librabox recording is in the public domain. The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs Chapter 15 From Ape to Savage The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment after the lion's death the two men were surrounded by lithe, ebb and warriors, gesticulating and jabbering, a thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply. And then the women came and the children, eager, curious, and at sight of Tarzan more questioning than ever. The ape-man's new friend finally succeeded in making himself heard, and when he had done talking the men and women of the village vied with one another in doing honor to the strange creature who had saved their fellow and battled single-handed with fierce Numa. At last they led him back to their village, where they brought him gifts of foul and goats and cooked food. When he pointed to their weapons the warriors hastened to fetch spear, shield, arrows, and a bowl. His friend of the encounter presented him with the knife with which he had killed Numa. There was nothing in all the village he could not have had for the asking. How much easier this was, thought Tarzan, than murder and robbery to supply his wants. How close he had been to killing this man whom he never had seen before, and who now was manifesting by every primitive means at his command friendship and affection for his would-be slayer. Tarzan of the Apes was ashamed. Hereafter he would at least wait until he knew men deserved it before he thought of killing them. The idea recalled Rokov to his mind. He wished that he might have the Russian to himself in the dark jungle for a few minutes. There was a man who deserved killing if ever anyone did. And if he could have seen Rokov at that moment as he assiduously bent every endeavor to the pleasant task of ingratiating himself into the affections of the beautiful Miss Strong, he would have longed more than ever to meet out to the man the fate he deserved. Tarzan's first night with the savages was devoted to a wild orgy in his honor. There was feasting, for the hunters had brought in an antelope and a zebra as trophies of their skill, and gallons of the weak, native beer were consumed. As the warriors danced in the firelight Tarzan was again impressed by the symmetry of their figures and the regularity of their features. The flat noses and thick lips of the typical West Coast savage were entirely missing. In repose the faces of the men were intelligent and dignified, those of the women off-times pre-possessing. It was during this dance that the eight men first noticed that some of the men and many of the women wore ornaments of gold, principally anklets and armlets of great weight, apparently beaten out of the solid metal. When he expressed a wish to examine one of these the owner removed it from her person and insisted through the medium of signs that Tarzan accepted as a gift. A close scrutiny of the bobble convinced the eight men that the article was of virgin gold, and he was surprised, for it was the first time that he had ever seen golden ornaments among the savages of Africa, other than the trifling bobbles those near the coast had purchased or stolen from Europeans. He tried to ask them from whence the metal came, but he could not make them understand. When the dance was done Tarzan signified his intention to leave them, but they almost implored him to accept the hospitality of a great hut which the chief set apart for his sole use. He tried to explain that he would return in the morning, but they could not understand. When he finally walked away from them toward the side of the village opposite the gate they were still further mystified as to his intentions. Tarzan however knew just what he was about. In the past he had had experience with the rodents and vermin that infest every native village, and while he was not overscrupulous about such matters he much preferred the fresh air of the swaying trees to the fetid atmosphere of a hut. The natives followed him to where a great tree overhung the palisade, and as Tarzan leaped for a lower branch and disappeared into the foliage above precisely after the manner of Manu the monkey there were loud exclamations of surprise and astonishment. For half an hour they called to him to return, but as he did not answer them they at last desisted and sought the sleeping mats within their huts. Tarzan went back into the forest a short distance until he had found a tree suited to his primitive requirements, and then curling himself in a great crotch he fell immediately into a deep sleep. The following morning he dropped into the village street as suddenly as he had disappeared the preceding night. For a moment the natives were startled and afraid, but when they recognized their guest of the night before they welcomed him with shouts and laughter. That day he accompanied a party of warriors to the nearby plains on a great hunt, and so dexterous did they find this white man with their own crude weapons that another bond of respect and admiration was thereby wrought. For weeks Tarzan lived with his savage friends, hunting buffalo, antelope, and zebra for meat and elephant for ivory. Quickly he learned their simple speech, their native customs, and the ethics of their wild primitive tribal life. He found that they were not cannibals, that they looked with loathing and contempt upon men who ate men. Boussouli, the warrior whom he had stalked to the village, told him many of the tribal legends. How, many years before his people had come many long marches from the north, how once they had been a great and powerful tribe, and how the slave raiders had wrought such havoc among them with their death-dealing guns that they had been reduced to a mere remnant of their former numbers and power. They hunted us down as one hunts a fierce beast, said Boussouli. There was no mercy in them. When it was not slaves they thought it was ivory, but usually it was both. Our men were killed, and our women driven away like sheep. We fought against them for many years, but our arrows and spears could not prevail against the sticks which spit fire and lead and death too many times the distance that our mightiest warrior could place an arrow. At last when my father was a young man, they rubs came again, but our warriors saw them a long way off, and Chaombi, who was chief then, told his people to gather up their belongings and come away with him that he would lead them far to the south until they found a spot to which the Arab raiders did not come, and they did as he bid, carrying all their belongings including many tusks of ivory. For months they wandered, suffering untold hardships and privations, for much of the way was through dense jungle and across mighty mountains, but finally they came to this spot, and although they sent parties farther on to search for an even better location, none has ever been found. And the raiders have never found you here, asked Tarzan. About a year ago a small party of Arabs and Manuma stumbled upon us, but we drove them off, killing many. For days we followed them, stalking them for the wild beasts they are, picking them off one by one, until but a handful remained, but these escaped us. As Busuli talked he fingered a heavy gold armlet that encircled the glossy hide of his left arm. Tarzan's eyes had been upon the ornament, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Presently he recalled the question he had tried to ask when he first came to the tribe, the question he could not at that time make them understand. For weeks he had forgotten so trivial a thing as gold, for he had been for the time a truly primeval man, with no thought beyond today. But of a sudden the sight of gold awakened the sleeping civilization that was in him, and with it came the lust for wealth. That lesson Tarzan had learned well in his brief experience of the ways of civilized man, he knew that gold meant power and pleasure. He pointed to the bobble. From whence came the yellow metal Busuli, he asked. The black pointed toward the southeast. A moon's march away, may be more, he replied. Have you been there, asked Tarzan? No, but some of our people were there years ago, when my father was yet a young man. One of the parties that searched farther for a location for the tribe when first they settled here, came upon a strange people who wore many ornaments of yellow metal. Their spears were tipped with it, as were their arrows, and they cooked in vessels all made of solid metal like my armlet. They lived in a great village in huts that were built of stone and surrounded by a great wall. They were very fierce, rushing out and falling upon our warriors before ever they learned that their errand was a peaceful one. Our men were few in number, but they held their own at the top of a little rocky hill, until the fierce people went back at sunset into their wicked city. Then our warriors came down from their hill, and after taking many ornaments of yellow metal from the bodies of those they had slain, they marched back out of the valley, nor have any of us ever returned. They are wicked people, neither white like you nor black like me, but covered with hair as is Bulgani the gorilla. Yes, they are very bad people indeed, and Chawambi was glad to get out of their country. And are none of those alive who were with Chawambi and saw these strange people in their wonderful city? asked Tarzan. Wasziri, our chief, was there, replied Boussouli. He was a very young man, then, but he accompanied Chawambi, who was his father. So that night Tarzan asked Wasziri about it, and Wasziri, who was now an old man, said that it was a long march, but that the way was not difficult to follow. He remembered it well. For ten days we followed this river which runs beside our village. Up toward its source we traveled until on the tenth day we came to a little spring far up upon the side of a lofty mountain range. In this little spring our river is born. The next day we crossed over the top of the mountain, and upon the other side we came to a tiny rivulet which we followed down into a great forest. For many days we traveled along the winding banks of the rivulet that had now become a river, until we came to a greater river into which it emptied, and which ran down the center of a mighty valley. Then we followed this large river toward its source, hoping to come to more open land. After twenty days of marching from the time we had crossed the mountains and passed out of our own country we came again to another range of mountains. Up there side we followed the great river that had now dwindled to a tiny rivulet until we came to a little cave near the mountain top. In this cave was the mother of the river. I remember that we camped there that night, and that it was very cold, for the mountains were high. The next day we decided to ascend to the top of the mountains and see what the country upon the other side looked like, and if it seemed no better than that which we had so far traversed, we would return to our village and tell them that they had already found the best place in all the world to live. And so we clamored up the face of the rocky cliffs until we reached the summit, and there from a flat mountain top we saw, not far beneath us, a shallow valley, very narrow, and upon the far side of it was a great village of stone, much of which had fallen and crumbled into decay. The balance of Waziri's story was practically the same as that which Busuli had told. I should like to go there and see this strange city, said Tarzan, and get some of their yellow metal from its fierce inhabitants. It is a long march, replied Waziri, and I am an old man, but if you will wait until the rainy season is over, and the rivers have gone down, I will take some of my warriors and go with you. And Tarzan had to be contented with that arrangement, though he would have liked it well enough to have set off the next morning. He was as impatient as a child. Really Tarzan of the Apes was but a child, or a primeval man, which is the same thing in a way. The next day a small party of hunters returned to the village from the south to report a large herd of elephants some miles away. By climbing trees they had had a fairly good view of the herd, which they described as numbering several large tuskers, a great many cows and calves, and full-grown bulls whose ivory would be worth having. The balance of the day and evening was filled with preparation for a great hunt. Spears were overhauled, quivers were replenished, bows were re-strung, and all the while the village witch-doctor passed through the busy throngs, disposing of various charms and amulets designed to protect the possessor from hurt or bring him good fortune in the morrow's hunt. At dawn the hunters were off. There were fifty sleek black warriors, and in their midst, lithe and active as a young forest god, strove Tarzan of the Apes, his brown skin contrasting oddly with the ebony of his companions. Except for Keller he was one of them. His ornaments and weapons were the same as theirs. He spoke their language. He laughed and joked with them, and leaped and shouted in the brief wild dance that preceded their departure from the village, to all intent and purpose a savage among savages. Nor had he questioned himself, is it to be doubted that he would have admitted that he was far more closely allied to these people in their life than to the Parisian friends whose ways ape-like he had successfully mimicked for a few short months. But he did think of Darnol, and a grin of amusement showed his strong white teeth as he pictured the immaculate Frenchman's expression could he by some means see Tarzan as he was that minute. Poor Paul, who had prided himself on having abradicated from his friend the last traces of wild savagery. How quickly have I fallen, thought Tarzan? But in his heart he did not consider it a fall. Rather he pitied the poor creatures of Paris, penned up like prisoners in their silly clothes and watched by policemen all their poor lives, that they might do nothing that was not entirely artificial and Tarzan. A two-hours march brought them close to the vicinity in which the elephants had been seen the previous day. From there on they moved very quietly indeed, searching for the spore of the great beast. At length they found the well-marked trail along which the herd had passed not many hours before. In single file they followed it for about half an hour. It was Tarzan who first raised his hand in signal that the quarry was at hand. His sensitive nose had warned him that the elephants were not far ahead of them. The blacks were skeptical when he told them how he knew. Come with me, said Tarzan, and we shall see. With the agility of a squirrel he sprang into a tree and ran nimbly to the top. One of the blacks followed more slowly and carefully. When he had reached the lofty limb beside the ape-man, the latter pointed to the south, and there, some few hundred yards away, the black saw a number of huge black backs swaying back and forth above the top of the lofty jungle grasses. He pointed the direction to the watchers below, indicating with his fingers the number of beasts he could count. Immediately the hunters started toward the elephants. The black in the tree hastened down, but Tarzan stalked after his own fashion along the leafy way of the Middle Terrace. It is no child's play to hunt wild elephants with the crude weapons of primitive man. Tarzan knew that few native tribes ever attempted it, and the fact that his tribe did so gave him no little pride. Already he was commencing to think of himself as a member of the little community. As Tarzan moved silently through the trees he saw the warriors below creeping in a half circle upon the still, unsuspecting elephants. Finally they were within side of the great beast. Now they singled out two large tuskers, and at a signal the fifty men rose from the ground where they had lame concealed and hurled their heavy war-spears at the two marked beast. There was not a single miss. Twenty-five spears were embedded in the sides of each of the great animals. One never moved from the spot where it stood when the avalanche of spears struck it, for two perfectly aimed had penetrated its heart, and it lunged forward upon its knees, rolling to the ground without a struggle. The other, standing nearly head-on toward the hunters, had not proved so good a mark, and though every spear struck not one entered the great heart. For a moment the huge bull stood trumpeting in rage and pain, casting about with its little eyes for the author of its hurt. The blacks had faded into the jungle before the weak eyes of the monster had fallen upon any of them. But now he caught the sound of their retreat, and amid a terrific crashing of underbrush and branches he charged in the direction of the noise. It so happened that Chance sent him in the direction of Boussoulie, whom he was overtaking so rapidly, that it was as though the black were standing still, instead of racing at full speed to escape the certain death which pursued him. Tarzan had witnessed the entire performance from the branches of a nearby tree, and now that he saw his friend's peril he raced toward the infuriated beast with loud cries, hoping to distract him. But it had been as well had he saved his breath, for the brute was deaf and blind to all else save the particular object of his rage that raced futilely before him. And now Tarzan saw that only a miracle could save Boussoulie, and with the same unconcern with which he had once hunted this very man he hurled himself into the path of the elephant to save the black warrior's life. He still grasped his spear, and while Tantor was yet six or eight paces behind his prey a sinewy white warrior dropped as from the heavens almost directly in his path. With a vicious lunge the elephant swerved to the right to dispose of this temerious fulmin who dared intervene between himself and his intended victim. But he had not reckoned on the lightning quickness that could galvanize those steel muscles into action so marvelously swift as to baffle even a keener eyesight than Tantor's. And so it happened that before the elephant realized that his new enemy had leaped from his path Tarzan had driven his iron-shod's spear from behind the massive shoulder straight into the fierce heart and the colossal pachyderm had toppled to his death at the feet of the ape-man. Boussoulie had not beheld the manner of his deliverance, but Waziri the old chief had seen and several of the other warriors, and they hailed Tarzan with delight as they swarmed about him and his great kill. When he leaped upon the mighty carcass and gave voice to the weird challenge with which he announced a great victory, the black shrank back in fear, for to them it marked the brutal bulganny, whom they feared fully as much as they feared Numa the lion, but with a fear with which was mixed a certain uncanny awe of the man-like thing to which they attributed supernatural powers. But when Tarzan Lorde has raised head and smiled upon them, they were reassured, though they did not understand. Nor did they ever fully understand this strange creature who ran through the trees as quickly as Manu yet was even more at home upon the ground than themselves, who was except as to color like unto themselves, yet as powerful as ten of them and single-handed a match for the fiercest denizens of the fierce jungle. When the remainder of the warriors had gathered the hunt was again taken up, and the stalking of the retreating herd once more begun. But they had covered a bare hundred yards when from behind them, at a great distance, sounded faintly a strange popping. For an instant they stood like a group of statuary, intently listening. Then Tarzan spoke. Guns, he said, the village is being attacked. Come, cried Waziri, the Arab raiders have returned with their cannibal slaves for our ivory and our women. End of Chapter 15