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CHAPTER XXI The Village of Torture
As the little expedition of sailors toiled through the dense jungle searching for
signs of Jane Porter, the futility of their venture became more and more apparent, but
the grief of the old man and the hopeless
eyes of the young Englishman prevented the kind hearted D'Arnot from turning back.
He thought that there might be a bare possibility of finding her body, or the
remains of it, for he was positive that she had been devoured by some beast of prey.
He deployed his men into a skirmish line from the point where Esmeralda had been
found, and in this extended formation they pushed their way, sweating and panting,
through the tangled vines and creepers.
It was slow work. Noon found them but a few miles inland.
They halted for a brief rest then, and after pushing on for a short distance
further one of the men discovered a well- marked trail.
It was an old elephant track, and D'Arnot after consulting with Professor Porter and
Clayton decided to follow it.
The path wound through the jungle in a northeasterly direction, and along it the
column moved in single file.
Lieutenant D'Arnot was in the lead and moving at a quick pace, for the trail was
comparatively open.
Immediately behind him came Professor Porter, but as he could not keep pace with
the younger man D'Arnot was a hundred yards in advance when suddenly a half dozen black
warriors arose about him.
D'Arnot gave a warning shout to his column as the blacks closed on him, but before he
could draw his revolver he had been pinioned and dragged into the jungle.
His cry had alarmed the sailors and a dozen of them sprang forward past Professor
Porter, running up the trail to their officer's aid.
They did not know the cause of his outcry, only that it was a warning of danger ahead.
They had rushed past the spot where D'Arnot had been seized when a spear hurled from
the jungle transfixed one of the men, and then a volley of arrows fell among them.
Raising their rifles they fired into the underbrush in the direction from which the
missiles had come.
By this time the balance of the party had come up, and volley after volley was fired
toward the concealed foe. It was these shots that Tarzan and Jane
Porter had heard.
Lieutenant Charpentier, who had been bringing up the rear of the column, now
came running to the scene, and on hearing the details of the ambush ordered the men
to follow him, and plunged into the tangled vegetation.
In an instant they were in a hand-to-hand fight with some fifty black warriors of
Mbonga's village.
Arrows and bullets flew thick and fast.
*** African knives and French gun butts mingled for a moment in savage and bloody
duels, but soon the natives fled into the jungle, leaving the Frenchmen to count
their losses.
Four of the twenty were dead, a dozen others were wounded, and Lieutenant D'Arnot
was missing.
Night was falling rapidly, and their predicament was rendered doubly worse when
they could not even find the elephant trail which they had been following.
There was but one thing to do, make camp where they were until daylight.
Lieutenant Charpentier ordered a clearing made and a circular abatis of underbrush
constructed about the camp.
This work was not completed until long after dark, the men building a huge fire in
the center of the clearing to give them light to work by.
When all was safe as possible against attack of wild beasts and savage men,
Lieutenant Charpentier placed sentries about the little camp and the tired and
hungry men threw themselves upon the ground to sleep.
The groans of the wounded, mingled with the roaring and growling of the great beasts
which the noise and firelight had attracted, kept sleep, except in its most
fitful form, from the tired eyes.
It was a sad and hungry party that lay through the long night praying for dawn.
The blacks who had seized D'Arnot had not waited to participate in the fight which
followed, but instead had dragged their prisoner a little way through the jungle
and then struck the trail further on beyond
the scene of the fighting in which their fellows were engaged.
They hurried him along, the sounds of battle growing fainter and fainter as they
drew away from the contestants until there suddenly broke upon D'Arnot's vision a
good-sized clearing at one end of which stood a thatched and palisaded village.
It was now dusk, but the watchers at the gate saw the approaching trio and
distinguished one as a prisoner ere they reached the portals.
A cry went up within the palisade.
A great throng of women and children rushed out to meet the party.
And then began for the French officer the most terrifying experience which man can
encounter upon earth--the reception of a white prisoner into a village of African
cannibals.
To add to the fiendishness of their cruel savagery was the poignant memory of still
crueler barbarities practiced upon them and theirs by the white officers of that arch
hypocrite, Leopold II of Belgium, because
of whose atrocities they had fled the Congo Free State--a pitiful remnant of what once
had been a mighty tribe.
They fell upon D'Arnot tooth and nail, beating him with sticks and stones and
tearing at him with claw-like hands.
Every vestige of clothing was torn from him, and the merciless blows fell upon his
bare and quivering flesh. But not once did the Frenchman cry out in
pain.
He breathed a silent prayer that he be quickly delivered from his torture.
But the death he prayed for was not to be so easily had.
Soon the warriors beat the women away from their prisoner.
He was to be saved for nobler sport than this, and the first wave of their passion
having subsided they contented themselves with crying out taunts and insults and
spitting upon him.
Presently they reached the center of the village.
There D'Arnot was bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever
been released.
A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while
others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled
while the balance would be slowly dried in
strips for future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many
prisoners.
The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the warriors who had remained to
engage in the skirmish with the white men, so that it was quite late when all were in
the village, and the dance of death
commenced to circle around the doomed officer.
Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, D'Arnot watched from beneath half-closed
lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrid nightmare from
which he must soon awake.
The *** faces, daubed with color--the huge mouths and flabby hanging lips--the
yellow teeth, sharp filed--the rolling, demon eyes--the shining naked bodies--the
cruel spears.
Surely no such creatures really existed upon earth--he must indeed be dreaming.
The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth and touched his
arm.
The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling blood assured him of the awful
reality of his hopeless position. Another spear and then another touched him.
He closed his eyes and held his teeth firm set--he would not cry out.
He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an officer and a
gentleman died.
Tarzan of the Apes needed no interpreter to translate the story of those distant shots.
With Jane Porter's kisses still warm upon his lips he was swinging with incredible
rapidity through the forest trees straight toward the village of Mbonga.
He was not interested in the location of the encounter, for he judged that that
would soon be over.
Those who were killed he could not aid, those who escaped would not need his
assistance. It was to those who had neither been killed
or escaped that he hastened.
And he knew that he would find them by the great post in the center of Mbonga village.
Many times had Tarzan seen Mbonga's black raiding parties return from the northward
with prisoners, and always were the same scenes enacted about that grim stake,
beneath the flaring light of many fires.
He knew, too, that they seldom lost much time before consummating the fiendish
purpose of their captures. He doubted that he would arrive in time to
do more than avenge.
On he sped.
Night had fallen and he traveled high along the upper terrace where the gorgeous tropic
moon lighted the dizzy pathway through the gently undulating branches of the tree
tops.
Presently he caught the reflection of a distant blaze.
It lay to the right of his path.
It must be the light from the camp fire the two men had built before they were
attacked--Tarzan knew nothing of the presence of the sailors.
So sure was Tarzan of his jungle knowledge that he did not turn from his course, but
passed the glare at a distance of a half mile.
It was the camp fire of the Frenchmen.
In a few minutes more Tarzan swung into the trees above Mbonga's village.
Ah, he was not quite too late! Or, was he?
He could not tell.
The figure at the stake was very still, yet the black warriors were but pricking it.
Tarzan knew their customs. The death blow had not been struck.
He could tell almost to a minute how far the dance had gone.
In another instant Mbonga's knife would sever one of the victim's ears--that would
mark the beginning of the end, for very shortly after only a writhing mass of
mutilated flesh would remain.
There would still be life in it, but death then would be the only charity it craved.
The stake stood forty feet from the nearest tree.
Tarzan coiled his rope.
Then there rose suddenly above the fiendish cries of the dancing demons the awful
challenge of the ape-man. The dancers halted as though turned to
stone.
The rope sped with singing whir high above the heads of the blacks.
It was quite invisible in the flaring lights of the camp fires.
D'Arnot opened his eyes.
A huge black, standing directly before him, lunged backward as though felled by an
invisible hand.
Struggling and shrieking, his body, rolling from side to side, moved quickly toward the
shadows beneath the trees. The blacks, their eyes protruding in
horror, watched spellbound.
Once beneath the trees, the body rose straight into the air, and as it
disappeared into the foliage above, the terrified negroes, screaming with fright,
broke into a mad race for the village gate.
D'Arnot was left alone. He was a brave man, but he had felt the
short hairs bristle upon the nape of his neck when that uncanny cry rose upon the
air.
As the writhing body of the black soared, as though by unearthly power, into the
dense foliage of the forest, D'Arnot felt an icy shiver run along his spine, as
though death had risen from a dark grave
and laid a cold and clammy finger on his flesh.
As D'Arnot watched the spot where the body had entered the tree he heard the sounds of
movement there.
The branches swayed as though under the weight of a man's body--there was a crash
and the black came sprawling to earth again,--to lie very quietly where he had
fallen.
Immediately after him came a white body, but this one alighted erect.
D'Arnot saw a clean-limbed young giant emerge from the shadows into the firelight
and come quickly toward him.
What could it mean? Who could it be?
Some new creature of torture and destruction, doubtless.
D'Arnot waited.
His eyes never left the face of the advancing man.
Nor did the other's frank, clear eyes waver beneath D'Arnot's fixed gaze.
D'Arnot was reassured, but still without much hope, though he felt that that face
could not mask a cruel heart. Without a word Tarzan of the Apes cut the
bonds which held the Frenchman.
Weak from suffering and loss of blood, he would have fallen but for the strong arm
that caught him. He felt himself lifted from the ground.
There was a sensation as of flying, and then he lost consciousness.
>
CHAPTER XXII The Search Party
When dawn broke upon the little camp of Frenchmen in the heart of the jungle it
found a sad and disheartened group.
As soon as it was light enough to see their surroundings Lieutenant Charpentier sent
men in groups of three in several directions to locate the trail, and in ten
minutes it was found and the expedition was hurrying back toward the beach.
It was slow work, for they bore the bodies of six dead men, two more having succumbed
during the night, and several of those who were wounded required support to move even
very slowly.
Charpentier had decided to return to camp for reinforcements, and then make an
attempt to track down the natives and rescue D'Arnot.
It was late in the afternoon when the exhausted men reached the clearing by the
beach, but for two of them the return brought so great a happiness that all their
suffering and heartbreaking grief was forgotten on the instant.
As the little party emerged from the jungle the first person that Professor Porter and
Cecil Clayton saw was Jane, standing by the cabin door.
With a little cry of joy and relief she ran forward to greet them, throwing her arms
about her father's neck and bursting into tears for the first time since they had
been cast upon this hideous and adventurous shore.
Professor Porter strove manfully to suppress his own emotions, but the strain
upon his nerves and weakened vitality were too much for him, and at length, burying
his old face in the girl's shoulder, he sobbed quietly like a tired child.
Jane led him toward the cabin, and the Frenchmen turned toward the beach from
which several of their fellows were advancing to meet them.
Clayton, wishing to leave father and daughter alone, joined the sailors and
remained talking with the officers until their boat pulled away toward the cruiser
whither Lieutenant Charpentier was bound to
report the unhappy outcome of his adventure.
Then Clayton turned back slowly toward the cabin.
His heart was filled with happiness.
The woman he loved was safe. He wondered by what manner of miracle she
had been spared. To see her alive seemed almost
unbelievable.
As he approached the cabin he saw Jane coming out.
When she saw him she hurried forward to meet him.
"Jane!" he cried, "God has been good to us, indeed.
Tell me how you escaped--what form Providence took to save you for--us."
He had never before called her by her given name.
Forty-eight hours before it would have suffused Jane with a soft glow of pleasure
to have heard that name from Clayton's lips--now it frightened her.
"Mr. Clayton," she said quietly, extending her hand, "first let me thank you for your
chivalrous loyalty to my dear father. He has told me how noble and self-
sacrificing you have been.
How can we repay you!" Clayton noticed that she did not return his
familiar salutation, but he felt no misgivings on that score.
She had been through so much.
This was no time to force his love upon her, he quickly realized.
"I am already repaid," he said. "Just to see you and Professor Porter both
safe, well, and together again.
I do not think that I could much longer have endured the pathos of his quiet and
uncomplaining grief.
"It was the saddest experience of my life, Miss Porter; and then, added to it, there
was my own grief--the greatest I have ever known.
But his was so hopeless--his was pitiful.
It taught me that no love, not even that of a man for his wife may be so deep and
terrible and self-sacrificing as the love of a father for his daughter."
The girl bowed her head.
There was a question she wanted to ask, but it seemed almost sacrilegious in the face
of the love of these two men and the terrible suffering they had endured while
she sat laughing and happy beside a godlike
creature of the forest, eating delicious fruits and looking with eyes of love into
answering eyes.
But love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger, so she asked her
question. "Where is the forest man who went to rescue
you?
Why did he not return?" "I do not understand," said Clayton.
"Whom do you mean?" "He who has saved each of us--who saved me
from the gorilla."
"Oh," cried Clayton, in surprise. "It was he who rescued you?
You have not told me anything of your adventure, you know."
"But the wood man," she urged.
"Have you not seen him? When we heard the shots in the jungle, very
faint and far away, he left me.
We had just reached the clearing, and he hurried off in the direction of the
fighting. I know he went to aid you."
Her tone was almost pleading--her manner tense with suppressed emotion.
Clayton could not but notice it, and he wondered, vaguely, why she was so deeply
moved--so anxious to know the whereabouts of this strange creature.
Yet a feeling of apprehension of some impending sorrow haunted him, and in his
breast, unknown to himself, was implanted the first germ of jealousy and suspicion of
the ape-man, to whom he owed his life.
"We did not see him," he replied quietly. "He did not join us."
And then after a moment of thoughtful pause: "Possibly he joined his own tribe--
the men who attacked us."
He did not know why he had said it, for he did not believe it.
The girl looked at him wide eyed for a moment.
"No!" she exclaimed vehemently, much too vehemently he thought.
"It could not be. They were savages."
Clayton looked puzzled.
"He is a strange, half-savage creature of the jungle, Miss Porter.
We know nothing of him.
He neither speaks nor understands any European tongue--and his ornaments and
weapons are those of the West Coast savages."
Clayton was speaking rapidly.
"There are no other human beings than savages within hundreds of miles, Miss
Porter.
He must belong to the tribes which attacked us, or to some other equally savage--he may
even be a cannibal." Jane blanched.
"I will not believe it," she half whispered.
"It is not true.
You shall see," she said, addressing Clayton, "that he will come back and that
he will prove that you are wrong. You do not know him as I do.
I tell you that he is a gentleman."
Clayton was a generous and chivalrous man, but something in the girl's breathless
defense of the forest man stirred him to unreasoning jealousy, so that for the
instant he forgot all that they owed to
this wild demi-god, and he answered her with a half sneer upon his lip.
"Possibly you are right, Miss Porter," he said, "but I do not think that any of us
need worry about our carrion-eating acquaintance.
The chances are that he is some half- demented castaway who will forget us more
quickly, but no more surely, than we shall forget him.
He is only a beast of the jungle, Miss Porter."
The girl did not answer, but she felt her heart shrivel within her.
She knew that Clayton spoke merely what he thought, and for the first time she began
to analyze the structure which supported her newfound love, and to subject its
object to a critical examination.
Slowly she turned and walked back to the cabin.
She tried to imagine her wood-god by her side in the saloon of an ocean liner.
She saw him eating with his hands, tearing his food like a beast of prey, and wiping
his greasy fingers upon his thighs. She shuddered.
She saw him as she introduced him to her friends--uncouth, illiterate--a boor; and
the girl winced.
She had reached her room now, and as she sat upon the edge of her bed of ferns and
grasses, with one hand resting upon her rising and falling ***, she felt the hard
outlines of the man's locket.
She drew it out, holding it in the palm of her hand for a moment with tear-blurred
eyes bent upon it.
Then she raised it to her lips, and crushing it there buried her face in the
soft ferns, sobbing. "Beast?" she murmured.
"Then God make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours."
She did not see Clayton again that day.
Esmeralda brought her supper to her, and she sent word to her father that she was
suffering from the reaction following her adventure.
The next morning Clayton left early with the relief expedition in search of
Lieutenant D'Arnot.
There were two hundred armed men this time, with ten officers and two surgeons, and
provisions for a week.
They carried bedding and hammocks, the latter for transporting their sick and
wounded.
It was a determined and angry company--a punitive expedition as well as one of
relief.
They reached the site of the skirmish of the previous expedition shortly after noon,
for they were now traveling a known trail and no time was lost in exploring.
From there on the elephant-track led straight to Mbonga's village.
It was but two o'clock when the head of the column halted upon the edge of the
clearing.
Lieutenant Charpentier, who was in command, immediately sent a portion of his force
through the jungle to the opposite side of the village.
Another detachment was dispatched to a point before the village gate, while he
remained with the balance upon the south side of the clearing.
It was arranged that the party which was to take its position to the north, and which
would be the last to gain its station should commence the assault, and that their
opening volley should be the signal for a
concerted rush from all sides in an attempt to carry the village by storm at the first
charge.
For half an hour the men with Lieutenant Charpentier crouched in the dense foliage
of the jungle, waiting the signal. To them it seemed like hours.
They could see natives in the fields, and others moving in and out of the village
gate.
At length the signal came--a sharp rattle of musketry, and like one man, an answering
volley tore from the jungle to the west and to the south.
The natives in the field dropped their implements and broke madly for the
palisade.
The French bullets mowed them down, and the French sailors bounded over their prostrate
bodies straight for the village gate.
So sudden and unexpected the assault had been that the whites reached the gates
before the frightened natives could bar them, and in another minute the village
street was filled with armed men fighting hand to hand in an inextricable tangle.
For a few moments the blacks held their ground within the entrance to the street,
but the revolvers, rifles and cutlasses of the Frenchmen crumpled the native spearmen
and struck down the black archers with their bows halfdrawn.
Soon the battle turned to a wild rout, and then to a grim massacre; for the French
sailors had seen bits of D'Arnot's uniform upon several of the black warriors who
opposed them.
They spared the children and those of the women whom they were not forced to kill in
self-defense, but when at length they stopped, panting, blood covered and
sweating, it was because there lived to
oppose them no single warrior of all the savage village of Mbonga.
Carefully they ransacked every hut and corner of the village, but no sign of
D'Arnot could they find.
They questioned the prisoners by signs, and finally one of the sailors who had served
in the French Congo found that he could make them understand the *** tongue
that passes for language between the whites
and the more degraded tribes of the coast, but even then they could learn nothing
definite regarding the fate of D'Arnot.
Only excited gestures and expressions of fear could they obtain in response to their
inquiries concerning their fellow; and at last they became convinced that these were
but evidences of the guilt of these demons
who had slaughtered and eaten their comrade two nights before.
At length all hope left them, and they prepared to camp for the night within the
village.
The prisoners were herded into three huts where they were heavily guarded.
Sentries were posted at the barred gates, and finally the village was wrapped in the
silence of slumber, except for the wailing of the native women for their dead.
The next morning they set out upon the return march.
Their original intention had been to burn the village, but this idea was abandoned
and the prisoners were left behind, weeping and moaning, but with roofs to cover them
and a palisade for refuge from the beasts of the jungle.
Slowly the expedition retraced its steps of the preceding day.
Ten loaded hammocks retarded its pace.
In eight of them lay the more seriously wounded, while two swung beneath the weight
of the dead.
Clayton and Lieutenant Charpentier brought up the rear of the column; the Englishman
silent in respect for the other's grief, for D'Arnot and Charpentier had been
inseparable friends since boyhood.
Clayton could not but realize that the Frenchman felt his grief the more keenly
because D'Arnot's sacrifice had been so futile, since Jane had been rescued before
D'Arnot had fallen into the hands of the
savages, and again because the service in which he had lost his life had been outside
his duty and for strangers and aliens; but when he spoke of it to Lieutenant
Charpentier, the latter shook his head.
"No, Monsieur," he said, "D'Arnot would have chosen to die thus.
I only grieve that I could not have died for him, or at least with him.
I wish that you could have known him better, Monsieur.
He was indeed an officer and a gentleman--a title conferred on many, but deserved by so
few.
"He did not die futilely, for his death in the cause of a strange American girl will
make us, his comrades, face our ends the more bravely, however they may come to us."
Clayton did not reply, but within him rose a new respect for Frenchmen which remained
undimmed ever after. It was quite late when they reached the
cabin by the beach.
A single shot before they emerged from the jungle had announced to those in camp as
well as on the ship that the expedition had been too late--for it had been prearranged
that when they came within a mile or two of
camp one shot was to be fired to denote failure, or three for success, while two
would have indicated that they had found no sign of either D'Arnot or his black
captors.
So it was a solemn party that awaited their coming, and few words were spoken as the
dead and wounded men were tenderly placed in boats and rowed silently toward the
cruiser.
Clayton, exhausted from his five days of laborious marching through the jungle and
from the effects of his two battles with the blacks, turned toward the cabin to seek
a mouthful of food and then the comparative
ease of his bed of grasses after two nights in the jungle.
By the cabin door stood Jane. "The poor lieutenant?" she asked.
"Did you find no trace of him?"
"We were too late, Miss Porter," he replied sadly.
"Tell me. What had happened?" she asked.
"I cannot, Miss Porter, it is too horrible."
"You do not mean that they had tortured him?" she whispered.
"We do not know what they did to him BEFORE they killed him," he answered, his face
drawn with fatigue and the sorrow he felt for poor D'Arnot and he emphasized the word
before.
"BEFORE they killed him! What do you mean?
They are not--? They are not--?"
She was thinking of what Clayton had said of the forest man's probable relationship
to this tribe and she could not frame the awful word.
"Yes, Miss Porter, they were--cannibals," he said, almost bitterly, for to him too
had suddenly come the thought of the forest man, and the strange, unaccountable
jealousy he had felt two days before swept over him once more.
And then in sudden brutality that was as unlike Clayton as courteous consideration
is unlike an ape, he blurted out:
"When your forest god left you he was doubtless hurrying to the feast."
He was sorry ere the words were spoken though he did not know how cruelly they had
cut the girl.
His regret was for his baseless disloyalty to one who had saved the lives of every
member of his party, and offered harm to none.
The girl's head went high.
"There could be but one suitable reply to your assertion, Mr. Clayton," she said
icily, "and I regret that I am not a man, that I might make it."
She turned quickly and entered the cabin.
Clayton was an Englishman, so the girl had passed quite out of sight before he deduced
what reply a man would have made. "Upon my word," he said ruefully, "she
called me a liar.
And I fancy I jolly well deserved it," he added thoughtfully.
"Clayton, my boy, I know you are tired out and unstrung, but that's no reason why you
should make an *** of yourself.
You'd better go to bed."
But before he did so he called gently to Jane upon the opposite side of the
sailcloth partition, for he wished to apologize, but he might as well have
addressed the Sphinx.
Then he wrote upon a piece of paper and shoved it beneath the partition.
Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was very angry and hurt and
mortified, but--she was a woman, and so eventually she picked it up and read it.
MY DEAR MISS PORTER: I had no reason to insinuate what I did.
My only excuse is that my nerves must be unstrung--which is no excuse at all.
Please try and think that I did not say it.
I am very sorry. I would not have hurt YOU, above all others
in the world. Say that you forgive me.
WM. CECIL CLAYTON.
"He did think it or he never would have said it," reasoned the girl, "but it cannot
be true--oh, I know it is not true!"
One sentence in the letter frightened her: "I would not have hurt YOU above all others
in the world." A week ago that sentence would have filled
her with delight, now it depressed her.
She wished she had never met Clayton. She was sorry that she had ever seen the
forest god. No, she was glad.
And there was that other note she had found in the grass before the cabin the day after
her return from the jungle, the love note signed by Tarzan of the Apes.
Who could be this new suitor?
If he were another of the wild denizens of this terrible forest what might he not do
to claim her? "Esmeralda!
Wake up," she cried.
"You make me so irritable, sleeping there peacefully when you know perfectly well
that the world is filled with sorrow." "Gaberelle!" screamed Esmeralda, sitting
up.
"What is it now? A hipponocerous?
Where is he, Miss Jane?" "Nonsense, Esmeralda, there is nothing.
Go back to sleep.
You are bad enough asleep, but you are infinitely worse awake."
"Yes honey, but what's the matter with you, precious?
You acts sort of disgranulated this evening."
"Oh, Esmeralda, I'm just plain ugly to- night," said the girl.
"Don't pay any attention to me--that's a dear."
"Yes, honey; now you go right to sleep. Your nerves are all on edge.
What with all these ripotamuses and man eating geniuses that Mister Philander been
telling about--Lord, it ain't no wonder we all get nervous prosecution."
Jane crossed the little room, laughing, and kissing the faithful woman, bid Esmeralda
good night.
>
CHAPTER XXIII Brother Men.
When D'Arnot regained consciousness, he found himself lying upon a bed of soft
ferns and grasses beneath a little "A" shaped shelter of boughs.
At his feet an opening looked out upon a green sward, and at a little distance
beyond was the dense wall of jungle and forest.
He was very lame and sore and weak, and as full consciousness returned he felt the
sharp torture of many cruel wounds and the dull aching of every bone and muscle in his
body as a result of the hideous beating he had received.
Even the turning of his head caused him such excruciating agony that he lay still
with closed eyes for a long time.
He tried to piece out the details of his adventure prior to the time he lost
consciousness to see if they would explain his present whereabouts--he wondered if he
were among friends or foes.
At length he recollected the whole hideous scene at the stake, and finally recalled
the strange white figure in whose arms he had sunk into oblivion.
D'Arnot wondered what fate lay in store for him now.
He could neither see nor hear any signs of life about him.
The incessant hum of the jungle--the rustling of millions of leaves--the buzz of
insects--the voices of the birds and monkeys seemed blended into a strangely
soothing purr, as though he lay apart, far
from the myriad life whose sounds came to him only as a blurred echo.
At length he fell into a quiet slumber, nor did he awake again until afternoon.
Once more he experienced the strange sense of utter bewilderment that had marked his
earlier awakening, but soon he recalled the recent past, and looking through the
opening at his feet he saw the figure of a man squatting on his haunches.
The broad, muscular back was turned toward him, but, tanned though it was, D'Arnot saw
that it was the back of a white man, and he thanked God.
The Frenchman called faintly.
The man turned, and rising, came toward the shelter.
His face was very handsome--the handsomest, thought D'Arnot, that he had ever seen.
Stooping, he crawled into the shelter beside the wounded officer, and placed a
cool hand upon his forehead.
D'Arnot spoke to him in French, but the man only shook his head--sadly, it seemed to
the Frenchman. Then D'Arnot tried English, but still the
man shook his head.
Italian, Spanish and German brought similar discouragement.
D'Arnot knew a few words of Norwegian, Russian, Greek, and also had a smattering
of the language of one of the West Coast *** tribes--the man denied them all.
After examining D'Arnot's wounds the man left the shelter and disappeared.
In half an hour he was back with fruit and a hollow gourd-like vegetable filled with
water.
D'Arnot drank and ate a little. He was surprised that he had no fever.
Again he tried to converse with his strange nurse, but the attempt was useless.
Suddenly the man hastened from the shelter only to return a few minutes later with
several pieces of bark and--wonder of wonders--a lead pencil.
Squatting beside D'Arnot he wrote for a minute on the smooth inner surface of the
bark; then he handed it to the Frenchman.
D'Arnot was astonished to see, in plain print-like characters, a message in
English: I am Tarzan of the Apes.
Who are you?
Can you read this language? D'Arnot seized the pencil--then he stopped.
This strange man wrote English--evidently he was an Englishman.
"Yes," said D'Arnot, "I read English.
I speak it also. Now we may talk.
First let me thank you for all that you have done for me."
The man only shook his head and pointed to the pencil and the bark.
"MON DIEU!" cried D'Arnot. "If you are English why is it then that you
cannot speak English?"
And then in a flash it came to him--the man was a mute, possibly a deaf mute.
So D'Arnot wrote a message on the bark, in English.
I am Paul d'Arnot, Lieutenant in the navy of France.
I thank you for what you have done for me. You have saved my life, and all that I have
is yours.
May I ask how it is that one who writes English does not speak it?
Tarzan's reply filled D'Arnot with still greater wonder:
I speak only the language of my tribe--the great apes who were Kerchak's; and a little
of the languages of Tantor, the elephant, and Numa, the lion, and of the other folks
of the jungle I understand.
With a human being I have never spoken, except once with Jane Porter, by signs.
This is the first time I have spoken with another of my kind through written words.
D'Arnot was mystified.
It seemed incredible that there lived upon earth a full-grown man who had never spoken
with a fellow man, and still more preposterous that such a one could read and
write.
He looked again at Tarzan's message-- "except once, with Jane Porter."
That was the American girl who had been carried into the jungle by a gorilla.
A sudden light commenced to dawn on D'Arnot--this then was the "gorilla."
He seized the pencil and wrote: Where is Jane Porter?
And Tarzan replied, below:
Back with her people in the cabin of Tarzan of the Apes.
She is not dead then? Where was she?
What happened to her?
She is not dead. She was taken by Terkoz to be his wife; but
Tarzan of the Apes took her away from Terkoz and killed him before he could harm
her.
None in all the jungle may face Tarzan of the Apes in battle, and live.
I am Tarzan of the Apes--mighty fighter. D'Arnot wrote:
I am glad she is safe.
It pains me to write, I will rest a while. And then Tarzan:
Yes, rest. When you are well I shall take you back to
your people.
For many days D'Arnot lay upon his bed of soft ferns.
The second day a fever had come and D'Arnot thought that it meant infection and he knew
that he would die.
An idea came to him. He wondered why he had not thought of it
before.
He called Tarzan and indicated by signs that he would write, and when Tarzan had
fetched the bark and pencil, D'Arnot wrote: Can you go to my people and lead them here?
I will write a message that you may take to them, and they will follow you.
Tarzan shook his head and taking the bark, wrote:
I had thought of that--the first day; but I dared not.
The great apes come often to this spot, and if they found you here, wounded and alone,
they would kill you.
D'Arnot turned on his side and closed his eyes.
He did not wish to die; but he felt that he was going, for the fever was mounting
higher and higher.
That night he lost consciousness. For three days he was in delirium, and
Tarzan sat beside him and bathed his head and hands and washed his wounds.
On the fourth day the fever broke as suddenly as it had come, but it left
D'Arnot a shadow of his former self, and very weak.
Tarzan had to lift him that he might drink from the gourd.
The fever had not been the result of infection, as D'Arnot had thought, but one
of those that commonly attack whites in the jungles of Africa, and either kill or leave
them as suddenly as D'Arnot's had left him.
Two days later, D'Arnot was tottering about the amphitheater, Tarzan's strong arm about
him to keep him from falling.
They sat beneath the shade of a great tree, and Tarzan found some smooth bark that they
might converse. D'Arnot wrote the first message:
What can I do to repay you for all that you have done for me?
And Tarzan, in reply: Teach me to speak the language of men.
And so D'Arnot commenced at once, pointing out familiar objects and repeating their
names in French, for he thought that it would be easier to teach this man his own
language, since he understood it himself best of all.
It meant nothing to Tarzan, of course, for he could not tell one language from
another, so when he pointed to the word man which he had printed upon a piece of bark
he learned from D'Arnot that it was
pronounced HOMME, and in the same way he was taught to pronounce ape, SINGE and
tree, ARBRE.
He was a most eager student, and in two more days had mastered so much French that
he could speak little sentences such as: "That is a tree," "this is grass," "I am
hungry," and the like, but D'Arnot found
that it was difficult to teach him the French construction upon a foundation of
English.
The Frenchman wrote little lessons for him in English and had Tarzan repeat them in
French, but as a literal translation was usually very poor French Tarzan was often
confused.
D'Arnot realized now that he had made a mistake, but it seemed too late to go back
and do it all over again and force Tarzan to unlearn all that he had learned,
especially as they were rapidly approaching
a point where they would be able to converse.
On the third day after the fever broke Tarzan wrote a message asking D'Arnot if he
felt strong enough to be carried back to the cabin.
Tarzan was as anxious to go as D'Arnot, for he longed to see Jane again.
It had been hard for him to remain with the Frenchman all these days for that very
reason, and that he had unselfishly done so spoke more glowingly of his nobility of
character than even did his rescuing the French officer from Mbonga's clutches.
D'Arnot, only too willing to attempt the journey, wrote:
But you cannot carry me all the distance through this tangled forest.
Tarzan laughed.
"MAIS OUI," he said, and D'Arnot laughed aloud to hear the phrase that he used so
often glide from Tarzan's tongue.
So they set out, D'Arnot marveling as had Clayton and Jane at the wondrous strength
and agility of the apeman.
Mid-afternoon brought them to the clearing, and as Tarzan dropped to earth from the
branches of the last tree his heart leaped and bounded against his ribs in
anticipation of seeing Jane so soon again.
No one was in sight outside the cabin, and D'Arnot was perplexed to note that neither
the cruiser nor the Arrow was at anchor in the bay.
An atmosphere of loneliness pervaded the spot, which caught suddenly at both men as
they strode toward the cabin.
Neither spoke, yet both knew before they opened the closed door what they would find
beyond. Tarzan lifted the latch and pushed the
great door in upon its wooden hinges.
It was as they had feared. The cabin was deserted.
The men turned and looked at one another.
D'Arnot knew that his people thought him dead; but Tarzan thought only of the woman
who had kissed him in love and now had fled from him while he was serving one of her
people.
A great bitterness rose in his heart. He would go away, far into the jungle and
join his tribe.
Never would he see one of his own kind again, nor could he bear the thought of
returning to the cabin.
He would leave that forever behind him with the great hopes he had nursed there of
finding his own race and becoming a man among men.
And the Frenchman?
D'Arnot? What of him?
He could get along as Tarzan had. Tarzan did not want to see him more.
He wanted to get away from everything that might remind him of Jane.
As Tarzan stood upon the threshold brooding, D'Arnot had entered the cabin.
Many comforts he saw that had been left behind.
He recognized numerous articles from the cruiser--a camp oven, some kitchen
utensils, a rifle and many rounds of ammunition, canned foods, blankets, two
chairs and a cot--and several books and periodicals, mostly American.
"They must intend returning," thought D'Arnot.
He walked over to the table that John Clayton had built so many years before to
serve as a desk, and on it he saw two notes addressed to Tarzan of the Apes.
One was in a strong masculine hand and was unsealed.
The other, in a woman's hand, was sealed.
"Here are two messages for you, Tarzan of the Apes," cried D'Arnot, turning toward
the door; but his companion was not there. D'Arnot walked to the door and looked out.
Tarzan was nowhere in sight.
He called aloud but there was no response. "MON DIEU!" exclaimed D'Arnot, "he has left
me. I feel it.
He has gone back into his jungle and left me here alone."
And then he remembered the look on Tarzan's face when they had discovered that the
cabin was empty--such a look as the hunter sees in the eyes of the wounded deer he has
wantonly brought down.
The man had been hard hit--D'Arnot realized it now--but why?
He could not understand. The Frenchman looked about him.
The loneliness and the horror of the place commenced to get on his nerves--already
weakened by the ordeal of suffering and sickness he had passed through.
To be left here alone beside this awful jungle--never to hear a human voice or see
a human face--in constant dread of savage beasts and more terribly savage men--a prey
to solitude and hopelessness.
It was awful. And far to the east Tarzan of the Apes was
speeding through the middle terrace back to his tribe.
Never had he traveled with such reckless speed.
He felt that he was running away from himself--that by hurtling through the
forest like a frightened squirrel he was escaping from his own thoughts.
But no matter how fast he went he found them always with him.
He passed above the sinuous body of Sabor, the lioness, going in the opposite
direction--toward the cabin, thought Tarzan.
What could D'Arnot do against Sabor--or if Bolgani, the gorilla, should come upon him-
-or Numa, the lion, or cruel Sheeta? Tarzan paused in his flight.
"What are you, Tarzan?" he asked aloud.
"An ape or a man?" "If you are an ape you will do as the apes
would do--leave one of your kind to die in the jungle if it suited your whim to go
elsewhere.
"If you are a man, you will return to protect your kind.
You will not run away from one of your own people, because one of them has run away
from you."
D'Arnot closed the cabin door. He was very nervous.
Even brave men, and D'Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.
He loaded one of the rifles and placed it within easy reach.
Then he went to the desk and took up the unsealed letter addressed to Tarzan.
Possibly it contained word that his people had but left the beach temporarily.
He felt that it would be no breach of ethics to read this letter, so he took the
enclosure from the envelope and read:
TO TARZAN OF THE APES: We thank you for the use of your cabin, and
are sorry that you did not permit us the pleasure of seeing and thanking you in
person.
We have harmed nothing, but have left many things for you which may add to your
comfort and safety here in your lonely home.
If you know the strange white man who saved our lives so many times, and brought us
food, and if you can converse with him, thank him, also, for his kindness.
We sail within the hour, never to return; but we wish you and that other jungle
friend to know that we shall always thank you for what you did for strangers on your
shore, and that we should have done
infinitely more to reward you both had you given us the opportunity.
Very respectfully, WM. CECIL CLAYTON.
"'Never to return,'" muttered D'Arnot, and threw himself face downward upon the cot.
An hour later he started up listening. Something was at the door trying to enter.
D'Arnot reached for the loaded rifle and placed it to his shoulder.
Dusk was falling, and the interior of the cabin was very dark; but the man could see
the latch moving from its place.
He felt his hair rising upon his scalp. Gently the door opened until a thin crack
showed something standing just beyond.
D'Arnot sighted along the blue barrel at the crack of the door--and then he pulled
the trigger.
>
CHAPTER XXIV Lost Treasure
When the expedition returned, following their fruitless endeavor to succor D'Arnot,
Captain Dufranne was anxious to steam away as quickly as possible, and all save Jane
had acquiesced.
"No," she said, determinedly, "I shall not go, nor should you, for there are two
friends in that jungle who will come out of it some day expecting to find us awaiting
them.
"Your officer, Captain Dufranne, is one of them, and the forest man who has saved the
lives of every member of my father's party is the other.
"He left me at the edge of the jungle two days ago to hasten to the aid of my father
and Mr. Clayton, as he thought, and he has stayed to rescue Lieutenant D'Arnot; of
that you may be sure.
"Had he been too late to be of service to the lieutenant he would have been back
before now--the fact that he is not back is sufficient proof to me that he is delayed
because Lieutenant D'Arnot is wounded, or
he has had to follow his captors further than the village which your sailors
attacked."
"But poor D'Arnot's uniform and all his belongings were found in that village, Miss
Porter," argued the captain, "and the natives showed great excitement when
questioned as to the white man's fate."
"Yes, Captain, but they did not admit that he was dead and as for his clothes and
accouterments being in their possession-- why more civilized peoples than these poor
savage negroes strip their prisoners of
every article of value whether they intend killing them or not.
"Even the soldiers of my own dear South looted not only the living but the dead.
It is strong circumstantial evidence, I will admit, but it is not positive proof."
"Possibly your forest man, himself was captured or killed by the savages,"
suggested Captain Dufranne.
The girl laughed. "You do not know him," she replied, a
little thrill of pride setting her nerves a-tingle at the thought that she spoke of
her own.
"I admit that he would be worth waiting for, this superman of yours," laughed the
captain. "I most certainly should like to see him."
"Then wait for him, my dear captain," urged the girl, "for I intend doing so."
The Frenchman would have been a very much surprised man could he have interpreted the
true meaning of the girl's words.
They had been walking from the beach toward the cabin as they talked, and now they
joined a little group sitting on camp stools in the shade of a great tree beside
the cabin.
Professor Porter was there, and Mr. Philander and Clayton, with Lieutenant
Charpentier and two of his brother officers, while Esmeralda hovered in the
background, ever and anon venturing
opinions and comments with the freedom of an old and much-indulged family servant.
The officers arose and saluted as their superior approached, and Clayton
surrendered his camp stool to Jane.
"We were just discussing poor Paul's fate," said Captain Dufranne.
"Miss Porter insists that we have no absolute proof of his death--nor have we.
And on the other hand she maintains that the continued absence of your omnipotent
jungle friend indicates that D'Arnot is still in need of his services, either
because he is wounded, or still is a prisoner in a more distant native village."
"It has been suggested," ventured Lieutenant Charpentier, "that the wild man
may have been a member of the tribe of blacks who attacked our party--that he was
hastening to aid THEM--his own people."
Jane shot a quick glance at Clayton. "It seems vastly more reasonable," said
Professor Porter. "I do not agree with you," objected Mr.
Philander.
"He had ample opportunity to harm us himself, or to lead his people against us.
Instead, during our long residence here, he has been uniformly consistent in his role
of protector and provider."
"That is true," interjected Clayton, "yet we must not overlook the fact that except
for himself the only human beings within hundreds of miles are savage cannibals.
He was armed precisely as are they, which indicates that he has maintained relations
of some nature with them, and the fact that he is but one against possibly thousands
suggests that these relations could scarcely have been other than friendly."
"It seems improbable then that he is not connected with them," remarked the captain;
"possibly a member of this tribe."
"Otherwise," added another of the officers, "how could he have lived a sufficient
length of time among the savage denizens of the jungle, brute and human, to have become
proficient in woodcraft, or in the use of African weapons."
"You are judging him according to your own standards, gentlemen," said Jane.
"An ordinary white man such as any of you-- pardon me, I did not mean just that--
rather, a white man above the ordinary in physique and intelligence could never, I
grant you, have lived a year alone and
naked in this tropical jungle; but this man not only surpasses the average white man in
strength and agility, but as far transcends our trained athletes and 'strong men' as
they surpass a day-old babe; and his
courage and ferocity in battle are those of the wild beast."
"He has certainly won a loyal champion, Miss Porter," said Captain Dufranne,
laughing.
"I am sure that there be none of us here but would willingly face death a hundred
times in its most terrifying forms to deserve the tributes of one even half so
loyal--or so beautiful."
"You would not wonder that I defend him," said the girl, "could you have seen him as
I saw him, battling in my behalf with that huge hairy brute.
"Could you have seen him charge the monster as a bull might charge a grizzly--
absolutely without sign of fear or hesitation--you would have believed him
more than human.
"Could you have seen those mighty muscles knotting under the brown skin--could you
have seen them force back those awful fangs--you too would have thought him
invincible.
"And could you have seen the chivalrous treatment which he accorded a strange girl
of a strange race, you would feel the same absolute confidence in him that I feel."
"You have won your suit, my fair pleader," cried the captain.
"This court finds the defendant not guilty, and the cruiser shall wait a few days
longer that he may have an opportunity to come and thank the divine Portia."
"For the Lord's sake honey," cried Esmeralda.
"You all don't mean to tell ME that you're going to stay right here in this here land
of carnivable animals when you all got the opportunity to escapade on that boat?
Don't you tell me THAT, honey."
"Why, Esmeralda! You should be ashamed of yourself," cried
Jane. "Is this any way to show your gratitude to
the man who saved your life twice?"
"Well, Miss Jane, that's all jest as you say; but that there forest man never did
save us to stay here. He done save us so we all could get AWAY
from here.
I expect he be mighty peevish when he find we ain't got no more sense than to stay
right here after he done give us the chance to get away.
"I hoped I'd never have to sleep in this here geological garden another night and
listen to all them lonesome noises that come out of that jumble after dark."
"I don't blame you a bit, Esmeralda," said Clayton, "and you certainly did hit it off
right when you called them 'lonesome' noises.
I never have been able to find the right word for them but that's it, don't you
know, lonesome noises." "You and Esmeralda had better go and live
on the cruiser," said Jane, in fine scorn.
"What would you think if you HAD to live all of your life in that jungle as our
forest man has done?" "I'm afraid I'd be a blooming bounder as a
wild man," laughed Clayton, ruefully.
"Those noises at night make the hair on my head bristle.
I suppose that I should be ashamed to admit it, but it's the truth."
"I don't know about that," said Lieutenant Charpentier.
"I never thought much about fear and that sort of thing--never tried to determine
whether I was a coward or brave man; but the other night as we lay in the jungle
there after poor D'Arnot was taken, and
those jungle noises rose and fell around us I began to think that I was a coward
indeed.
It was not the roaring and growling of the big beasts that affected me so much as it
was the stealthy noises--the ones that you heard suddenly close by and then listened
vainly for a repetition of--the
unaccountable sounds as of a great body moving almost noiselessly, and the
knowledge that you didn't KNOW how close it was, or whether it were creeping closer
after you ceased to hear it?
It was those noises--and the eyes. "MON DIEU!
I shall see them in the dark forever--the eyes that you see, and those that you don't
see, but feel--ah, they are the worst."
All were silent for a moment, and then Jane spoke.
"And he is out there," she said, in an awe- hushed whisper.
"Those eyes will be glaring at him to- night, and at your comrade Lieutenant
D'Arnot.
Can you leave them, gentlemen, without at least rendering them the passive succor
which remaining here a few days longer might insure them?"
"Tut, tut, child," said Professor Porter.
"Captain Dufranne is willing to remain, and for my part I am perfectly willing,
perfectly willing--as I always have been to humor your childish whims."
"We can utilize the morrow in recovering the chest, Professor," suggested Mr.
Philander.
"Quite so, quite so, Mr. Philander, I had almost forgotten the treasure," exclaimed
Professor Porter.
"Possibly we can borrow some men from Captain Dufranne to assist us, and one of
the prisoners to point out the location of the chest."
"Most assuredly, my dear Professor, we are all yours to command," said the captain.
And so it was arranged that on the next day Lieutenant Charpentier was to take a detail
of ten men, and one of the mutineers of the Arrow as a guide, and unearth the treasure;
and that the cruiser would remain for a full week in the little harbor.
At the end of that time it was to be assumed that D'Arnot was truly dead, and
that the forest man would not return while they remained.
Then the two vessels were to leave with all the party.
Professor Porter did not accompany the treasure-seekers on the following day, but
when he saw them returning empty-handed toward noon, he hastened forward to meet
them--his usual preoccupied indifference
entirely vanished, and in its place a nervous and excited manner.
"Where is the treasure?" he cried to Clayton, while yet a hundred feet separated
them.
Clayton shook his head. "Gone," he said, as he neared the
professor. "Gone!
It cannot be.
Who could have taken it?" cried Professor Porter.
"God only knows, Professor," replied Clayton.
"We might have thought the fellow who guided us was lying about the location, but
his surprise and consternation on finding no chest beneath the body of the murdered
Snipes were too real to be feigned.
And then our spades showed us that SOMETHING had been buried beneath the
corpse, for a hole had been there and it had been filled with loose earth."
"But who could have taken it?" repeated Professor Porter.
"Suspicion might naturally fall on the men of the cruiser," said Lieutenant
Charpentier, "but for the fact that sub- lieutenant Janviers here assures me that no
men have had shore leave--that none has
been on shore since we anchored here except under command of an officer.
I do not know that you would suspect our men, but I am glad that there is now no
chance for suspicion to fall on them," he concluded.
"It would never have occurred to me to suspect the men to whom we owe so much,"
replied Professor Porter, graciously. "I would as soon suspect my dear Clayton
here, or Mr. Philander."
The Frenchmen smiled, both officers and sailors.
It was plain to see that a burden had been lifted from their minds.
"The treasure has been gone for some time," continued Clayton.
"In fact the body fell apart as we lifted it, which indicates that whoever removed
the treasure did so while the corpse was still fresh, for it was intact when we
first uncovered it."
"There must have been several in the party," said Jane, who had joined them.
"You remember that it took four men to carry it."
"By jove!" cried Clayton.
"That's right. It must have been done by a party of
blacks.
Probably one of them saw the men bury the chest and then returned immediately after
with a party of his friends, and carried it off."
"Speculation is futile," said Professor Porter sadly.
"The chest is gone. We shall never see it again, nor the
treasure that was in it."
Only Jane knew what the loss meant to her father, and none there knew what it meant
to her. Six days later Captain Dufranne announced
that they would sail early on the morrow.
Jane would have begged for a further reprieve, had it not been that she too had
begun to believe that her forest lover would return no more.
In spite of herself she began to entertain doubts and fears.
The reasonableness of the arguments of these disinterested French officers
commenced to convince her against her will.
That he was a cannibal she would not believe, but that he was an adopted member
of some savage tribe at length seemed possible to her.
She would not admit that he could be dead.
It was impossible to believe that that perfect body, so filled with triumphant
life, could ever cease to harbor the vital spark--as soon believe that immortality
were dust.
As Jane permitted herself to harbor these thoughts, others equally unwelcome forced
themselves upon her.
If he belonged to some savage tribe he had a savage wife--a dozen of them perhaps--and
wild, half-caste children.
The girl shuddered, and when they told her that the cruiser would sail on the morrow
she was almost glad.
It was she, though, who suggested that arms, ammunition, supplies and comforts be
left behind in the cabin, ostensibly for that intangible personality who had signed
himself Tarzan of the Apes, and for D'Arnot
should he still be living, but really, she hoped, for her forest god--even though his
feet should prove of clay.
And at the last minute she left a message for him, to be transmitted by Tarzan of the
Apes.
She was the last to leave the cabin, returning on some trivial pretext after the
others had started for the boat.
She kneeled down beside the bed in which she had spent so many nights, and offered
up a prayer for the safety of her primeval man, and crushing his locket to her lips
she murmured:
"I love you, and because I love you I believe in you.
But if I did not believe, still should I love.
Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into
the jungle with you--forever."
>
CHAPTER XXV The Outpost of the World
With the report of his gun D'Arnot saw the door fly open and the figure of a man pitch
headlong within onto the cabin floor.
The Frenchman in his panic raised his gun to fire again into the prostrate form, but
suddenly in the half dusk of the open door he saw that the man was white and in
another instant realized that he had shot
his friend and protector, Tarzan of the Apes.
With a cry of anguish D'Arnot sprang to the ape-man's side, and kneeling, lifted the
latter's head in his arms--calling Tarzan's name aloud.
There was no response, and then D'Arnot placed his ear above the man's heart.
To his joy he heard its steady beating beneath.
Carefully he lifted Tarzan to the cot, and then, after closing and bolting the door,
he lighted one of the lamps and examined the wound.
The bullet had struck a glancing blow upon the skull.
There was an ugly flesh wound, but no signs of a fracture of the skull.
D'Arnot breathed a sigh of relief, and went about bathing the blood from Tarzan's face.
Soon the cool water revived him, and presently he opened his eyes to look in
questioning surprise at D'Arnot.
The latter had bound the wound with pieces of cloth, and as he saw that Tarzan had
regained consciousness he arose and going to the table wrote a message, which he
handed to the ape-man, explaining the
terrible mistake he had made and how thankful he was that the wound was not more
serious. Tarzan, after reading the message, sat on
the edge of the couch and laughed.
"It is nothing," he said in French, and then, his vocabulary failing him, he wrote:
You should have seen what Bolgani did to me, and Kerchak, and Terkoz, before I
killed them--then you would laugh at such a little scratch.
D'Arnot handed Tarzan the two messages that had been left for him.
Tarzan read the first one through with a look of sorrow on his face.
The second one he turned over and over, searching for an opening--he had never seen
a sealed envelope before. At length he handed it to D'Arnot.
The Frenchman had been watching him, and knew that Tarzan was puzzled over the
envelope. How strange it seemed that to a full-grown
white man an envelope was a mystery.
D'Arnot opened it and handed the letter back to Tarzan.
Sitting on a camp stool the ape-man spread the written sheet before him and read:
TO TARZAN OF THE APES: Before I leave let me add my thanks to
those of Mr. Clayton for the kindness you have shown in permitting us the use of your
cabin.
That you never came to make friends with us has been a great regret to us.
We should have liked so much to have seen and thanked our host.
There is another I should like to thank also, but he did not come back, though I
cannot believe that he is dead. I do not know his name.
He is the great white giant who wore the diamond locket upon his breast.
If you know him and can speak his language carry my thanks to him, and tell him that
I waited seven days for him to return.
Tell him, also, that in my home in America, in the city of Baltimore, there will always
be a welcome for him if he cares to come. I found a note you wrote me lying among the
leaves beneath a tree near the cabin.
I do not know how you learned to love me, who have never spoken to me, and I am very
sorry if it is true, for I have already given my heart to another.
But know that I am always your friend, JANE PORTER.
Tarzan sat with gaze fixed upon the floor for nearly an hour.
It was evident to him from the notes that they did not know that he and Tarzan of the
Apes were one and the same.
"I have given my heart to another," he repeated over and over again to himself.
Then she did not love him!
How could she have pretended love, and raised him to such a pinnacle of hope only
to cast him down to such utter depths of despair!
Maybe her kisses were only signs of friendship.
How did he know, who knew nothing of the customs of human beings?
Suddenly he arose, and, bidding D'Arnot good night as he had learned to do, threw
himself upon the couch of ferns that had been Jane Porter's.
D'Arnot extinguished the lamp, and lay down upon the cot.
For a week they did little but rest, D'Arnot coaching Tarzan in French.
At the end of that time the two men could converse quite easily.
One night, as they were sitting within the cabin before retiring, Tarzan turned to
D'Arnot.
"Where is America?" he said. D'Arnot pointed toward the northwest.
"Many thousands of miles across the ocean," he replied.
"Why?"
"I am going there." D'Arnot shook his head.
"It is impossible, my friend," he said.
Tarzan rose, and, going to one of the cupboards, returned with a well-thumbed
geography. Turning to a map of the world, he said:
"I have never quite understood all this; explain it to me, please."
When D'Arnot had done so, showing him that the blue represented all the water on the
earth, and the bits of other colors the continents and islands, Tarzan asked him to
point out the spot where they now were.
D'Arnot did so. "Now point out America," said Tarzan.
And as D'Arnot placed his finger upon North America, Tarzan smiled and laid his palm
upon the page, spanning the great ocean that lay between the two continents.
"You see it is not so very far," he said; "scarce the width of my hand."
D'Arnot laughed. How could he make the man understand?
Then he took a pencil and made a tiny point upon the shore of Africa.
"This little mark," he said, "is many times larger upon this map than your cabin is
upon the earth.
Do you see now how very far it is?" Tarzan thought for a long time.
"Do any white men live in Africa?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where are the nearest?" D'Arnot pointed out a spot on the shore
just north of them. "So close?" asked Tarzan, in surprise.
"Yes," said D'Arnot; "but it is not close."
"Have they big boats to cross the ocean?" "Yes."
"We shall go there to-morrow," announced Tarzan.
Again D'Arnot smiled and shook his head.
"It is too far. We should die long before we reached them."
"Do you wish to stay here then forever?" asked Tarzan.
"No," said D'Arnot.
"Then we shall start to-morrow. I do not like it here longer.
I should rather die than remain here."
"Well," answered D'Arnot, with a shrug, "I do not know, my friend, but that I also
would rather die than remain here. If you go, I shall go with you."
"It is settled then," said Tarzan.
"I shall start for America to-morrow." "How will you get to America without
money?" asked D'Arnot. "What is money?" inquired Tarzan.
It took a long time to make him understand even imperfectly.
"How do men get money?" he asked at last. "They work for it."
"Very well.
I will work for it, then." "No, my friend," returned D'Arnot, "you
need not worry about money, nor need you work for it.
I have enough money for two--enough for twenty.
Much more than is good for one man and you shall have all you need if ever we reach
civilization."
So on the following day they started north along the shore.
Each man carrying a rifle and ammunition, beside bedding and some food and cooking
utensils.
The latter seemed to Tarzan a most useless encumbrance, so he threw his away.
"But you must learn to eat cooked food, my friend," remonstrated D'Arnot.
"No civilized men eat raw flesh."
"There will be time enough when I reach civilization," said Tarzan.
"I do not like the things and they only spoil the taste of good meat."
For a month they traveled north.
Sometimes finding food in plenty and again going hungry for days.
They saw no signs of natives nor were they molested by wild beasts.
Their journey was a miracle of ease.
Tarzan asked questions and learned rapidly.
D'Arnot taught him many of the refinements of civilization--even to the use of knife
and fork; but sometimes Tarzan would drop them in disgust and grasp his food in his
strong brown hands, tearing it with his molars like a wild beast.
Then D'Arnot would expostulate with him, saying:
"You must not eat like a brute, Tarzan, while I am trying to make a gentleman of
you. MON DIEU!
Gentlemen do not thus--it is terrible."
Tarzan would grin sheepishly and pick up his knife and fork again, but at heart he
hated them.
On the journey he told D'Arnot about the great chest he had seen the sailors bury;
of how he had dug it up and carried it to the gathering place of the apes and buried
it there.
"It must be the treasure chest of Professor Porter," said D'Arnot.
"It is too bad, but of course you did not know."
Then Tarzan recalled the letter written by Jane to her friend--the one he had stolen
when they first came to his cabin, and now he knew what was in the chest and what it
meant to Jane.
"To-morrow we shall go back after it," he announced to D'Arnot.
"Go back?" exclaimed D'Arnot. "But, my dear fellow, we have now been
three weeks upon the march.
It would require three more to return to the treasure, and then, with that enormous
weight which required, you say, four sailors to carry, it would be months before
we had again reached this spot."
"It must be done, my friend," insisted Tarzan.
"You may go on toward civilization, and I will return for the treasure.
I can go very much faster alone."
"I have a better plan, Tarzan," exclaimed D'Arnot.
"We shall go on together to the nearest settlement, and there we will charter a
boat and sail back down the coast for the treasure and so transport it easily.
That will be safer and quicker and also not require us to be separated.
What do you think of that plan?" "Very well," said Tarzan.
"The treasure will be there whenever we go for it; and while I could fetch it now, and
catch up with you in a moon or two, I shall feel safer for you to know that you are not
alone on the trail.
When I see how helpless you are, D'Arnot, I often wonder how the human race has escaped
annihilation all these ages which you tell me about.
Why, Sabor, single handed, could exterminate a thousand of you."
D'Arnot laughed.
"You will think more highly of your genus when you have seen its armies and navies,
its great cities, and its mighty engineering works.
Then you will realize that it is mind, and not muscle, that makes the human animal
greater than the mighty beasts of your jungle.
"Alone and unarmed, a single man is no match for any of the larger beasts; but if
ten men were together, they would combine their wits and their muscles against their
savage enemies, while the beasts, being
unable to reason, would never think of combining against the men.
Otherwise, Tarzan of the Apes, how long would you have lasted in the savage
wilderness?"
"You are right, D'Arnot," replied Tarzan, "for if Kerchak had come to Tublat's aid
that night at the Dum-Dum, there would have been an end of me.
But Kerchak could never think far enough ahead to take advantage of any such
opportunity. Even Kala, my mother, could never plan
ahead.
She simply ate what she needed when she needed it, and if the supply was very
scarce, even though she found plenty for several meals, she would never gather any
ahead.
"I remember that she used to think it very silly of me to burden myself with extra
food upon the march, though she was quite glad to eat it with me, if the way chanced
to be barren of sustenance."
"Then you knew your mother, Tarzan?" asked D'Arnot, in surprise.
"Yes. She was a great, fine ape, larger than I,
and weighing twice as much."
"And your father?" asked D'Arnot. "I did not know him.
Kala told me he was a white ape, and hairless like myself.
I know now that he must have been a white man."
D'Arnot looked long and earnestly at his companion.
"Tarzan," he said at length, "it is impossible that the ape, Kala, was your
mother.
If such a thing can be, which I doubt, you would have inherited some of the
characteristics of the ape, but you have not--you are pure man, and, I should say,
the offspring of highly bred and intelligent parents.
Have you not the slightest clue to your past?"
"Not the slightest," replied Tarzan.
"No writings in the cabin that might have told something of the lives of its original
inmates?"
"I have read everything that was in the cabin with the exception of one book which
I know now to be written in a language other than English.
Possibly you can read it."
Tarzan fished the little black diary from the bottom of his quiver, and handed it to
his companion. D'Arnot glanced at the title page.
"It is the diary of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, an English nobleman, and it is
written in French," he said.
Then he proceeded to read the diary that had been written over twenty years before,
and which recorded the details of the story which we already know--the story of
adventure, hardships and sorrow of John
Clayton and his wife Alice, from the day they left England until an hour before he
was struck down by Kerchak. D'Arnot read aloud.
At times his voice broke, and he was forced to stop reading for the pitiful
hopelessness that spoke between the lines.
Occasionally he glanced at Tarzan; but the ape-man sat upon his haunches, like a
carven image, his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Only when the little babe was mentioned did the tone of the diary alter from the
habitual note of despair which had crept into it by degrees after the first two
months upon the shore.
Then the passages were tinged with a subdued happiness that was even sadder than
the rest. One entry showed an almost hopeful spirit.
To-day our little boy is six months old.
He is sitting in Alice's lap beside the table where I am writing--a happy, healthy,
perfect child.
Somehow, even against all reason, I seem to see him a grown man, taking his father's
place in the world--the second John Clayton--and bringing added honors to the
house of Greystoke.
There--as though to give my prophecy the weight of his endorsement--he has grabbed
my pen in his chubby fists and with his inkbegrimed little fingers has placed the
seal of his tiny finger prints upon the page.
And there, on the margin of the page, were the partially blurred imprints of four wee
fingers and the outer half of the thumb.
When D'Arnot had finished the diary the two men sat in silence for some minutes.
"Well! Tarzan of the Apes, what think you?" asked
D'Arnot.
"Does not this little book clear up the mystery of your parentage?
"Why man, you are Lord Greystoke." "The book speaks of but one child," he
replied.
"Its little skeleton lay in the crib, where it died crying for nourishment, from the
first time I entered the cabin until Professor Porter's party buried it, with
its father and mother, beside the cabin.
"No, that was the babe the book speaks of-- and the mystery of my origin is deeper than
before, for I have thought much of late of the possibility of that cabin having been
my birthplace.
I am afraid that Kala spoke the truth," he concluded sadly.
D'Arnot shook his head.
He was unconvinced, and in his mind had sprung the determination to prove the
correctness of his theory, for he had discovered the key which alone could unlock
the mystery, or consign it forever to the realms of the unfathomable.
A week later the two men came suddenly upon a clearing in the forest.
In the distance were several buildings surrounded by a strong palisade.
Between them and the enclosure stretched a cultivated field in which a number of
negroes were working.
The two halted at the edge of the jungle. Tarzan fitted his bow with a poisoned
arrow, but D'Arnot placed a hand upon his arm.
"What would you do, Tarzan?" he asked.
"They will try to kill us if they see us," replied Tarzan.
"I prefer to be the killer." "Maybe they are friends," suggested
D'Arnot.
"They are black," was Tarzan's only reply. And again he drew back his shaft.
"You must not, Tarzan!" cried D'Arnot. "White men do not kill wantonly.
MON DIEU! but you have much to learn.
"I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild man, when I take you to Paris.
I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the guillotine."
Tarzan lowered his bow and smiled.
"I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle, yet not kill them
here.
Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon us, I should say, then, I presume:
Good morning, Monsieur Numa, how is Madame Numa; eh?"
"Wait until the blacks spring upon you," replied D'Arnot, "then you may kill them.
Do not assume that men are your enemies until they prove it."
"Come," said Tarzan, "let us go and present ourselves to be killed," and he started
straight across the field, his head high held and the tropical sun beating upon his
smooth, brown skin.
Behind him came D'Arnot, clothed in some garments which had been discarded at the
cabin by Clayton when the officers of the French cruiser had fitted him out in more
presentable fashion.
Presently one of the blacks looked up, and beholding Tarzan, turned, shrieking, toward
the palisade.
In an instant the air was filled with cries of terror from the fleeing gardeners, but
before any had reached the palisade a white man emerged from the enclosure, rifle in
hand, to discover the cause of the commotion.
What he saw brought his rifle to his shoulder, and Tarzan of the Apes would have
felt cold lead once again had not D'Arnot cried loudly to the man with the leveled
gun:
"Do not fire! We are friends!"
"Halt, then!" was the reply. "Stop, Tarzan!" cried D'Arnot.
"He thinks we are enemies."
Tarzan dropped into a walk, and together he and D'Arnot advanced toward the white man
by the gate. The latter eyed them in puzzled
bewilderment.
"What manner of men are you?" he asked, in French.
"White men," replied D'Arnot. "We have been lost in the jungle for a long
time."
The man had lowered his rifle and now advanced with outstretched hand.
"I am Father Constantine of the French Mission here," he said, "and I am glad to
welcome you."
"This is Monsieur Tarzan, Father Constantine," replied D'Arnot, indicating
the ape-man; and as the priest extended his hand to Tarzan, D'Arnot added: "and I am
Paul D'Arnot, of the French Navy."
Father Constantine took the hand which Tarzan extended in imitation of the
priest's act, while the latter took in the superb physique and handsome face in one
quick, keen glance.
And thus came Tarzan of the Apes to the first outpost of civilization.
For a week they remained there, and the ape-man, keenly observant, learned much of
the ways of men; meanwhile black women sewed white duck garments for himself and
D'Arnot so that they might continue their journey properly clothed.
>
CHAPTER XXVI The Height of Civilization
Another month brought them to a little group of buildings at the mouth of a wide
river, and there Tarzan saw many boats, and was filled with the timidity of the wild
thing by the sight of many men.
Gradually he became accustomed to the strange noises and the odd ways of
civilization, so that presently none might know that two short months before, this
handsome Frenchman in immaculate white
ducks, who laughed and chatted with the gayest of them, had been swinging naked
through primeval forests to pounce upon some unwary victim, which, raw, was to fill
his savage belly.
The knife and fork, so contemptuously flung aside a month before, Tarzan now
manipulated as exquisitely as did the polished D'Arnot.
So apt a pupil had he been that the young Frenchman had labored assiduously to make
of Tarzan of the Apes a polished gentleman in so far as nicety of manners and speech
were concerned.
"God made you a gentleman at heart, my friend," D'Arnot had said; "but we want His
works to show upon the exterior also."
As soon as they had reached the little port, D'Arnot had cabled his government of
his safety, and requested a three-months' leave, which had been granted.
He had also cabled his bankers for funds, and the enforced wait of a month, under
which both chafed, was due to their inability to charter a vessel for the
return to Tarzan's jungle after the treasure.
During their stay at the coast town "Monsieur Tarzan" became the wonder of both
whites and blacks because of several occurrences which to Tarzan seemed the
merest of nothings.
Once a huge black, crazed by drink, had run amuck and terrorized the town, until his
evil star had led him to where the black- haired French giant lolled upon the veranda
of the hotel.
Mounting the broad steps, with brandished knife, the *** made straight for a party
of four men sitting at a table sipping the inevitable absinthe.
Shouting in alarm, the four took to their heels, and then the black spied Tarzan.
With a roar he charged the ape-man, while half a hundred heads peered from sheltering
windows and doorways to witness the butchering of the poor Frenchman by the
giant black.
Tarzan met the rush with the fighting smile that the joy of battle always brought to
his lips.
As the *** closed upon him, steel muscles gripped the black wrist of the uplifted
knife-hand, and a single swift wrench left the hand dangling below a broken bone.
With the pain and surprise, the madness left the black man, and as Tarzan dropped
back into his chair the fellow turned, crying with agony, and dashed wildly toward
the native village.
On another occasion as Tarzan and D'Arnot sat at dinner with a number of other
whites, the talk fell upon lions and lion hunting.
Opinion was divided as to the bravery of the king of beasts--some maintaining that
he was an arrant coward, but all agreeing that it was with a feeling of greater
security that they gripped their express
rifles when the monarch of the jungle roared about a camp at night.
D'Arnot and Tarzan had agreed that his past be kept secret, and so none other than the
French officer knew of the ape-man's familiarity with the beasts of the jungle.
"Monsieur Tarzan has not expressed himself," said one of the party.
"A man of his prowess who has spent some time in Africa, as I understand Monsieur
Tarzan has, must have had experiences with lions--yes?"
"Some," replied Tarzan, dryly.
"Enough to know that each of you are right in your judgment of the characteristics of
the lions--you have met.
But one might as well judge all blacks by the fellow who ran amuck last week, or
decide that all whites are cowards because one has met a cowardly white.
"There is as much individuality among the lower orders, gentlemen, as there is among
ourselves. Today we may go out and stumble upon a lion
which is over-timid--he runs away from us.
To-morrow we may meet his uncle or his twin brother, and our friends wonder why we do
not return from the jungle.
For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my
guard."
"There would be little pleasure in hunting," retorted the first speaker, "if
one is afraid of the thing he hunts." D'Arnot smiled.
Tarzan afraid!
"I do not exactly understand what you mean by fear," said Tarzan.
"Like lions, fear is a different thing in different men, but to me the only pleasure
in the hunt is the knowledge that the hunted thing has power to harm me as much
as I have to harm him.
If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters,
to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure
of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt."
"Then I am to take it that Monsieur Tarzan would prefer to go naked into the jungle,
armed only with a jackknife, to kill the king of beasts," laughed the other, good
naturedly, but with the merest touch of sarcasm in his tone.
"And a piece of rope," added Tarzan.
Just then the deep roar of a lion sounded from the distant jungle, as though to
challenge whoever dared enter the lists with him.
"There is your opportunity, Monsieur Tarzan," bantered the Frenchman.
"I am not hungry," said Tarzan simply. The men laughed, all but D'Arnot.
He alone knew that a savage beast had spoken its simple reason through the lips
of the ape-man.
"But you are afraid, just as any of us would be, to go out there naked, armed only
with a knife and a piece of rope," said the banterer.
"Is it not so?"
"No," replied Tarzan. "Only a fool performs any act without
reason." "Five thousand francs is a reason," said
the other.
"I wager you that amount you cannot bring back a lion from the jungle under the
conditions we have named--naked and armed only with a knife and a piece of rope."
Tarzan glanced toward D'Arnot and nodded his head.
"Make it ten thousand," said D'Arnot. "Done," replied the other.
Tarzan arose.
"I shall have to leave my clothes at the edge of the settlement, so that if I do not
return before daylight I shall have something to wear through the streets."
"You are not going now," exclaimed the wagerer--"at night?"
"Why not?" asked Tarzan. "Numa walks abroad at night--it will be
easier to find him."
"No," said the other, "I do not want your blood upon my hands.
It will be foolhardy enough if you go forth by day."
"I shall go now," replied Tarzan, and went to his room for his knife and rope.
The men accompanied him to the edge of the jungle, where he left his clothes in a
small storehouse.
But when he would have entered the blackness of the undergrowth they tried to
dissuade him; and the wagerer was most insistent of all that he abandon his
foolhardy venture.
"I will accede that you have won," he said, "and the ten thousand francs are yours if
you will but give up this foolish attempt, which can only end in your death."
Tarzan laughed, and in another moment the jungle had swallowed him.
The men stood silent for some moments and then slowly turned and walked back to the
hotel veranda.
Tarzan had no sooner entered the jungle than he took to the trees, and it was with
a feeling of exultant freedom that he swung once more through the forest branches.
This was life!
Ah, how he loved it! Civilization held nothing like this in its
narrow and circumscribed sphere, hemmed in by restrictions and conventionalities.
Even clothes were a hindrance and a nuisance.
At last he was free. He had not realized what a prisoner he had
been.
How easy it would be to circle back to the coast, and then make toward the south and
his own jungle and cabin. Now he caught the scent of Numa, for he was
traveling up wind.
Presently his quick ears detected the familiar sound of padded feet and the
brushing of a huge, fur-clad body through the undergrowth.
Tarzan came quietly above the unsuspecting beast and silently stalked him until he
came into a little patch of moonlight.
Then the quick noose settled and tightened about the tawny throat, and, as he had done
it a hundred times in the past, Tarzan made fast the end to a strong branch and, while
the beast fought and clawed for freedom,
dropped to the ground behind him, and leaping upon the great back, plunged his
long thin blade a dozen times into the fierce heart.
Then with his foot upon the carcass of Numa, he raised his voice in the awesome
victory cry of his savage tribe.
For a moment Tarzan stood irresolute, swayed by conflicting emotions of loyalty
to D'Arnot and a mighty *** for the freedom of his own jungle.
At last the vision of a beautiful face, and the memory of warm lips crushed to his
dissolved the fascinating picture he had been drawing of his old life.
The ape-man threw the warm carcass of Numa across his shoulders and took to the trees
once more. The men upon the veranda had sat for an
hour, almost in silence.
They had tried ineffectually to converse on various subjects, and always the thing
uppermost in the mind of each had caused the conversation to lapse.
"MON DIEU," said the wagerer at length, "I can endure it no longer.
I am going into the jungle with my express and bring back that mad man."
"I will go with you," said one.
"And I"--"And I"--"And I," chorused the others.
As though the suggestion had broken the spell of some horrid nightmare they
hastened to their various quarters, and presently were headed toward the jungle--
each one heavily armed.
"God! What was that?" suddenly cried one of the party, an Englishman, as Tarzan's
savage cry came faintly to their ears.
"I heard the same thing once before," said a Belgian, "when I was in the gorilla
country. My carriers said it was the cry of a great
bull ape who has made a kill."
D'Arnot remembered Clayton's description of the awful roar with which Tarzan had
announced his kills, and he half smiled in spite of the horror which filled him to
think that the uncanny sound could have
issued from a human throat--from the lips of his friend.
As the party stood finally near the edge of the jungle, debating as to the best
distribution of their forces, they were startled by a low laugh near them, and
turning, beheld advancing toward them a
giant figure bearing a dead lion upon its broad shoulders.
Even D'Arnot was thunderstruck, for it seemed impossible that the man could have
so quickly dispatched a lion with the pitiful weapons he had taken, or that alone
he could have borne the huge carcass through the tangled jungle.
The men crowded about Tarzan with many questions, but his only answer was a
laughing depreciation of his feat.
To Tarzan it was as though one should eulogize a butcher for his heroism in
killing a cow, for Tarzan had killed so often for food and for self-preservation
that the act seemed anything but remarkable to him.
But he was indeed a hero in the eyes of these men--men accustomed to hunting big
game.
Incidentally, he had won ten thousand francs, for D'Arnot insisted that he keep
it all.
This was a very important item to Tarzan, who was just commencing to realize the
power which lay beyond the little pieces of metal and paper which always changed hands
when human beings rode, or ate, or slept,
or clothed themselves, or drank, or worked, or played, or sheltered themselves from the
rain or cold or sun. It had become evident to Tarzan that
without money one must die.
D'Arnot had told him not to worry, since he had more than enough for both, but the ape-
man was learning many things and one of them was that people looked down upon one
who accepted money from another without
giving something of equal value in exchange.
Shortly after the episode of the lion hunt, D'Arnot succeeded in chartering an ancient
tub for the coastwise trip to Tarzan's land-locked harbor.
It was a happy morning for them both when the little vessel weighed anchor and made
for the open sea.
The trip to the beach was uneventful, and the morning after they dropped anchor
before the cabin, Tarzan, garbed once more in his jungle regalia and carrying a spade,
set out alone for the amphitheater of the apes where lay the treasure.
Late the next day he returned, bearing the great chest upon his shoulder, and at
sunrise the little vessel worked through the harbor's mouth and took up her
northward journey.
Three weeks later Tarzan and D'Arnot were passengers on board a French steamer bound
for Lyons, and after a few days in that city D'Arnot took Tarzan to Paris.
The ape-man was anxious to proceed to America, but D'Arnot insisted that he must
accompany him to Paris first, nor would he divulge the nature of the urgent necessity
upon which he based his demand.
One of the first things which D'Arnot accomplished after their arrival was to
arrange to visit a high official of the police department, an old friend; and to
take Tarzan with him.
Adroitly D'Arnot led the conversation from point to point until the policeman had
explained to the interested Tarzan many of the methods in vogue for apprehending and
identifying criminals.
Not the least interesting to Tarzan was the part played by finger prints in this
fascinating science.
"But of what value are these imprints," asked Tarzan, "when, after a few years the
lines upon the fingers are entirely changed by the wearing out of the old tissue and
the growth of new?"
"The lines never change," replied the official.
"From infancy to senility the fingerprints of an individual change only in size,
except as injuries alter the loops and whorls.
But if imprints have been taken of the thumb and four fingers of both hands one
must needs lose all entirely to escape identification."
"It is marvelous," exclaimed D'Arnot.
"I wonder what the lines upon my own fingers may resemble."
"We can soon see," replied the police officer, and ringing a bell he summoned an
assistant to whom he issued a few directions.
The man left the room, but presently returned with a little hardwood box which
he placed on his superior's desk. "Now," said the officer, "you shall have
your fingerprints in a second."
He drew from the little case a square of plate glass, a little tube of thick ink, a
rubber roller, and a few snowy white cards.
Squeezing a drop of ink onto the glass, he spread it back and forth with the rubber
roller until the entire surface of the glass was covered to his satisfaction with
a very thin and uniform layer of ink.
"Place the four fingers of your right hand upon the glass, thus," he said to D'Arnot.
"Now the thumb. That is right.
Now place them in just the same position upon this card, here, no--a little to the
right. We must leave room for the thumb and the
fingers of the left hand.
There, that's it. Now the same with the left."
"Come, Tarzan," cried D'Arnot, "let's see what your whorls look like."
Tarzan complied readily, asking many questions of the officer during the
operation. "Do fingerprints show racial
characteristics?" he asked.
"Could you determine, for example, solely from fingerprints whether the subject was
*** or Caucasian?" "I think not," replied the officer.
"Could the finger prints of an ape be detected from those of a man?"
"Probably, because the ape's would be far simpler than those of the higher organism."
"But a cross between an ape and a man might show the characteristics of either
progenitor?" continued Tarzan.
"Yes, I should think likely," responded the official; "but the science has not
progressed sufficiently to render it exact enough in such matters.
I should hate to trust its findings further than to differentiate between individuals.
There it is absolute.
No two people born into the world probably have ever had identical lines upon all
their digits.
It is very doubtful if any single fingerprint will ever be exactly duplicated
by any finger other than the one which originally made it."
"Does the comparison require much time or labor?" asked D'Arnot.
"Ordinarily but a few moments, if the impressions are distinct."
D'Arnot drew a little black book from his pocket and commenced turning the pages.
Tarzan looked at the book in surprise. How did D'Arnot come to have his book?
Presently D'Arnot stopped at a page on which were five tiny little smudges.
He handed the open book to the policeman.
"Are these imprints similar to mine or Monsieur Tarzan's or can you say that they
are identical with either?"
The officer drew a powerful glass from his desk and examined all three specimens
carefully, making notations meanwhile upon a pad of paper.
Tarzan realized now what was the meaning of their visit to the police officer.
The answer to his life's riddle lay in these tiny marks.
With tense nerves he sat leaning forward in his chair, but suddenly he relaxed and
dropped back, smiling. D'Arnot looked at him in surprise.
"You forget that for twenty years the dead body of the child who made those
fingerprints lay in the cabin of his father, and that all my life I have seen it
lying there," said Tarzan bitterly.
The policeman looked up in astonishment. "Go ahead, captain, with your examination,"
said D'Arnot, "we will tell you the story later--provided Monsieur Tarzan is
agreeable."
Tarzan nodded his head. "But you are mad, my dear D'Arnot," he
insisted. "Those little fingers are buried on the
west coast of Africa."
"I do not know as to that, Tarzan," replied D'Arnot.
"It is possible, but if you are not the son of John Clayton then how in heaven's name
did you come into that God forsaken jungle where no white man other than John Clayton
had ever set foot?"
"You forget--Kala," said Tarzan. "I do not even consider her," replied
D'Arnot. The friends had walked to the broad window
overlooking the boulevard as they talked.
For some time they stood there gazing out upon the busy throng beneath, each wrapped
in his own thoughts.
"It takes some time to compare finger prints," thought D'Arnot, turning to look
at the police officer.
To his astonishment he saw the official leaning back in his chair hastily scanning
the contents of the little black diary. D'Arnot coughed.
The policeman looked up, and, catching his eye, raised his finger to admonish silence.
D'Arnot turned back to the window, and presently the police officer spoke.
"Gentlemen," he said.
Both turned toward him. "There is evidently a great deal at stake
which must hinge to a greater or lesser extent upon the absolute correctness of
this comparison.
I therefore ask that you leave the entire matter in my hands until Monsieur Desquerc,
our expert returns. It will be but a matter of a few days."
"I had hoped to know at once," said D'Arnot.
"Monsieur Tarzan sails for America tomorrow."
"I will promise that you can cable him a report within two weeks," replied the
officer; "but what it will be I dare not say.
There are resemblances, yet--well, we had better leave it for Monsieur Desquerc to
solve."
>
CHAPTER XXVII The Giant Again
A taxicab drew up before an oldfashioned residence upon the outskirts of Baltimore.
A man of about forty, well built and with strong, regular features, stepped out, and
paying the chauffeur dismissed him.
A moment later the passenger was entering the library of the old home.
"Ah, Mr. Canler!" exclaimed an old man, rising to greet him.
"Good evening, my dear Professor," cried the man, extending a cordial hand.
"Who admitted you?" asked the professor. "Esmeralda."
"Then she will acquaint Jane with the fact that you are here," said the old man.
"No, Professor," replied Canler, "for I came primarily to see you."
"Ah, I am honored," said Professor Porter.
"Professor," continued Robert Canler, with great deliberation, as though carefully
weighing his words, "I have come this evening to speak with you about Jane.
"You know my aspirations, and you have been generous enough to approve my suit."
Professor Archimedes Q. Porter fidgeted in his armchair.
The subject always made him uncomfortable.
He could not understand why. Canler was a splendid match.
"But Jane," continued Canler, "I cannot understand her.
She puts me off first on one ground and then another.
I have always the feeling that she breathes a sigh of relief every time I bid her good-
by."
"Tut, tut," said Professor Porter. "Tut, tut, Mr. Canler.
Jane is a most obedient daughter. She will do precisely as I tell her."
"Then I can still count on your support?" asked Canler, a tone of relief marking his
voice. "Certainly, sir; certainly, sir," exclaimed
Professor Porter.
"How could you doubt it?" "There is young Clayton, you know,"
suggested Canler. "He has been hanging about for months.
I don't know that Jane cares for him; but beside his title they say he has inherited
a very considerable estate from his father, and it might not be strange,--if he finally
won her, unless--" and Canler paused.
"Tut--tut, Mr. Canler; unless--what?" "Unless, you see fit to request that Jane
and I be married at once," said Canler, slowly and distinctly.
"I have already suggested to Jane that it would be desirable," said Professor Porter
sadly, "for we can no longer afford to keep up this house, and live as her associations
demand."
"What was her reply?" asked Canler.
"She said she was not ready to marry anyone yet," replied Professor Porter, "and that
we could go and live upon the farm in northern Wisconsin which her mother left
her.
"It is a little more than self-supporting. The tenants have always made a living from
it, and been able to send Jane a trifle beside, each year.
She is planning on our going up there the first of the week.
Philander and Mr. Clayton have already gone to get things in readiness for us."
"Clayton has gone there?" exclaimed Canler, visibly chagrined.
"Why was I not told? I would gladly have gone and seen that
every comfort was provided."
"Jane feels that we are already too much in your debt, Mr. Canler," said Professor
Porter.
Canler was about to reply, when the sound of footsteps came from the hall without,
and Jane entered the room. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" she exclaimed,
pausing on the threshold.
"I thought you were alone, papa." "It is only I, Jane," said Canler, who had
risen, "won't you come in and join the family group?
We were just speaking of you."
"Thank you," said Jane, entering and taking the chair Canler placed for her.
"I only wanted to tell papa that Tobey is coming down from the college tomorrow to
pack his books.
I want you to be sure, papa, to indicate all that you can do without until fall.
Please don't carry this entire library to Wisconsin, as you would have carried it to
Africa, if I had not put my foot down."
"Was Tobey here?" asked Professor Porter. "Yes, I just left him.
He and Esmeralda are exchanging religious experiences on the back porch now."
"Tut, tut, I must see him at once!" cried the professor.
"Excuse me just a moment, children," and the old man hastened from the room.
As soon as he was out of earshot Canler turned to Jane.
"See here, Jane," he said bluntly. "How long is this thing going on like this?
You haven't refused to marry me, but you haven't promised either.
I want to get the license tomorrow, so that we can be married quietly before you leave
for Wisconsin.
I don't care for any fuss or feathers, and I'm sure you don't either."
The girl turned cold, but she held her head bravely.
"Your father wishes it, you know," added Canler.
"Yes, I know." She spoke scarcely above a whisper.
"Do you realize that you are buying me, Mr. Canler?" she said finally, and in a cold,
level voice. "Buying me for a few paltry dollars?
Of course you do, Robert Canler, and the hope of just such a contingency was in your
mind when you loaned papa the money for that hair-brained escapade, which but for
a most mysterious circumstance would have been surprisingly successful.
"But you, Mr. Canler, would have been the most surprised.
You had no idea that the venture would succeed.
You are too good a businessman for that.
And you are too good a businessman to loan money for buried treasure seeking, or to
loan money without security--unless you had some special object in view.
"You knew that without security you had a greater hold on the honor of the Porters
than with it. You knew the one best way to force me to
marry you, without seeming to force me.
"You have never mentioned the loan. In any other man I should have thought that
the prompting of a magnanimous and noble character.
But you are deep, Mr. Robert Canler.
I know you better than you think I know you.
"I shall certainly marry you if there is no other way, but let us understand each other
once and for all."
While she spoke Robert Canler had alternately flushed and paled, and when she
ceased speaking he arose, and with a cynical smile upon his strong face, said:
"You surprise me, Jane.
I thought you had more self-control--more pride.
Of course you are right.
I am buying you, and I knew that you knew it, but I thought you would prefer to
pretend that it was otherwise.
I should have thought your self respect and your Porter pride would have shrunk from
admitting, even to yourself, that you were a bought woman.
But have it your own way, dear girl," he added lightly.
"I am going to have you, and that is all that interests me."
Without a word the girl turned and left the room.
Jane was not married before she left with her father and Esmeralda for her little
Wisconsin farm, and as she coldly bid Robert Canler goodby as her train pulled
out, he called to her that he would join them in a week or two.
At their destination they were met by Clayton and Mr. Philander in a huge touring
car belonging to the former, and quickly whirled away through the dense northern
woods toward the little farm which the girl had not visited before since childhood.
The farmhouse, which stood on a little elevation some hundred yards from the
tenant house, had undergone a complete transformation during the three weeks that
Clayton and Mr. Philander had been there.
The former had imported a small army of carpenters and plasterers, plumbers and
painters from a distant city, and what had been but a dilapidated shell when they
reached it was now a cosy little two-story
house filled with every modern convenience procurable in so short a time.
"Why, Mr. Clayton, what have you done?" cried Jane Porter, her heart sinking within
her as she realized the probable size of the expenditure that had been made.
"S-sh," cautioned Clayton.
"Don't let your father guess. If you don't tell him he will never notice,
and I simply couldn't think of him living in the terrible squalor and sordidness
which Mr. Philander and I found.
It was so little when I would like to do so much, Jane.
For his sake, please, never mention it." "But you know that we can't repay you,"
cried the girl.
"Why do you want to put me under such terrible obligations?"
"Don't, Jane," said Clayton sadly.
"If it had been just you, believe me, I wouldn't have done it, for I knew from the
start that it would only hurt me in your eyes, but I couldn't think of that dear old
man living in the hole we found here.
Won't you please believe that I did it just for him and give me that little crumb of
pleasure at least?"
"I do believe you, Mr. Clayton," said the girl, "because I know you are big enough
and generous enough to have done it just for him--and, oh Cecil, I wish I might
repay you as you deserve--as you would wish."
"Why can't you, Jane?" "Because I love another."
"Canler?"
"No." "But you are going to marry him.
He told me as much before I left Baltimore."
The girl winced.
"I do not love him," she said, almost proudly.
"Is it because of the money, Jane?" She nodded.
"Then am I so much less desirable than Canler?
I have money enough, and far more, for every need," he said bitterly.
"I do not love you, Cecil," she said, "but I respect you.
If I must disgrace myself by such a bargain with any man, I prefer that it be one I
already despise.
I should loathe the man to whom I sold myself without love, whomsoever he might
be.
You will be happier," she concluded, "alone--with my respect and friendship,
than with me and my contempt."
He did not press the matter further, but if ever a man had *** in his heart it was
William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, when, a week later, Robert Canler drew up
before the farmhouse in his purring six cylinder.
A week passed; a tense, uneventful, but uncomfortable week for all the inmates of
the little Wisconsin farmhouse.
Canler was insistent that Jane marry him at once.
At length she gave in from sheer loathing of the continued and hateful importuning.
It was agreed that on the morrow Canler was to drive to town and bring back the license
and a minister.
Clayton had wanted to leave as soon as the plan was announced, but the girl's tired,
hopeless look kept him. He could not desert her.
Something might happen yet, he tried to console himself by thinking.
And in his heart, he knew that it would require but a tiny spark to turn his hatred
for Canler into the blood *** of the killer.
Early the next morning Canler set out for town.
In the east smoke could be seen lying low over the forest, for a fire had been raging
for a week not far from them, but the wind still lay in the west and no danger
threatened them.
About noon Jane started off for a walk. She would not let Clayton accompany her.
She wanted to be alone, she said, and he respected her wishes.
In the house Professor Porter and Mr. Philander were immersed in an absorbing
discussion of some weighty scientific problem.
Esmeralda dozed in the kitchen, and Clayton, heavy-eyed after a sleepless
night, threw himself down upon the couch in the living room and soon dropped into a
fitful slumber.
To the east the black smoke clouds rose higher into the heavens, suddenly they
eddied, and then commenced to drift rapidly toward the west.
On and on they came.
The inmates of the tenant house were gone, for it was market day, and none was there
to see the rapid approach of the fiery demon.
Soon the flames had spanned the road to the south and cut off Canler's return.
A little fluctuation of the wind now carried the path of the forest fire to the
north, then blew back and the flames nearly stood still as though held in leash by some
master hand.
Suddenly, out of the northeast, a great black car came careening down the road.
With a jolt it stopped before the cottage, and a black-haired giant leaped out to run
up onto the porch.
Without a pause he rushed into the house. On the couch lay Clayton.
The man started in surprise, but with a bound was at the side of the sleeping man.
Shaking him roughly by the shoulder, he cried:
"My God, Clayton, are you all mad here? Don't you know you are nearly surrounded by
fire?
Where is Miss Porter?" Clayton sprang to his feet.
He did not recognize the man, but he understood the words and was upon the
veranda in a bound.
"Scott!" he cried, and then, dashing back into the house, "Jane!
Jane! where are you?" In an instant Esmeralda, Professor Porter
and Mr. Philander had joined the two men.
"Where is Miss Jane?" cried Clayton, seizing Esmeralda by the shoulders and
shaking her roughly. "Oh, Gaberelle, Mister Clayton, she done
gone for a walk."
"Hasn't she come back yet?" and, without waiting for a reply, Clayton dashed out
into the yard, followed by the others. "Which way did she go?" cried the black-
haired giant of Esmeralda.
"Down that road," cried the frightened woman, pointing toward the south where a
mighty wall of roaring flames shut out the view.
"Put these people in the other car," shouted the stranger to Clayton.
"I saw one as I drove up--and get them out of here by the north road.
"Leave my car here.
If I find Miss Porter we shall need it. If I don't, no one will need it.
Do as I say," as Clayton hesitated, and then they saw the lithe figure bound away
cross the clearing toward the northwest where the forest still stood, untouched by
flame.
In each rose the unaccountable feeling that a great responsibility had been raised from
their shoulders; a kind of implicit confidence in the power of the stranger to
save Jane if she could be saved.
"Who was that?" asked Professor Porter. "I do not know," replied Clayton.
"He called me by name and he knew Jane, for he asked for her.
And he called Esmeralda by name."
"There was something most startlingly familiar about him," exclaimed Mr.
Philander, "And yet, bless me, I know I never saw him before."
"Tut, tut!" cried Professor Porter.
"Most remarkable! Who could it have been, and why do I feel
that Jane is safe, now that he has set out in search of her?"
"I can't tell you, Professor," said Clayton soberly, "but I know I have the same
uncanny feeling."
"But come," he cried, "we must get out of here ourselves, or we shall be shut off,"
and the party hastened toward Clayton's car.
When Jane turned to retrace her steps homeward, she was alarmed to note how near
the smoke of the forest fire seemed, and as she hastened onward her alarm became almost
a panic when she perceived that the rushing
flames were rapidly forcing their way between herself and the cottage.
At length she was compelled to turn into the dense thicket and attempt to force her
way to the west in an effort to circle around the flames and reach the house.
In a short time the futility of her attempt became apparent and then her one hope lay
in retracing her steps to the road and flying for her life to the south toward the
town.
The twenty minutes that it took her to regain the road was all that had been
needed to cut off her retreat as effectually as her advance had been cut off
before.
A short run down the road brought her to a horrified stand, for there before her was
another wall of flame.
An arm of the main conflagration had shot out a half mile south of its parent to
embrace this tiny strip of road in its implacable clutches.
Jane knew that it was useless again to attempt to force her way through the
undergrowth. She had tried it once, and failed.
Now she realized that it would be but a matter of minutes ere the whole space
between the north and the south would be a seething mass of billowing flames.
Calmly the girl kneeled down in the dust of the roadway and prayed for strength to meet
her fate bravely, and for the delivery of her father and her friends from death.
Suddenly she heard her name being called aloud through the forest:
"Jane! Jane Porter!"
It rang strong and clear, but in a strange voice.
"Here!" she called in reply. "Here!
In the roadway!"
Then through the branches of the trees she saw a figure swinging with the speed of a
squirrel.
A veering of the wind blew a cloud of smoke about them and she could no longer see the
man who was speeding toward her, but suddenly she felt a great arm about her.
Then she was lifted up, and she felt the rushing of the wind and the occasional
brush of a branch as she was borne along. She opened her eyes.
Far below her lay the undergrowth and the hard earth.
About her was the waving foliage of the forest.
From tree to tree swung the giant figure which bore her, and it seemed to Jane that
she was living over in a dream the experience that had been hers in that far
African jungle.
Oh, if it were but the same man who had borne her so swiftly through the tangled
verdure on that other day! but that was impossible!
Yet who else in all the world was there with the strength and agility to do what
this man was now doing?
She stole a sudden glance at the face close to hers, and then she gave a little
frightened gasp. It was he!
"My forest man!" she murmured.
"No, I must be delirious!" "Yes, your man, Jane Porter.
Your savage, primeval man come out of the jungle to claim his mate--the woman who ran
away from him," he added almost fiercely.
"I did not run away," she whispered. "I would only consent to leave when they
had waited a week for you to return."
They had come to a point beyond the fire now, and he had turned back to the
clearing. Side by side they were walking toward the
cottage.
The wind had changed once more and the fire was burning back upon itself--another hour
like that and it would be burned out. "Why did you not return?" she asked.
"I was nursing D'Arnot.
He was badly wounded." "Ah, I knew it!" she exclaimed.
"They said you had gone to join the blacks- -that they were your people."
He laughed.
"But you did not believe them, Jane?" "No;--what shall I call you?" she asked.
"What is your name?" "I was Tarzan of the Apes when you first
knew me," he said.
"Tarzan of the Apes!" she cried--"and that was your note I answered when I left?"
"Yes, whose did you think it was?"
"I did not know; only that it could not be yours, for Tarzan of the Apes had written
in English, and you could not understand a word of any language."
Again he laughed.
"It is a long story, but it was I who wrote what I could not speak--and now D'Arnot has
made matters worse by teaching me to speak French instead of English.
"Come," he added, "jump into my car, we must overtake your father, they are only a
little way ahead." As they drove along, he said:
"Then when you said in your note to Tarzan of the Apes that you loved another--you
might have meant me?" "I might have," she answered, simply.
"But in Baltimore--Oh, how I have searched for you--they told me you would possibly be
married by now. That a man named Canler had come up here to
wed you.
Is that true?" "Yes."
"Do you love him?" "No."
"Do you love me?"
She buried her face in her hands. "I am promised to another.
I cannot answer you, Tarzan of the Apes," she cried.
"You have answered.
Now, tell me why you would marry one you do not love."
"My father owes him money."
Suddenly there came back to Tarzan the memory of the letter he had read--and the
name Robert Canler and the hinted trouble which he had been unable to understand
then.
He smiled. "If your father had not lost the treasure
you would not feel forced to keep your promise to this man Canler?"
"I could ask him to release me."
"And if he refused?" "I have given my promise."
He was silent for a moment.
The car was plunging along the uneven road at a reckless pace, for the fire showed
threateningly at their right, and another change of the wind might sweep it on with
raging fury across this one avenue of escape.
Finally they passed the danger point, and Tarzan reduced their speed.
"Suppose I should ask him?" ventured Tarzan.
"He would scarcely accede to the demand of a stranger," said the girl.
"Especially one who wanted me himself."
"Terkoz did," said Tarzan, grimly. Jane shuddered and looked fearfully up at
the giant figure beside her, for she knew that he meant the great anthropoid he had
killed in her defense.
"This is not the African jungle," she said. "You are no longer a savage beast.
You are a gentleman, and gentlemen do not kill in cold blood."
"I am still a wild beast at heart," he said, in a low voice, as though to himself.
Again they were silent for a time. "Jane," said the man, at length, "if you
were free, would you marry me?"
She did not reply at once, but he waited patiently.
The girl was trying to collect her thoughts.
What did she know of this strange creature at her side?
What did he know of himself? Who was he?
Who, his parents?
Why, his very name echoed his mysterious origin and his savage life.
He had no name. Could she be happy with this jungle waif?
Could she find anything in common with a husband whose life had been spent in the
tree tops of an African wilderness, frolicking and fighting with fierce
anthropoids; tearing his food from the
quivering flank of fresh-killed prey, sinking his strong teeth into raw flesh,
and tearing away his portion while his mates growled and fought about him for
their share?
Could he ever rise to her social sphere? Could she bear to think of sinking to his?
Would either be happy in such a horrible misalliance?
"You do not answer," he said.
"Do you shrink from wounding me?" "I do not know what answer to make," said
Jane sadly. "I do not know my own mind."
"You do not love me, then?" he asked, in a level tone.
"Do not ask me. You will be happier without me.
You were never meant for the formal restrictions and conventionalities of
society--civilization would become irksome to you, and in a little while you would
long for the freedom of your old life--a
life to which I am as totally unfitted as you to mine."
"I think I understand you," he replied quietly.
"I shall not urge you, for I would rather see you happy than to be happy myself.
I see now that you could not be happy with- -an ape."
There was just the faintest tinge of bitterness in his voice.
"Don't," she remonstrated. "Don't say that.
You do not understand."
But before she could go on a sudden turn in the road brought them into the midst of a
little hamlet.
Before them stood Clayton's car surrounded by the party he had brought from the
cottage.
>
CHAPTER XXVIII Conclusion
At the sight of Jane, cries of relief and delight broke from every lip, and as
Tarzan's car stopped beside the other, Professor Porter caught his daughter in his
arms.
For a moment no one noticed Tarzan, sitting silently in his seat.
Clayton was the first to remember, and, turning, held out his hand.
"How can we ever thank you?" he exclaimed.
"You have saved us all. You called me by name at the cottage, but
I do not seem to recall yours, though there is something very familiar about you.
It is as though I had known you well under very different conditions a long time ago."
Tarzan smiled as he took the proffered hand.
"You are quite right, Monsieur Clayton," he said, in French.
"You will pardon me if I do not speak to you in English.
I am just learning it, and while I understand it fairly well I speak it very
poorly." "But who are you?" insisted Clayton,
speaking in French this time himself.
"Tarzan of the Apes." Clayton started back in surprise.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "It is true."
And Professor Porter and Mr. Philander pressed forward to add their thanks to
Clayton's, and to voice their surprise and pleasure at seeing their jungle friend so
far from his savage home.
The party now entered the modest little hostelry, where Clayton soon made
arrangements for their entertainment.
They were sitting in the little, stuffy parlor when the distant chugging of an
approaching automobile caught their attention.
Mr. Philander, who was sitting near the window, looked out as the car drew in
sight, finally stopping beside the other automobiles.
"Bless me!" said Mr. Philander, a shade of annoyance in his tone.
"It is Mr. Canler.
I had hoped, er--I had thought or--er--how very happy we should be that he was not
caught in the fire," he ended lamely. "Tut, tut!
Mr. Philander," said Professor Porter.
"Tut, tut! I have often admonished my pupils to count
ten before speaking.
Were I you, Mr. Philander, I should count at least a thousand, and then maintain a
discreet silence." "Bless me, yes!" acquiesced Mr. Philander.
"But who is the clerical appearing gentleman with him?"
Jane blanched. Clayton moved uneasily in his chair.
Professor Porter removed his spectacles nervously, and breathed upon them, but
replaced them on his nose without wiping. The ubiquitous Esmeralda grunted.
Only Tarzan did not comprehend.
Presently Robert Canler burst into the room.
"Thank God!" he cried. "I feared the worst, until I saw your car,
Clayton.
I was cut off on the south road and had to go away back to town, and then strike east
to this road. I thought we'd never reach the cottage."
No one seemed to enthuse much.
Tarzan eyed Robert Canler as Sabor eyes her prey.
Jane glanced at him and coughed nervously. "Mr. Canler," she said, "this is Monsieur
Tarzan, an old friend."
Canler turned and extended his hand. Tarzan rose and bowed as only D'Arnot could
have taught a gentleman to do it, but he did not seem to see Canler's hand.
Nor did Canler appear to notice the oversight.
"This is the Reverend Mr. Tousley, Jane," said Canler, turning to the clerical party
behind him.
"Mr. Tousley, Miss Porter." Mr. Tousley bowed and beamed.
Canler introduced him to the others. "We can have the ceremony at once, Jane,"
said Canler.
"Then you and I can catch the midnight train in town."
Tarzan understood the plan instantly. He glanced out of half-closed eyes at Jane,
but he did not move.
The girl hesitated. The room was tense with the silence of taut
nerves. All eyes turned toward Jane, awaiting her
reply.
"Can't we wait a few days?" she asked. "I am all unstrung.
I have been through so much today." Canler felt the hostility that emanated
from each member of the party.
It made him angry. "We have waited as long as I intend to
wait," he said roughly. "You have promised to marry me.
I shall be played with no longer.
I have the license and here is the preacher.
Come Mr. Tousley; come Jane.
There are plenty of witnesses--more than enough," he added with a disagreeable
inflection; and taking Jane Porter by the arm, he started to lead her toward the
waiting minister.
But scarcely had he taken a single step ere a heavy hand closed upon his arm with a
grip of steel.
Another hand shot to his throat and in a moment he was being shaken high above the
floor, as a cat might shake a mouse. Jane turned in horrified surprise toward
Tarzan.
And, as she looked into his face, she saw the crimson band upon his forehead that she
had seen that other day in far distant Africa, when Tarzan of the Apes had closed
in mortal combat with the great anthropoid- -Terkoz.
She knew that *** lay in that savage heart, and with a little cry of horror she
sprang forward to plead with the ape-man.
But her fears were more for Tarzan than for Canler.
She realized the stern retribution which justice metes to the murderer.
Before she could reach them, however, Clayton had jumped to Tarzan's side and
attempted to drag Canler from his grasp.
With a single sweep of one mighty arm the Englishman was hurled across the room, and
then Jane laid a firm white hand upon Tarzan's wrist, and looked up into his
eyes.
"For my sake," she said. The grasp upon Canler's throat relaxed.
Tarzan looked down into the beautiful face before him.
"Do you wish this to live?" he asked in surprise.
"I do not wish him to die at your hands, my friend," she replied.
"I do not wish you to become a murderer."
Tarzan removed his hand from Canler's throat.
"Do you release her from her promise?" he asked.
"It is the price of your life."
Canler, gasping for breath, nodded. "Will you go away and never *** her
further?"
Again the man nodded his head, his face distorted by fear of the death that had
been so close. Tarzan released him, and Canler staggered
toward the door.
In another moment he was gone, and the terror-stricken preacher with him.
Tarzan turned toward Jane. "May I speak with you for a moment, alone,"
he asked.
The girl nodded and started toward the door leading to the narrow veranda of the little
hotel. She passed out to await Tarzan and so did
not hear the conversation which followed.
"Wait," cried Professor Porter, as Tarzan was about to follow.
The professor had been stricken dumb with surprise by the rapid developments of the
past few minutes.
"Before we go further, sir, I should like an explanation of the events which have
just transpired. By what right, sir, did you interfere
between my daughter and Mr. Canler?
I had promised him her hand, sir, and regardless of our personal likes or
dislikes, sir, that promise must be kept."
"I interfered, Professor Porter," replied Tarzan, "because your daughter does not
love Mr. Canler--she does not wish to marry him.
That is enough for me to know."
"You do not know what you have done," said Professor Porter.
"Now he will doubtless refuse to marry her."
"He most certainly will," said Tarzan, emphatically.
"And further," added Tarzan, "you need not fear that your pride will suffer, Professor
Porter, for you will be able to pay the Canler person what you owe him the moment
you reach home."
"Tut, tut, sir!" exclaimed Professor Porter.
"What do you mean, sir?" "Your treasure has been found," said
Tarzan.
"What--what is that you are saying?" cried the professor.
"You are mad, man. It cannot be."
"It is, though.
It was I who stole it, not knowing either its value or to whom it belonged.
I saw the sailors bury it, and, ape-like, I had to dig it up and bury it again
elsewhere.
When D'Arnot told me what it was and what it meant to you I returned to the jungle
and recovered it.
It had caused so much crime and suffering and sorrow that D'Arnot thought it best not
to attempt to bring the treasure itself on here, as had been my intention, so I have
brought a letter of credit instead.
"Here it is, Professor Porter," and Tarzan drew an envelope from his pocket and handed
it to the astonished professor, "two hundred and forty-one thousand dollars.
The treasure was most carefully appraised by experts, but lest there should be any
question in your mind, D'Arnot himself bought it and is holding it for you, should
you prefer the treasure to the credit."
"To the already great burden of the obligations we owe you, sir," said
Professor Porter, with trembling voice, "is now added this greatest of all services.
You have given me the means to save my honor."
Clayton, who had left the room a moment after Canler, now returned.
"Pardon me," he said.
"I think we had better try to reach town before dark and take the first train out of
this forest.
A native just rode by from the north, who reports that the fire is moving slowly in
this direction."
This announcement broke up further conversation, and the entire party went out
to the waiting automobiles.
Clayton, with Jane, the professor and Esmeralda occupied Clayton's car, while
Tarzan took Mr. Philander in with him. "Bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Philander, as the
car moved off after Clayton.
"Who would ever have thought it possible!
The last time I saw you you were a veritable wild man, skipping about among
the branches of a tropical African forest, and now you are driving me along a
Wisconsin road in a French automobile.
Bless me! But it is most remarkable."
"Yes," assented Tarzan, and then, after a pause, "Mr. Philander, do you recall any of
the details of the finding and burying of three skeletons found in my cabin beside
that African jungle?"
"Very distinctly, sir, very distinctly," replied Mr. Philander.
"Was there anything peculiar about any of those skeletons?"
Mr. Philander eyed Tarzan narrowly.
"Why do you ask?" "It means a great deal to me to know,"
replied Tarzan. "Your answer may clear up a mystery.
It can do no worse, at any rate, than to leave it still a mystery.
I have been entertaining a theory concerning those skeletons for the past two
months, and I want you to answer my question to the best of your knowledge--
were the three skeletons you buried all human skeletons?"
"No," said Mr. Philander, "the smallest one, the one found in the crib, was the
skeleton of an anthropoid ape."
"Thank you," said Tarzan. In the car ahead, Jane was thinking fast
and furiously.
She had felt the purpose for which Tarzan had asked a few words with her, and she
knew that she must be prepared to give him an answer in the very near future.
He was not the sort of person one could put off, and somehow that very thought made her
wonder if she did not really fear him. And could she love where she feared?
She realized the spell that had been upon her in the depths of that far-off jungle,
but there was no spell of enchantment now in prosaic Wisconsin.
Nor did the immaculate young Frenchman appeal to the primal woman in her, as had
the stalwart forest god. Did she love him?
She did not know--now.
She glanced at Clayton out of the corner of her eye.
Was not here a man trained in the same school of environment in which she had been
trained--a man with social position and culture such as she had been taught to
consider as the prime essentials to congenial association?
Did not her best judgment point to this young English nobleman, whose love she knew
to be of the sort a civilized woman should crave, as the logical mate for such as
herself?
Could she love Clayton? She could see no reason why she could not.
Jane was not coldly calculating by nature, but training, environment and heredity had
all combined to teach her to reason even in matters of the heart.
That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant when his
great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today, in the
Wisconsin woods, seemed to her only
attributable to a temporary mental reversion to type on her part--to the
psychological appeal of the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature.
If he should never touch her again, she reasoned, she would never feel attracted
toward him. She had not loved him, then.
It had been nothing more than a passing hallucination, super-induced by excitement
and by personal contact.
Excitement would not always mark their future relations, should she marry him, and
the power of personal contact eventually would be dulled by familiarity.
Again she glanced at Clayton.
He was very handsome and every inch a gentleman.
She should be very proud of such a husband.
And then he spoke--a minute sooner or a minute later might have made all the
difference in the world to three lives--but chance stepped in and pointed out to
Clayton the psychological moment.
"You are free now, Jane," he said. "Won't you say yes--I will devote my life
to making you very happy." "Yes," she whispered.
That evening in the little waiting room at the station Tarzan caught Jane alone for a
moment.
"You are free now, Jane," he said, "and I have come across the ages out of the dim
and distant past from the lair of the primeval man to claim you--for your sake I
have become a civilized man--for your sake
I have crossed oceans and continents--for your sake I will be whatever you will me to
be. I can make you happy, Jane, in the life you
know and love best.
Will you marry me?" For the first time she realized the depths
of the man's love--all that he had accomplished in so short a time solely for
love of her.
Turning her head she buried her face in her arms.
What had she done?
Because she had been afraid she might succumb to the pleas of this giant, she had
burned her bridges behind her--in her groundless apprehension that she might make
a terrible mistake, she had made a worse one.
And then she told him all--told him the truth word by word, without attempting to
shield herself or condone her error.
"What can we do?" he asked. "You have admitted that you love me.
You know that I love you; but I do not know the ethics of society by which you are
governed.
I shall leave the decision to you, for you know best what will be for your eventual
welfare." "I cannot tell him, Tarzan," she said.
"He too, loves me, and he is a good man.
I could never face you nor any other honest person if I repudiated my promise to Mr.
Clayton.
I shall have to keep it--and you must help me bear the burden, though we may not see
each other again after tonight." The others were entering the room now and
Tarzan turned toward the little window.
But he saw nothing outside--within he saw a patch of greensward surrounded by a matted
mass of gorgeous tropical plants and flowers, and, above, the waving foliage of
mighty trees, and, over all, the blue of an equatorial sky.
In the center of the greensward a young woman sat upon a little mound of earth, and
beside her sat a young giant.
They ate pleasant fruit and looked into each other's eyes and smiled.
They were very happy, and they were all alone.
His thoughts were broken in upon by the station agent who entered asking if there
was a gentleman by the name of Tarzan in the party.
"I am Monsieur Tarzan," said the ape-man.
"Here is a message for you, forwarded from Baltimore; it is a cablegram from Paris."
Tarzan took the envelope and tore it open. The message was from D'Arnot.
It read: Fingerprints prove you Greystoke.
Congratulations. D'ARNOT.
As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.
Here was the man who had Tarzan's title, and Tarzan's estates, and was going to
marry the woman whom Tarzan loved--the woman who loved Tarzan.
A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man's life.
It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and--it would take them
away from Jane Porter also.
"I say, old man," cried Clayton, "I haven't had a chance to thank you for all you've
done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full
saving our lives in Africa and here.
"I'm awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted.
I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your
environment.
"If it's any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?"
"I was born there," said Tarzan, quietly. "My mother was an Ape, and of course she
couldn't tell me much about it.
I never knew who my father was."
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