Korak screamed commands to his huge protector, in an effort to halt
him; but all to no avail. Meriem raced toward the bordering trees with
all the speed that lay in her swift, little feet; but Tantor, for all
his huge bulk, drove down upon her with the rapidity of an express
train.
Korak lay where he could see the whole frightful tragedy. The cold
sweat broke out upon his body. His heart seemed to have stopped its
beating. Meriem might reach the trees before Tantor overtook her, but
even her agility would not carry her beyond the reach of that
relentless trunk—she would be dragged down and tossed. Korak could
picture the whole frightful scene. Then Tantor would follow her up,
goring the frail, little body with his relentless tusks, or trampling
it into an unrecognizable mass beneath his ponderous feet.
He was almost upon her now. Korak wanted to close his eyes, but could
not. His throat was dry and parched. Never in all his savage existence
had he suffered such blighting terror—never before had he known what
terror meant. A dozen more strides and the brute would seize her. What
was that? Korak’s eyes started from their sockets. A strange figure had
leaped from the tree the shade of which Meriem already had
reached—leaped beyond the girl straight into the path of the charging
elephant. It was a naked white giant. Across his shoulder a coil of
rope was looped. In the band of his gee string was a hunting knife.
Otherwise he was unarmed. With naked hands he faced the maddening
Tantor. A sharp command broke from the stranger’s lips—the great beast
halted in his tracks—and Meriem swung herself upward into the tree to
safety. Korak breathed a sigh of relief not unmixed with wonder. He
fastened his eyes upon the face of Meriem’s deliverer and as
recognition slowly filtered into his understanding they went wide in
incredulity and surprise.
Tantor, still rumbling angrily, stood swaying to and fro close before
the giant white man. Then the latter stepped straight beneath the
upraised trunk and spoke a low word of command. The great beast ceased
his muttering. The savage light died from his eyes, and as the stranger
stepped forward toward Korak, Tantor trailed docilely at his heels.
Meriem was watching, too, and wondering. Suddenly the man turned toward
her as though recollecting her presence after a moment of
forgetfulness. “Come! Meriem,” he called, and then she recognized him
with a startled: “Bwana!” Quickly the girl dropped from the tree and
ran to his side. Tantor cocked a questioning eye at the white giant,
but receiving a warning word let Meriem approach. Together the two
walked to where Korak lay, his eyes wide with wonder and filled with a
pathetic appeal for forgiveness, and, mayhap, a glad thankfulness for
the miracle that had brought these two of all others to his side.
“Jack!” cried the white giant, kneeling at the ape-man’s side.
“Father!” came chokingly from The Killer’s lips. “Thank God that it was
you. No one else in all the jungle could have stopped Tantor.”
Quickly the man cut the bonds that held Korak, and as the youth leaped
to his feet and threw his arms about his father, the older man turned
toward Meriem.
“I thought,” he said, sternly, “that I told you to return to the farm.”
Korak was looking at them wonderingly. In his heart was a great
yearning to take the girl in his arms; but in time he remembered the
other—the dapper young English gentleman—and that he was but a savage,
uncouth ape-man.
Meriem looked up pleadingly into Bwana’s eyes.
“You told me,” she said, in a very small voice, “that my place was
beside the man I loved,” and she turned her eyes toward Korak all
filled with the wonderful light that no other man had yet seen in them,
and that none other ever would.
The Killer started toward her with outstretched arms; but suddenly he
fell upon one knee before her, instead, and lifting her hand to his
lips kissed it more reverently than he could have kissed the hand of
his country’s queen.
A rumble from Tantor brought the three, all jungle bred, to instant
alertness. Tantor was looking toward the trees behind them, and as
their eyes followed his gaze the head and shoulders of a great ape
appeared amidst the foliage. For a moment the creature eyed them, and
then from its throat rose a loud scream of recognition and of joy, and
a moment later the beast had leaped to the ground, followed by a score
of bulls like himself, and was waddling toward them, shouting in the
primordial tongue of the anthropoid:
“Tarzan has returned! Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle!”
It was Akut, and instantly he commenced leaping and bounding about the
trio, uttering hideous shrieks and mouthings that to any other human
beings might have indicated the most ferocious rage; but these three
knew that the king of the apes was doing homage to a king greater than
himself. In his wake leaped his shaggy bulls, vying with one another as
to which could spring the highest and which utter the most uncanny
sounds.
Korak laid his hand affectionately upon his father’s shoulder.
“There is but one Tarzan,” he said. “There can never be another.”
Two days later the three dropped from the trees on the edge of the
plain across which they could see the smoke rising from the bungalow
and the cook house chimneys. Tarzan of the Apes had regained his
civilized clothing from the tree where he had hidden it, and as Korak
refused to enter the presence of his mother in the savage half-raiment
that he had worn so long and as Meriem would not leave him, for fear,
as she explained, that he would change his mind and run off into the
jungle again, the father went on ahead to the bungalow for horses and
clothes.
My Dear met him at the gate, her eyes filled with questioning and
sorrow, for she saw that Meriem was not with him.
“Where is she?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Muviri told me that
she disobeyed your instructions and ran off into the jungle after you
had left them. Oh, John, I cannot bear to lose her, too!” And Lady
Greystoke broke down and wept, as she pillowed her head upon the broad
breast where so often before she had found comfort in the great
tragedies of her life.
Lord Greystoke raised her head and looked down into her eyes, his own
smiling and filled with the light of happiness.
“What is it, John?” she cried. “You have good news—do not keep me
waiting for it.”
“I want to be quite sure that you can stand hearing the best news that
ever came to either of us,” he said.
“Joy never kills,” she cried. “You have found—her?” She could not bring
herself to hope for the impossible.
“Yes, Jane,” he said, and his voice was husky with emotion; “I have
found her, and—HIM!”
“Where is he? Where are they?” she demanded.
“Out there at the edge of the jungle. He wouldn’t come to you in his
savage leopard skin and his nakedness—he sent me to fetch him civilized
clothing.”
She clapped her hands in ecstasy, and turned to run toward the
bungalow. “Wait!” she cried over her shoulder. “I have all his little
suits—I have saved them all. I will bring one to you.”
Tarzan laughed and called to her to stop.
“The only clothing on the place that will fit him,” he said, “is
mine—if it isn’t too small for him—your little boy has grown, Jane.”
She laughed, too; she felt like laughing at everything, or at nothing.
The world was all love and happiness and joy once more—the world that
had been shrouded in the gloom of her great sorrow for so many years.
So great was her joy that for the moment she forgot the sad message
that awaited Meriem. She called to Tarzan after he had ridden away to
prepare her for it, but he did not hear and rode on without knowing
himself what the event was to which his wife referred.
And so, an hour later, Korak, The Killer, rode home to his mother—the
mother whose image had never faded in his boyish heart—and found in her
arms and her eyes the love and forgiveness that he plead for.
And then the mother turned toward Meriem, an expression of pitying
sorrow erasing the happiness from her eyes.
“My little girl,” she said, “in the midst of our happiness a great
sorrow awaits you—Mr. Baynes did not survive his wound.”
The expression of sorrow in Meriem’s eyes expressed only what she
sincerely felt; but it was not the sorrow of a woman bereft of her best
beloved.
“I am sorry,” she said, quite simply. “He would have done me a great
wrong; but he amply atoned before he died. Once I thought that I loved
him. At first it was only fascination for a type that was new to
me—then it was respect for a brave man who had the moral courage to
admit a sin and the physical courage to face death to right the wrong
he had committed. But it was not love. I did not know what love was
until I knew that Korak lived,” and she turned toward The Killer with a
smile.
Lady Greystoke looked quickly up into the eyes of her son—the son who
one day would be Lord Greystoke. No thought of the difference in the
stations of the girl and her boy entered her mind. To her Meriem was
fit for a king. She only wanted to know that Jack loved the little Arab
waif. The look in his eyes answered the question in her heart, and she
threw her arms about them both and kissed them each a dozen times.
“Now,” she cried, “I shall really have a daughter!”
It was several weary marches to the nearest mission; but they only
waited at the farm a few days for rest and preparation for the great
event before setting out upon the journey, and after the marriage
ceremony had been performed they kept on to the coast to take passage
for England. Those days were the most wonderful of Meriem’s life. She
had not dreamed even vaguely of the marvels that civilization held in
store for her. The great ocean and the commodious steamship filled her
with awe. The noise, and bustle and confusion of the English railway
station frightened her.
“If there was a good-sized tree at hand,” she confided to Korak, “I
know that I should run to the very top of it in terror of my life.”
“And make faces and throw twigs at the engine?” he laughed back.
“Poor old Numa,” sighed the girl. “What will he do without us?”
“Oh, there are others to tease him, my little Mangani,” assured Korak.
The Greystoke town house quite took Meriem’s breath away; but when
strangers were about none might guess that she had not been to the
manner born.
They had been home but a week when Lord Greystoke received a message
from his friend of many years, D’Arnot.
It was in the form of a letter of introduction brought by one General
Armand Jacot. Lord Greystoke recalled the name, as who familiar with
modern French history would not, for Jacot was in reality the Prince de
Cadrenet—that intense republican who refused to use, even by courtesy,
a title that had belonged to his family for four hundred years.
“There is no place for princes in a republic,” he was wont to say.
Lord Greystoke received the hawk-nosed, gray mustached soldier in his
library, and after a dozen words the two men had formed a mutual esteem
that was to endure through life.
“I have come to you,” explained General Jacot, “because our dear
Admiral tells me that there is no one in all the world who is more
intimately acquainted with Central Africa than you.
“Let me tell you my story from the beginning. Many years ago my little
daughter was stolen, presumably by Arabs, while I was serving with the
Foreign Legion in Algeria. We did all that love and money and even
government resources could do to discover her; but all to no avail. Her
picture was published in the leading papers of every large city in the
world, yet never did we find a man or woman who ever had seen her since
the day she mysteriously disappeared.
“A week since there came to me in Paris a swarthy Arab, who called
himself Abdul Kamak. He said that he had found my daughter and could
lead me to her. I took him at once to Admiral d’Arnot, whom I knew had
traveled some in Central Africa. The man’s story led the Admiral to
believe that the place where the white girl the Arab supposed to be my
daughter was held in captivity was not far from your African estates,
and he advised that I come at once and call upon you—that you would
know if such a girl were in your neighborhood.”
“What proof did the Arab bring that she was your daughter?” asked Lord
Greystoke.
“None,” replied the other. “That is why we thought best to consult you
before organizing an expedition. The fellow had only an old photograph
of her on the back of which was pasted a newspaper cutting describing
her and offering a reward. We feared that having found this somewhere
it had aroused his cupidity and led him to believe that in some way he
could obtain the reward, possibly by foisting upon us a white girl on
the chance that so many years had elapsed that we would not be able to
recognize an imposter as such.”
“Have you the photograph with you?” asked Lord Greystoke.
The General drew an envelope from his pocket, took a yellowed
photograph from it and handed it to the Englishman.
Tears dimmed the old warrior’s eyes as they fell again upon the
pictured features of his lost daughter.
Lord Greystoke examined the photograph for a moment. A queer expression
entered his eyes. He touched a bell at his elbow, and an instant later
a footman entered.
“Ask my son’s wife if she will be so good as to come to the library,”
he directed.
The two men sat in silence. General Jacot was too well bred to show in
any way the chagrin and disappointment he felt in the summary manner in
which Lord Greystoke had dismissed the subject of his call. As soon as
the young lady had come and he had been presented he would make his
departure. A moment later Meriem entered.
Lord Greystoke and General Jacot rose and faced her. The Englishman
spoke no word of introduction—he wanted to mark the effect of the first
sight of the girl’s face on the Frenchman, for he had a theory—a
heaven-born theory that had leaped into his mind the moment his eyes
had rested on the baby face of Jeanne Jacot.
General Jacot took one look at Meriem, then he turned toward Lord
Greystoke.
“How long have you known it?” he asked, a trifle accusingly.
“Since you showed me that photograph a moment ago,” replied the
Englishman.
“It is she,” said Jacot, shaking with suppressed emotion; “but she does
not recognize me—of course she could not.” Then he turned to Meriem.
“My child,” he said, “I am your—”
But she interrupted him with a quick, glad cry, as she ran toward him
with outstretched arms.
“I know you! I know you!” she cried. “Oh, now I remember,” and the old
man folded her in his arms.
Jack Clayton and his mother were summoned, and when the story had been
told them they were only glad that little Meriem had found a father and
a mother.
“And really you didn’t marry an Arab waif after all,” said Meriem.
“Isn’t it fine!”
“You are fine,” replied The Killer. “I married my little Meriem, and I
don’t care, for my part, whether she is an Arab, or just a little
Tarmangani.”
“She is neither, my son,” said General Armand Jacot. “She is a princess
in her own right.”