Marooned
As Tarzan and his guide had disappeared into the shadows upon the dark
wharf the figure of a heavily veiled woman had hurried down the narrow
alley to the entrance of the drinking-place the two men had just
quitted.
Here she paused and looked about, and then as though satisfied that she
had at last reached the place she sought, she pushed bravely into the
interior of the vile den.
A score of half-drunken sailors and wharf-rats looked up at the
unaccustomed sight of a richly gowned woman in their midst. Rapidly she
approached the slovenly barmaid who stared half in envy, half in hate,
at her more fortunate sister.
“Have you seen a tall, well-dressed man here, but a minute since,” she
asked, “who met another and went away with him?”
The girl answered in the affirmative, but could not tell which way the
two had gone. A sailor who had approached to listen to the conversation
vouchsafed the information that a moment before as he had been about to
enter the “pub” he had seen two men leaving it who walked toward the
wharf.
“Show me the direction they went,” cried the woman, slipping a coin
into the man’s hand.
The fellow led her from the place, and together they walked quickly
toward the wharf and along it until across the water they saw a small
boat just pulling into the shadows of a near-by steamer.
“There they be,” whispered the man.
“Ten pounds if you will find a boat and row me to that steamer,” cried
the woman.
“Quick, then,” he replied, “for we gotta go it if we’re goin’ to catch
the Kincaid afore she sails. She’s had steam up for three hours an’
jest been a-waitin’ fer that one passenger. I was a-talkin’ to one of
her crew ’arf an hour ago.”
As he spoke he led the way to the end of the wharf where he knew
another boat lay moored, and, lowering the woman into it, he jumped in
after and pushed off. The two were soon scudding over the water.
At the steamer’s side the man demanded his pay and, without waiting to
count out the exact amount, the woman thrust a handful of bank-notes
into his outstretched hand. A single glance at them convinced the
fellow that he had been more than well paid. Then he assisted her up
the ladder, holding his skiff close to the ship’s side against the
chance that this profitable passenger might wish to be taken ashore
later.
But presently the sound of the donkey engine and the rattle of a steel
cable on the hoisting-drum proclaimed the fact that the Kincaid’s
anchor was being raised, and a moment later the waiter heard the
propellers revolving, and slowly the little steamer moved away from him
out into the channel.
As he turned to row back to shore he heard a woman’s shriek from the
ship’s deck.
“That’s wot I calls rotten luck,” he soliloquized. “I might jest as
well of ’ad the whole bloomin’ wad.”
When Jane Clayton climbed to the deck of the Kincaid she found the ship
apparently deserted. There was no sign of those she sought nor of any
other aboard, and so she went about her search for her husband and the
child she hoped against hope to find there without interruption.
Quickly she hastened to the cabin, which was half above and half below
deck. As she hurried down the short companion-ladder into the main
cabin, on either side of which were the smaller rooms occupied by the
officers, she failed to note the quick closing of one of the doors
before her. She passed the full length of the main room, and then
retracing her steps stopped before each door to listen, furtively
trying each latch.
All was silence, utter silence there, in which the throbbing of her own
frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to fill the ship
with its thunderous alarm.
One by one the doors opened before her touch, only to reveal empty
interiors. In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity upon
the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the propeller.
She had reached the last door upon the right now, and as she pushed it
open she was seized from within by a powerful, dark-visaged man, and
drawn hastily into the stuffy, ill-smelling interior.
The sudden shock of fright which the unexpected attack had upon her
drew a single piercing scream from her throat; then the man clapped a
hand roughly over the mouth.
“Not until we are farther from land, my dear,” he said. “Then you may
yell your pretty head off.”
Lady Greystoke turned to look into the leering, bearded face so close
to hers. The man relaxed the pressure of his fingers upon her lips, and
with a little moan of terror as she recognized him the girl shrank away
from her captor.
“Nikolas Rokoff! M. Thuran!” she exclaimed.
“Your devoted admirer,” replied the Russian, with a low bow.
“My little boy,” she said next, ignoring the terms of endearment—“where
is he? Let me have him. How could you be so cruel—even as you—Nikolas
Rokoff—cannot be entirely devoid of mercy and compassion? Tell me where
he is. Is he aboard this ship? Oh, please, if such a thing as a heart
beats within your breast, take me to my baby!”
“If you do as you are bid no harm will befall him,” replied Rokoff.
“But remember that it is your own fault that you are here. You came
aboard voluntarily, and you may take the consequences. I little
thought,” he added to himself, “that any such good luck as this would
come to me.”
He went on deck then, locking the cabin-door upon his prisoner, and for
several days she did not see him. The truth of the matter being that
Nikolas Rokoff was so poor a sailor that the heavy seas the Kincaid
encountered from the very beginning of her voyage sent the Russian to
his berth with a bad attack of sea-sickness.
During this time her only visitor was an uncouth Swede, the Kincaid’s
unsavoury cook, who brought her meals to her. His name was Sven
Anderssen, his one pride being that his patronymic was spelt with a
double “s.”
The man was tall and raw-boned, with a long yellow moustache, an
unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails. The very sight of him with
one grimy thumb buried deep in the lukewarm stew, that seemed, from the
frequency of its repetition, to constitute the pride of his culinary
art, was sufficient to take away the girl’s appetite.
His small, blue, close-set eyes never met hers squarely. There was a
shiftiness of his whole appearance that even found expression in the
cat-like manner of his gait, and to it all a sinister suggestion was
added by the long slim knife that always rested at his waist, slipped
through the greasy cord that supported his soiled apron. Ostensibly it
was but an implement of his calling; but the girl could never free
herself of the conviction that it would require less provocation to
witness it put to other and less harmless uses.
His manner toward her was surly, yet she never failed to meet him with
a pleasant smile and a word of thanks when he brought her food to her,
though more often than not she hurled the bulk of it through the tiny
cabin port the moment that the door closed behind him.
During the days of anguish that followed Jane Clayton’s imprisonment,
but two questions were uppermost in her mind—the whereabouts of her
husband and her son. She fully believed that the baby was aboard the
Kincaid, provided that he still lived, but whether Tarzan had been
permitted to live after having been lured aboard the evil craft she
could not guess.
She knew, of course, the deep hatred that the Russian felt for the
Englishman, and she could think of but one reason for having him
brought aboard the ship—to dispatch him in comparative safety in
revenge for his having thwarted Rokoff’s pet schemes, and for having
been at last the means of landing him in a French prison.
Tarzan, on his part, lay in the darkness of his cell, ignorant of the
fact that his wife was a prisoner in the cabin almost above his head.
The same Swede that served Jane brought his meals to him, but, though
on several occasions Tarzan had tried to draw the man into
conversation, he had been unsuccessful. He had hoped to learn through
this fellow whether his little son was aboard the Kincaid, but to every
question upon this or kindred subjects the fellow returned but one
reply, “Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard.” So after several
attempts Tarzan gave it up.
For weeks that seemed months to the two prisoners the little steamer
forged on they knew not where. Once the Kincaid stopped to coal, only
immediately to take up the seemingly interminable voyage.
Rokoff had visited Jane Clayton but once since he had locked her in the
tiny cabin. He had come gaunt and hollow-eyed from a long siege of
sea-sickness. The object of his visit was to obtain from her her
personal cheque for a large sum in return for a guarantee of her
personal safety and return to England.
“When you set me down safely in any civilized port, together with my
son and my husband,” she replied, “I will pay you in gold twice the
amount you ask; but until then you shall not have a cent, nor the
promise of a cent under any other conditions.”
“You will give me the cheque I ask,” he replied with a snarl, “or
neither you nor your child nor your husband will ever again set foot
within any port, civilized or otherwise.”
“I would not trust you,” she replied. “What guarantee have I that you
would not take my money and then do as you pleased with me and mine
regardless of your promise?”
“I think you will do as I bid,” he said, turning to leave the cabin.
“Remember that I have your son—if you chance to hear the agonized wail
of a tortured child it may console you to reflect that it is because of
your stubbornness that the baby suffers—and that it is your baby.”
“You would not do it!” cried the girl. “You would not—could not be so
fiendishly cruel!”
“It is not I that am cruel, but you,” he returned, “for you permit a
paltry sum of money to stand between your baby and immunity from
suffering.”
The end of it was that Jane Clayton wrote out a cheque of large
denomination and handed it to Nikolas Rokoff, who left her cabin with a
grin of satisfaction upon his lips.
The following day the hatch was removed from Tarzan’s cell, and as he
looked up he saw Paulvitch’s head framed in the square of light above
him.
“Come up,” commanded the Russian. “But bear in mind that you will be
shot if you make a single move to attack me or any other aboard the
ship.”
The ape-man swung himself lightly to the deck. About him, but at a
respectful distance, stood a half-dozen sailors armed with rifles and
revolvers. Facing him was Paulvitch.
Tarzan looked about for Rokoff, who he felt sure must be aboard, but
there was no sign of him.
“Lord Greystoke,” commenced the Russian, “by your continued and wanton
interference with M. Rokoff and his plans you have at last brought
yourself and your family to this unfortunate extremity. You have only
yourself to thank. As you may imagine, it has cost M. Rokoff a large
amount of money to finance this expedition, and, as you are the sole
cause of it, he naturally looks to you for reimbursement.
“Further, I may say that only by meeting M. Rokoff’s just demands may
you avert the most unpleasant consequences to your wife and child, and
at the same time retain your own life and regain your liberty.”
“What is the amount?” asked Tarzan. “And what assurance have I that you
will live up to your end of the agreement? I have little reason to
trust two such scoundrels as you and Rokoff, you know.”
The Russian flushed.
“You are in no position to deliver insults,” he said. “You have no
assurance that we will live up to our agreement other than my word, but
you have before you the assurance that we can make short work of you if
you do not write out the cheque we demand.
“Unless you are a greater fool than I imagine, you should know that
there is nothing that would give us greater pleasure than to order
these men to fire. That we do not is because we have other plans for
punishing you that would be entirely upset by your death.”
“Answer one question,” said Tarzan. “Is my son on board this ship?”
“No,” replied Alexis Paulvitch, “your son is quite safe elsewhere; nor
will he be killed until you refuse to accede to our fair demands. If it
becomes necessary to kill you, there will be no reason for not killing
the child, since with you gone the one whom we wish to punish through
the boy will be gone, and he will then be to us only a constant source
of danger and embarrassment. You see, therefore, that you may only save
the life of your son by saving your own, and you can only save your own
by giving us the cheque we ask.”
“Very well,” replied Tarzan, for he knew that he could trust them to
carry out any sinister threat that Paulvitch had made, and there was a
bare chance that by conceding their demands he might save the boy.
That they would permit him to live after he had appended his name to
the cheque never occurred to him as being within the realms of
probability. But he was determined to give them such a battle as they
would never forget, and possibly to take Paulvitch with him into
eternity. He was only sorry that it was not Rokoff.
He took his pocket cheque-book and fountain-pen from his pocket.
“What is the amount?” he asked.
Paulvitch named an enormous sum. Tarzan could scarce restrain a smile.
Their very cupidity was to prove the means of their undoing, in the
matter of the ransom at least. Purposely he hesitated and haggled over
the amount, but Paulvitch was obdurate. Finally the ape-man wrote out
his cheque for a larger sum than stood to his credit at the bank.
As he turned to hand the worthless slip of paper to the Russian his
glance chanced to pass across the starboard bow of the Kincaid. To his
surprise he saw that the ship lay within a few hundred yards of land.
Almost down to the water’s edge ran a dense tropical jungle, and behind
was higher land clothed in forest.
Paulvitch noted the direction of his gaze.
“You are to be set at liberty here,” he said.
Tarzan’s plan for immediate physical revenge upon the Russian vanished.
He thought the land before him the mainland of Africa, and he knew that
should they liberate him here he could doubtless find his way to
civilization with comparative ease.
Paulvitch took the cheque.
“Remove your clothing,” he said to the ape-man. “Here you will not need
it.”
Tarzan demurred.
Paulvitch pointed to the armed sailors. Then the Englishman slowly
divested himself of his clothing.
A boat was lowered, and, still heavily guarded, the ape-man was rowed
ashore. Half an hour later the sailors had returned to the Kincaid, and
the steamer was slowly getting under way.
As Tarzan stood upon the narrow strip of beach watching the departure
of the vessel he saw a figure appear at the rail and call aloud to
attract his attention.
The ape-man had been about to read a note that one of the sailors had
handed him as the small boat that bore him to the shore was on the
point of returning to the steamer, but at the hail from the vessel’s
deck he looked up.
He saw a black-bearded man who laughed at him in derision as he held
high above his head the figure of a little child. Tarzan half started
as though to rush through the surf and strike out for the already
moving steamer; but realizing the futility of so rash an act he halted
at the water’s edge.
Thus he stood, his gaze riveted upon the Kincaid until it disappeared
beyond a projecting promontory of the coast.
From the jungle at his back fierce bloodshot eyes glared from beneath
shaggy overhanging brows upon him.
Little monkeys in the tree-tops chattered and scolded, and from the
distance of the inland forest came the scream of a leopard.
But still John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, stood deaf and unseeing,
suffering the pangs of keen regret for the opportunity that he had
wasted because he had been so gullible as to place credence in a single
statement of the first lieutenant of his arch-enemy.
“I have at least,” he thought, “one consolation—the knowledge that Jane
is safe in London. Thank Heaven she, too, did not fall into the
clutches of those villains.”
Behind him the hairy thing whose evil eyes had been watching him as a
cat watches a mouse was creeping stealthily toward him.
Where were the trained senses of the savage ape-man?
Where the acute hearing?
Where the uncanny sense of scent?