Escape
For a moment Rokoff stood sneering down upon Jane Clayton, then his
eyes fell to the little bundle in her lap. Jane had drawn one corner of
the blanket over the child’s face, so that to one who did not know the
truth it seemed but to be sleeping.
“You have gone to a great deal of unnecessary trouble,” said Rokoff,
“to bring the child to this village. If you had attended to your own
affairs I should have brought it here myself.
“You would have been spared the dangers and fatigue of the journey. But
I suppose I must thank you for relieving me of the inconvenience of
having to care for a young infant on the march.
“This is the village to which the child was destined from the first.
M’ganwazam will rear him carefully, making a good cannibal of him, and
if you ever chance to return to civilization it will doubtless afford
you much food for thought as you compare the luxuries and comforts of
your life with the details of the life your son is living in the
village of the Waganwazam.
“Again I thank you for bringing him here for me, and now I must ask you
to surrender him to me, that I may turn him over to his foster
parents.” As he concluded Rokoff held out his hands for the child, a
nasty grin of vindictiveness upon his lips.
To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest, laid
the little bundle in his arms.
“Here is the child,” she said. “Thank God he is beyond your power to
harm.”
Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanket from the
child’s face to seek confirmation of his fears. Jane Clayton watched
his expression closely.
She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the question of Rokoff’s
knowledge of the child’s identity. If she had been in doubt before the
last shred of that doubt was wiped away as she witnessed the terrible
anger of the Russian as he looked upon the dead face of the baby and
realized that at the last moment his dearest wish for vengeance had
been thwarted by a higher power.
Almost throwing the body of the child back into Jane Clayton’s arms,
Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with his clenched
fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in front of the young
woman, bringing his face down close to hers.
“You are laughing at me,” he shrieked. “You think that you have beaten
me—eh? I’ll show you, as I have shown the miserable ape you call
‘husband,’ what it means to interfere with the plans of Nikolas Rokoff.
“You have robbed me of the child. I cannot make him the son of a
cannibal chief, but”—and he paused as though to let the full meaning of
his threat sink deep—“I can make the mother the wife of a cannibal, and
that I shall do—after I have finished with her myself.”
If he had thought to wring from Jane Clayton any sign of terror he
failed miserably. She was beyond that. Her brain and nerves were numb
to suffering and shock.
To his surprise a faint, almost happy smile touched her lips. She was
thinking with thankful heart that this poor little corpse was not that
of her own wee Jack, and that—best of all—Rokoff evidently did not know
the truth.
She would have liked to have flaunted the fact in his face, but she
dared not. If he continued to believe that the child had been hers, so
much safer would be the real Jack wherever he might be. She had, of
course, no knowledge of the whereabouts of her little son—she did not
know, even, that he still lived, and yet there was the chance that he
might.
It was more than possible that without Rokoff’s knowledge this child
had been substituted for hers by one of the Russian’s confederates, and
that even now her son might be safe with friends in London, where there
were many, both able and willing, to have paid any ransom which the
traitorous conspirator might have asked for the safe release of Lord
Greystoke’s son.
She had thought it all out a hundred times since she had discovered
that the baby which Anderssen had placed in her arms that night upon
the Kincaid was not her own, and it had been a constant and gnawing
source of happiness to her to dream the whole fantasy through in its
every detail.
No, the Russian must never know that this was not her baby. She
realized that her position was hopeless—with Anderssen and her husband
dead there was no one in all the world with a desire to succour her who
knew where she might be found.
Rokoff’s threat, she realized, was no idle one. That he would do, or
attempt to do, all that he had promised, she was perfectly sure; but at
the worst it meant but a little earlier release from the hideous
anguish that she had been enduring. She must find some way to take her
own life before the Russian could harm her further.
Just now she wanted time—time to think and prepare herself for the end.
She felt that she could not take the last, awful step until she had
exhausted every possibility of escape. She did not care to live unless
she might find her way back to her own child, but slight as such a hope
appeared she would not admit its impossibility until the last moment
had come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing between the
final alternatives—Nikolas Rokoff on one hand and self-destruction upon
the other.
“Go away!” she said to the Russian. “Go away and leave me in peace with
my dead. Have you not brought sufficient misery and anguish upon me
without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I ever done you
that you should persist in persecuting me?”
“You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chose when you might
have had the love of a gentleman—of Nikolas Rokoff,” he replied. “But
where is the use in discussing the matter? We shall bury the child
here, and you will return with me at once to my own camp. Tomorrow I
shall bring you back and turn you over to your new husband—the lovely
M’ganwazam. Come!”
He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feet now, turned
away from him.
“I shall bury the body,” she said. “Send some men to dig a grave
outside the village.”
Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back to his camp with
his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy a resignation to her fate.
Stepping outside the hut, he motioned her to follow him, and a moment
later, with his men, he escorted Jane beyond the village, where beneath
a great tree the blacks scooped a shallow grave.
Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderly in the black
hole, and, turning her head that she might not see the mouldy earth
falling upon the pitiful little bundle, she breathed a prayer beside
the grave of the nameless waif that had won its way to the innermost
recesses of her heart.
Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russian through
the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding, leafy corridor
that led from the village of M’ganwazam, the black cannibal, to the
camp of Nikolas Rokoff, the white fiend.
Beside them, in the impenetrable thickets that fringed the path, rising
to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl could hear the
stealthy, muffled footfalls of great beasts, and ever round about them
rose the deafening roars of hunting lions, until the earth trembled to
the mighty sound.
The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon either hand to
frighten off the beasts of prey. Rokoff urged them to greater speed,
and from the quavering note in his voice Jane Clayton knew that he was
weak from terror.
The sounds of the jungle night recalled most vividly the days and
nights that she had spent in a similar jungle with her forest god—with
the fearless and unconquerable Tarzan of the Apes. Then there had been
no thoughts of terror, though the jungle noises were new to her, and
the roar of a lion had seemed the most awe-inspiring sound upon the
great earth.
How different would it be now if she knew that he was somewhere there
in the wilderness, seeking her! Then, indeed, would there be that for
which to live, and every reason to believe that succour was close at
hand—but he was dead! It was incredible that it should be so.
There seemed no place in death for that great body and those mighty
thews. Had Rokoff been the one to tell her of her lord’s passing she
would have known that he lied. There could be no reason, she thought,
why M’ganwazam should have deceived her. She did not know that the
Russian had talked with the savage a few minutes before the chief had
come to her with his tale.
At last they reached the rude boma that Rokoff’s porters had thrown up
round the Russian’s camp. Here they found all in turmoil. She did not
know what it was all about, but she saw that Rokoff was very angry, and
from bits of conversation which she could translate she gleaned that
there had been further desertions while he had been absent, and that
the deserters had taken the bulk of his food and ammunition.
When he had done venting his rage upon those who remained he returned
to where Jane stood under guard of a couple of his white sailors. He
grasped her roughly by the arm and started to drag her toward his tent.
The girl struggled and fought to free herself, while the two sailors
stood by, laughing at the rare treat.
Rokoff did not hesitate to use rough methods when he found that he was
to have difficulty in carrying out his designs. Repeatedly he struck
Jane Clayton in the face, until at last, half-conscious, she was
dragged within his tent.
Rokoff’s boy had lighted the Russian’s lamp, and now at a word from his
master he made himself scarce. Jane had sunk to the floor in the middle
of the enclosure. Slowly her numbed senses were returning to her and
she was commencing to think very fast indeed. Quickly her eyes ran
round the interior of the tent, taking in every detail of its equipment
and contents.
Now the Russian was lifting her to her feet and attempting to drag her
to the camp cot that stood at one side of the tent. At his belt hung a
heavy revolver. Jane Clayton’s eyes riveted themselves upon it. Her
palm itched to grasp the huge butt. She feigned again to swoon, but
through her half-closed lids she waited her opportunity.
It came just as Rokoff was lifting her upon the cot. A noise at the
tent door behind him brought his head quickly about and away from the
girl. The butt of the gun was not an inch from her hand. With a single,
lightning-like move she snatched the weapon from its holster, and at
the same instant Rokoff turned back toward her, realizing his peril.
She did not dare fire for fear the shot would bring his people about
him, and with Rokoff dead she would fall into hands no better than his
and to a fate probably even worse than he alone could have imagined.
The memory of the two brutes who stood and laughed as Rokoff struck her
was still vivid.
As the rage and fear-filled countenance of the Slav turned toward her
Jane Clayton raised the heavy revolver high above the pasty face and
with all her strength dealt the man a terrific blow between the eyes.
Without a sound he sank, limp and unconscious, to the ground. A moment
later the girl stood beside him—for a moment at least free from the
menace of his lust.
Outside the tent she again heard the noise that had distracted Rokoff’s
attention. What it was she did not know, but, fearing the return of the
servant and the discovery of her deed, she stepped quickly to the camp
table upon which burned the oil lamp and extinguished the smudgy,
evil-smelling flame.
In the total darkness of the interior she paused for a moment to
collect her wits and plan for the next step in her venture for freedom.
About her was a camp of enemies. Beyond these foes a black wilderness
of savage jungle peopled by hideous beasts of prey and still more
hideous human beasts.
There was little or no chance that she could survive even a few days of
the constant dangers that would confront her there; but the knowledge
that she had already passed through so many perils unscathed, and that
somewhere out in the faraway world a little child was doubtless at that
very moment crying for her, filled her with determination to make the
effort to accomplish the seemingly impossible and cross that awful land
of horror in search of the sea and the remote chance of succour she
might find there.
Rokoff’s tent stood almost exactly in the centre of the boma.
Surrounding it were the tents and shelters of his white companions and
the natives of his safari. To pass through these and find egress
through the boma seemed a task too fraught with insurmountable
obstacles to warrant even the slightest consideration, and yet there
was no other way.
To remain in the tent until she should be discovered would be to set at
naught all that she had risked to gain her freedom, and so with
stealthy step and every sense alert she approached the back of the tent
to set out upon the first stage of her adventure.
Groping along the rear of the canvas wall, she found that there was no
opening there. Quickly she returned to the side of the unconscious
Russian. In his belt her groping fingers came upon the hilt of a long
hunting-knife, and with this she cut a hole in the back wall of the
tent.
Silently she stepped without. To her immense relief she saw that the
camp was apparently asleep. In the dim and flickering light of the
dying fires she saw but a single sentry, and he was dozing upon his
haunches at the opposite side of the enclosure.
Keeping the tent between him and herself, she crossed between the small
shelters of the native porters to the boma wall beyond.
Outside, in the darkness of the tangled jungle, she could hear the
roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas, and the countless, nameless
noises of the midnight jungle.
For a moment she hesitated, trembling. The thought of the prowling
beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a sudden
brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny boma wall with her
delicate hands. Torn and bleeding though they were, she worked on
breathlessly until she had made an opening through which she could worm
her body, and at last she stood outside the enclosure.
Behind her lay a fate worse than death, at the hands of human beings.
Before her lay an almost certain fate—but it was only death—sudden,
merciful, and honourable death.
Without a tremor and without regret she darted away from the camp, and
a moment later the mysterious jungle had closed about her.