Alone in the Jungle
Tambudza, leading Tarzan of the Apes toward the camp of the Russian,
moved very slowly along the winding jungle path, for she was old and
her legs stiff with rheumatism.
So it was that the runners dispatched by M’ganwazam to warn Rokoff that
the white giant was in his village and that he would be slain that
night reached the Russian’s camp before Tarzan and his ancient guide
had covered half the distance.
The guides found the white man’s camp in a turmoil. Rokoff had that
morning been discovered stunned and bleeding within his tent. When he
had recovered his senses and realized that Jane Clayton had escaped,
his rage was boundless.
Rushing about the camp with his rifle, he had sought to shoot down the
native sentries who had allowed the young woman to elude their
vigilance, but several of the other whites, realizing that they were
already in a precarious position owing to the numerous desertions that
Rokoff’s cruelty had brought about, seized and disarmed him.
Then came the messengers from M’ganwazam, but scarce had they told
their story and Rokoff was preparing to depart with them for their
village when other runners, panting from the exertions of their swift
flight through the jungle, rushed breathless into the firelight, crying
that the great white giant had escaped from M’ganwazam and was already
on his way to wreak vengeance against his enemies.
Instantly confusion reigned within the encircling boma. The blacks
belonging to Rokoff’s safari were terror-stricken at the thought of the
proximity of the white giant who hunted through the jungle with a
fierce pack of apes and panthers at his heels.
Before the whites realized what had happened the superstitious fears of
the natives had sent them scurrying into the bush—their own carriers as
well as the messengers from M’ganwazam—but even in their haste they had
not neglected to take with them every article of value upon which they
could lay their hands.
Thus Rokoff and the seven white sailors found themselves deserted and
robbed in the midst of a wilderness.
The Russian, following his usual custom, berated his companions, laying
all the blame upon their shoulders for the events which had led up to
the almost hopeless condition in which they now found themselves; but
the sailors were in no mood to brook his insults and his cursing.
In the midst of this tirade one of them drew a revolver and fired
point-blank at the Russian. The fellow’s aim was poor, but his act so
terrified Rokoff that he turned and fled for his tent.
As he ran his eyes chanced to pass beyond the boma to the edge of the
forest, and there he caught a glimpse of that which sent his craven
heart cold with a fear that almost expunged his terror of the seven men
at his back, who by this time were all firing in hate and revenge at
his retreating figure.
What he saw was the giant figure of an almost naked white man emerging
from the bush.
Darting into his tent, the Russian did not halt in his flight, but kept
right on through the rear wall, taking advantage of the long slit that
Jane Clayton had made the night before.
The terror-stricken Muscovite scurried like a hunted rabbit through the
hole that still gaped in the boma’s wall at the point where his own
prey had escaped, and as Tarzan approached the camp upon the opposite
side Rokoff disappeared into the jungle in the wake of Jane Clayton.
As the ape-man entered the boma with old Tambudza at his elbow the
seven sailors, recognizing him, turned and fled in the opposite
direction. Tarzan saw that Rokoff was not among them, and so he let
them go their way—his business was with the Russian, whom he expected
to find in his tent. As to the sailors, he was sure that the jungle
would exact from them expiation for their villainies, nor, doubtless,
was he wrong, for his were the last white man’s eyes to rest upon any
of them.
Finding Rokoff’s tent empty, Tarzan was about to set out in search of
the Russian when Tambudza suggested to him that the departure of the
white man could only have resulted from word reaching him from
M’ganwazam that Tarzan was in his village.
“He has doubtless hastened there,” argued the old woman. “If you would
find him let us return at once.”
Tarzan himself thought that this would probably prove to be the fact,
so he did not waste time in an endeavour to locate the Russian’s trail,
but, instead, set out briskly for the village of M’ganwazam, leaving
Tambudza to plod slowly in his wake.
His one hope was that Jane was still safe and with Rokoff. If this was
the case, it would be but a matter of an hour or more before he should
be able to wrest her from the Russian.
He knew now that M’ganwazam was treacherous and that he might have to
fight to regain possession of his wife. He wished that Mugambi, Sheeta,
Akut, and the balance of the pack were with him, for he realized that
single-handed it would be no child’s play to bring Jane safely from the
clutches of two such scoundrels as Rokoff and the wily M’ganwazam.
To his surprise he found no sign of either Rokoff or Jane in the
village, and as he could not trust the word of the chief, he wasted no
time in futile inquiry. So sudden and unexpected had been his return,
and so quickly had he vanished into the jungle after learning that
those he sought were not among the Waganwazam, that old M’ganwazam had
no time to prevent his going.
Swinging through the trees, he hastened back to the deserted camp he
had so recently left, for here, he knew, was the logical place to take
up the trail of Rokoff and Jane.
Arrived at the boma, he circled carefully about the outside of the
enclosure until, opposite a break in the thorny wall, he came to
indications that something had recently passed into the jungle. His
acute sense of smell told him that both of those he sought had fled
from the camp in this direction, and a moment later he had taken up the
trail and was following the faint spoor.
Far ahead of him a terror-stricken young woman was slinking along a
narrow game-trail, fearful that the next moment would bring her face to
face with some savage beast or equally savage man. As she ran on,
hoping against hope that she had hit upon the direction that would lead
her eventually to the great river, she came suddenly upon a familiar
spot.
At one side of the trail, beneath a giant tree, lay a little heap of
loosely piled brush—to her dying day that little spot of jungle would
be indelibly impressed upon her memory. It was where Anderssen had
hidden her—where he had given up his life in the vain effort to save
her from Rokoff.
At sight of it she recalled the rifle and ammunition that the man had
thrust upon her at the last moment. Until now she had forgotten them
entirely. Still clutched in her hand was the revolver she had snatched
from Rokoff’s belt, but that could contain at most not over six
cartridges—not enough to furnish her with food and protection both on
the long journey to the sea.
With bated breath she groped beneath the little mound, scarce daring to
hope that the treasure remained where she had left it; but, to her
infinite relief and joy, her hand came at once upon the barrel of the
heavy weapon and then upon the bandoleer of cartridges.
As she threw the latter about her shoulder and felt the weight of the
big game-gun in her hand a sudden sense of security suffused her. It
was with new hope and a feeling almost of assured success that she
again set forward upon her journey.
That night she slept in the crotch of a tree, as Tarzan had so often
told her that he was accustomed to doing, and early the next morning
was upon her way again. Late in the afternoon, as she was about to
cross a little clearing, she was startled at the sight of a huge ape
coming from the jungle upon the opposite side.
The wind was blowing directly across the clearing between them, and
Jane lost no time in putting herself downwind from the huge creature.
Then she hid in a clump of heavy bush and watched, holding the rifle
ready for instant use.
To her consternation she saw that the apes were pausing in the centre
of the clearing. They came together in a little knot, where they stood
looking backward, as though in expectation of the coming of others of
their tribe. Jane wished that they would go on, for she knew that at
any moment some little, eddying gust of wind might carry her scent down
to their nostrils, and then what would the protection of her rifle
amount to in the face of those gigantic muscles and mighty fangs?
Her eyes moved back and forth between the apes and the edge of the
jungle toward which they were gazing until at last she perceived the
object of their halt and the thing that they awaited. They were being
stalked.
Of this she was positive, as she saw the lithe, sinewy form of a
panther glide noiselessly from the jungle at the point at which the
apes had emerged but a moment before.
Quickly the beast trotted across the clearing toward the anthropoids.
Jane wondered at their apparent apathy, and a moment later her wonder
turned to amazement as she saw the great cat come quite close to the
apes, who appeared entirely unconcerned by its presence, and, squatting
down in their midst, fell assiduously to the business of preening,
which occupies most of the waking hours of the cat family.
If the young woman was surprised by the sight of these natural enemies
fraternizing, it was with emotions little short of fear for her own
sanity that she presently saw a tall, muscular warrior enter the
clearing and join the group of savage beasts assembled there.
At first sight of the man she had been positive that he would be torn
to pieces, and she had half risen from her shelter, raising her rifle
to her shoulder to do what she could to avert the man’s terrible fate.
Now she saw that he seemed actually conversing with the beasts—issuing
orders to them.
Presently the entire company filed on across the clearing and
disappeared in the jungle upon the opposite side.
With a gasp of mingled incredulity and relief Jane Clayton staggered to
her feet and fled on away from the terrible horde that had just passed
her, while a half-mile behind her another individual, following the
same trail as she, lay frozen with terror behind an ant-hill as the
hideous band passed quite close to him.
This one was Rokoff; but he had recognized the members of the awful
aggregation as allies of Tarzan of the Apes. No sooner, therefore, had
the beasts passed him than he rose and raced through the jungle as fast
as he could go, in order that he might put as much distance as possible
between himself and these frightful beasts.
So it happened that as Jane Clayton came to the bank of the river, down
which she hoped to float to the ocean and eventual rescue, Nikolas
Rokoff was but a short distance in her rear.
Upon the bank the girl saw a great dugout drawn half-way from the water
and tied securely to a near-by tree.
This, she felt, would solve the question of transportation to the sea
could she but launch the huge, unwieldy craft. Unfastening the rope
that had moored it to the tree, Jane pushed frantically upon the bow of
the heavy canoe, but for all the results that were apparent she might
as well have been attempting to shove the earth out of its orbit.
She was about winded when it occurred to her to try working the dugout
into the stream by loading the stern with ballast and then rocking the
bow back and forth along the bank until the craft eventually worked
itself into the river.
There were no stones or rocks available, but along the shore she found
quantities of driftwood deposited by the river at a slightly higher
stage. These she gathered and piled far in the stern of the boat, until
at last, to her immense relief, she saw the bow rise gently from the
mud of the bank and the stern drift slowly with the current until it
again lodged a few feet farther down-stream.
Jane found that by running back and forth between the bow and stern she
could alternately raise and lower each end of the boat as she shifted
her weight from one end to the other, with the result that each time
she leaped to the stern the canoe moved a few inches farther into the
river.
As the success of her plan approached more closely to fruition she
became so wrapped in her efforts that she failed to note the figure of
a man standing beneath a huge tree at the edge of the jungle from which
he had just emerged.
He watched her and her labours with a cruel and malicious grin upon his
swarthy countenance.
The boat at last became so nearly free of the retarding mud and of the
bank that Jane felt positive that she could pole it off into deeper
water with one of the paddles which lay in the bottom of the rude
craft. With this end in view she seized upon one of these implements
and had just plunged it into the river bottom close to the shore when
her eyes happened to rise to the edge of the jungle.
As her gaze fell upon the figure of the man a little cry of terror rose
to her lips. It was Rokoff.
He was running toward her now and shouting to her to wait or he would
shoot—though as he was entirely unarmed it was difficult to discover
just how he intended making good his threat.
Jane Clayton knew nothing of the various misfortunes that had befallen
the Russian since she had escaped from his tent, so she believed that
his followers must be close at hand.
However, she had no intention of falling again into the man’s clutches.
She would rather die at once than that that should happen to her.
Another minute and the boat would be free.
Once in the current of the river she would be beyond Rokoff’s power to
stop her, for there was no other boat upon the shore, and no man, and
certainly not the cowardly Rokoff, would dare to attempt to swim the
crocodile-infested water in an effort to overtake her.
Rokoff, on his part, was bent more upon escape than aught else. He
would gladly have forgone any designs he might have had upon Jane
Clayton would she but permit him to share this means of escape that she
had discovered. He would promise anything if she would let him come
aboard the dugout, but he did not think that it was necessary to do so.
He saw that he could easily reach the bow of the boat before it cleared
the shore, and then it would not be necessary to make promises of any
sort. Not that Rokoff would have felt the slightest compunction in
ignoring any promises he might have made the girl, but he disliked the
idea of having to sue for favour with one who had so recently assaulted
and escaped him.
Already he was gloating over the days and nights of revenge that would
be his while the heavy dugout drifted its slow way to the ocean.
Jane Clayton, working furiously to shove the boat beyond his reach,
suddenly realized that she was to be successful, for with a little
lurch the dugout swung quickly into the current, just as the Russian
reached out to place his hand upon its bow.
His fingers did not miss their goal by a half-dozen inches. The girl
almost collapsed with the reaction from the terrific mental, physical,
and nervous strain under which she had been labouring for the past few
minutes. But, thank Heaven, at last she was safe!
Even as she breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving, she saw a sudden
expression of triumph lighten the features of the cursing Russian, and
at the same instant he dropped suddenly to the ground, grasping firmly
upon something which wriggled through the mud toward the water.
Jane Clayton crouched, wide-eyed and horror-stricken, in the bottom of
the boat as she realized that at the last instant success had been
turned to failure, and that she was indeed again in the power of the
malignant Rokoff.
For the thing that the man had seen and grasped was the end of the
trailing rope with which the dugout had been moored to the tree.