The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter 16
In the Darkness of the Night
When Tarzan of the Apes realized that he was in the grip of the greatjaws of a crocodile he did not, as an ordinary man might have done,give up all hope and resign himself to his fate.
Instead, he filled his lungs with air before the huge reptile draggedhim beneath the surface, and then, with all the might of his greatmuscles, fought bitterly for freedom. But out of his native elementthe ape-man was too greatly handicapped to do more than excite themonster to greater speed as it dragged its prey swiftly through thewater.
Tarzan's lungs were bursting for a breath of pure fresh air. He knewthat he could survive but a moment more, and in the last paroxysm ofhis suffering he did what he could to avenge his own death.
His body trailed out beside the slimy carcass of his captor, and intothe tough armour the ape-man attempted to plunge his stone knife as hewas borne to the creature's horrid den.
His efforts but served to accelerate the speed of the crocodile, andjust as the ape-man realized that he had reached the limit of hisendurance he felt his body dragged to a muddy bed and his nostrils riseabove the water's surface. All about him was the blackness of thepit--the silence of the grave.
For a moment Tarzan of the Apes lay gasping for breath upon the slimy,evil-smelling bed to which the animal had borne him. Close at his sidehe could feel the cold, hard plates of the creature's coat rising andfalling as though with spasmodic efforts to breathe.
For several minutes the two lay thus, and then a sudden convulsion ofthe giant carcass at the man's side, a tremor, and a stiffening broughtTarzan to his knees beside the crocodile. To his utter amazement hefound that the beast was dead. The slim knife had found a vulnerablespot in the scaly armour.
Staggering to his feet, the ape-man groped about the reeking, oozy den.He found that he was imprisoned in a subterranean chamber amply largeenough to have accommodated a dozen or more of the huge animals such asthe one that had dragged him thither.
He realized that he was in the creature's hidden nest far under thebank of the stream, and that doubtless the only means of ingress oregress lay through the submerged opening through which the crocodilehad brought him.
His first thought, of course, was of escape, but that he could make hisway to the surface of the river beyond and then to the shore seemedhighly improbable. There might be turns and windings in the neck ofthe passage, or, most to be feared, he might meet another of the slimyinhabitants of the retreat upon his journey outward.
Even should he reach the river in safety, there was still the danger ofhis being again attacked before he could effect a safe landing. Stillthere was no alternative, and, filling his lungs with the close andreeking air of the chamber, Tarzan of the Apes dived into the dark andwatery hole which he could not see but had felt out and found with hisfeet and legs.
The leg which had been held within the jaws of the crocodile was badlylacerated, but the bone had not been broken, nor were the muscles ortendons sufficiently injured to render it useless. It gave himexcruciating pain, that was all.
But Tarzan of the Apes was accustomed to pain, and gave it no furtherthought when he found that the use of his legs was not greatly impairedby the sharp teeth of the monster.
Rapidly he crawled and swam through the passage which inclined downwardand finally upward to open at last into the river bottom but a few feetfrom the shore line. As the ape-man reached the surface he saw theheads of two great crocodiles but a short distance from him. They weremaking rapidly in his direction, and with a superhuman effort the manstruck out for the overhanging branches of a near-by tree.
Nor was he a moment too soon, for scarcely had he drawn himself to thesafety of the limb than two gaping mouths snapped venomously below him.For a few minutes Tarzan rested in the tree that had proved the meansof his salvation. His eyes scanned the river as far down-stream asthe tortuous channel would permit, but there was no sign of the Russianor his dugout.
When he had rested and bound up his wounded leg he started on inpursuit of the drifting canoe. He found himself upon the opposite ofthe river to that at which he had entered the stream, but as his quarrywas upon the bosom of the water it made little difference to theape-man upon which side he took up the pursuit.
To his intense chagrin he soon found that his leg was more badlyinjured than he had thought, and that its condition seriously impededhis progress. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he couldproceed faster than a walk upon the ground, and in the trees hediscovered that it not only impeded his progress, but renderedtravelling distinctly dangerous.
From the old negress, Tambudza, Tarzan had gathered a suggestion thatnow filled his mind with doubts and misgivings. When the old woman hadtold him of the child's death she had also added that the white woman,though grief-stricken, had confided to her that the baby was not hers.
Tarzan could see no reason for believing that Jane could have found itadvisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the onlyexplanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all, thewhite woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the junglefastness of the interior had not been Jane at all.
The more he gave thought to the problem, the more firmly convinced hebecame that his son was dead and his wife still safe in London, and inignorance of the terrible fate that had overtaken her first-born.
After all, then, his interpretation of Rokoff's sinister taunt had beenerroneous, and he had been bearing the burden of a double apprehensionneedlessly--at least so thought the ape-man. From this belief hegarnered some slight surcease from the numbing grief that the death ofhis little son had thrust upon him.
And such a death! Even the savage beast that was the real Tarzan,inured to the sufferings and horrors of the grim jungle, shuddered ashe contemplated the hideous fate that had overtaken the innocent child.
As he made his way painfully towards the coast, he let his mind dwellso constantly upon the frightful crimes which the Russian hadperpetrated against his loved ones that the great scar upon hisforehead stood out almost continuously in the vivid scarlet that markedthe man's most relentless and bestial moods of rage. At times hestartled even himself and sent the lesser creatures of the wild junglescampering to their hiding places as involuntary roars and growlsrumbled from his throat.
Could he but lay his hand upon the Russian!
Twice upon the way to the coast bellicose natives ran threateninglyfrom their villages to bar his further progress, but when the awful cryof the bull-ape thundered upon their affrighted ears, and the greatwhite giant charged bellowing upon them, they had turned and fled intothe bush, nor ventured thence until he had safely passed.
Though his progress seemed tantalizingly slow to the ape-man whose ideaof speed had been gained by such standards as the lesser apes attain,he made, as a matter of fact, almost as rapid progress as the driftingcanoe that bore Rokoff on ahead of him, so that he came to the bay andwithin sight of the ocean just after darkness had fallen upon the sameday that Jane Clayton and the Russian ended their flights from theinterior.
The darkness lowered so heavily upon the black river and the encirclingjungle that Tarzan, even with eyes accustomed to much use after dark,could make out nothing a few yards from him. His idea was to searchthe shore that night for signs of the Russian and the woman who he wascertain must have preceded Rokoff down the Ugambi. That the Kincaid orother ship lay at anchor but a hundred yards from him he did not dream,for no light showed on board the steamer.
Even as he commenced his search his attention was suddenly attracted bya noise that he had not at first perceived--the stealthy dip of paddlesin the water some distance from the shore, and about opposite the pointat which he stood. Motionless as a statue he stood listening to thefaint sound.
Presently it ceased, to be followed by a shuffling noise that theape-man's trained ears could interpret as resulting from but a singlecause--the scraping of leather-shod feet upon the rounds of a ship'sm
As he stood thus, peering out into the darkness of the cloud-enshroudednight, there came to him from across the water, like a slap in theface, so sudden and unexpected was it, the sharp staccato of anexchange of shots and then the scream of a woman.
Wounded though he was, and with the memory of his recent horribleexperience still strong upon him, Tarzan of the Apes did not hesitateas the notes of that frightened cry rose shrill and piercing upon thestill night air. With a bound he cleared the intervening bush--therewas a splash as the water closed about him--and then, with powerfulstrokes, he swam out into the impenetrable night with no guide save thememory of an illusive cry, and for company the hideous denizens of anequatorial river.
The boat that had attracted Jane's attention as she stood guard uponthe deck of the Kincaid had been perceived by Rokoff upon one bank andMugambi and the horde upon the other. The cries of the Russian hadbrought the dugout first to him, and then, after a conference, it hadbeen turned toward the Kincaid, but before ever it covered half thedistance between the shore and the steamer a rifle had spoken from thelatter's deck and one of the sailors in the bow of the canoe hadcrumpled and fallen into the water.
After that they went more slowly, and presently, when Jane's rifle hadfound another member of the party, the canoe withdrew to the shore,where it lay as long as daylight lasted.
The savage, snarling pack upon the opposite shore had been directed intheir pursuit by the black warrior, Mugambi, chief of the Wagambi.Only he knew which might be foe and which friend of their lost master.
Could they have reached either the canoe or the Kincaid they would havemade short work of any whom they found there, but the gulf of blackwater intervening shut them off from farther advance as effectually asthough it had been the broad ocean that separated them from their prey.
Mugambi knew something of the occurrences which had led up to thelanding of Tarzan upon Jungle Island and the pursuit of the whites upthe Ugambi. He knew that his savage master sought his wife and childwho had been stolen by the wicked white man whom they had followed farinto the interior and now back to the sea.
He believed also that this same man had killed the great white giantwhom he had come to respect and love as he had never loved the greatestchiefs of his own people. And so in the wild breast of Mugambi burnedan iron resolve to win to the side of the wicked one and wreakvengeance upon him for the murder of the ape-man.
But when he saw the canoe come down the river and take in Rokoff, whenhe saw it make for the Kincaid, he realized that only by possessinghimself of a canoe could he hope to transport the beasts of the packwithin striking distance of the enemy.
So it happened that even before Jane Clayton fired the first shot intoRokoff's canoe the beasts of Tarzan had disappeared into the jungle.
After the Russian and his party, which consisted of Paulvitch and theseveral men he had left upon the Kincaid to attend to the matter ofcoaling, had retreated before her fire, Jane realized that it would bebut a temporary respite from their attentions which she had gained, andwith the conviction came a determination to make a bold and finalstroke for freedom from the menacing threat of Rokoff's evil purpose.
With this idea in view she opened negotiations with the two sailors shehad imprisoned in the forecastle, and having forced their consent toher plans, upon pain of death should they attempt disloyalty, shereleased them just as darkness closed about the ship.
With ready revolver to compel obedience, she let them up one by one,searching them carefully for concealed weapons as they stood with handselevated above their heads. Once satisfied that they were unarmed, sheset them to work cutting the cable which held the Kincaid to heranchorage, for her bold plan was nothing less than to set the steameradrift and float with her out into the open sea, there to trust to themercy of the elements, which she was confident would be no moremerciless than Nikolas Rokoff should he again capture her.
There was, too, the chance that the Kincaid might be sighted by somepassing ship, and as she was well stocked with provisions andwater--the men had assured her of this fact--and as the season of stormwas well over, she had every reason to hope for the eventual success ofher plan.
The night was deeply overcast, heavy clouds riding low above the jungleand the water--only to the west, where the broad ocean spread beyondthe river's mouth, was there a suggestion of lessening gloom.
It was a perfect night for the purposes of the work in hand.
Her enemies could not see the activity aboard the ship nor mark hercourse as the swift current bore her outward into the ocean. Beforedaylight broke the ebb-tide would have carried the Kincaid well intothe Benguela current which flows northward along the coast of Africa,and, as a south wind was prevailing, Jane hoped to be out of sight ofthe mouth of the Ugambi before Rokoff could become aware of thedeparture of the steamer.
Standing over the labouring seamen, the young woman breathed a sigh ofrelief as the last strand of the cable parted and she knew that thevessel was on its way out of the maw of the savage Ugambi.
With her two prisoners still beneath the coercing influence of herrifle, she ordered them upon deck with the intention of againimprisoning them in the forecastle; but at length she permitted herselfto be influenced by their promises of loyalty and the arguments whichthey put forth that they could be of service to her, and permitted themto remain above.
For a few minutes the Kincaid drifted rapidly with the current, andthen, with a grinding jar, she stopped in midstream. The ship had runupon a low-lying bar that splits the channel about a quarter of a milefrom the sea.
For a moment she hung there, and then, swinging round until her bowpointed toward the shore, she broke adrift once more.
At the same instant, just as Jane Clayton was congratulating herselfthat the ship was once more free, there fell upon her ears from a pointup the river about where the Kincaid had been anchored the rattle ofmusketry and a woman's scream--shrill, piercing, fear-laden.
The sailors heard the shots with certain conviction that they announcedthe coming of their employer, and as they had no relish for the planthat would consign them to the deck of a drifting derelict, theywhispered together a hurried plan to overcome the young woman and hailRokoff and their companions to their rescue.
It seemed that fate would play into their hands, for with the reportsof the guns Jane Clayton's attention had been distracted from herunwilling assistants, and instead of keeping one eye upon them as shehad intended doing, she ran to the bow of the Kincaid to peer throughthe darkness toward the source of the disturbance upon the river'sbosom.
Seeing that she was off her guard, the two sailors crept stealthilyupon her from behind.
The scraping upon the deck of the shoes of one of them startled thegirl to a sudden appreciation of her danger, but the warning had cometoo late.
As she turned, both men leaped upon her and bore her to the deck, andas she went down beneath them she saw, outlined against the lessergloom of the ocean, the figure of another man clamber over the side ofthe Kincaid.
After all her pains her heroic struggle for freedom had failed. With astifled sob she gave up the unequal battle.