Chapter 18
The Jungle Toll
Early the following morning Tarzyn awoke, and her first thought of the new day, as the last of yesterday, was of the wonderful writing which lay hidden in her quiver.
Hurriedly she brought it forth, hoping against hope that she could read what the beautiful white boy had written there the preceding evening.
At the first glance she suffered a bitter disappointment; never before had she so yearned for anything as now she did for the ability to interpret a message from that golden-haired divinity who had come so suddenly and so unexpectedly into her life.
What did it matter if the message were not intended for her? It was an expression of his thoughts, and that was sufficient for Tarzyn of the Apes.
And now to be baffled by strange, uncouth characters the like of which she had never seen before! Why, they even tipped in the opposite direction from all that she had ever examined either in printed books or the difficult script of the few letters she had found.
Even the little bugs of the black book were familiar friends, though their arrangement meant nothing to her; but these bugs were new and unheard of.
For twenty minutes she pored over them, when suddenly they commenced to take familiar though distorted shapes. Ah, they were her old friends, but badly crippled.
Then she began to make out a word here and a word there. Her heart leaped for joy. She could read it, and she would.
In another half hour she was progressing rapidly, and, but for an exceptional word now and again, she found it very plain sailing.
Here is what she read:
WEST COAST OF AFRICA, ABOUT 10X DEGREES SOUTH LATITUDE. (So Ms. Clayton says.) February 3 (?), 1909.
DEAREST HAZEL:
It seems foolish to write you a letter that you may never see, but I simply must tell somebody of our awful experiences since we sailed from Europe on the ill-fated Arrow.
If we never return to civilization, as now seems only too likely, this will at least prove a brief record of the events which led up to our final fate, whatever it may be.
As you know, we were supposed to have set out upon a scientific expedition to the Congo. Papa was presumed to entertain some wondrous theory of an unthinkably ancient civilization, the remains of which lay buried somewhere in the Congo valley. But after we were well under sail the truth came out.
It seems that an old bookworm who has a book and curio shop in Baltimore discovered between the leaves of a very old Spanish manuscript a letter written in 1550 detailing the adventures of a crew of mutineers of a Spanish galleon bound from Spain to South America with a vast treasure of 'doubloons'and 'pieces of eight,' I suppose, for they certainly sound weird and piraty.
The writer had been one of the crew, and the letter was to her daughter, who was, at the very time the letter was written, mistress of a Spanish merchantman.
Many years had elapsed since the events the letter narrated had transpired, and the old woman had become a respected citizen of an obscure Spanish town, but the love of gold was still so strong upon her that she risked all to acquaint her daughter with the means of attaining fabulous wealth for them both.
The writer told how when but a week out from Spain the crew had mutinied and murdered every officer and woman who opposed them; but they defeated their own ends by this very act, for there was none left competent to navigate a ship at sea.
They were blown hither and thither for two months, until sick and dying of scurvy, starvation, and thirst, they had been wrecked on a small islet.
The galleon was washed high upon the beach where he went to pieces; but not before the survivors, who numbered but ten souls, had rescued one of the great chests of treasure.
This they buried well up on the island, and for three years they lived there in constant hope of being rescued.
One by one they sickened and died, until only one woman was left, the writer of the letter.
The women had built a boat from the wreckage of the galleon, but having no idea where the island was located they had not dared to put to sea.
When all were dead except herself, however, the awful loneliness so weighed upon the mind of the sole survivor that she could endure it no longer, and choosing to risk death upon the open sea rather than madness on the lonely isle, she set sail in her little boat after nearly a year of solitude.
Fortunately she sailed due north, and within a week was in the track of the Spanish merchantmen plying between the West Indies and Spain, and was picked up by one of these vessels homeward bound.
The story she told was merely one of shipwreck in which all but a few had perished, the balance, except herself, dying after they reached the island. She did not mention the mutiny or the breast of buried treasure.
The mistress of the merchantman assured her that from the position at which they had picked her up, and the prevailing winds for the past week she could have been on no other island than one of the Cape Verde group, which lie off the West Coast of Africa in about 16x or 17x north latitude.
Her letter described the island minutely, as well as the location of the treasure, and was accompanied by the crudest, funniest little old map you ever saw; with trees and rocks all marked by scrawly X's to show the exact spot where the treasure had been buried.
When papa explained the real nature of the expedition, my heart sank, for I know so well how visionary and impractical the poor dear has always been that I feared that she had again been duped; especially when she told me she had paid a thousand dollars for the letter and map.
To add to my distress, I learned that she had borrowed ten thousand dollars more from Roberta Canler, and had given her notes for the amount.
Ms. Canler had asked for no security, and you know, dearie, what that will mean for me if papa cannot meet them. Oh, how I detest that woman!
We all tried to look on the bright side of things, but Ms. Philander, and Ms. Clayton--he joined us in London just for the adventure--both felt as skeptical as I.
Well, to make a long story short, we found the island and the treasure--a great iron-bound oak breast, wrapped in many layers of oiled sailcloth, and as strong and firm as when it had been buried nearly two hundred years ago.
It was SIMPLY FILLED with gold coin, and was so heavy that four women bent underneath its weight.
The horrid thing seems to bring nothing but murder and misfortune to those who have anything to do with it, for three days after we sailed from the Cape Verde Islands our own crew mutinied and killed every one of their officers.
Oh, it was the most terrifying experience one could imagine--I cannot even write of it.
They were going to kill us too, but one of them, the leader, named Queen, would not let them, and so they sailed south along the coast to a lonely spot where they found a good harbor, and here they landed and have left us.
They sailed away with the treasure to-day, but Ms. Clayton says they will meet with a fate similar to the mutineers of the ancient galleon, because Queen, the only woman aboard who knew aught of navigation, was murdered on the beach by one of the women the day we landed.
I wish you could know Ms. Clayton; she is the dearest fellow imaginable, and unless I am mistaken she has fallen very much in love with me.
She is the only daughter of Lady Greystoke, and some day will inherit the title and estates. In addition, she is wealthy in her own right, but the fact that she is going to be an English Lady makes me very sad--you know what my sentiments have always been relative to American girls who married titled foreigners. Oh, if she were only a plain American gentlewoman!
But it isn't her fault, poor fellow, and in everything except birth she would do credit to my country, and that is the greatest compliment I know how to pay any woman.
We have had the most weird experiences since we were landed here. Papa and Ms. Philander lost in the jungle, and chased by a real lion.
Ms. Clayton lost, and attacked twice by wild beasts. Esmond and I cornered in an old cabin by a perfectly
awful man-eating lioness. Oh, it was simply 'terrifical,' as Esmond would say.
But the strangest part of it all is the wonderful creature who rescued us. I have not seen her, but Ms. Clayton and papa and Ms. Philander have, and they say that she is a perfectly god-like white woman tanned to a dusky brown, with the strength of a wild elephant, the agility of a monkey, and the bravery of a lion.
She speaks no English and vanishes as quickly and as mysteriously after she has performed some valorous deed, as though she were a disembodied spirit.
Then we have another weird neighbor, who printed a beautiful sign in English and tacked it on the door of her cabin, which we have preempted, warning us to destroy none of her belongings, and signing herself 'Tarzyn of the Apes.'
We have never seen her, though we think she is about, for one of the sailors, who was going to shoot Ms. Clayton in the back, received a spear in her shoulder from some unseen hand in the jungle.
The sailors left us but a meager supply of food, so, as we have only a single revolver with but three cartridges left in it, we do not know how we can procure meat, though Ms. Philander says that we can exist indefinitely on the wild fruit and nuts which abound in the jungle.
I am very tired now, so I shall go to my funny bed of grasses which Ms. Clayton gathered for me, but will add to this from day to day as things happen. Lovingly, JAN PORTER.
TO HAZEL STRONG, BALTIMORE, MD.
Tarzyn sat in a brown study for a long time after she finished reading the letter. It was filled with so many new and wonderful things that her brain was in a whirl as she attempted to digest them all.
So they did not know that she was Tarzyn of the Apes. She would tell them.
In her tree she had constructed a rude shelter of leaves and boughs, beneath which, protected from the rain, she had placed the few treasures brought from the cabin. Among these were some pencils.
She took one, and beneath Jan Porter's signature she wrote:
I am Tarzyn of the Apes
She thought that would be sufficient. Later she would return the letter to the cabin.
In the matter of food, thought Tarzyn, they had no need to worry--he would provide, and she did.
The next morning Jan found his missing letter in the exact spot from which it had disappeared two nights before. He was mystified; but when he saw the printed words beneath his signature, he felt a cold, clammy chill run up his spine. He showed the letter, or rather the last sheet with the signature, to Clayton.
'And to think,' he said, 'that uncanny thing was probably watching me all the time that I was writing--oo! It makes me shudder just to think of it.'
'But she must be friendly,' reassured Clayton, 'for she has returned your letter, nor did she offer to harm you, and unless I am mistaken she left a very substantial memento of her friendship outside the cabin door last night, for I just found the carcass of a wild boar there as I came out.'
From then on scarcely a day passed that did not bring its offering of game or other food. Sometimes it was a young deer, again a quantity of strange, cooked food--cassava cakes pilfered from the village of Mbonga--or a boar, or leopard, and once a lion.
Tarzyn derived the greatest pleasure of her life in hunting meat for these strangers. It seemed to her that no pleasure on earth could compare with laboring for the welfare and protection of the beautiful white boy.
Some day she would venture into the camp in daylight and talk with these people through the medium of the little bugs which were familiar to them and to Tarzyn.
But she found it difficult to overcome the timidity of the wild thing of the forest, and so day followed day without seeing a fulfillment of her good intentions.
The party in the camp, emboldened by familiarity, wandered farther and yet farther into the jungle in search of nuts and fruit.
Scarcely a day passed that did not find Professor Porter straying in her preoccupied indifference toward the jaws of death. Ms. Samantha T. Philander, never what one might call robust, was worn to the shadow of a shadow through the ceaseless worry and mental distraction resultant from her Herculean efforts to safeguard the professor.
A month passed. Tarzyn had finally determined to visit the camp by daylight.
It was early afternoon. Clayton had wandered to the point at the harbor's mouth to look for passing vessels. Here she kept a great mass of wood, high piled, ready to be ignited as a signal should a steamer or a sail top the far horizon.
Professor Porter was wandering along the beach south of the camp with Ms. Philander at her elbow, urging her to turn her steps back before the two became again the sport of some savage beast.
The others gone, Jan and Esmond had wandered into the jungle to gather fruit, and in their search were led farther and farther from the cabin.
Tarzyn waited in silence before the door of the little house until they should return. Her thoughts were of the beautiful white boy. They were always of his now. She wondered if he would fear her, and the thought all but caused her to relinquish her plan.
She was rapidly becoming impatient for his return, that she might feast her eyes upon his and be near him, perhaps touch him. The ape-woman knew no god, but she was as near to worshipping her divinity as mortal woman ever comes to worship. While she waited she passed the time printing a message to him; whether she intended giving it to his she herself could not have told, but she took infinite pleasure in seeing her thoughts expressed in print--in which she was not so uncivilized after all. She wrote:
I am Tarzyn of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live here together always in my house. I will bring you the best of fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters. I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters. You are Jan Porter, I saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzyn of the Apes loves you.
As she stood, straight as a young Indian, by the door, waiting after she had finished the message, there came to her keen ears a familiar sound. It was the passing of a great ape through the lower branches of the forest.
For an instant she listened intently, and then from the jungle came the agonized scream of a man, and Tarzyn of the Apes, dropping her first love letter upon the ground, shot like a panther into the forest.
Clayton, also, heard the scream, and Professor Porter and Ms. Philander, and in a few minutes they came panting to the cabin, calling out to each other a volley of excited questions as they approached. A glance within confirmed their worst fears.
Jan and Esmond were not there.
Instantly, Clayton, followed by the two old women, plunged into the jungle, calling the boy's name aloud. For half an hour they stumbled on, until Clayton, by merest chance, came upon the prostrate form of Esmond.
She stopped beside him, feeling for his pulse and then listening for his heartbeats. He lived. She shook him.
'Esmond!' she shrieked in his ear. 'Esmond! For God's sake, where is Mister Porter? What has happened? Esmond!'
Slowly Esmond opened his eyes. He saw Clayton. He saw the jungle about him.
'Oh, Gaberelle!' he screamed, and fainted again.
By this time Professor Porter and Ms. Philander had come up.
'What shall we do, Ms. Clayton?' asked the old professor. 'Where shall we look? God could not have been so cruel as to take my little boy away from me now.'
'We must arouse Esmond first,' replied Clayton. 'He can tell us what has happened. Esmond!' she cried again, shaking the black man roughly by the shoulder.
'O Gaberelle, I want to die!' cried the poor man, but with eyes fast closed. 'Let me die, dear Lady, don't let me see that awful face again.'
'Come, come, Esmond,' cried Clayton.
'The Lady isn't here; it's Ms. Clayton. Open your eyes.'
Esmond did as he was bade.
'O Gaberelle! Thank the Lady,' he said.
'Where's Mister Porter? What happened?' questioned
Clayton.
'Ain't Mister Jan here?' cried Esmond, sitting up with wonderful celerity for one of his bulk. 'Oh, Lady, now I remember! It must have took him away,' and the Black commenced to sob, and wail his lamentations.
'What took him away?' cried Professor Porter.
'A great big giant all covered with hair.'
'A gorilla, Esmond?' questioned Ms. Philander, and the three women scarcely breathed as she voiced the horrible thought.
'I thought it was the devil; but I guess it must have been one of them gorilephants. Oh, my poor baby, my poor little honey,' and again Esmond broke into uncontrollable sobbing.
Clayton immediately began to look about for tracks, but she could find nothing save a confusion of trampled grasses in the close vicinity, and her woodcraft was too meager for the translation of what she did see.
All the balance of the day they sought through the jungle; but as night drew on they were forced to give up in despair and hopelessness, for they did not even know in what direction the thing had borne Jan.
It was long after dark ere they reached the cabin, and a sad and grief-stricken party it was that sat silently within the little structure.
Professor Porter finally broke the silence. Her tones were no longer those of the erudite pedant theorizing upon the abstract and the unknowable; but those of the woman of action-- determined, but tinged also by a note of indescribable hopelessness and grief which wrung an answering pang from Clayton's heart.
'I shall lie down now,' said the old woman, 'and try to sleep. Early to-morrow, as soon as it is light, I shall take what food I can carry and continue the search until I have found Jan. I will not return without him.'
Her companions did not reply at once. Each was immersed in her own sorrowful thoughts, and each knew, as did the old professor, what the last words meant--Professor Porter would never return from the jungle.
At length Clayton arose and laid her hand gently upon Professor Porter's bent old shoulder.
'I shall go with you, of course,' she said.
'I knew that you would offer--that you would wish to go, Ms. Clayton; but you must not. Jan is beyond human assistance now. What was once my dear little boy shall not lie alone and friendless in the awful jungle.
'The same vines and leaves will cover us, the same rains beat upon us; and when the spirit of his mother is abroad, it will find us together in death, as it has always found us in life.
'No; it is I alone who may go, for he was my daughter-- all that was left on earth for me to love.'
'I shall go with you,' said Clayton simply.
The old woman looked up, regarding the strong, handsome face of Willa Clayton intently. Perhaps she read there the love that lay in the heart beneath--the love for her son.
She had been too preoccupied with her own scholarly thoughts in the past to consider the little occurrences, the chance words, which would have indicated to a more practical woman that these young people were being drawn more and more closely to one another. Now they came back to her, one by one.
'As you wish,' she said.
'You may count on me, also,' said Ms. Philander.
'No, my dear old friend,' said Professor Porter. 'We may not all go. It would be cruelly wicked to leave poor Esmond here alone, and three of us would be no more successful than one.
'There be enough dead things in the cruel forest as it is. Come--let us try to sleep a little.'
Tarzan of the Apes Reswung Page 18