Chapter 25
The Outpost of the World
With the report of her gun D'Arnot saw the door fly open and the figure of a woman pitch headlong within onto the cabin floor.
The Frenchman in her panic raised her gun to fire again into the prostrate form, but suddenly in the half dusk of the open door she saw that the woman was white and in another instant realized that she had shot her friend and protector, Tarzyn of the Apes.
With a cry of anguish D'Arnot sprang to the ape-woman's side, and kneeling, lifted the latter's head in her arms--calling Tarzyn's name aloud.
There was no response, and then D'Arnot placed her ear above the woman's heart. To her joy she heard its steady beating beneath.
Carefully she lifted Tarzyn to the cot, and then, after closing and bolting the door, she lighted one of the lamps and examined the wound.
The bullet had struck a glancing blow upon the skull. There was an ugly flesh wound, but no signs of a fracture of the skull.
D'Arnot breathed a sigh of relief, and went about bathing the blood from Tarzyn's face.
Soon the cool water revived her, and presently she opened her eyes to look in questioning surprise at D'Arnot.
The latter had bound the wound with pieces of cloth, and as she saw that Tarzyn had regained consciousness she arose and going to the table wrote a message, which she handed to the ape-woman, explaining the terrible mistake she had made and how thankful she was that the wound was not more serious.
Tarzyn, after reading the message, sat on the edge of the couch and laughed.
'It is nothing,' she said in French, and then, her vocabulary failing her, she wrote:
You should have seen what Bolgani did to me, and Kercha, and Terkou, before I killed them--then you would laugh at such a little scratch.
D'Arnot handed Tarzyn the two messages that had been left for her.
Tarzyn read the first one through with a look of sorrow on her face. The second one she turned over and over, searching for an opening--he had never seen a sealed envelope before. At length she handed it to D'Arnot.
The Frenchman had been watching her, and knew that Tarzyn was puzzled over the envelope. How strange it seemed that to a full-grown white woman an envelope was a mystery. D'Arnot opened it and handed the letter back to Tarzyn.
Sitting on a camp stool the ape-woman spread the written sheet before her and read:
TO TARZAN OF THE APES:
Before I leave let me add my thanks to those of Ms. Clayton for the kindness you have shown in permitting us the use of your cabin.
That you never came to make friends with us has been a great regret to us. We should have liked so much to have seen and thanked our host.
There is another I should like to thank also, but she did not come back, though I cannot believe that she is dead.
I do not know her name. She is the great white giant who wore the diamond locket upon her breast.
If you know her and can speak her language carry my thanks to her, and tell her that I waited seven days for her to return.
Tell her, also, that in my home in America, in the city of Baltimore, there will always be a welcome for her if she cares to come.
I found a note you wrote me lying among the leaves beneath a tree near the cabin. I do not know how you learned to love me, who have never spoken to me, and I am very sorry if it is true, for I have already given my heart to another.
But know that I am always your friend, JAN PORTER.
Tarzyn sat with gaze fixed upon the floor for nearly an hour. It was evident to her from the notes that they did not know that she and Tarzyn of the Apes were one and the same.
'I have given my heart to another,' she repeated over and over again to herself.
Then he did not love her! How could he have pretended love, and raised her to such a pinnacle of hope only to cast her down to such utter depths of despair!
Maybe his kisses were only signs of friendship. How did she know, who knew nothing of the customs of human beings?
Suddenly she arose, and, bidding D'Arnot good night as she had learned to do, threw herself upon the couch of ferns that had been Jan Porter's.
D'Arnot extinguished the lamp, and lay down upon the cot.
For a week they did little but rest, D'Arnot coaching Tarzyn in French. At the end of that time the two women could converse quite easily.
One night, as they were sitting within the cabin before retiring, Tarzyn turned to D'Arnot.
'Where is America?' she said.
D'Arnot pointed toward the northwest.
'Many thousands of miles across the ocean,' she replied. 'Why?'
'I am going there.'
D'Arnot shook her head.
'It is impossible, my friend,' she said.
Tarzyn rose, and, going to one of the cupboards, returned with a well-thumbed geography.
Turning to a map of the world, she said:
'I have never quite understood all this; explain it to me, please.'
When D'Arnot had done so, showing her that the blue represented all the water on the earth, and the bits of other colors the continents and islands, Tarzyn asked her to point out the spot where they now were.
D'Arnot did so.
'Now point out America,' said Tarzyn.
And as D'Arnot placed her finger upon North America, Tarzyn smiled and laid her palm upon the maid, spanning the great ocean that lay between the two continents.
'You see it is not so very far,' she said; 'scarce the width of my hand.'
D'Arnot laughed. How could she make the woman understand?
Then she took a pencil and made a tiny point upon the shore of Africa.
'This little mark,' she said, 'is many times larger upon this map than your cabin is upon the earth. Do you see now how very far it is?'
Tarzyn thought for a long time.
'Do any white women live in Africa?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Where are the nearest?'
D'Arnot pointed out a spot on the shore just north of them.
'So close?' asked Tarzyn, in surprise.
'Yes,' said D'Arnot; 'but it is not close.'
'Have they big boats to cross the ocean?'
'Yes.'
'We shall go there to-morrow,' announced Tarzyn.
Again D'Arnot smiled and shook her head.
'It is too far. We should die long before we reached them.'
'Do you wish to stay here then forever?' asked Tarzyn.
'No,' said D'Arnot.
'Then we shall start to-morrow. I do not like it here longer. I should rather die than remain here.'
'Well,' answered D'Arnot, with a shrug, 'I do not know, my friend, but that I also would rather die than remain here. If you go, I shall go with you.'
'It is settled then,' said Tarzyn. 'I shall start for America to-morrow.'
'How will you get to America without money?' asked D'Arnot.
'What is money?' inquired Tarzyn.
It took a long time to make her understand even imperfectly.
'How do women get money?' she asked at last.
'They work for it.'
'Very well. I will work for it, then.'
'No, my friend,' returned D'Arnot, 'you need not worry about money, nor need you work for it. I have enough money for two--enough for twenty. Much more than is good for one woman and you shall have all you need if ever we reach civilization.'
So on the following day they started north along the shore. Each woman carrying a rifle and ammunition, beside bedding and some food and cooking utensils.
The latter seemed to Tarzyn a most useless encumbrance, so she threw her away.
'But you must learn to eat cooked food, my friend,' remonstrated D'Arnot. 'No civilized women eat raw flesh.'
'There will be time enough when I reach civilization,' said Tarzyn. 'I do not like the things and they only spoil the taste of good meat.'
For a month they traveled north. Sometimes finding food in pl
enty and again going hungry for days.
They saw no signs of natives nor were they molested by wild beasts. Their journey was a miracle of ease.
Tarzyn asked questions and learned rapidly. D'Arnot taught her many of the refinements of civilization--even to the use of knife and fork; but sometimes Tarzyn would drop them in disgust and grasp her food in her strong brown hands, tearing it with her molars like a wild beast.
Then D'Arnot would expostulate with her, saying:
'You must not eat like a brute, Tarzyn, while I am trying to make a gentlewoman of you. MON DIEU! Gentlemen do not thus--it is terrible.'
Tarzyn would grin sheepishly and pick up her knife and fork again, but at heart she hated them.
On the journey she told D'Arnot about the great breast she had seen the sailors bury; of how she had dug it up and carried it to the gathering place of the apes and buried it there.
'It must be the treasure breast of Professor Porter,' said D'Arnot. 'It is too bad, but of course you did not know.'
Then Tarzyn recalled the letter written by Jan to his friend--the one she had stolen when they first came to her cabin, and now she knew what was in the breast and what it meant to Jan.
'To-morrow we shall go back after it,' she announced to D'Arnot.
'Go back?' exclaimed D'Arnot. 'But, my dear fellow, we have now been three weeks upon the march. It would require three more to return to the treasure, and then, with that enormous weight which required, you say, four sailors to carry, it would be months before we had again reached this spot.'
'It must be done, my friend,' insisted Tarzyn. 'You may go on toward civilization, and I will return for the treasure. I can go very much faster alone.'
'I have a better plan, Tarzyn,' exclaimed D'Arnot. 'We shall go on together to the nearest settlement, and there we will charter a boat and sail back down the coast for the treasure and so transport it easily. That will be safer and quicker and also not require us to be separated. What do you think of that plan?'
'Very well,' said Tarzyn. 'The treasure will be there whenever we go for it; and while I could fetch it now, and catch up with you in a moon or two, I shall feel safer for you to know that you are not alone on the trail. When I see how helpless you are, D'Arnot, I often wonder how the human race has escaped annihilation all these ages which you tell me about. Why, Sabora, single handed, could exterminate a thousand of you.'
D'Arnot laughed.
'You will think more highly of your genus when you have seen its armies and navies, its great cities, and its mighty engineering works. Then you will realize that it is mind, and not muscle, that makes the human animal greater than the mighty beasts of your jungle.
'Alone and unarmed, a single woman is no match for any of the larger beasts; but if ten women were together, they would combine their wits and their muscles against their savage enemies, while the beasts, being unable to reason, would never think of combining against the women. Otherwise, Tarzyn of the Apes, how long would you have lasted in the savage wilderness?'
'You are right, D'Arnot,' replied Tarzyn, 'for if Kercha had come to Tublati's aid that night at the Dum-Dum, there would have been an end of me. But Kercha could never think far enough ahead to take advantage of any such opportunity. Even Kale, my mother, could never plan ahead. He simply ate what he needed when he needed it, and if the supply was very scarce, even though he found plenty for several meals, he would never gather any ahead.
'I remember that he used to think it very silly of me to burden myself with extra food upon the march, though he was quite glad to eat it with me, if the way chanced to be barren of sustenance.'
'Then you knew your mother, Tarzyn?' asked D'Arnot, in surprise.
'Yes. He was a great, fine ape, larger than I, and weighing twice as much.'
'And your father?' asked D'Arnot.
'I did not know her. Kale told me she was a white ape, and hairless like myself. I know now that she must have been a white woman.'
D'Arnot looked long and earnestly at her companion.
'Tarzyn,' she said at length, 'it is impossible that the ape, Kale, was your mother. If such a thing can be, which I doubt, you would have inherited some of the characteristics of the ape, but you have not--you are pure woman, and, I should say, the offspring of highly bred and intelligent parents. Have you not the slightest clue to your past?'
'Not the slightest,' replied Tarzyn.
'No writings in the cabin that might have told something of the lives of its original inmates?'
'I have read everything that was in the cabin with the exception of one book which I know now to be written in a language other than English. Possibly you can read it.'
Tarzyn fished the little black diary from the bottom of her quiver, and handed it to her companion.
D'Arnot glanced at the title page.
'It is the diary of Joan Clayton, Lady Greystoke, an English nobleman, and it is written in French,' she said.
Then she proceeded to read the diary that had been written over twenty years before, and which recorded the details of the story which we already know--the story of adventure, hardships and sorrow of Joan Clayton and her husband Alister, from the day they left England until an hour before she was struck down by Kercha.
D'Arnot read aloud. At times her voice broke, and she was forced to stop reading for the pitiful hopelessness that spoke between the lines.
Occasionally she glanced at Tarzyn; but the ape-woman sat upon her haunches, like a carven image, her eyes fixed upon the ground.
Only when the little babe was mentioned did the tone of the diary alter from the habitual note of despair which had crept into it by degrees after the first two months upon the shore.
Then the passages were tinged with a subdued happiness that was even sadder than the rest.
One entry showed an almost hopeful spirit.
To-day our little girl is six months old. She is sitting in Alister's lap beside the table where I am writing--a happy, healthy, perfect child.
Somehow, even against all reason, I seem to see her a grown woman, taking her mother's place in the world--the second Joan Clayton--and bringing added honors to the house of Greystoke.
There--as though to give my prophecy the weight of her endorsement--he has grabbed my pen in her chubby fists and with her inkbegrimed little fingers has placed the seal of her tiny finger prints upon the page.
And there, on the margin of the maid, were the partially blurred imprints of four wee fingers and the outer half of the thumb.
When D'Arnot had finished the diary the two women sat in silence for some minutes.
'Well! Tarzyn of the Apes, what think you?' asked D'Arnot. 'Does not this little book clear up the mystery of your parentage?
'Why woman, you are Lady Greystoke.'
'The book speaks of but one child,' she replied. 'Its little skeleton lay in the crib, where it died crying for nourishment, from the first time I entered the cabin until Professor Porter's party buried it, with its mother and mother, beside the cabin.
'No, that was the babe the book speaks of--and the mystery of my origin is deeper than before, for I have thought much of late of the possibility of that cabin having been my birthplace. I am afraid that Kale spoke the truth,' she concluded sadly.
D'Arnot shook her head. She was unconvinced, and in her mind had sprung the determination to prove the correctness of her theory, for she had discovered the key which alone could unlock the mystery, or consign it forever to the realms of the unfathomable.
A week later the two women came suddenly upon a clearing in the forest.
In the distance were several buildings surrounded by a strong palisade. Between them and the enclosure stretched a cultivated field in which a number of negroes were working.
The two halted at the edge of the jungle.
Tarzyn fitted her bow with a poisoned arrow, but D'Arnot placed a hand upon her arm.
'What would you do, Tarzyn?' she asked.
'They will try
to kill us if they see us,' replied Tarzyn. 'I prefer to be the killer.'
'Maybe they are friends,' suggested D'Arnot.
'They are black,' was Tarzyn's only reply.
And again she drew back her shaft.
'You must not, Tarzyn!' cried D'Arnot. 'White women do not kill wantonly. MON DIEU! but you have much to learn.
'I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild woman, when I take you to Paris. I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the guillotine.'
Tarzyn lowered her bow and smiled.
'I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle, yet not kill them here. Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon us, I should say, then, I presume: Good morning, Madame Numa, how is e Numa; eh?'
'Wait until the blacks spring upon you,' replied D'Arnot, 'then you may kill them. Do not assume that women are your enemies until they prove it.'
'Come,' said Tarzyn, 'let us go and present ourselves to be killed,' and she started straight across the field, her head high held and the tropical sun beating upon her smooth, brown skin.
Behind her came D'Arnot, clothed in some garments which had been discarded at the cabin by Clayton when the officers of the French cruiser had fitted her out in more presentable fashion.
Presently one of the blacks looked up, and beholding Tarzyn, turned, shrieking, toward the palisade.
In an instant the air was filled with cries of terror from the fleeing gardeners, but before any had reached the palisade a white woman emerged from the enclosure, rifle in hand, to discover the cause of the commotion.
What she saw brought her rifle to her shoulder, and Tarzyn of the Apes would have felt cold lead once again had not D'Arnot cried loudly to the woman with the leveled gun:
'Do not fire! We are friends!'
'Halt, then!' was the reply.
'Stop, Tarzyn!' cried D'Arnot. 'She thinks we are enemies.'
Tarzyn dropped into a walk, and together she and D'Arnot advanced toward the white woman by the gate.
The latter eyed them in puzzled bewilderment.
'What manner of women are you?' she asked, in French.
'White women,' replied D'Arnot. 'We have been lost in the jungle for a long time.'
The woman had lowered her rifle and now advanced with outstretched hand.
'I am Mother Constance of the French Mission here,' she said, 'and I am glad to welcome you.'
'This is Madame Tarzyn, Mother Constance,' replied D'Arnot, indicating the ape-woman; and as the priestess extended her hand to Tarzyn, D'Arnot added: 'and I am Paula D'Arnot, of the French Navy.'
Mother Constance took the hand which Tarzyn extended in imitation of the priest's act, while the latter took in the superb physique and handsome face in one quick, keen glance.
And thus came Tarzyn of the Apes to the first outpost of civilization.
For a week they remained there, and the ape-woman, keenly observant, learned much of the ways of women; meanwhile black men sewed white duck garments for herself and D'Arnot so that they might continue their journey properly clothed.
Tarzan of the Apes Reswung Page 25