The Beasts of Tarzan t-3 Read online

  When Jane Clayton climbed to the deck of the Kincaid she found the ship apparently deserted. There was no sign of those she sought nor of any other aboard, and so she went about her search for her husband and the child she hoped against hope to find there without interruption.

  Quickly she hastened to the cabin, which was half above and half below deck. As she hurried down the short companion-ladder into the main cabin, on either side of which were the smaller rooms occupied by the officers, she failed to note the quick closing of one of the doors before her. She passed the full length of the main room, and then retracing her steps stopped before each door to listen, furtively trying each latch.

  All was silence, utter silence there, in which the throbbing of her own frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to fill the ship with its thunderous alarm.

  One by one the doors opened before her touch, only to reveal empty interiors. In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity upon the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the propeller. She had reached the last door upon the right now, and as she pushed it open she was seized from within by a powerful, dark-visaged man, and drawn hastily into the stuffy, ill-smelling interior.

  The sudden shock of fright which the unexpected attack had upon her drew a single piercing scream from her throat; then the man clapped a hand roughly over the mouth.

  “Not until we are farther from land, my dear,” he said.

  “Then you may yell your pretty head off.”

  Lady Greystoke turned to look into the leering, bearded face so close to hers. The man relaxed the pressure of his fingers upon her lips, and with a little moan of terror as she recognized him the girl shrank away from her captor.

  “Nikolas Rokoff! M. Thuran!” she exclaimed.

  “Your devoted admirer,” replied the Russian, with a low bow.

  “My little boy,” she said next, ignoring the terms of endearment— “where is he? Let me have him. How could you be so cruel—even as you— Nikolas Rokoff—cannot be entirely devoid of mercy and compassion?

  Tell me where he is. Is he aboard this ship? Oh, please, if such a thing as a heart beats within your breast, take me to my baby!”

  “If you do as you are bid no harm will befall him,” replied Rokoff.

  “But remember that it is your own fault that you are here.

  You came aboard voluntarily, and you may take the consequences.

  I little thought,” he added to himself, “that any such good luck as this would come to me.”

  He went on deck then, locking the cabin-door upon his prisoner, and for several days she did not see him. The truth of the matter being that Nikolas Rokoff was so poor a sailor that the heavy seas the Kincaid encountered from the very beginning of her voyage sent the Russian to his berth with a bad attack of sea-sickness.

  During this time her only visitor was an uncouth Swede, the Kincaid's unsavoury cook, who brought her meals to her.

  His name was Sven Anderssen, his one pride being that his patronymic was spelt with a double “s.”

  The man was tall and raw-boned, with a long yellow moustache, an unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails.

  The very sight of him with one grimy thumb buried deep in the lukewarm stew, that seemed, from the frequency of its repetition, to constitute the pride of his culinary art, was sufficient to take away the girl's appetite.

  His small, blue, close-set eyes never met hers squarely.

  There was a shiftiness of his whole appearance that even found expression in the cat-like manner of his gait, and to it all a sinister suggestion was added by the long slim knife that always rested at his waist, slipped through the greasy cord that supported his soiled apron. Ostensibly it was but an implement of his calling; but the girl could never free herself of the conviction that it would require less provocation to witness it put to other and less harmless uses.

  His manner toward her was surly, yet she never failed to meet him with a pleasant smile and a word of thanks when he brought her food to her, though more often than not she hurled the bulk of it through the tiny cabin port the moment that the door closed behind him.

  During the days of anguish that followed Jane Clayton's imprisonment, but two questions were uppermost in her mind—the whereabouts of her husband and her son. She fully believed that the baby was aboard the Kincaid, provided that he still lived, but whether Tarzan had been permitted to live after having been lured aboard the evil craft she could not guess.

  She knew, of course, the deep hatred that the Russian felt for the Englishman, and she could think of but one reason for having him brought aboard the ship—to dispatch him in comparative safety in revenge for his having thwarted Rokoff's pet schemes, and for having been at last the means of landing him in a French prison.

  Tarzan, on his part, lay in the darkness of his cell, ignorant of the fact that his wife was a prisoner in the cabin almost above his head.

  The same Swede that served Jane brought his meals to him, but, though on several occasions Tarzan had tried to draw the man into conversation, he had been unsuccessful.

  He had hoped to learn through this fellow whether his little son was aboard the Kincaid, but to every question upon this or kindred subjects the fellow returned but one reply, “Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard.” So after several attempts Tarzan gave it up.

  For weeks that seemed months to the two prisoners the little steamer forged on they knew not where. Once the Kincaid stopped to coal, only immediately to take up the seemingly interminable voyage.

  Rokoff had visited Jane Clayton but once since he had locked her in the tiny cabin. He had come gaunt and hollow-eyed from a long siege of sea-sickness. The object of his visit was to obtain from her her personal cheque for a large sum in return for a guarantee of her personal safety and return to England .

  “When you set me down safely in any civilized port, together with my son and my husband,” she replied, “I will pay you in gold twice the amount you ask; but until then you shall not have a cent, nor the promise of a cent under any other conditions.”

  “You will give me the cheque I ask,” he replied with a snarl, “or neither you nor your child nor your husband will ever again set foot within any port, civilized or otherwise.”

  “I would not trust you,” she replied. “What guarantee have I that you would not take my money and then do as you pleased with me and mine regardless of your promise?”

  “I think you will do as I bid,” he said, turning to leave the cabin. “Remember that I have your son—if you chance to hear the agonized wail of a tortured child it may console you to reflect that it is because of your stubbornness that the baby suffers—and that it is your baby.”

  “You would not do it!” cried the girl. “You would not— could not be so fiendishly cruel!”

  “It is not I that am cruel, but you,” he returned, “for you permit a paltry sum of money to stand between your baby and immunity from suffering.”

  The end of it was that Jane Clayton wrote out a cheque of large denomination and handed it to Nikolas Rokoff, who left her cabin with a grin of satisfaction upon his lips.

  The following day the hatch was removed from Tarzan's cell, and as he looked up he saw Paulvitch's head framed in the square of light above him.

  “Come up,” commanded the Russian. “But bear in mind that you will be shot if you make a single move to attack me or any other aboard the ship.”

  The ape-man swung himself lightly to the deck. About him, but at a respectful distance, stood a half-dozen sailors armed with rifles and revolvers. Facing him was Paulvitch.

  Tarzan looked about for Rokoff, who he felt sure must be aboard, but there was no sign of him.

  “Lord Greystoke,” commenced the Russian, “by your continued and wanton interference with M. Rokoff and his plans you have at last brought yourself and your family to this unfortunate extremity. You have only yourself to thank.

  As you may imagine, it has cost M. Rokoff a large am
ount of money to finance this expedition, and, as you are the sole cause of it, he naturally looks to you for reimbursement.

  “Further, I may say that only by meeting M. Rokoff's just demands may you avert the most unpleasant consequences to your wife and child, and at the same time retain your own life and regain your liberty.”

  “What is the amount?” asked Tarzan. “And what assurance have I that you will live up to your end of the agreement?

  I have little reason to trust two such scoundrels as you and Rokoff, you know.”

  The Russian flushed.

  “You are in no position to deliver insults,” he said.

  “You have no assurance that we will live up to our agreement other than my word, but you have before you the assurance that we can make short work of you if you do not write out the cheque we demand.

  “Unless you are a greater fool than I imagine, you should know that there is nothing that would give us greater pleasure than to order these men to fire. That we do not is because we have other plans for punishing you that would be entirely upset by your death.”

  “Answer one question,” said Tarzan. “Is my son on board this ship?”

  “No,” replied Alexis Paulvitch, “your son is quite safe elsewhere; nor will he be killed until you refuse to accede to our fair demands.

  If it becomes necessary to kill you, there will be no reason for not killing the child, since with you gone the one whom we wish to punish through the boy will be gone, and he will then be to us only a constant source of danger and embarrassment. You see, therefore, that you may only save the life of your son by saving your own, and you can only save your own by giving us the cheque we ask.”

  “Very well,” replied Tarzan, for he knew that he could trust them to carry out any sinister threat that Paulvitch had made, and there was a bare chance that by conceding their demands he might save the boy.

  That they would permit him to live after he had appended his name to the cheque never occurred to him as being within the realms of probability. But he was determined to give them such a battle as they would never forget, and possibly to take Paulvitch with him into eternity. He was only sorry that it was not Rokoff.

  He took his pocket cheque-book and fountain-pen from his pocket.

  “What is the amount?” he asked.

  Paulvitch named an enormous sum. Tarzan could scarce restrain a smile.

  Their very cupidity was to prove the means of their undoing, in the matter of the ransom at least. Purposely he hesitated and haggled over the amount, but Paulvitch was obdurate.

  Finally the ape-man wrote out his cheque for a larger sum than stood to his credit at the bank.

  As he turned to hand the worthless slip of paper to the Russian his glance chanced to pass across the starboard bow of the Kincaid. To his surprise he saw that the ship lay within a few hundred yards of land. Almost down to the water's edge ran a dense tropical jungle, and behind was higher land clothed in forest.

  Paulvitch noted the direction of his gaze.

  “You are to be set at liberty here,” he said.

  Tarzan's plan for immediate physical revenge upon the Russian vanished. He thought the land before him the mainland of Africa , and he knew that should they liberate him here he could doubtless find his way to civilization with comparative ease.

  Paulvitch took the cheque.

  “Remove your clothing,” he said to the ape-man.

  “Here you will not need it.”

  Tarzan demurred.

  Paulvitch pointed to the armed sailors. Then the Englishman slowly divested himself of his clothing.

  A boat was lowered, and, still heavily guarded, the ape-man was rowed ashore. Half an hour later the sailors had returned to the Kincaid, and the steamer was slowly getting under way.

  As Tarzan stood upon the narrow strip of beach watching the departure of the vessel he saw a figure appear at the rail and call aloud to attract his attention.

  The ape-man had been about to read a note that one of the sailors had handed him as the small boat that bore him to the shore was on the point of returning to the steamer, but at the hail from the vessel's deck he looked up.

  He saw a black-bearded man who laughed at him in derision as he held high above his head the figure of a little child.

  Tarzan half started as though to rush through the surf and strike out for the already moving steamer; but realizing the futility of so rash an act he halted at the water's edge.

  Thus he stood, his gaze riveted upon the Kincaid until it disappeared beyond a projecting promontory of the coast.

  From the jungle at his back fierce bloodshot eyes glared from beneath shaggy overhanging brows upon him.

  Little monkeys in the tree-tops chattered and scolded, and from the distance of the inland forest came the scream of a leopard.

  But still John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, stood deaf and unseeing, suffering the pangs of keen regret for the opportunity that he had wasted because he had been so gullible as to place credence in a single statement of the first lieutenant of his arch-enemy.

  “I have at least,” he thought, “one consolation—the knowledge that Jane is safe in London . Thank Heaven she, too, did not fall into the clutches of those villains.”

  Behind him the hairy thing whose evil eyes had been watching his as a cat watches a mouse was creeping stealthily toward him.

  Where were the trained senses of the savage ape-man?

  Where the acute hearing?

  Where the uncanny sense of scent?

  Chapter 3

  Beasts at Bay

  Slowly Tarzan unfolded the note the sailor had thrust into his hand, and read it. At first it made little impression on his sorrow-numbed senses, but finally the full purport of the hideous plot of revenge unfolded itself before his imagination.

  “This will explain to you” (the note read) “the exact nature of my intentions relative to your offspring and to you.

  “You were born an ape. You lived naked in the jungles— to your own we have returned you; but your son shall rise a step above his sire. It is the immutable law of evolution.

  “The father was a beast, but the son shall be a man—he shall take the next ascending step in the scale of progress.

  He shall be no naked beast of the jungle, but shall wear a loincloth and copper anklets, and, perchance, a ring in his nose, for he is to be reared by men—a tribe of savage cannibals.

  “I might have killed you, but that would have curtailed the full measure of the punishment you have earned at my hands.

  “Dead, you could not have suffered in the knowledge of your son's plight; but living and in a place from which you may not escape to seek or succour your child, you shall suffer worse than death for all the years of your life in contemplation of the horrors of your son's existence.

  “This, then, is to be a part of your punishment for having dared to pit yourself against N. R.

  “P. S. —The balance of your punishment has to do with what shall presently befall your wife—that I shall leave to your imagination.”

  As he finished reading, a slight sound behind him brought him back with a start to the world of present realities.

  Instantly his senses awoke, and he was again Tarzan of the Apes.

  As he wheeled about, it was a beast at bay, vibrant with the instinct of self-preservation, that faced a huge bull-ape that was already charging down upon him.

  The two years that had elapsed since Tarzan had come out of the savage forest with his rescued mate had witnessed slight diminution of the mighty powers that had made him the invincible lord of the jungle. His great estates in Uziri had claimed much of his time and attention, and there he had found ample field for the practical use and retention of his almost superhuman powers; but naked and unarmed to do battle with the shaggy, bull-necked beast that now confronted him was a test that the ape-man would scarce have welcomed at any period of his wild existence.

  But there was no alternative other than to meet the rage—
maddened creature with the weapons with which nature had endowed him.

  Over the bull's shoulder Tarzan could see now the heads and shoulders of perhaps a dozen more of these mighty fore— runners of primitive man.

  He knew, however, that there was little chance that they would attack him, since it is not within the reasoning powers of the anthropoid to be able to weigh or appreciate the value of concentrated action against an enemy—otherwise they would long since have become the dominant creatures of their haunts, so tremendous a power of destruction lies in their mighty thews and savage fangs.

  With a low snarl the beast now hurled himself at Tarzan, but the ape-man had found, among other things in the haunts of civilized man, certain methods of scientific warfare that are unknown to the jungle folk.

  Whereas, a few years since, he would have met the brute rush with brute force, he now sidestepped his antagonist's headlong charge, and as the brute hurtled past him swung a mighty right to the pit of the ape's stomach.

  With a howl of mingled rage and anguish the great anthropoid bent double and sank to the ground, though almost instantly he was again struggling to his feet.

  Before he could regain them, however, his white-skinned foe had wheeled and pounced upon him, and in the act there dropped from the shoulders of the English lord the last shred of his superficial mantle of civilization.

  Once again he was the jungle beast revelling in bloody conflict with his kind. Once again he was Tarzan, son of Kala the she-ape.

  His strong, white teeth sank into the hairy throat of his enemy as he sought the pulsing jugular.

  Powerful fingers held the mighty fangs from his own flesh, or clenched and beat with the power of a steam-hammer upon the snarling, foam-flecked face of his adversary.

  In a circle about them the balance of the tribe of apes stood watching and enjoying the struggle. They muttered low gutturals of approval as bits of white hide or hairy bloodstained skin were torn from one contestant or the other. But they were silent in amazement and expectation when they saw the mighty white ape wriggle upon the back of their king, and, with steel muscles tensed beneath the armpits of his antagonist, bear down mightily with his open palms upon the back of the thick bullneck, so that the king ape could but shriek in agony and flounder helplessly about upon the thick mat of jungle grass.