Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“Where else could she be, then?” asked Usula. “It is true that you may
be right—she may not be within the village, but that I intend to find
out. I have a plan. See; the wind is from the opposite side of the
village. Ten of you will accompany me, the others will advance again
before the gate and make much noise, and pretend that you are about to
attack. After awhile the gate will open and they will come out. That I
promise you. I will try to be here before that happens, but if I am not,
divide into two parties and stand upon either side of the gateway and
let the west coast blacks escape; we do not care for them. Watch only
for Lady Greystoke, and when you see her take her away from those who
guard her. Do you understand?” His companions nodded. “Then come,” he
said, and selecting ten men disappeared into the jungle.
Luvini had carried Jane Clayton to a hut not far from the gateway to the
village. Here he had bound her securely and tied her to a stake, still
believing that she was Flora Hawkes, and then he had left her to hurry
back toward the gate that he might take command of his forces in defense
of the village.
So rapidly had the events of the past hour transpired that Jane Clayton
was still half dazed from the series of shocks that she had been called
upon to endure. Dwarfing to nothingness the menace of her present
position was the remembrance that her Tarzan had deserted her in her
hour of need, and carried off into the jungle another woman. Not even
the remembrance of what Usula had told her concerning the accident that
Tarzan had sustained, and which had supposedly again affected his
memory, could reconcile her to the brutality of his desertion, and now
she lay, face down, in the filth of the Arab hut, sobbing as she had not
for many years.
As she lay there torn by grief, Usula and his ten crept stealthily and
silently around the outside of the palisade to the rear of the village.
Here they found great quantities of dead brush left from the clearing
which the Arabs had made when constructing their village. This they
brought and piled along the palisade, close against it, until nearly
three-quarters of the palisade upon that side of the village was banked
high with it. Finding that it was difficult to prosecute their work in
silence, Usula despatched one of his men to the main body upon the
opposite side of the village, with instructions that they were to keep
up a continuous din of shouting to drown the sound of the operations of
their fellows. The plan worked to perfection, yet even though it
permitted Usula and his companions to labor with redoubled efforts, it
was more than an hour before the brush pile was disposed to his
satisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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