Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“It was Esteban who ran off into the jungle with me, Lady Greystoke,”
said the girl. “It was Esteban who was about to deceive you again. This
is indeed Lord Greystoke. The other was an impostor, who only just
deserted me and left me to die in the jungle. Had not Lord Greystoke
come when he did I should be dead by now.”
Lady Greystoke took a faltering step toward her husband. “Ah, John,” she
said, “I knew it could not have been you. My heart told me, but my eyes
deceived me. Quick,” she cried, “that impostor must be captured. Hurry,
John, before he escapes.”
“Let him go,” said the ape-man. “As much as I want him, as much as I
want that which he has stolen from me, I will not leave you alone again
in the jungle, Jane, even to catch him.”
“But Jad-bal-ja,” she cried. “What of him?”
“Ah,” cried the ape-man, “I had forgotten,” and turning to the lion he
pointed toward the direction that the Spaniard had escaped. “Fetch him,
Jad-bal-ja,” he cried; and, with a bound, the tawny beast was off upon
the spoor of his quarry.
“He will kill him?” asked Flora Hawkes, shuddering. And yet at heart she
was glad of the just fate that was overtaking the Spaniard.
“No, he will not kill him,” said Tarzan of the Apes. “He may maul him a
bit, but he will bring him back alive if it is possible.” And then, as
though the fate of the fugitive was already forgotten, he turned toward
his mate.
“Jane,” he said, “Usula told me that you were dead. He said that they
found your burned body in the Arab village and that they buried it
there. How is it, then, that you are here alive and unharmed? I have
been searching the jungles for Luvini to avenge your death. Perhaps it
is well that I did not find him.”
“You would never have found him,” replied Jane Clayton, “but I cannot
understand why Usula should have told you that he had found my body and
buried it.”
“Some prisoners that he took,” replied Tarzan, “told him that Luvini had
taken you bound hand and foot into one of the Arab huts near the village
gateway, and that there he had further secured you to a stake driven
into the floor of the hut. After the village had been destroyed by fire
Usula and the other Waziri returned to search for you with some of the
prisoners they had taken who pointed out the location of the hut, where
the charred remains of a human body were found beside a burned stake to
which it had apparently been tied.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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