Screaming with terror the Maoris were dragged from their lofty perches.
The beasts, uncontrolled by Tarzan who had gone in search of Jane,
loosed the full fury of their savage natures upon the unhappy wretches
who fell into their clutches.
Sheeta, in the meanwhile, had felt his great fangs sink into but a
single jugular. For a moment he mauled the corpse, and then he spied
Kai Shang darting down the companionway toward his cabin.
With a shrill scream Sheeta was after him—a scream which awoke an
almost equally uncanny cry in the throat of the terror-stricken
Chinaman.
But Kai Shang reached his cabin a fraction of a second ahead of the
panther, and leaping within slammed the door—just too late. Sheeta’s
great body hurtled against it before the catch engaged, and a moment
later Kai Shang was gibbering and shrieking in the back of an upper
berth.
Lightly Sheeta sprang after his victim, and presently the wicked days
of Kai Shang of Fachan were ended, and Sheeta was gorging himself upon
tough and stringy flesh.
A moment scarcely had elapsed after Schneider leaped upon Jane Clayton
and wrenched the revolver from her hand, when the door of the cabin
opened and a tall and half-naked white man stood framed within the
portal.
Silently he leaped across the cabin. Schneider felt sinewy fingers at
his throat. He turned his head to see who had attacked him, and his
eyes went wide when he saw the face of the ape-man close above his own.
Grimly the fingers tightened upon the mate’s throat. He tried to
scream, to plead, but no sound came forth. His eyes protruded as he
struggled for freedom, for breath, for life.
Jane Clayton seized her husband’s hands and tried to drag them from the
throat of the dying man; but Tarzan only shook his head.
“Not again,” he said quietly. “Before have I permitted scoundrels to
live, only to suffer and to have you suffer for my mercy. This time we
shall make sure of one scoundrel—sure that he will never again harm us
or another,” and with a sudden wrench he twisted the neck of the
perfidious mate until there was a sharp crack, and the man’s body lay
limp and motionless in the ape-man’s grasp. With a gesture of disgust
Tarzan tossed the corpse aside. Then he returned to the deck, followed
by Jane and the Mosula woman.
The battle there was over. Schmidt and Momulla and two others alone
remained alive of all the company of the Cowrie, for they had found
sanctuary in the forecastle. The others had died, horribly, and as they
deserved, beneath the fangs and talons of the beasts of Tarzan, and in
the morning the sun rose on a grisly sight upon the deck of the unhappy
Cowrie; but this time the blood which stained her white planking was
the blood of the guilty and not of the innocent.
Tarzan brought forth the men who had hidden in the forecastle, and
without promises of immunity from punishment forced them to help work
the vessel—the only alternative was immediate death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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