Instantly it occurred to the ape-man that this fellow had not been
among those who had accompanied Rokoff at the village where Tarzan had
been a prisoner. He had seen them all, and this fellow had not been
there. There could be but one explanation—he it was who had fled ahead
of the Russian with the woman and the child—and the woman had been Jane
Clayton. He was sure now of the meaning of Rokoff’s words.
The ape-man’s face went white as he looked upon the pasty, vice-marked
countenance of the Swede. Across Tarzan’s forehead stood out the broad
band of scarlet that marked the scar where, years before, Terkoz had
torn a great strip of the ape-man’s scalp from his skull in the fierce
battle in which Tarzan had sustained his fitness to the kingship of the
apes of Kerchak.
The man was his prey—the black should not have him, and with the
thought he leaped upon the warrior, striking down the spear before it
could reach its mark. The black, whipping out his knife, turned to do
battle with this new enemy, while the Swede, lying in the bush,
witnessed a duel, the like of which he had never dreamed to see—a
half-naked white man battling with a half-naked black, hand to hand
with the crude weapons of primeval man at first, and then with hands
and teeth like the primordial brutes from whose loins their forebears
sprung.
For a time Anderssen did not recognize the white, and when at last it
dawned upon him that he had seen this giant before, his eyes went wide
in surprise that this growling, rending beast could ever have been the
well-groomed English gentleman who had been a prisoner aboard the
Kincaid.
An English nobleman! He had learned the identity of the Kincaid’s
prisoners from Lady Greystoke during their flight up the Ugambi.
Before, in common with the other members of the crew of the steamer, he
had not known who the two might be.
The fight was over. Tarzan had been compelled to kill his antagonist,
as the fellow would not surrender.
The Swede saw the white man leap to his feet beside the corpse of his
foe, and placing one foot upon the broken neck lift his voice in the
hideous challenge of the victorious bull-ape.
Anderssen shuddered. Then Tarzan turned toward him. His face was cold
and cruel, and in the grey eyes the Swede read murder.
“Where is my wife?” growled the ape-man. “Where is the child?”
Anderssen tried to reply, but a sudden fit of coughing choked him.
There was an arrow entirely through his chest, and as he coughed the
blood from his wounded lung poured suddenly from his mouth and
nostrils.
Tarzan stood waiting for the paroxysm to pass. Like a bronze
image—cold, hard, and relentless—he stood over the helpless man,
waiting to wring such information from him as he needed, and then to
kill.
Presently the coughing and haemorrhage ceased, and again the wounded
man tried to speak. Tarzan knelt near the faintly moving lips.
“The wife and child!” he repeated. “Where are they?”
Anderssen pointed up the trail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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