الفصل الفصل 18 · The Jungle Toll

. The Jungle Toll

Early the following morning Tarzan awoke, and his first thought of the

new day, as the last of yesterday, was of the wonderful writing which

lay hidden in his quiver.

Hurriedly he brought it forth, hoping against hope that he could read

what the beautiful white girl had written there the preceding evening.

At the first glance he suffered a bitter disappointment; never before

had he so yearned for anything as now he did for the ability to

interpret a message from that golden-haired divinity who had come so

suddenly and so unexpectedly into his life.

What did it matter if the message were not intended for him? It was an

expression of her thoughts, and that was sufficient for Tarzan of the

Apes.

And now to be baffled by strange, uncouth characters the like of which

he had never seen before! Why, they even tipped in the opposite

direction from all that he had ever examined either in printed books or

the difficult script of the few letters he had found.

Even the little bugs of the black book were familiar friends, though

their arrangement meant nothing to him; but these bugs were new and

unheard of.

For twenty minutes he pored over them, when suddenly they commenced to

take familiar though distorted shapes. Ah, they were his old friends,

but badly crippled.

Then he began to make out a word here and a word there. His heart

leaped for joy. He could read it, and he would.

In another half hour he was progressing rapidly, and, but for an

exceptional word now and again, he found it very plain sailing.

Here is what he read:

WEST COAST OF AFRICA, ABOUT 10° SOUTH

LATITUDE. (So Mr. Clayton says.)

_February 3 (?), 1909._

DEAREST HAZEL:

It seems foolish to write you a letter that you may never see, but I

simply must tell somebody of our awful experiences since we sailed from

Europe on the ill-fated _Arrow_.

If we never return to civilization, as now seems only too likely, this

will at least prove a brief record of the events which led up to our

final fate, whatever it may be.

As you know, we were supposed to have set out upon a scientific

expedition to the Congo. Papa was presumed to entertain some wondrous

theory of an unthinkably ancient civilization, the remains of which lay

buried somewhere in the Congo valley. But after we were well under sail

the truth came out.

It seems that an old bookworm who has a book and curio shop in

Baltimore discovered between the leaves of a very old Spanish

manuscript a letter written in 1550 detailing the adventures of a crew

of mutineers of a Spanish galleon bound from Spain to South America

with a vast treasure of “doubloons” and “pieces of eight,” I suppose,

for they certainly sound weird and piraty.

The writer had been one of the crew, and the letter was to his son, who

was, at the very time the letter was written, master of a Spanish

merchantman.

Many years had elapsed since the events the letter narrated had

transpired, and the old man had become a respected citizen of an

obscure Spanish town, but the love of gold was still so strong upon him

that he risked all to acquaint his son with the means of attaining

fabulous wealth for them both.

The writer told how when but a week out from Spain the crew had

mutinied and murdered every officer and man who opposed them; but they

defeated their own ends by this very act, for there was none left

competent to navigate a ship at sea.

They were blown hither and thither for two months, until sick and dying

of scurvy, starvation, and thirst, they had been wrecked on a small

islet.

The galleon was washed high upon the beach where she went to pieces;

but not before the survivors, who numbered but ten souls, had rescued

one of the great chests of treasure.

This they buried well up on the island, and for three years they lived

there in constant hope of being rescued.

One by one they sickened and died, until only one man was left, the

writer of the letter.

The men had built a boat from the wreckage of the galleon, but having

no idea where the island was located they had not dared to put to sea.

When all were dead except himself, however, the awful loneliness so

weighed upon the mind of the sole survivor that he could endure it no

longer, and choosing to risk death upon the open sea rather than

madness on the lonely isle, he set sail in his little boat after nearly

a year of solitude.

Fortunately he sailed due north, and within a week was in the track of

the Spanish merchantmen plying between the West Indies and Spain, and

was picked up by one of these vessels homeward bound.

The story he told was merely one of shipwreck in which all but a few

had perished, the balance, except himself, dying after they reached the

island. He did not mention the mutiny or the chest of buried treasure.

The master of the merchantman assured him that from the position at

which they had picked him up, and the prevailing winds for the past

week he could have been on no other island than one of the Cape Verde

group, which lie off the West Coast of Africa in about 16° or 17° north

latitude.

His letter described the island minutely, as well as the location of

the treasure, and was accompanied by the crudest, funniest little old

map you ever saw; with trees and rocks all marked by scrawly X’s to

show the exact spot where the treasure had been buried.

When papa explained the real nature of the expedition, my heart sank,

for I know so well how visionary and impractical the poor dear has

always been that I feared that he had again been duped; especially when

he told me he had paid a thousand dollars for the letter and map.

To add to my distress, I learned that he had borrowed ten thousand

dollars more from Robert Canler, and had given his notes for the

amount.

Mr. Canler had asked for no security, and you know, dearie, what that

will mean for me if papa cannot meet them. Oh, how I detest that man!

We all tried to look on the bright side of things, but Mr. Philander,

and Mr. Clayton—he joined us in London just for the adventure—both felt

as skeptical as I.

Well, to make a long story short, we found the island and the

treasure—a great iron-bound oak chest, wrapped in many layers of oiled

sailcloth, and as strong and firm as when it had been buried nearly two

hundred years ago.

It was _simply filled_ with gold coin, and was so heavy that four men

bent underneath its weight.

The horrid thing seems to bring nothing but murder and misfortune to

those who have anything to do with it, for three days after we sailed

from the Cape Verde Islands our own crew mutinied and killed every one

of their officers.

Oh, it was the most terrifying experience one could imagine—I cannot

even write of it.

They were going to kill us too, but one of them, the leader, named

King, would not let them, and so they sailed south along the coast to a

lonely spot where they found a good harbor, and here they landed and

have left us.

They sailed away with the treasure to-day, but Mr. Clayton says they

will meet with a fate similar to the mutineers of the ancient galleon,

because King, the only man aboard who knew aught of navigation, was

murdered on the beach by one of the men the day we landed.

I wish you could know Mr. Clayton; he is the dearest fellow imaginable,

and unless I am mistaken he has fallen very much in love with me.

He is the only son of Lord Greystoke, and some day will inherit the

title and estates. In addition, he is wealthy in his own right, but the

fact that he is going to be an English Lord makes me very sad—you know

what my sentiments have always been relative to American girls who

married titled foreigners. Oh, if he were only a plain American

gentleman!

But it isn’t his fault, poor fellow, and in everything except birth he

would do credit to my country, and that is the greatest compliment I

know how to pay any man.

We have had the most weird experiences since we were landed here. Papa

and Mr. Philander lost in the jungle, and chased by a real lion.

Mr. Clayton lost, and attacked twice by wild beasts. Esmeralda and I

cornered in an old cabin by a perfectly awful man-eating lioness. Oh,

it was simply “terrifical,” as Esmeralda would say.

But the strangest part of it all is the wonderful creature who rescued

us. I have not seen him, but Mr. Clayton and papa and Mr. Philander

have, and they say that he is a perfectly god-like white man tanned to

a dusky brown, with the strength of a wild elephant, the agility of a

monkey, and the bravery of a lion.

He speaks no English and vanishes as quickly and as mysteriously after

he has performed some valorous deed, as though he were a disembodied

spirit.

Then we have another weird neighbor, who printed a beautiful sign in

English and tacked it on the door of his cabin, which we have

preempted, warning us to destroy none of his belongings, and signing

himself “Tarzan of the Apes.”

We have never seen him, though we think he is about, for one of the

sailors, who was going to shoot Mr. Clayton in the back, received a

spear in his shoulder from some unseen hand in the jungle.

The sailors left us but a meager supply of food, so, as we have only a

single revolver with but three cartridges left in it, we do not know

how we can procure meat, though Mr. Philander says that we can exist

indefinitely on the wild fruit and nuts which abound in the jungle.

I am very tired now, so I shall go to my funny bed of grasses which Mr.

Clayton gathered for me, but will add to this from day to day as things

happen.

Lovingly,

JANE PORTER.

TO HAZEL STRONG, BALTIMORE, MD.

Tarzan sat in a brown study for a long time after he finished reading

the letter. It was filled with so many new and wonderful things that

his brain was in a whirl as he attempted to digest them all.

So they did not know that he was Tarzan of the Apes. He would tell

them.

In his tree he had constructed a rude shelter of leaves and boughs,

beneath which, protected from the rain, he had placed the few treasures

brought from the cabin. Among these were some pencils.

He took one, and beneath Jane Porter’s signature he wrote:

I am Tarzan of the Apes

He thought that would be sufficient. Later he would return the letter

to the cabin.

In the matter of food, thought Tarzan, they had no need to worry—he

would provide, and he did.

The next morning Jane found her missing letter in the exact spot from

which it had disappeared two nights before. She was mystified; but when

she saw the printed words beneath her signature, she felt a cold,

clammy chill run up her spine. She showed the letter, or rather the

last sheet with the signature, to Clayton.

“And to think,” she said, “that uncanny thing was probably watching me

all the time that I was writing—oo! It makes me shudder just to think

of it.”

“But he must be friendly,” reassured Clayton, “for he has returned your

letter, nor did he offer to harm you, and unless I am mistaken he left

a very substantial memento of his friendship outside the cabin door

last night, for I just found the carcass of a wild boar there as I came

out.”

From then on scarcely a day passed that did not bring its offering of

game or other food. Sometimes it was a young deer, again a quantity of

strange, cooked food—cassava cakes pilfered from the village of

Mbonga—or a boar, or leopard, and once a lion.

Tarzan derived the greatest pleasure of his life in hunting meat for

these strangers. It seemed to him that no pleasure on earth could

compare with laboring for the welfare and protection of the beautiful

white girl.

Some day he would venture into the camp in daylight and talk with these

people through the medium of the little bugs which were familiar to

them and to Tarzan.

But he found it difficult to overcome the timidity of the wild thing of

the forest, and so day followed day without seeing a fulfillment of his

good intentions.

The party in the camp, emboldened by familiarity, wandered farther and

yet farther into the jungle in search of nuts and fruit.

Scarcely a day passed that did not find Professor Porter straying in

his preoccupied indifference toward the jaws of death. Mr. Samuel T.

Philander, never what one might call robust, was worn to the shadow of

a shadow through the ceaseless worry and mental distraction resultant

from his Herculean efforts to safeguard the professor.

A month passed. Tarzan had finally determined to visit the camp by

daylight.

It was early afternoon. Clayton had wandered to the point at the

harbor’s mouth to look for passing vessels. Here he kept a great mass

of wood, high piled, ready to be ignited as a signal should a steamer

or a sail top the far horizon.

Professor Porter was wandering along the beach south of the camp with

Mr. Philander at his elbow, urging him to turn his steps back before

the two became again the sport of some savage beast.

The others gone, Jane and Esmeralda had wandered into the jungle to

gather fruit, and in their search were led farther and farther from the

cabin.

Tarzan waited in silence before the door of the little house until they

should return. His thoughts were of the beautiful white girl. They were

always of her now. He wondered if she would fear him, and the thought

all but caused him to relinquish his plan.

He was rapidly becoming impatient for her return, that he might feast

his eyes upon her and be near her, perhaps touch her. The ape-man knew

no god, but he was as near to worshipping his divinity as mortal man

ever comes to worship. While he waited he passed the time printing a

message to her; whether he intended giving it to her he himself could

not have told, but he took infinite pleasure in seeing his thoughts

expressed in print—in which he was not so uncivilized after all. He

wrote:

I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live

here together always in my house. I will bring you the best of fruits,

the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt

for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters. I will fight for

you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters. You are Jane Porter, I

saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for

you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.

As he stood, straight as a young Indian, by the door, waiting after he

had finished the message, there came to his keen ears a familiar sound.

It was the passing of a great ape through the lower branches of the

forest.

For an instant he listened intently, and then from the jungle came the

agonized scream of a woman, and Tarzan of the Apes, dropping his first

love letter upon the ground, shot like a panther into the forest.

Clayton, also, heard the scream, and Professor Porter and Mr.

Philander, and in a few minutes they came panting to the cabin, calling

out to each other a volley of excited questions as they approached. A

glance within confirmed their worst fears.

Jane and Esmeralda were not there.

Instantly, Clayton, followed by the two old men, plunged into the

jungle, calling the girl’s name aloud. For half an hour they stumbled

on, until Clayton, by merest chance, came upon the prostrate form of

Esmeralda.

He stopped beside her, feeling for her pulse and then listening for her

heartbeats. She lived. He shook her.

“Esmeralda!” he shrieked in her ear. “Esmeralda! For God’s sake, where

is Miss Porter? What has happened? Esmeralda!”

Slowly Esmeralda opened her eyes. She saw Clayton. She saw the jungle

about her.

“Oh, Gaberelle!” she screamed, and fainted again.

By this time Professor Porter and Mr. Philander had come up.

“What shall we do, Mr. Clayton?” asked the old professor. “Where shall

we look? God could not have been so cruel as to take my little girl

away from me now.”

“We must arouse Esmeralda first,” replied Clayton. “She can tell us

what has happened. Esmeralda!” he cried again, shaking the black woman

roughly by the shoulder.

“O Gaberelle, I want to die!” cried the poor woman, but with eyes fast

closed. “Let me die, dear Lord, don’t let me see that awful face

again.”

“Come, come, Esmeralda,” cried Clayton.

“The Lord isn’t here; it’s Mr. Clayton. Open your eyes.”

Esmeralda did as she was bade.

“O Gaberelle! Thank the Lord,” she said.

“Where’s Miss Porter? What happened?” questioned Clayton.

“Ain’t Miss Jane here?” cried Esmeralda, sitting up with wonderful

celerity for one of her bulk. “Oh, Lord, now I remember! It must have

took her away,” and the Negress commenced to sob, and wail her

lamentations.

“What took her away?” cried Professor Porter.

“A great big giant all covered with hair.”

“A gorilla, Esmeralda?” questioned Mr. Philander, and the three men

scarcely breathed as he voiced the horrible thought.

“I thought it was the devil; but I guess it must have been one of them

gorilephants. Oh, my poor baby, my poor little honey,” and again

Esmeralda broke into uncontrollable sobbing.

Clayton immediately began to look about for tracks, but he could find

nothing save a confusion of trampled grasses in the close vicinity, and

his woodcraft was too meager for the translation of what he did see.

All the balance of the day they sought through the jungle; but as night

drew on they were forced to give up in despair and hopelessness, for

they did not even know in what direction the thing had borne Jane.

It was long after dark ere they reached the cabin, and a sad and

grief-stricken party it was that sat silently within the little

structure.

Professor Porter finally broke the silence. His tones were no longer

those of the erudite pedant theorizing upon the abstract and the

unknowable; but those of the man of action—determined, but tinged also

by a note of indescribable hopelessness and grief which wrung an

answering pang from Clayton’s heart.

“I shall lie down now,” said the old man, “and try to sleep. Early

to-morrow, as soon as it is light, I shall take what food I can carry

and continue the search until I have found Jane. I will not return

without her.”

His companions did not reply at once. Each was immersed in his own

sorrowful thoughts, and each knew, as did the old professor, what the

last words meant—Professor Porter would never return from the jungle.

At length Clayton arose and laid his hand gently upon Professor

Porter’s bent old shoulder.

“I shall go with you, of course,” he said.

“I knew that you would offer—that you would wish to go, Mr. Clayton;

but you must not. Jane is beyond human assistance now. What was once my

dear little girl shall not lie alone and friendless in the awful

jungle.

“The same vines and leaves will cover us, the same rains beat upon us;

and when the spirit of her mother is abroad, it will find us together

in death, as it has always found us in life.

“No; it is I alone who may go, for she was my daughter—all that was

left on earth for me to love.”

“I shall go with you,” said Clayton simply.

The old man looked up, regarding the strong, handsome face of William

Cecil Clayton intently. Perhaps he read there the love that lay in the

heart beneath—the love for his daughter.

He had been too preoccupied with his own scholarly thoughts in the past

to consider the little occurrences, the chance words, which would have

indicated to a more practical man that these young people were being

drawn more and more closely to one another. Now they came back to him,

one by one.

“As you wish,” he said.

“You may count on me, also,” said Mr. Philander.

“No, my dear old friend,” said Professor Porter. “We may not all go. It

would be cruelly wicked to leave poor Esmeralda here alone, and three

of us would be no more successful than one.

“There be enough dead things in the cruel forest as it is. Come—let us

try to sleep a little.”