Part 21 (1/2)
As Mo-sar carried Jane Clayton froled incessantly to regain her freedom He tried to compel her to walk, but despite his threats and his abuse she would not voluntarily take a single step in the direction in which he wished her to go Instead she threw herself to the ground each tiht to place her upon her feet, and so of necessity he was coed her to save himself from further lacerations, for the beauty and slenderness of the woe When he calad indeed to turn her over to a couple of stalarriors, but these too were forced to carry her since Mo-sar's fear of the vengeance of Ko-tan's retainers would brook no delays
And thus they came down out of the hills from which A-lur is carved, to the meadows that skirt the lower end of Jad-ben-lul, with Jane Clayton carried between two of Mo-sar'scanoes, hollowed from the trunks of trees, their bows and sterns carved in the serotesque beasts or birds and vividly colored by some master in that primitive school of art, which fortunately is not without its devotees today
Into the stern of one of these canoes the warriors tossed their captive at a sign from Mo-sar, who ca their places in the canoes and selecting their paddles
”Come, Beautiful One,” he said, ”let us be friends and you shall not be har,” and thinking tofro well that she could not escape surrounded as she was by his warriors, and presently, when they were out on the lake, she would be as safely ih he held her behind bars
And so the fleetof a hundred paddles, to follow the windings of the rivers and lakes through which the waters of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho ereatupon one knee, faced the bow and in the last canoe Mo-sar tiring of his fruitless attempts to win responses from his sullen captive, squatted in the botto his head upon the gunwale sought sleep
Thus they moved in silence between the verdure-clad banks of the little river through which the waters of Jad-ben-lul ereat trees overhung the stream, and at last out upon the waters of another lake, the black shores of which seeht
Jane Clayton sat alert in the stern of the last canoe For months she had been under constant surveillance, the prisoner first of one ruthless race and now the prisoner of another Since the long-gone day that Hauptmann Fritz Schneider and his band of native Gerht the Kaiser's work of rapine and destruction on the Greystoke bungalow and carried her away to captivity she had not drawn a free breath That she had survived unharh which she had passed she attributed solely to the beneficence of a kind and watchful Providence
At first she had been held on the orders of the Gere and during these months she had been subjected to neither hardshi+p nor oppression, but when the Germans had becon in East Africa it had been determined to take her further into the interior and now there was an elee in their motives, since it er be of any possible ainst that half-savage ly annoyed and harassed theenuity that had resulted in a noticeable loss in morale in the sector he had chosen for his operations They had to charge against him the lives of certain officers that he had deliberately taken with his own hands, and one entire section of trench that hadeneraled the and cruelty with cruelties until they feared and loathed his very na trick that they had played upon hi his retainers, and covering the abduction of his wife in such a way as to lead hiretted a thousand times, for a thousandfold had they paid the price for their senseless ruthlessness, and now, unable to wreak their vengeance directly upon hi upon hisher into the interior to avoid the path of the victorious British, they had chosen as her escort Lieutenant Erich Obergatz who had been second in command of Schneider's co vengeance of the ape-e, the chief of which was still under the domination of his fear of the ruthless German oppressors While here only hardshi+ps and disco held in leash by the orders of his distant superior but as tirew to be a veritable hell of cruelties and oppressions practiced by the arrogant Prussian upon the villagers and theheavily upon the hands of the lieutenant and with idleness co with the personal discoreeable temper found an outlet first in petty interference with the chiefs and later in the practice of absolute cruelties upon them
What the self-sufficient German could not see was plain to Jane Clayton-that the syers and that all were so heartily sickened by his abuse that it needed now but the slightest spark to detonate the -headed Hun had been assiduously fabricating beneath his own person
And at last it came, but from an unexpected source in the form of a German native deserter froed hiatz was even aware of his presence the whole village knew that the power of Ger for the lieutenant's native soldiers to realize that the authority that held theone the power to pay thee Or at least, so they reasoned To theht else than a powerless and hated foreigner, and short indeed would have been his shrift had not a native wolike affection for Jane Clayton hurried to her ord of the murderous plan, for the fate of the innocent white wouilty Teuton
”Already they are quarreling as to which one shall possess you,” she told Jane
”When will they coht,” replied the woht for hiht and kill him while he sleeps”
Jane thanked the woman and sent her away lest the suspicion of her fellows be aroused against her when they discovered that the thites had learned of their intentions The woatz She had never gone there before and the German looked up in surprise as he saho his visitor was
Briefly she told him what she had heard At first he was inclined to bluster arrogantly, with a great display of bravado but she silenced him peremptorily
”Such talk is useless,” she said shortly ”You have brought upon yourself the just hatred of these people Regardless of the truth or falsity of the report which has been brought to the noeen you and your Maker other than flight We shall both be dead before e unseen If you go to them noith your silly protestations of authority you will be dead a little sooner, that is all”
”You think it is as bad as that?” he said, a noticeable alteration in his tone and manner
”It is precisely as I have told you,” she replied ”They will coht and kill you while you sleep Find me pistols and a rifle and ale to hunt That you have done often Perhaps it will arouse suspicion that I accompany you but that we must chance And be sure my dear Herr Lieutenant to bluster and curse and abuse your servants unless they note a change in youryour fear know that you suspect their intention If all goes well then we can go out into the jungle to hunt and we need not return
”But first and now you must swear never to harm me, or otherwise it would be better that I called the chief and turned you over to him and then put a bullet into my own head, for unless you swear as I have asked I were no better alone in the jungle with you than here at the raded blacks”