Part 30 (2/2)
”Now you may revive him,” said Jane Porter, for she, too, had been haunted with the pangs of conscience which had resulted fro succor to their companion
It required the better part of half an hour before the Russian evinced sufficient sy consciousness to open his eyes, and it was so hiood fortune By this tiently upon the sandy botto water that he had drunk and the stier through the shalloater to the shore with a line made fast to the boat's bow This he fastened to a srew at the top of a low bank, for the tide was at flood, and he feared that the boat ain with the ebb, since it was quite likely that it would be beyond his strength to get Jane Porter to the shore for several hours
Next he le, where he had seen evidences of profusion of tropical fruit His forht his were edible, and after nearly an hour of absence he returned to the beach with a little armful of food
The rain had ceased, and the hot sun was beating down soan iorated by the food Clayton had brought, the three were able to reach the half shade of the shly exhausted, they threw the until dark
For a month they lived upon the beach in coth returned the two h enough froer beasts of prey By day they gathered fruits and trapped s within their frail shelter while savage denizens of the jungle made hideous the hours of darkness
They slept upon litters of jungle grasses, and for covering at night Jane Porter had only an old ulster that belonged to Clayton, the saarment that he had worn upon that memorable trip to the Wisconsin woods Clayton had erected a frail partition of boughs to divide their arboreal shelter into two rooirl and the other for Monsieur Thuran and himself
From the first the Russian had exhibited every trait of his true character--selfishness, boorishness, arrogance, cowardice, and lust
Twice had he and Clayton coirl Clayton dared not leave her alone with hilishhtmare of horror, and yet they lived on in hope of ultihts often reverted to her other experience on this savage shore Ah, if the invincible forest God of that dead past were but with the beasts, or from the bestial Russian She could not well refrain fro the scant protection afforded her by Clayton hat she le instant confronted by the sinister andattitude of Monsieur Thuran Once, when Clayton had gone to the little stream for water, and Thuran had spoken coarsely to her, she voiced her thoughts
”It is well for you, Monsieur Thuran,” she said, ”that the poor Monsieur Tarzan as lost fro to Cape Town is not here now”
”You knew the pig?” asked Thuran, with a sneer
”I knew the man,” she replied ”The only real man, I think, that I have ever known”
There was so in her tone of voice that led the Russian to attribute to her a deeper feeling for his eneestion to be further revenged upon the irl
”He orse than a pig,” he cried ”He was a poltroon and a coward
To save hihteous wrath of the husband of a woed, he perjured his soul in an atte in this, he ran away fro the husband upon the field of honor That is why he was on board the shi+p that bore Miss Strong and myself to Cape Town I knohereof I speak, for the wo more I know that I have never told another--your brave Monsieur Tarzan leaped overboard in an agony of fear because I recognized hi ht with knives in hed ”You do not for a ine that one who has known both Monsieur Tarzan and you could ever believe such an impossible tale?”
”Then why did he travel under an assumed name?” asked Monsieur Thuran
”I do not believe you,” she cried, but nevertheless the seed of suspicion was sown, for she knew that Hazel Strong had known her forest God only as John Caldwell, of London
A scant five miles north of their rude shelter, all unknown to theh separated by thousands oflittle cabin of Tarzan of the Apes
While farther up the coast, a few miles beyond the cabin, in crude but well-built shelters, lived a little party of eighteen souls--the occupants of the three boats from the LADY ALICE from which Clayton's boat had become separated
Over a smooth sea they had rowed to the mainland in less than three days None of the horrors of shi+pwreck had been theirs, and though depressed by sorrow, and suffering from the shock of the catastrophe and the unaccustomed hardshi+ps of their new existence there was none much the worse for the experience
All were buoyed by the hope that the fourth boat had been picked up, and that a thorough search of the coast would be quickly made As all the firearton's boat, the party ell equipped for defense, and for hunting the larger game for food
Professor Archimedes Q Porter was their only imhter had been picked up by a passing stea her welfare, and devoted his giant intellect solely to the consideration of those momentous and abstruse scientific probleht in one of his erudition
His mind appeared blank to the influence of all extraneous matters
”Never,” said the exhausted Mr Saton, ”never has Professor Porter been ht say, i, after I had been forced to relinquishupon ine I discovered him? A halfaway for dear life I do not kno he attained even that le oar, hich he was blissfully rowing about in circles