'You are a woman. I could not leave you alone in the jungle to die, no matter what you may have done,' replied the ape-man. And Flora Hawkes could only sob a broken plea for forgiveness for the wrong she had done him.
It grew quite dark, but still they moved along the silent trail until presently Tarzan caught in the distance the reflection of firelight.
'I think we shall soon find your friend,' he whispered. 'Make no noise.'
A moment later his keen ears caught the sound of voices. He halted and lowered the girl to her feet.
'If you cannot follow,' he said, 'wait here. I do not wish him to escape. I will return for you. If you can follow on slowly, do so.' And then he left her and made his way cautiously forward toward the light and the voices. He heard Flora Hawkes moving directly behind him. It was evident that she could not bear the thought of being left alone again in the dark jungle. Almost simultaneously Tarzan heard a low whine a few paces to his right. 'Jad-bal- ja,' he whispered in a low voice, 'heel,' and the great black-maned lion crept close to him, and Flora Hawkes, stifling a scream, rushed to his side and grasped his arms.
'Silence,' he whispered; 'Jad-bal-ja will not harm you.'
An instant later the three came to the edge of the ancient river bank, and through the tall grasses growing there looked down upon the little camp beneath.
Tarzan, to his consternation, saw a counterpart of himself standing before a little fire, while slowly approaching the man, with outstretched arms, was a woman, draped in flowing white. He heard her words; soft words of love and endearment, and at the sound of the voice and the scent spoor that a vagrant wind carried suddenly to his nostrils, strange complex of emotion overwhelmed him—happiness, despair, rage, love, and hate.
He saw the man at the fire step forward with open arms to take the woman to his breast, and then Tarzan separated the grasses and stepped to the very edge of the embankment, his voice shattering the jungle with a single word.
'Jane!' he cried, and instantly the man and woman turned and looked up at him, where his figure was dimly revealed in the light of the campfire. At sight of him the man wheeled and raced for the jungle on the opposite side of the river, and then Tarzan leaped to the bottom of the wash below and ran toward the woman.
'Jane,' he cried, 'it is you, it is you!'
The woman showed her bewilderment. She looked first at the retreating figure of the man she had been about to embrace and then turned her eyes toward Tarzan. She drew her fingers across her brow and looked back toward Esteban, but Esteban was no longer in sight. Then she took a faltering step toward the ape-man.
'My God,' she cried, 'what does it mean? Who are you, and if you are Tarzan who was he?'
'I am Tarzan, Jane,' said the ape-man.
She looked back and saw Flora Hawkes approaching. 'Yes,' she said, 'you are Tarzan. I saw you when you ran off into the jungle with Flora Hawkes. I cannot understand, John. I could not believe that you, even had you suffered an accident to your head, could have done such a thing.'
'I, run off into the jungle with Flora Hawkes?' he asked, in unfeigned surprise.
'I saw you,' said Jane.
The ape-man turned toward Flora. 'I do not understand it,' he said.
'It was Esteban who ran off into the jungle with me, Lady Greystoke,' said the girl. 'It was Esteban who was about to deceive you again. This is indeed Lord Greystoke. The other was an impostor, who only just deserted me and left me to die in the jungle. Had not Lord Greystoke come when he did I should be dead by now.'
Lady Greystoke took a faltering step toward her husband. 'Ah, John,' she said, 'I knew it could not have been you. My heart told me, but my eyes deceived me. Quick,' she cried, 'that impostor must be captured. Hurry, John, before he escapes.'
'Let him go,' said the ape-man. 'As much as I want him, as much as I want that which he has stolen from me, I will not leave you alone again in the jungle, Jane, even to catch him.'
'But Jad-bal-ja,' she cried. 'What of him?'
'Ah', cried the ape-man, 'I had forgotten,' and turning to the lion he pointed toward the direction that the Spaniard had escaped. 'Fetch him, Jad-bal-ja,' he cried; and, with a bound, the tawny beast was off upon the spoor of his quarry.
'He will kill him?' asked Flora Hawkes, shuddering. And yet at heart she was glad of the just fate that was overtaking the Spaniard.
'No, he will not kill him,' said Tarzan of the Apes. 'He may maul him a bit, but he will bring him back alive if it is possible.' And then, as though the fate of the fugitive was already forgotten, he turned toward his mate.
'Jane,' he said, 'Usula told me that you were dead. He said that they found your burned body in the Arab village and that they buried it there. How is it, then, that you are here alive and unharmed? I have been searching the jungles for Luvini to avenge your death. Perhaps it is well that I did not find him.'
'You would never have found him,' replied Jane Clayton, 'but I cannot understand why Usula should have told you that he had found my body and buried it.'
'Some prisoners that he took,' replied Tarzan, 'told him that Luvini had taken you bound hand and foot into one of the Arab huts near the village gateway, and that there he had further secured you to a stake driven into the floor of the hut. After the village had been destroyed by fire Usula and the other Waziri returned to search for you with some of the prisoners they had taken who pointed out the location of the hut, where the charred remains of a human body were found beside a burned stake to which it had apparently been tied.'
'Ah!' exclaimed the girl, 'I see. Luvini did bind me hand and foot and tie me to the stake but later he came back into the hut and removed the bonds. He attempted to attack me— long we fought I do not know, but so engrosses were we in our struggle that neither one of us was aware of the burning of the village about us. As I persistently fought him off I caught a glimpse of a knife in his belt, and then I let him seize me and as his arms encircled me I grasped the knife and, drawing it from its sheath, plunged it into his back, below his left shoulder— that was the end. Luvini sank lifeless to the floor of the hut. Almost simultaneously the rear and roof of the structure burst into flames.
'I was almost naked, for he had torn nearly all my clothing from me in our struggles. Hanging upon the wall of the hut was this white burnoose, the property, doubtless, of one of murdered Arabs. I seized it, and throwing about me ran into the village street. The huts were now all aflame, and the last of the natives was disappearing through the gateway. To my right was a section of palisade that had not been attacked by the flames. To escape into jungle by the gateway would have meant into the arms of my enemies, and so, somehow, I managed to scale the palisade and drop into the jungle unseen by any.
'I have had considerable difficulty eluding the various bands of blacks who escaped the village. A part of the time I have been hunting for the Waziri and the balance I have had to remain in hiding. I was resting in the crotch of a tree, about half a mile from here, when I saw the light of this man's fire, and when I came to investigate I was almost stunned by joy to discover that I had, as I imagined, stumbled upon my Tarzan.'
'It was Luvini's body, then, and not yours that they buried,' said Tarzan.
'Yes,' said Jane, 'and it was this man who just escaped whom I saw run off into the jungle with Flora, and not you, as I believed.'
Flora Hawkes looked up suddenly. 'And it must have been Esteban who came with the Waziri and stole the gold from us. He fooled our men he must have fooled the Waziri, too.'
'He might have fooled anyone if he could have me,' said Jane Clayton. 'I should have discovered the deception in a few minutes I have no doubt, but in the flickering light of the campfire, and influenced as I was by the great joy of seeing Lord Greystoke again, I believed quickly that which I wanted to believe.'
The ape-man ran his fingers through his thick shock of hair in a characteristic gesture of meditation. 'I cannot understand how he fooled Usula in broad daylight,' he said with a shake of his head.
'I can,' said Jane. 'He told him that he had suffered an injury to his head which caused him to lose his memory partially—an explanation which accounted for many lapses in the man's interpretation of your personality.'
'He was a clever devil,' commented the ape-man.
'He was a devil, all right,' said Flora.
It was more than an hour later that the grasses at the river bank suddenly parted and Jad-bal-ja emerged silently into their presence. Grasped in his jaws was a torn and bloody leopard skin which he brought and laid at the
