'Why haven't you told us you were Tarzan?' asked Jerry.
'What difference could it have made?'
'We were sure dumb not to have recognized you long ago,' said Bubonovitch.
Corrie said that she could go on. The men gathered the bows they had flung aside when they dropped to the ground, and they started back toward their camp. 'Funny none of us thought to shoot it wit arrows,' said Shrimp.
'They would only have infuriated it,' said Tarzan. 'Of course, if you got one through his heart that would kill a tiger; but he would live long enough to do a terrible lot of damage. Many a hunter has been mauled by lions after sending a large caliber bullet through its heart. These great cats are amazingly tenacious of life.'
'To be mauled by a lion or tiger must be a terrible way to die,' said Corrie, shuddering.
'On the contrary, it would seem to be a rather nice way to die—if one had to die,' said Tarzan. 'A number of men who had been mauled by lions and lived have recorded their sensations. They were unanimous in declaring that they felt neither pain nor fear.'
'Dey can have it,' said Shrimp. 'I'll take a tommy gun for mine.'
Tarzan brought up the rear of the little column on the way back to camp, that Usha the Wind might bring to his nostrils warning of the approach of the Sumatrans, if they were pursuing Corrie, before they came too close.
Shrimp walked beside him, watching his every move with admiring eyes. To think, he said to himself, that I'd ever be runnin' around in a jungle wit Tarzan of de Apes. Bubono-vitch had convinced him that it was not Johnny Weismuller. Jerry and Corrie led the way. He walked just behind one of her shoulders. He could watch her profile from that position. He found it a very nice profile to watch. So nice that, though he tried, he couldn't conjure up the likeness of the girl in Oklahoma City for any length of time. His thoughts kept coming back to the profile.
'You must be very tired,' he said. He was thinking that she had walked this trail all the day before and all this day, with practically no sleep.
'A little,' she replied. 'But I am used to walking. I am very tough.'
'We were frightened when we found you gone and Tarzan discovered that you had been abducted.'
She threw him a quick, quizzical glance. 'And you a misogynist!' she chided.
'Who said I was a misogynist?'
'Both you and the little sergeant.'
'I didn't tell you that, and Shrimp doesn't know what a misogynist is.'
'I didn't mean that. I meant that you are both misogynists. No one told me. It was quite obvious.'
'Maybe I thought I was,' he said. Then he told her about the girl in Oklahoma City .
'And you love her so much?'
'I do not. I guess my pride was hurt. A man hates to be brushed off.'
'Brushed off? What is that?'
'Jilted—and for a Republican 4-F.'
'Is that such a terrible person? I never heard of one before.'
Jerry laughed. 'Really, no. But when you're mad you like to call names, and I couldn't think of anything else. The fellow is really all right. As a matter of fact I am commencing to love him.'
'You mean that it is better to discover, before marriage, that she is fickle rather than after?'
'We'll settle for that—for the time being. I just know that I would not want her to be in love with me now.'
Corrie thought that over. Whatever she deduced from it, she kept to herself. When they reached camp a few minutes later, she was humming a gay little tune.
After she had gone into the cave, Bubonovitch said to Jerry, 'How's the misogynist this afternoon?'
'Shut your trap,' said Jerry.
Tarzan, in questioning Corrie about her abductors, had ascertained that there had been ten of them and that they were armed with kris and parang. They carried no firearms, the Japs having confiscated all such weapons as they could find.
The five were gathered at the mouth of the cave discussing plans for the future, which included tactics in the event the tribesmen returned and proved belligerent. Those who wished always had an equal voice in these discussions; but since they had left the ship, where Jerry's authority had been supreme, there had been a tacit acknowledgement of Tarzan's position as leader. Jerry realized the fitness of this. There had never been any question in his mind, nor in the minds of the others, that the Englishman was better equipped by knowledge and experience of the jungle, acute sense perceptivity, and physical prowess to guide and protect them than were any of the others. Even Shrimp had had to acknowledge this, and at first that had been hard. Now he would have been one of the Britisher's most ardent supporters had there been any dissidents.
'Corrie tells me,' said Tarzan, 'that there are ten men in the party that took her. Most of them, she says, are armed with a long straight kris, not the wavy bladed type with which most of us are familiar. They all carry parangs, a heavy knife designed more for use as a tool than a weapon. They have no firearms.'
'If they come, we shall have to stop them before they get to close quarters. Corrie will act as interpreter. While they outnumber us more than two to one, we should have no difficulty in holding our own. We are four bows—'
'Five,' corrected Corrie.
Tarzan smiled. 'We are five bows, and we are all good shots. We shall try to convince them that they had better go away and leave us alone. We shall not shoot until it is absolutely necessary.'
'Nuts,' said Shrimp. 'We'd ought to let 'em have it for stealin' de kid.' Corrie gave him a look of surprise and incredulity. Jerry and Bubonovitch grinned. Shrimp turned red.
'There goes another misogynist,' Bubonovitch whispered to Jerry.
'I know how you feel, Rosetti,' said Tarzan. 'I think we all feel the same way. But years ago I learned to kill only for food and defense. I learned it from what you call the beasts. I think it is a good rule. Those who kill for any other reason, such as for pleasure or revenge, debase themselves. They make savages of themselves. I will tell you when to fire.'
'Perhaps they won't come after all,' said Corrie.
Tarzan shook his head. 'They will come. They are almost here.'
Chapter 8
WHEN Iskandar awoke the sun was shining full in his face. He raised himself on an elbow. His eyes took in the scene before him. His nine companions slept. The sentry slept beside a dead fire. The captive was not there.
His cruel face distorted in rage, Iskandar seized his kris and leaped to his feet. The shrieks of the sentry awakened the other sleepers. 'Pig!' screamed Iskandar, hacking at the head and body of his victim as the man tried to crawl away from him on hands and knees. 'The tigers could have come and killed us all. And because of you, the woman has escaped.'
A final blow at the base of the brain, which severed the spinal column, ended the torture. Iskandar wiped his bloody kris on the garments of the dead man and turned his scowling face upon his men. 'Come!' he ordered. 'She cannot have gotten far. Hurry!'
They soon picked up Corrie's footprints in the trail and hurried in pursuit. Half way along the trail to the cave where they had captured her, they came upon the body of a tiger. Iskandar examined it closely. He saw the knife wounds behind its left shoulder. He saw many footprints in the muddy trail. There were those of the girl and others made by the same crude type of sandal that she had worn, but larger—the footprints of men. And there were prints of the bare feet of a man. Iskandar was puzzled. There seemed ample evidence that someone had stabbed the tiger to death. But that was impossible. No one could have come within reach of those terrible talons and jaws and lived.
They pushed on, and in the afternoon they came within sight of the cave.
'Here they come,' said Jerry Lucas.
