head. 'All in?' he asked. Corrie nodded. 'Well, your troubles are over for today at least, I hope. Jerry, van der Bos, and the sergeants are coming along the trail. We'd better get over there and meet them.' He swung her across his shoulder and swung back along the leafy way that the ape had brought her, but how different were her feelings now!
When they reached the trail, Tarzan examined it and found that the others had not yet passed; so they sat down beside it and waited. They did not talk. The man realized that the girl had undergone terrific shock, and so he left her alone and did not question her. He wanted her to rest.
But finally Corrie broke the silence herself. 'I am an awful fool,' she said. 'I have had to exert all the will power I possess to keep from crying. I thought death was so near, and then you came. It was just as though you had materialized out of thin air. I suppose that it was the reaction that nearly broke me down. But how in the world did you know where I was? How could you have known what had happened to me?'
'Stories are not written in books alone,' he said. 'It was not difficult.' Then he told her just how he had trailed her. 'I had an encounter with that same ape a few days ago. I got the better of him then, but I refrained from killing him. I wish BOW that I had not. His name was Oju.'
'You never said anything about that,' she said.
'It was of no importance.'
'You are a very strange man.'
'I am more beast than man, Corrie.'
She knitted her brows and shook her head. 'You are very far from being a beast.'
'You mean that for a compliment. That is because you don't know the beasts very well. They have many fine qualities that men would do well to emulate. They have no vices. It was left for man to have those as well as many disagreeable and criminal characteristics that the beasts do not have. When I said that I was more beast than man, I didn't mean that I possessed all their noble qualities. I simply meant that I thought and reacted more like a beast than a man. I have the psychology of a wild beast.'
'Well, you may be right; but if I were going out to dinner, I'd rather go with a man than a tiger.'
Tarzan smiled. 'That is one of the nice things about being a beast. You don't have to go to dinners and listen to speeches and be bored to death.'
Corrie laughed. 'But one of your fellow beasts may leap on you and take you for his dinner.'
'Or a nice man may come along and shoot you, just for fun.'
'You win,' said Corrie.
'The others are coming,' said Tarzan.
'How do you know?'
'Usha tells me.'
'Usha? Who is Usha?'
'The wind. It carries to both my ears and my nostrils evidence that men are coming along the trail. Each race has its distinctive body odor; so I know these are white men.'
A moment later, Rosetti came into view around a curve in the trail. When he saw Tarzan and Corrie he voiced a whoop of pleasure and shouted the word back to those behind him. Soon the others joined them. It was a happy reunion.
'Just like old home week,' observed Bubonovitch.
'It seems as though you had been gone for weeks, Corrie,' said Jerry.
'I went a long way into the Valley of the Shadow,' said Corrie. 'I thought that I should never see any of you again in this world. Then Tarzan came.'
Tak van der Bos came and kissed her. 'If my hair hasn't turned white since you disappeared, then worry doesn't turn hair white. Don't you ever get out of our sight again, darling.'
Jerry wished that he didn't like van der Bos. He would greatly have enjoyed hating him. Then he thought: You are an idiot, Lucas. You haven't a ghost of a show anyway, and those two were made for each other. They are both swell. So Jerry lagged along behind and left them together as they resumed the march toward the village.
Tarzan had gone ahead to act as point. The others listened as Corrie recounted her adventures, telling of Amat's treachery, of Sarina's unexpected help, of her horrifying experience with Oju, and of her rescue by Tarzan.
'He is magnificent,' she said. 'In battle he is terrifying. He seems to become a wild beast, with the strength and agility of a tiger guided by the intelligence of a man. He growls like a beast. I was almost afraid of him. But when the fight was over and he smiled he was all human again.'
'He has added one more debt which we owe him and can never repay,' said Jerry.
'Dat guy's sure some guy,' said Rosetti, 'even if he is a Britisher. I bet he didn't have nuttin' to do wit dat Geo'ge Toid.'
'That's a safe bet, Shrimp,' said Bubonovitch. 'You can also lay 100 to 1 that he didn't run around with Caligula either.'
Tak van der Bos found these Americans amusing. He liked them, but often he could not make head nor tail of what they were talking about.
'Who was Geo'ge Toid?' he asked.
'He is dat king of England wot Mayor Thompson said he would poke in de snoot if he ever came to Chicago ,' explained Rosetti.
'You mean George Third?'
'Dat's who I said—Geo'ge Toid.'
'Oh,' said van der Bos. Bubonovitch was watching him, and noticed that he did not smile. He liked him for that. Bubonovitch could rib Shrimp, but he wouldn't stand for any foreigner ribbing him.
'This lame brain,' he said, jerking a thumb in Rosetti's direction, 'doesn't know that the War of the Revolution is over.'
'You disliked Englishmen because of what George Third did?' Tak asked Shrimp.
'You said it.'
'Maybe you won't think so badly of Englishmen if you'll just remember that George Third was not an Englishman.'
'Wot?'
'He was a German.'
'No kiddin'?'
'No kidding. Many of the Englishmen of his day didn't like him any more than you do.'
'So de guy was a Heinie! Dat explains everyt'ing.' Shrimp was satisfied now. He could like Tarzan and not be ashamed of it.
Presently they caught up with Tarzan. He was talking to two bearded white men. They were sentries posted by the guerrillas who had occupied the village. The two other trails were similarly guarded.
Within a few minutes the returning party had entered the kampong; and as they did so, Amat departed into the forest on the opposite side of the village. He had caught a glimpse of Rosetti.
Chapter 20
CAPT. VAN PRINS and Lieut, de Lettenhove, as well as several others of the guerrilla force, knew both Corrie and Tak, whom they had believed to be dead. They gathered around them, laughing and talking, congratulating them and exchanging snatches of their various experiences during the more than two years since they had seen one another. Corrie and Tak asked of news of old friends. Some were known to be dead, others had been prisoners of the Japs when last heard of. They spoke in their own tongue.
Jerry, feeling very much an outsider, sought Bubonovitch and Rosetti. They sat together beneath a tree and cleaned their rifles and pistols, for since they had captured the equipment of the Japs they had all that was necessary to keep their weapons cleaned and oiled, an endless procedure in the humid equatorial atmosphere of the Sumatran mountains.
Presently van Prins and de Lettenhove joined them to discuss plans for the future. Corrie and Tak were sitting
