'And handsome,' said the girl. She turned to Krause. 'Have some water and food brought,' she directed.
'You going to be his nurse maid?' inquired Krause with a sneer.
'I'm going to see that he's treated decently,' she replied. 'What does he eat?'
'I don't know,' replied Krause. 'What does he eat, Abdullah?'
'The dog has not eaten for two days,' replied the Arab; 'so I guess he will eat almost anything. In the jungle he eats raw meat from his kills, like a beast.'
'We'll try him on some,' said Krause; 'it will be a good way of getting rid of any of the animals that die.' He sent a sailor to the galley for meat and water.
The man in the iron cage looked long at Abdullah Abu Nejm; so long that the Arab spat on the deck and turned away.
'I wouldn't want to be in your shoes if he ever got out of that cage,' said Krause.
'You should not have freed his hands,' said Abdullah; 'he is more dangerous than the lion.'
When the sailor returned with the meat and water, Janette took them from him and passed them in to the wild man. He took a small swallow of water; then he went into a far corner of his cage, squatted on his haunches, and tore at the meat with his strong, white teeth; and as he ate, he growled.
The girl shuddered, and the men moved about uneasily. 'El adrea of the broad head eats thus,' said Abdullah.
'He sounds like a lion,' said Krause. 'By what name do the natives know him, Abdullah?'
'He is called Tarzan of the Apes,' replied the Arab.
Chapter III
The Saigon crossed the Indian Ocean to Sumatra , where Krause took on two elephants, a rhinoceros, three orangutans, two tigers, a panther, and a tapir. Fearing that de Groote would make good his threat to report the human captive to the authorities at Batavia, Krause did not put in there as he had intended; but continued on to Singapore for monkeys, another tiger, and several boa constrictors; then the Saigon steamed across the South China Sea toward Manila, its last port of call on the long drag to the Panama Canal.
Krause was delighted; so far all his plans had worked out splendidly; and if he got his cargo to New York , he stood to clean up an excellent profit. Perhaps he would not have been so delighted had he known of all that went on aboard the Saigon . Larsen was still confined to his cabin, and while de Groote was a good officer, he was young, and new aboard the ship. Like Krause, he did not know all that was talked of in the forecastle and on deck at night when it was Schmidt's watch. At such times, the 2nd mate spoke long and earnestly with Jabu Singh, the Lascar; and he spoke in whispers. Afterward, Jabu Singh spoke long and earnestly with the other Lascars in the forecastle.
'But the wild beasts?' asked Chand of his fellow Lascar, Jabu Singh; 'what of them?'
'Schmidt says we throw them overboard along with de Groote, Krause, and the others.'
'They are worth much money,' objected Chand; 'we should keep them and sell them.'
'We should be caught and hanged,' said another Lascar.
'No,' Jabu Singh contradicted. 'While we were in Singapore , Schmidt learned that Germany and England have gone to war. This is an English ship; Schmidt says that a German has a right to capture it. He says we would get prize money; but he thinks the animals would be valueless, and they are a nuisance.'
'I know a man on the island of Illili who would buy them,' said Chand. 'We will not let Schmidt throw them overboard.'
The men spoke in their native dialect, confident that the Chinese sailors would not understand them; but in that they were wrong; Lum Kip had once sailed the China Sea aboard a felucca that had been captained and manned by Lascars, and he had learned their language. He had also learned to hate Lascars, as he had been treated very badly aboard the felucca and had been given no share of the spoils of their nefarious operations. But Lum Kip's face gave no indication that he understood what he overheard; it wore its usual expression of profound detachment, as he puffed on his long pipe with its little brass bowl.
The man in the large iron cage on deck often paced back and forth for hours at a time. Often he leaped and seized the bars at the top of the cage and swung to and fro from one end of the cage to the other, hand over hand. When anyone approached his cage, he would stop; for he was not doing these things for his amusement, nor for the amusement of others, but to keep his magnificent physique from deteriorating during his confinement.
Janette Laon came often to his cage; she saw that he was fed regularly and that he always had water; and she tried to teach him her native language, French; but in this she made no headway. Tarzan knew what was the matter with him; and while he could neither speak nor understand speech, his thoughts were as coherent and intelligent as ever. He wondered if he would ever recover; but he was not greatly troubled because he could not converse with human beings; the thing that annoyed him most was that he could no longer communicate with manu, the monkey, or the mangani, the great apes, with which he classed the orangutans that were aboard and confined in cages near his. Seeing the cargo that the Saigon carried, he knew the life that lay in store for him; but he also knew that sooner or later he would escape. He thought of that most often when he saw Abdullah Abu Nejm on deck.
He had tested the bars of his cage at night when nobody was near; and he was confident that he could spread them sufficiently to allow his body to pass between them; but he guessed that were he to do so, while at sea, he would only be shot down; for he knew that they feared him. With the patience of a wild beast he bided his time.
When Abdullah Abu Nejm or Schmidt were on deck, his eyes followed them; for these two had spat at him. Abdullah Abu Nejm had reason to hate him, for Tarzan had ended his lucrative career as a slave trader and ivory poacher; but the 2nd mate had been motivated only by the natural reactions of a bully and a coward who discovers one whom he considers his racial enemy powerless to retaliate.
Abdullah Abu Nejm, hating Krause and the girl and ignored by de Groote, consorted much with Schmidt, until the two men, finding much in common, became boon companions. Abdullah, glad of any opportunity to wreak vengeance on Krause, willingly agreed to aid Schmidt in the venture the 2nd mate was planning.
'The Lascars are with me to a man,' Schmidt told Abdullah, 'but we haven't approached the chinks; there's bad blood between them and the Lascars on this ship, and Jabu Singh says his men won't play if the chinks are to be in on it and get a cut.'
'There are not many,' said Abdullah, 'If they make trouble, they, too, can go overboard.'
'The trouble is, we need 'em to man the ship,' explained Schmidt; 'and about throwing 'em overboard; I've changed my mind; there ain't anybody going overboard. They're all going to be prisoners of war; then, if anything goes wrong, there's no murder charge against us.'
'You can run the ship without Larsen and de Groote?' asked the Arab.
'Sure I can,' replied Schmidt. 'I've got Oubanovitch on my side. Being a Red Russian, he hates Krause; he hates everybody who has a pfennig more than he. I'm making him 1st mate, but he'll have to keep on running the engine room too. Jabu Singh will be 2nd mate. Oh, I've got everything worked out.'
'And you are to be captain?' inquired the Arab.
'Certainly.'
'And what am I to be?'
'You? Oh, hell, you can be admiral.'
That afternoon Lum Kip approached de Groote. 'Maybe—so you make dead tonight,' said Lum Kip in a low whisper.
'What you driving at, Lum?' demanded de Groote.
'You savvy Schmidt?'
'Of course; what about him?'
'Tonight he takee ship; Lascars, they takee ship; 'banovitchee, he takee ship; man in long, white dless, he takee ship. They killee Larsen; killee you; killee Klause; killee evlybody. Chinee boy no takee ship; no killee. You savvy?'
