next.
'The Saigon doesn't look like much,' said Janette Laon, who had come to stand beside Tarzan, 'but I think she will weather this storm all right. We ran into a worse one coming out. Of course we had Captain Larsen in command then, and Mr. de Groote was 1st mate; it may be a different story with Schmidt in command.'
The ship swung suddenly, quartering to the sea, and slithered down into the trough, heeling over on her beam-ends. There was a frightened scream as a flash of lightning revealed the colonel and his wife being thrown heavily against the bars of their cage.
'Poor Aunt Penelope!' cried the English girl; 'she can't stand much more of this.' She worked her way around the side of the cage to her aunt. ' Are you hurt, Auntie?' she asked.
'Every bone in my body is broken,' said Mrs. Leigh. 'I never did approve of that silly expedition. Who cares what lives at the bottom of the ocean, anyway—you'd never meet any of them in London . Now we have lost the Naiad and are about to lose our lives in the bargain. I hope your uncle is satisfied.' Patricia breathed a sigh of relief, for she knew now that her aunt was all right. The Colonel maintained a discreet silence: twenty-five years experience had taught him when to keep still.
The long night passed, but the storm did not abate in fury. The Saigon still ran before it, slowed down to about five knots and taking it on her quarter. An occasional wave broke over the stern, flooding the decks, and almost submerging the inmates of the cages, who could only cling to the bars and hope for the best.
By her own testimony, Mrs. Leigh was drowned three times. 'Hereafter, William,' she said, 'you should stick to The Times, Napoleon's campaigns, and Gibbon's Rome ; the moment you read anything else you go quite off your head. If you hadn't read that Arcturus Adventure by that Beebe person, we would undoubtedly be safe at home in England this minute. Just because he fished up a lot of hideous creatures equipped with electric lights, you had to come out and try it; I simply cannot understand it, William.'
'Don't be too hard on Uncle,' said Patricia; 'he might have found some with hot and cold running water and become famous.'
'Humph!' snorted Mrs. Leigh.
That day no one approached the cages, and neither food nor water was brought to the captives. The animals below deck fared similarly, and their plaints rose above the howling of the storm. It was not until late in the afternoon of the third day that two of the Chinese sailors brought food, and by this time the captives were so famished that they wolfed it ravenously, notwithstanding the fact that it was only a cold and soggy mess of ship's biscuit.
Mrs. Leigh had lapsed into total silence; and both her niece and her husband were worried, for they knew that when Penelope Leigh failed to complain there must be something radically wrong with her.
At about nine o'clock that night, the wind suddenly died down; the calm that ensued was ominous. 'We have reached the center of it,' said Janette Laon.
'Soon it will be bad again,' said Tarzan.
'The fool should have run out of it, not into it,' said Janette.
Tarzan was waiting patiently, like a lion at a waterhole—waiting for his prey to come. 'It is better thus,' he said to the girl.
'I do not understand,' she replied, 'I do not see how it could be worse.'
'Wait,' he said, 'and I think you will see presently.'
While the seas were still high, the Saigon seemed to be taking them better now, and presently Schmidt appeared on deck and came down to the cages. 'How's the livestock?' he demanded.
'These women will die if you keep them in here, Schmidt,' said de Groote. 'Why can't you take them out and give them a cabin, or at least put them below decks where they will be protected from the storm?'
'If I hear any more complaints,' said Schmidt, 'I'll dump the whole lot of you overboard, cages and all. What do you want anyway? You're getting free transportation, free food, and private rooms. You've been getting free shower baths, too, for the last three days.'
'But, man, my wife will die if she is exposed much longer,' said Colonel Leigh.
'Let her die,' said Schmidt, 'I need some fresh meat for the wild man and the other animals,' with which parting pleasantry, Schmidt returned to the bridge.
Mrs. Leigh was sobbing, and the Colonel was cursing luridly. Tarzan was waiting, and presently that for which he was waiting came to pass; Asoka, the Lascar, was coming to make his belated inspection. He swaggered a little, feeling the importance of being keeper of English sahibs and their ladies.
The ship's lights relieved the darkness sufficiently so that objects were discernible at some distance, and Tarzan, whose eyes were trained by habit to see at night, had recognized Asoka immediately he came on deck.
The ape-man stood grasping two adjacent bars of his cage as Asoka passed, keeping well out of arm's reach of the wild man. Janette Laon stood beside Tarzan; she intuitively sensed that something important was impending.
Her eyes were on her cage mate; she saw the muscles of his shoulders and his arms tense as he exerted all their tremendous power upon the bars of his cage. And then she saw those bars slowly spread and Tarzan of the Apes step through to freedom.
Chapter VIII
Asoka, the Lascar, swaggered on past the cage of the Leigh's, and when he was opposite that in which the four Englishmen were confined, steel-thewed fingers closed upon his throat from behind, and his gun was snatched from its holster.
Janette Laon had watched with amazement the seeming ease with which those Herculean muscles had separated the bars. She had seen Tarzan overtake the Lascar and disarm him; and now she stepped through the opening after him, carrying the pistols they had taken from Schmidt and Jabu Singh.
Asoka struggled and tried to cry out until a grim voice whispered in his ear, 'Quiet, or I kill;' then he subsided.
Tarzan glanced back and saw Janette Laon behind him. Then he took the key to the cages which hung about Asoka's neck on a piece of cord and handed it to the girl. 'Come with me and unlock them,' he said, and passed around the end of the last cage to the doors, which were on the opposite side.
'You men will come with me,' said Tarzan in a whisper; 'the Colonel and the women will remain here.'
As Tarzan came opposite the cage of the Leigh's, Mrs. Leigh, who had been dozing during the lull in the storm, awoke and saw him. She voiced a little scream and cried, 'The wild man has escaped!'
'Shut up, Penelope,' growled the Colonel; 'he is going to let us out of this damn cage.'
'Don't you dare curse me, William Cecil Hugh Percival Leigh,' cried Penelope.
'Quiet,' growled Tarzan, and Penelope Leigh subsided into terrified silence.
'You may come out,' said Tarzan, 'but remain close to the cages until we return.' Then he followed Janette to the cage in which de Groote and Krause were imprisoned and waited until she had removed the padlock.
'De Groote may come out,' he said; 'Krause will remain. Asoka, you get in there.' He turned to Janette. 'Lock them in,' he said. 'Give me one of the pistols and keep the other yourself; if either of these two tries to raise an alarm, shoot him. Do you think you could do that?'
'I shot Jabu Singh,' she reminded him.
Tarzan nodded and then turned to the men behind him; he handed Asoka's pistol to de Groote. He had appraised the other men since they had come aboard, and now he told Janette to give her second pistol to Tibbet, the second mate of the Naiad.
'What is your name?' he asked.
'Tibbet,' replied the mate.
'You will come with me. We will take over on the bridge. De Groote knows the ship. He and the others will look for arms. In the meantime, pick up anything you can to fight with, for there may be fighting.'
The ship had passed beyond the center of the storm, and the wind was howling with renewed violence. The Saigon was pitching and rolling violently as Tarzan and Tibbet ascended the ladder to the bridge, where the Lascar,
