“I will see that you are returned to your people,” he replied. “Who are they and where is their village?”
He had been eyeing her strange, barbaric garmenture wonderingly. From her speech she was evidently an Arab girl; but he had never before seen one thus clothed.
“Who are your people? Who is Korak?” he asked again.
“Korak! Why Korak is an ape. I have no other people. Korak and I live in the jungle alone since A’ht went to be king of the apes.” She had always thus pronounced Akut’s name, for so it had sounded to her when first she came with Korak and the ape. “Korak could have been kind, but he would not.”
A questioning expression entered the stranger’s eyes. He looked at the girl closely.
“So Korak is an ape?” he said. “And what, pray, are you?”
“I am Meriem. I, also, am an ape.”
“M-m,” was the stranger’s only oral comment upon this startling announcement; but what he thought might have been partially interpreted through the pitying light that entered his eyes. He approached the girl and started to lay his hand upon her forehead. She drew back with a savage little growl. A smile touched his lips.
“You need not fear me,” he said. “I shall not harm you. I only wish to discover if you have fever—if you are entirely well. If you are we will set forth in search of Korak.”
Meriem looked straight into the keen gray eyes. She must have found there an unquestionable assurance of the honorableness of their owner, for she permitted him to lay his palm upon her forehead and feel her pulse. Apparently she had no fever.
“How long have you been an ape?” asked the man.
“Since I was a little girl, many, many years ago, and Korak came and took me from my father who was beating me. Since then I have lived in the trees with Korak and A’ht.”
“Where in the jungle lives Korak?” asked the stranger.
Meriem pointed with a sweep of her hand that took in, generously, half the continent of Africa.
“Could you find your way back to him?”
“I do not know,” she replied; “but he will find his way to me.”
“Then I have a plan,” said the stranger. “I live but a few marches from here. I shall take you home where my wife will look after you and care for you until we can find Korak or Korak finds us. If he could find you here he can find you at my village. Is it not so?”
Meriem thought that it was so; but she did not like the idea of not starting immediately back to meet Korak. On the other hand the man had no intention of permitting this poor, insane child to wander further amidst the dangers of the jungle. From whence she had come, or what she had undergone he could not guess, but that her Korak and their life among the apes was but a figment of a disordered mind he could not doubt. He knew the jungle well, and he knew that men have lived alone and naked among the savage beasts for years; but a frail and slender girl! No, it was not possible.
Together they went outside. Malbihn’s boys were striking camp in preparation for a hasty departure. The stranger’s blacks were conversing with them. Malbihn stood at a distance, angry and glowering. The stranger approached one of his own men.
“Find out where they got this girl,” he commanded.
The Negro thus addressed questioned one of Malbihn’s followers. Presently he returned to his master.
“They bought her from old Kovudoo,” he said. “That is all that this fellow will tell me. He pretends that he knows nothing more, and I guess that he does not. These two white men were very bad men. They did many things that their boys knew not the meanings of. It would be well, Bwana, to kill the other.”
“I wish that I might; but a new law is come into this part of the jungle. It is not as it was in the old days, Muviri,” replied the master.
The stranger remained until Malbihn and his safari had disappeared into the jungle toward the north. Meriem, trustful now, stood at his side, Geeka clutched in one slim, brown hand. They talked together, the man wondering at the faltering Arabic of the girl, but attributing it finally to her defective mentality. Could he have known that years had elapsed since she had used it until she was taken by the Swedes he would not have wondered that she had half forgotten it. There was yet another reason why the language of The Sheik had thus readily eluded her; but of that reason she herself could not have guessed the truth any better than could the man.
He tried to persuade her to return with him to his “village” as he called it, or douar, in Arabic; but she was insistent upon searching immediately for Korak. As a last resort he determined to take her with him by force rather than sacrifice her life to the insane hallucination which haunted her; but, being a wise man, he determined to humor her first and then attempt to lead her as he would have her go. So when they took up their march it was in the direction of the south, though his own ranch lay almost due east.
By degrees he turned the direction of their way more and more eastward, and greatly was he pleased to note that the girl failed to discover that any change was being made. Little by little she became more trusting. At first she had had but her intuition to guide her belief that this big Tarmangani meant her no harm, but as the days passed and she saw that his kindness and consideration never faltered she came to compare him with Korak, and to be very fond of him; but never did her loyalty to her ape-man flag.
On the fifth day they came suddenly upon a
