The Return of Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs (read e book TXT) 📗

the coast. Where the way was easy they walked hand in hand beneath the arching boughs of the mighty forest, as might in a far-gone past have walked their primeval forbears. When the underbrush was tangled he took her in his great arms, and bore her lightly through the trees, and the days were all too short, for they were very happy. Had it not been for their anxiety to reach and succor Clayton they would have drawn out the sweet pleasure of that wonderful journey indefinitely.

On the last day before they reached the coast Tarzan caught the scent of men ahead of them⁠—the scent of black men. He told the girl, and cautioned her to maintain silence. “There are few friends in the jungle,” he remarked dryly.

In half an hour they came stealthily upon a small party of black warriors filing toward the west. As Tarzan saw them he gave a cry of delight⁠—it was a band of his own Waziri. Busuli was there, and others who had accompanied him to Opar. At sight of him they danced and cried out in exuberant joy. For weeks they had been searching for him, they told him.

The blacks exhibited considerable wonderment at the presence of the white girl with him, and when they found that she was to be his woman they vied with one another to do her honor. With the happy Waziri laughing and dancing about them they came to the rude shelter by the shore.

There was no sign of life, and no response to their calls. Tarzan clambered quickly to the interior of the little tree hut, only to emerge a moment later with an empty tin. Throwing it down to Busuli, he told him to fetch water, and then he beckoned Jane Porter to come up.

Together they leaned over the emaciated thing that once had been an English nobleman. Tears came to the girl’s eyes as she saw the poor, sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, and the lines of suffering upon the once young and handsome face.

“He still lives,” said Tarzan. “We will do all that can be done for him, but I fear that we are too late.”

When Busuli had brought the water Tarzan forced a few drops between the cracked and swollen lips. He wetted the hot forehead and bathed the pitiful limbs.

Presently Clayton opened his eyes. A faint, shadowy smile lighted his countenance as he saw the girl leaning over him. At sight of Tarzan the expression changed to one of wonderment.

“It’s all right, old fellow,” said the ape-man. “We’ve found you in time. Everything will be all right now, and we’ll have you on your feet again before you know it.”

The Englishman shook his head weakly. “It’s too late,” he whispered. “But it’s just as well. I’d rather die.”

“Where is Monsieur Thuran?” asked the girl.

“He left me after the fever got bad. He is a devil. When I begged for the water that I was too weak to get he drank before me, threw the rest out, and laughed in my face.” At the thought of it the man was suddenly animated by a spark of vitality. He raised himself upon one elbow. “Yes,” he almost shouted; “I will live. I will live long enough to find and kill that beast!” But the brief effort left him weaker than before, and he sank back again upon the rotting grasses that, with his old ulster, had been the bed of Jane Porter.

“Don’t worry about Thuran,” said Tarzan of the Apes, laying a reassuring hand on Clayton’s forehead. “He belongs to me, and I shall get him in the end, never fear.”

For a long time Clayton lay very still. Several times Tarzan had to put his ear quite close to the sunken chest to catch the faint beating of the worn-out heart. Toward evening he aroused again for a brief moment.

“Jane,” he whispered. The girl bent her head closer to catch the faint message. “I have wronged you⁠—and him,” he nodded weakly toward the ape-man. “I loved you so⁠—it is a poor excuse to offer for injuring you; but I could not bear to think of giving you up. I do not ask your forgiveness. I only wish to do now the thing I should have done over a year ago.” He fumbled in the pocket of the ulster beneath him for something that he had discovered there while he lay between the paroxysms of fever. Presently he found it⁠—a crumpled bit of yellow paper. He handed it to the girl, and as she took it his arm fell limply across his chest, his head dropped back, and with a little gasp he stiffened and was still. Then Tarzan of the Apes drew a fold of the ulster across the upturned face.

For a moment they remained kneeling there, the girl’s lips moving in silent prayer, and as they rose and stood on either side of the now peaceful form, tears came to the ape-man’s eyes, for through the anguish that his own heart had suffered he had learned compassion for the suffering of others.

Through her own tears the girl read the message upon the bit of faded yellow paper, and as she read her eyes went very wide. Twice she read those startling words before she could fully comprehend their meaning.

Finger prints prove you Greystoke. Congratulations.

D’Arnot.

She handed the paper to Tarzan. “And he has known it all this time,” she said, “and did not tell you?”

“I knew it first, Jane,” replied the man. “I did not know that he knew it at all. I must have dropped this message that night in the waiting room. It was there that I received it.”

“And afterward you told us that your mother was a she-ape, and that you had never known your father?” she asked incredulously.

“The title and the estates meant nothing to me without you, dear,” he replied. “And if I had taken them away from him I should have been robbing the woman I