Edgar Burroughs - The Return of Tarzan

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 wornout 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 love— don't you understand, Jane?” It was as though he attempted to excuse a fault.

She extended her arms toward him across the body of the dead man, and took his hands in hers.

“And I would have thrown away a love like that!” she said.

The next morning they set out upon the short journey to Tarzan's cabin. Four Waziri bore the body of the dead Englishman.

It had been the ape-man's suggestion that Clayton be buried beside the former Lord Greystoke near the edge of the jungle against the cabin that the older man had built.

Jane Porter was glad that it was to be so, and in her heart of hearts she wondered at the marvelous fineness of character of this wondrous man, who, though raised by brutes and among brutes, had the true chivalry and tenderness which only associates with the refinements of the highest civilization.

They had proceeded some three miles of the five that had separated them from Tarzan's own beach when the Waziri who were ahead stopped suddenly, pointing in amazement at a strange figure approaching them along the beach.

It was a man with a shiny silk hat, who walked slowly with bent head, and hands clasped behind him underneath the tails of his long, black coat.

At sight of him Jane Porter uttered a little cry of surprise and joy, and ran quickly ahead to meet him. At the sound of her voice the old man looked up, and when he saw who it was confronting him he, too, cried out in relief and happiness.

As Professor Archimedes Q. Porter folded his daughter in his arms tears streamed down his seamed old face, and it was several minutes before he could control himself sufficiently to speak.

When a moment later he recognized Tarzan it was with difficulty that they could convince him that his sorrow had not unbalanced his mind, for with the other members of the party he had been so thoroughly convinced that the ape-man was dead it was a problem to reconcile the conviction with the very lifelike appearance of Jane's “forest god.” The old man was deeply touched at the news of Clayton's death.

“I cannot understand it,” he said. “Monsieur Thuran assured us that Clayton passed away many days ago.”

“Thuran is with you?” asked Tarzan.

“Yes; he but recently found us and led us to your cabin.

We were camped but a short distance north of it. Bless me, but he will be delighted to see you both.”

“And surprised,” commented Tarzan.

A short time later the strange party came to the clearing in which stood the ape-man's cabin. It was filled with people coming and going, and almost the first whom Tarzan saw was D'Arnot.

“Paul!” he cried. “In the name of sanity what are you doing here? Or are we all insane?”

It was quickly explained, however, as were many other seemingly strange things. D'Arnot's ship had been cruising along the coast, on patrol duty, when at the lieutenant's suggestion they had anchored off the little landlocked harbor to have another look at the cabin and the jungle in which many of the officers and men had taken part in exciting adventures two years before. On landing they had found Lord Tennington's party, and arrangements were being made to take them all on board the following morning, and carry them back to civilization.

Hazel Strong and her mother, Esmeralda, and Mr. Samuel T. Philander were almost overcome by happiness at Jane Porter's safe return. Her escape seemed to them little short of miraculous, and it was the consensus of opinion that it could have been achieved by no other man than Tarzan of the Apes. They loaded the uncomfortable ape-man with eulogies and attentions until he wished himself back in the amphitheater of the apes.