Drawing his own weapon, the officer fired, and Tarzan fearing the effect of the noise upon his really timid friends called to them to hasten and fulfill his commands.
A couple of the apes turned and fled at the sound of the firearm; but Chulk and a half dozen others waddled rapidly forward, and, following the ape-man's directions, seized both him and Werper and bore them off toward the jungle.
By dint of threats, reproaches and profanity the Belgian officer succeeded in persuading his trembling command to fire a volley after the retreating apes.Aragged, straggling volley it was, but at least one of its bullets found a mark, for as the jungle closed about the hairy rescuers, Chulk, who bore Werper across one broad shoulder, staggered and fell.
In an instant he was up again; but the Belgian guessed from his unsteady gait that he was hard hit.He lagged far behind the others, and it was several minutes after they had halted at Tarzan's command before he came slowly up to them, reeling from side to side, and at last falling again beneath the weight of his burden and the shock of his wound.
As Chulk went down he dropped Werper, so that the latter fell face downward with the body of the ape lying half across him.In this position the Belgian felt something resting against his hands, which were still bound at his back--something that was not a part of the hairy body of the ape.
Mechanically the man's fingers felt of the object resting almost in their grasp--it was a soft pouch, filled with small, hard particles.Werper gasped in wonderment as recognition filtered through the incredulity of his mind.It was impossible, and yet--
it was true!
Feverishly he strove to remove the pouch from the ape and transfer it to his own possession; but the restricted radius to which his bonds held his hands prevented this, though he did succeed in tucking the pouch with its precious contents inside the waist band of his trousers.
Tarzan, sitting at a short distance, was busy with the remaining knots of the cords which bound him.
Presently he flung aside the last of them and rose to his feet.Approaching Werper he knelt beside him.For a moment he examined the ape.
"Quite dead," he announced."It is too bad--he was a splendid creature," and then he turned to the work of liberating the Belgian.
He freed his hands first, and then commenced upon the knots at his ankles.
"I can do the rest," said the Belgian."I have a small pocketknife which they overlooked when they searched me," and in this way he succeeded in ridding himself of the ape-man's attentions that he might find and open his little knife and cut the thong which fastened the pouch about Chulk's shoulder, and transfer it from his waist band to the breast of his shirt.Then he rose and approached Tarzan.
Once again had avarice claimed him.Forgotten were the good intentions which the confidence of Jane Clayton in his honor had awakened.What she had done, the little pouch had undone.How it had come upon the person of the great ape, Werper could not imagine, unless it had been that the anthropoid had witnessed his fight with Achmet Zek, seen the Arab with the pouch and taken it away from him; but that this pouch contained the jewels of Opar, Werper was positive, and that was all that interested him greatly.
"Now," said the ape-man, "keep your promise to me.
Lead me to the spot where you last saw my wife."
It was slow work pushing through the jungle in the dead of night behind the slow-moving Belgian.The ape-man chafed at the delay, but the European could not swing through the trees as could his more agile and muscular companions, and so the speed of all was limited to that of the slowest.
The apes trailed out behind the two white men for a matter of a few miles; but presently their interest lagged, the foremost of them halted in a little glade and the others stopped at his side.There they sat peering from beneath their shaggy brows at the figures of the two men forging steadily ahead, until the latter disappeared in the leafy trail beyond the clearing.
Then an ape sought a comfortable couch beneath a tree, and one by one the others followed his example, so that Werper and Tarzan continued their journey alone; nor was the latter either surprised or concerned.
The two had gone but a short distance beyond the glade where the apes had deserted them, when the roaring of distant lions fell upon their ears.The ape-man paid no attention to the familiar sounds until the crack of a rifle came faintly from the same direction, and when this was followed by the shrill neighing of horses, and an almost continuous fusillade of shots intermingled with increased and savage roaring of a large troop of lions, he became immediately concerned.
"Someone is having trouble over there," he said, turning toward Werper."I'll have to go to them--they may be friends."
"Your wife might be among them," suggested the Belgian, for since he had again come into possession of the pouch he had become fearful and suspicious of the ape-man, and in his mind had constantly revolved many plans for eluding this giant Englishman, who was at once his savior and his captor.
At the suggestion Tarzan started as though struck with a whip.
"God!" he cried, "she might be, and the lions are attacking them--they are in the camp.I can tell from the screams of the horses--and there! that was the cry of a man in his death agonies.Stay here man--I will come back for you.I must go first to them," and swinging into a tree the lithe figure swung rapidly off into the night with the speed and silence of a disembodied spirit.
For a moment Werper stood where the ape-man had left him.Then a cunning smile crossed his lips."Stay here?" he asked himself."Stay here and wait until you return to find and take these jewels from me? Not I, my friend, not I," and turning abruptly eastward Albert Werper passed through the foliage of a hanging vine and out of the sight of his fellow-man--forever.