Chapter 18

Beasts of Tarzan

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER 18, BEASTS OF TARZAN by Edgar R. Burroughs
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Paulvitch Plots Revenge


As Jane and Tarzan stood upon the vessel's deck recounting
to one another the details of the various adventures
through which each had passed since they had parted in their
London home, there glared at them from beneath scowling
brows a hidden watcher upon the shore.

Through the man's brain passed plan after plan whereby
he might thwart the escape of the Englishman and his wife,
for so long as the vital spark remained within the vindictive
brain of Alexander Paulvitch none who had aroused the enmity
of the Russian might be entirely safe.

Plan after plan he formed only to discard each either as
impracticable, or unworthy the vengeance his wrongs demanded.
So warped by faulty reasoning was the criminal mind of
Rokoff's lieutenant that he could not grasp the real
truth of that which lay between himself and the ape-man and
see that always the fault had been, not with the English lord,
but with himself and his confederate.

And at the rejection of each new scheme Paulvitch arrived
always at the same conclusion--that he could accomplish
naught while half the breadth of the Ugambi separated him
from the object of his hatred.

But how was he to span the crocodile-infested waters?
There was no canoe nearer than the Mosula village, and
Paulvitch was none too sure that the Kincaid would still be
at anchor in the river when he returned should he take the
time to traverse the jungle to the distant village and return
with a canoe. Yet there was no other way, and so, convinced
that thus alone might he hope to reach his prey, Paulvitch,
with a parting scowl at the two figures upon the Kincaid's
deck, turned away from the river.

Hastening through the dense jungle, his mind centred upon
his one fetich--revenge--the Russian forgot even his terror
of the savage world through which he moved.

Baffled and beaten at every turn of Fortune's wheel,
reacted upon time after time by his own malign plotting,
the principal victim of his own criminality, Paulvitch
was yet so blind as to imagine that his greatest happiness
lay in a continuation of the plottings and schemings which
had ever brought him and Rokoff to disaster, and the latter
finally to a hideous death.

As the Russian stumbled on through the jungle toward the Mosula
village there presently crystallized within his brain a plan
which seemed more feasible than any that he had as yet considered.

He would come by night to the side of the Kincaid, and
once aboard, would search out the members of the ship's
original crew who had survived the terrors of this frightful
expedition, and enlist them in an attempt to wrest the vessel
from Tarzan and his beasts.

In the cabin were arms and ammunition, and hidden in a
secret receptacle in the cabin table was one of those infernal
machines, the construction of which had occupied much of
Paulvitch's spare time when he had stood high in the
confidence of the Nihilists of his native land.

That was before he had sold them out for immunity and
gold to the police of Petrograd. Paulvitch winced as he
recalled the denunciation of him that had fallen from the lips
of one of his former comrades ere the poor devil expiated his
political sins at the end of a hempen rope.

But the infernal machine was the thing to think of now.
He could do much with that if he could but get his hands
upon it. Within the little hardwood case hidden in the cabin
table rested sufficient potential destructiveness to wipe out
in the fraction of a second every enemy aboard the Kincaid.

Paulvitch licked his lips in anticipatory joy, and urged his
tired legs to greater speed that he might not be too late to the
ship's anchorage to carry out his designs.

All depended, of course, upon when the Kincaid departed.
The Russian realized that nothing could be accomplished
beneath the light of day. Darkness must shroud his approach
to the ship's side, for should he be sighted by Tarzan or Lady
Greystoke he would have no chance to board the vessel.

The gale that was blowing was, he believed, the cause of
the delay in getting the Kincaid under way, and if it
continued to blow until night then the chances were all in
his favour, for he knew that there was little likelihood
of the ape-man attempting to navigate the tortuous channel
of the Ugambi while darkness lay upon the surface of the water,
hiding the many bars and the numerous small islands which are
scattered over the expanse of the river's mouth.

It was well after noon when Paulvitch came to the Mosula
village upon the bank of the tributary of the Ugambi.
Here he was received with suspicion and unfriendliness by the
native chief, who, like all those who came in contact with
Rokoff or Paulvitch, had suffered in some manner from the
greed, the cruelty, or the lust of the two Muscovites.

When Paulvitch demanded the use of a canoe the chief
grumbled a surly refusal and ordered the white man from
the village. Surrounded by angry, muttering warriors who
seemed to be but waiting some slight pretext to transfix him
with their menacing spears the Russian could do naught else
than withdraw.

A dozen fighting men led him to the edge of the clearing,
leaving him with a warning never to show himself again in
the vicinity of their village.

Stifling his anger, Paulvitch slunk into the jungle; but once
beyond the sight of the warriors he paused and listened intently.
He could hear the voices of his escort as the men returned
to the village, and when he was sure that they were
not following him he wormed his way through the bushes to
the edge of the river, still determined some way to obtain a canoe.

Life itself depended upon his reaching the Kincaid and
enlisting the survivors of the ship's crew in his service,
for to be abandoned here amidst the dangers of the African jungle
where he had won the enmity of the natives was, he well knew,
practically equivalent to a sentence of death.

A desire for revenge acted as an almost equally powerful
incentive to spur him into the face of danger to accomplish
his design, so that it was a desperate man that lay hidden in
the foliage beside the little river searching with eager eyes
for some sign of a small canoe which might be easily handled
by a single paddle.

Nor had the Russian long to wait before one of the awkward
little skiffs which the Mosula fashion came in sight
upon the bosom of the river. A youth was paddling lazily out
into midstream from a point beside the village. When he
reached the channel he allowed the sluggish current to carry
him slowly along while he lolled indolently in the bottom of
his crude canoe.

All ignorant of the unseen enemy upon the river's bank
the lad floated slowly down the stream while Paulvitch
followed along the jungle path a few yards behind him.

A mile below the village the black boy dipped his paddle
into the water and forced his skiff toward the bank.
Paulvitch, elated by the chance which had drawn the youth to
the same side of the river as that along which he followed
rather than to the opposite side where he would have been
beyond the stalker's reach, hid in the brush close beside
the point at which it was evident the skiff would touch the
bank of the slow-moving stream, which seemed jealous of each
fleeting instant which drew it nearer to the broad and muddy
Ugambi where it must for ever lose its identity in the larger
stream that would presently cast its waters into the great ocean.

Equally indolent were the motions of the Mosula youth as
he drew his skiff beneath an overhanging limb of a great tree
that leaned down to implant a farewell kiss upon the bosom
of the departing water, caressing with green fronds the soft
breast of its languorous love.

And, snake-like, amidst the concealing foliage lay the
malevolent Russ. Cruel, shifty eyes gloated upon the outlines
of the coveted canoe, and measured the stature of its owner,
while the crafty brain weighed the chances of the white man
should physical encounter with the black become necessary.

Only direct necessity could drive Alexander Paulvitch to
personal conflict; but it was indeed dire necessity which
goaded him on to action now.

There was time, just time enough, to reach the Kincaid
by nightfall. Would the black fool never quit his skiff?
Paulvitch squirmed and fidgeted. The lad yawned and stretched.
With exasperating deliberateness he examined the arrows in his
quiver, tested his bow, and looked to the edge upon the
hunting-knife in his loin-cloth.

Again he stretched and yawned, glanced up at the river-bank,
shrugged his shoulders, and lay down in the bottom of his canoe
for a little nap before he plunged into the jungle after the prey
he had come forth to hunt.

Paulvitch half rose, and with tensed muscles stood glaring
down upon his unsuspecting victim. The boy's lids drooped
and closed. Presently his breast rose and fell to the deep
breaths of slumber. The time had come!

The Russian crept stealthily nearer. A branch rustled beneath
his weight and the lad stirred in his sleep. Paulvitch drew
his revolver and levelled it upon the black. For a moment he
remained in rigid quiet, and then again the youth relapsed
into undisturbed slumber.

The white man crept closer. He could not chance a shot
until there was no risk of missing. Presently he leaned close
above the Mosula. The cold steel of the revolver in his hand
insinuated itself nearer and nearer to the breast of the
unconscious lad. Now it stopped but a few inches above
the strongly beating heart.

But the pressure of a finger lay between the harmless boy
and eternity. The soft bloom of youth still lay upon the brown
cheek, a smile half parted the beardless lips. Did any qualm of
conscience point its disquieting finger of reproach at the murderer?

To all such was Alexander Paulvitch immune. A sneer curled
his bearded lip as his forefinger closed upon the trigger
of his revolver. There was a loud report. A little hole
appeared above the heart of the sleeping boy, a little hole
about which lay a blackened rim of powder-burned flesh.

The youthful body half rose to a sitting posture. The smiling
lips tensed to the nervous shock of a momentary agony
which the conscious mind never apprehended, and then the
dead sank limply back into that deepest of slumbers from
which there is no awakening.

The killer dropped quickly into the skiff beside the killed.
Ruthless hands seized the dead boy heartlessly and raised
him to the low gunwale. A little shove, a splash, some widening
ripples broken by the sudden surge of a dark, hidden body from
the slimy depths, and the coveted canoe was in the sole
possession of the white man--more savage than the youth
whose life he had taken.

Casting off the tie rope and seizing the paddle,
Paulvitch bent feverishly to the task of driving
the skiff downward toward the Ugambi at top speed.

Night had fallen when the prow of the bloodstained craft
shot out into the current of the larger stream. Constantly the
Russian strained his eyes into the increasing darkness ahead
in vain endeavour to pierce the black shadows which lay between
him and the anchorage of the Kincaid.

Was the ship still riding there upon the waters of the
Ugambi, or had the ape-man at last persuaded himself of the
safety of venturing forth into the abating storm? As Paulvitch
forged ahead with the current he asked himself these questions,
and many more beside, not the least disquieting of which were
those which related to his future should it chance that the
Kincaid had already steamed away, leaving him to the
merciless horrors of the savage wilderness.

In the darkness it seemed to the paddler that he was fairly
flying over the water, and he had become convinced that the
ship had left her moorings and that he had already passed the
spot at which she had lain earlier in the day, when there
appeared before him beyond a projecting point which he had
but just rounded the flickering light from a ship's lantern.

Alexander Paulvitch could scarce restrain an exclamation of triumph.
The Kincaid had not departed! Life and vengeance were not to elude
him after all.

He stopped paddling the moment that he descried the gleaming beacon
of hope ahead of him. Silently he drifted down the muddy waters
of the Ugambi, occasionally dipping his paddle's blade gently
into the current that he might guide his primitive craft
to the vessel's side.

As he approached more closely the dark bulk of a ship
loomed before him out of the blackness of the night.
No sound came from the vessel's deck. Paulvitch drifted,
unseen, close to the Kincaid's side. Only the momentary
scraping of his canoe's nose against the ship's planking broke
the silence of the night.

Trembling with nervous excitement, the Russian remained
motionless for several minutes; but there was no sound from the
great bulk above him to indicate that his coming had been noted.

Stealthily he worked his craft forward until the stays of the
bowsprit were directly above him. He could just reach them.
To make his canoe fast there was the work of but a minute
or two, and then the man raised himself quietly aloft.

A moment later he dropped softly to the deck. Thoughts of
the hideous pack which tenanted the ship induced cold
tremors along the spine of the cowardly prowler; but life
itself depended upon the success of his venture, and so he
was enabled to steel himself to the frightful chances which
lay before him.

No sound or sign of watch appeared upon the ship's deck.
Paulvitch crept stealthily toward the forecastle.
All was silence. The hatch was raised, and as the man
peered downward he saw one of the Kincaid's crew reading
by the light of the smoky lantern depending from the ceiling
of the crew's quarters.

Paulvitch knew the man well, a surly cut-throat upon whom
he figured strongly in the carrying out of the plan which he
had conceived. Gently the Russ lowered himself through the
aperture to the rounds of the ladder which led into the forecastle.

He kept his eyes turned upon the reading man, ready to
warn him to silence the moment that the fellow discovered
him; but so deeply immersed was the sailor in the magazine
that the Russian came, unobserved, to the forecastle floor.

There he turned and whispered the reader's name. The man
raised his eyes from the magazine--eyes that went wide
for a moment as they fell upon the familiar countenance of
Rokoff's lieutenant, only to narrow instantly in a scowl
of disapproval.

"The devil!" he ejaculated. "Where did you come from?
We all thought you were done for and gone where you ought
to have gone a long time ago. His lordship will be mighty
pleased to see you."

Paulvitch crossed to the sailor's side. A friendly smile lay
on the Russian's lips, and his right hand was extended in
greeting, as though the other might have been a dear and
long lost friend. The sailor ignored the proffered hand,
nor did he return the other's smile.

"I've come to help you," explained Paulvitch. "I'm going to
help you get rid of the Englishman and his beasts--then there
will be no danger from the law when we get back to civilization.
We can sneak in on them while they sleep--that is Greystoke,
his wife, and that black scoundrel, Mugambi. Afterward it will
be a simple matter to clean up the beasts. Where are they?"

"They're below," replied the sailor; "but just let me tell
you something, Paulvitch. You haven't got no more show to
turn us men against the Englishman than nothing. We had
all we wanted of you and that other beast. He's dead, an' if
I don't miss my guess a whole lot you'll be dead too before long.
You two treated us like dogs, and if you think we got any love
for you you better forget it."

"You mean to say that you're going to turn against me?"
demanded Paulvitch.

The other nodded, and then after a momentary pause,
during which an idea seemed to have occurred to him,
he spoke again.

"Unless," he said, "you can make it worth my while to
let you go before the Englishman finds you here."

"You wouldn't turn me away in the jungle, would you?"
asked Paulvitch. "Why, I'd die there in a week."

"You'd have a chance there," replied the sailor. "Here,
you wouldn't have no chance. Why, if I woke up my maties here
they'd probably cut your heart out of you before the Englishman
got a chance at you at all. It's mighty lucky for you that
I'm the one to be awake now and not none of the others."

"You're crazy," cried Paulvitch. "Don't you know that
the Englishman will have you all hanged when he gets you
back where the law can get hold of you?"

"No, he won't do nothing of the kind," replied the sailor.
"He's told us as much, for he says that there wasn't nobody to
blame but you and Rokoff--the rest of us was just tools. See?"

For half an hour the Russian pleaded or threatened as the
mood seized him. Sometimes he was upon the verge of tears,
and again he was promising his listener either fabulous
rewards or condign punishment; but the other was obdurate.
[condign: of equal value]

He made it plain to the Russian that there were but two plans
open to him--either he must consent to being turned over
immediately to Lord Greystoke, or he must pay to the sailor,
as a price for permission to quit the Kincaid unmolested,
every cent of money and article of value upon his person
and in his cabin.

"And you'll have to make up your mind mighty quick,"
growled the man, "for I want to turn in. Come now, choose--
his lordship or the jungle?"

"You'll be sorry for this," grumbled the Russian.

"Shut up," admonished the sailor. "If you get funny I
may change my mind, and keep you here after all."

Now Paulvitch had no intention of permitting himself to
fall into the hands of Tarzan of the Apes if he could possibly
avoid it, and while the terrors of the jungle appalled him they
were, to his mind, infinitely preferable to the certain death
which he knew he merited and for which he might look at
the hands of the ape-man.

"Is anyone sleeping in my cabin?" he asked.

The sailor shook his head. "No," he said; "Lord and Lady
Greystoke have the captain's cabin. The mate is in his own,
and there ain't no one in yours."

"I'll go and get my valuables for you," said Paulvitch.

"I'll go with you to see that you don't try any funny business,"
said the sailor, and he followed the Russian up the ladder to the deck.

At the cabin entrance the sailor halted to watch, permitting
Paulvitch to go alone to his cabin. Here he gathered together
his few belongings that were to buy him the uncertain safety
of escape, and as he stood for a moment beside the little
table on which he had piled them he searched his brain for
some feasible plan either to ensure his safety or to bring
revenge upon his enemies.

And presently as he thought there recurred to his memory
the little black box which lay hidden in a secret receptacle
beneath a false top upon the table where his hand rested.

The Russian's face lighted to a sinister gleam of malevolent
satisfaction as he stooped and felt beneath the table top.
A moment later he withdrew from its hiding-place the thing
he sought. He had lighted the lantern swinging from the
beams overhead that he might see to collect his belongings,
and now he held the black box well in the rays of the lamplight,
while he fingered at the clasp that fastened its lid.

The lifted cover revealed two compartments within the box.
In one was a mechanism which resembled the works of a
small clock. There also was a little battery of two dry cells.
A wire ran from the clockwork to one of the poles of the
battery, and from the other pole through the partition into
the other compartment, a second wire returning directly to
the clockwork.

Whatever lay within the second compartment was not visible,
for a cover lay over it and appeared to be sealed in place
by asphaltum. In the bottom of the box, beside the clockwork,
lay a key, and this Paulvitch now withdrew and fitted
to the winding stem.

Gently he turned the key, muffling the noise of the winding
operation by throwing a couple of articles of clothing over
the box. All the time he listened intently for any sound which
might indicate that the sailor or another were approaching
his cabin; but none came to interrupt his work.

When the winding was completed the Russian set a pointer
upon a small dial at the side of the clockwork, then he
replaced the cover upon the black box, and returned the
entire machine to its hiding-place in the table.

A sinister smile curled the man's bearded lips as he gathered
up his valuables, blew out the lamp, and stepped from his cabin
to the side of the waiting sailor.

"Here are my things," said the Russian; "now let me go."

"I'll first take a look in your pockets," replied the sailor.
"You might have overlooked some trifling thing that won't
be of no use to you in the jungle, but that'll come in mighty
handy to a poor sailorman in London. Ah! just as I feared,"
he ejaculated an instant later as he withdrew a roll of bank-
notes from Paulvitch's inside coat pocket.

The Russian scowled, muttering an imprecation; but nothing
could be gained by argument, and so he did his best to
reconcile himself to his loss in the knowledge that the sailor
would never reach London to enjoy the fruits of his thievery.

It was with difficulty that Paulvitch restrained a consuming
desire to taunt the man with a suggestion of the fate that
would presently overtake him and the other members of the
Kincaid's company; but fearing to arouse the fellow's
suspicions, he crossed the deck and lowered himself in silence
into his canoe.

A minute or two later he was paddling toward the shore to
be swallowed up in the darkness of the jungle night, and the
terrors of a hideous existence from which, could he have had
even a slight foreknowledge of what awaited him in the long
years to come, he would have fled to the certain death of the
open sea rather than endure it.

The sailor, having made sure that Paulvitch had departed,
returned to the forecastle, where he hid away his booty and
turned into his bunk, while in the cabin that had belonged to
the Russian there ticked on and on through the silences of
the night the little mechanism in the small black box which
held for the unconscious sleepers upon the ill-starred Kincaid
the coming vengeance of the thwarted Russian.