Chapter 13
Escape
For a moment Rokoff stood sneering down upon Jane Clayton, then
his eyes fell to the little bundle in her lap. Jane had drawn one
corner of the blanket over the child's face, so that to one who
did not know the truth it seemed but to be sleeping.
"You have gone to a great deal of unnecessary trouble," said Rokoff,
"to bring the child to this village. If you had attended to your
own affairs I should have brought it here myself.
"You would have been spared the dangers and fatigue of the journey.
But I suppose I must thank you for relieving me of the inconvenience
of having to care for a young infant on the march.
"This is the village to which the child was destined from the first.
M'ganwazam will rear him carefully, making a good cannibal of him,
and if you ever chance to return to civilization it will doubtless
afford you much food for thought as you compare the luxuries and
comforts of your life with the details of the life your son is
living in the village of the Waganwazam.
"Again I thank you for bringing him here for me, and now I must ask
you to surrender him to me, that I may turn him over to his foster
parents." As he concluded Rokoff held out his hands for the child,
a nasty grin of vindictiveness upon his lips.
To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest,
laid the little bundle in his arms.
"Here is the child," she said. "Thank God he is beyond your power
to harm."
Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanket from
the child's face to seek confirmation of his fears. Jane Clayton
watched his expression closely.
She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the question of
Rokoff's knowledge of the child's identity. If she had been in
doubt before the last shred of that doubt was wiped away as she
witnessed the terrible anger of the Russian as he looked upon the
dead face of the baby and realized that at the last moment his
dearest wish for vengeance had been thwarted by a higher power.
Almost throwing the body of the child back into Jane Clayton's
arms, Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with his
clenched fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in front
of the young woman, bringing his face down close to hers.
"You are laughing at me," he shrieked. "You think that you have
beaten me--eh? I'll show you, as I have shown the miserable ape
you call `husband,' what it means to interfere with the plans of
Nikolas Rokoff.
"You have robbed me of the child. I cannot make him the son of
a cannibal chief, but"--and he paused as though to let the full
meaning of his threat sink deep--"I can make the mother the wife
of a cannibal, and that I shall do--after I have finished with her
myself."
If he had thought to wring from Jane Clayton any sign of terror he
failed miserably. She was beyond that. Her brain and nerves were
numb to suffering and shock.
To his surprise a faint, almost happy smile touched her lips. She
was thinking with thankful heart that this poor little corpse was
not that of her own wee Jack, and that--best of all--Rokoff evidently
did not know the truth.
She would have liked to have flaunted the fact in his face, but
she dared not. If he continued to believe that the child had been
hers, so much safer would be the real Jack wherever he might be.
She had, of course, no knowledge of the whereabouts of her little
son--she did not know, even, that he still lived, and yet there
was the chance that he might.
It was more than possible that without Rokoff's knowledge this child
had been substituted for hers by one of the Russian's confederates,
and that even now her son might be safe with friends in London,
where there were many, both able and willing, to have paid any
ransom which the traitorous conspirator might have asked for the
safe release of Lord Greystoke's son.
She had thought it all out a hundred times since she had discovered
that the baby which Anderssen had placed in her arms that night upon
the Kincaid was not her own, and it had been a constant and gnawing
source of happiness to her to dream the whole fantasy through in
its every detail.
No, the Russian must never know that this was not her baby. She
realized that her position was hopeless--with Anderssen and her
husband dead there was no one in all the world with a desire to
succour her who knew where she might be found.
Rokoff's threat, she realized, was no idle one. That he would
do, or attempt to do, all that he had promised, she was perfectly
sure; but at the worst it meant but a little earlier release from
the hideous anguish that she had been enduring. She must find some
way to take her own life before the Russian could harm her further.
Just now she wanted time--time to think and prepare herself for the
end. She felt that she could not take the last, awful step until
she had exhausted every possibility of escape. She did not care
to live unless she might find her way back to her own child, but
slight as such a hope appeared she would not admit its impossibility
until the last moment had come, and she faced the fearful reality
of choosing between the final alternatives--Nikolas Rokoff on one
hand and self-destruction upon the other.
"Go away!" she said to the Russian. "Go away and leave me in peace
with my dead. Have you not brought sufficient misery and anguish
upon me without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I
ever done you that you should persist in persecuting me?"
"You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chose when you
might have had the love of a gentleman--of Nikolas Rokoff," he
replied. "But where is the use in discussing the matter? We shall
bury the child here, and you will return with me at once to my own
camp. Tomorrow I shall bring you back and turn you over to your
new husband--the lovely M'ganwazam. Come!"
He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feet now, turned
away from him.
"I shall bury the body," she said. "Send some men to dig a grave
outside the village."
Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back to his camp
with his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy a resignation
to her fate. Stepping outside the hut, he motioned her to follow
him, and a moment later, with his men, he escorted Jane beyond the
village, where beneath a great tree the blacks scooped a shallow
grave.
Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderly in the
black hole, and, turning her head that she might not see the mouldy
earth falling upon the pitiful little bundle, she breathed a prayer
beside the grave of the nameless waif that had won its way to the
innermost recesses of her heart.
Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russian
through the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding,
leafy corridor that led from the village of M'ganwazam, the black
cannibal, to the camp of Nikolas Rokoff, the white fiend.
Beside them, in the impenetrable thickets that fringed the path,
rising to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl could hear
the stealthy, muffled footfalls of great beasts, and ever round
about them rose the deafening roars of hunting lions, until the
earth trembled to the mighty sound.
The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon either hand
to frighten off the beasts of prey. Rokoff urged them to greater
speed, and from the quavering note in his voice Jane Clayton knew
that he was weak from terror.
The sounds of the jungle night recalled most vividly the days
and nights that she had spent in a similar jungle with her forest
god--with the fearless and unconquerable Tarzan of the Apes. Then
there had been no thoughts of terror, though the jungle noises were
new to her, and the roar of a lion had seemed the most awe-inspiring
sound upon the great earth.
How different would it be now if she knew that he was somewhere
there in the wilderness, seeking her! Then, indeed, would there
be that for which to live, and every reason to believe that succour
was close at hand--but he was dead! It was incredible that it
should be so.
There seemed no place in death for that great body and those mighty
thews. Had Rokoff been the one to tell her of her lord's passing
she would have known that he lied. There could be no reason, she
thought, why M'ganwazam should have deceived her. She did not know
that the Russian had talked with the savage a few minutes before
the chief had come to her with his tale.
At last they reached the rude boma that Rokoff's porters had thrown
up round the Russian's camp. Here they found all in turmoil. She
did not know what it was all about, but she saw that Rokoff was
very angry, and from bits of conversation which she could translate
she gleaned that there had been further desertions while he had
been absent, and that the deserters had taken the bulk of his food
and ammunition.
When he had done venting his rage upon those who remained he returned
to where Jane stood under guard of a couple of his white sailors.
He grasped her roughly by the arm and started to drag her toward
his tent. The girl struggled and fought to free herself, while
the two sailors stood by, laughing at the rare treat.
Rokoff did not hesitate to use rough methods when he found that he
was to have difficulty in carrying out his designs. Repeatedly
he struck Jane Clayton in the face, until at last, half-conscious,
she was dragged within his tent.
Rokoff's boy had lighted the Russian's lamp, and now at a word from
his master he made himself scarce. Jane had sunk to the floor in
the middle of the enclosure. Slowly her numbed senses were returning
to her and she was commencing to think very fast indeed. Quickly
her eyes ran round the interior of the tent, taking in every detail
of its equipment and contents.
Now the Russian was lifting her to her feet and attempting to drag
her to the camp cot that stood at one side of the tent. At his
belt hung a heavy revolver. Jane Clayton's eyes riveted themselves
upon it. Her palm itched to grasp the huge butt. She feigned
again to swoon, but through her half-closed lids she waited her
opportunity.
It came just as Rokoff was lifting her upon the cot. A noise at
the tent door behind him brought his head quickly about and away
from the girl. The butt of the gun was not an inch from her hand.
With a single, lightning-like move she snatched the weapon from
its holster, and at the same instant Rokoff turned back toward her,
realizing his peril.
She did not dare fire for fear the shot would bring his people about
him, and with Rokoff dead she would fall into hands no better than
his and to a fate probably even worse than he alone could have
imagined. The memory of the two brutes who stood and laughed as
Rokoff struck her was still vivid.
As the rage and fear-filled countenance of the Slav turned toward
her Jane Clayton raised the heavy revolver high above the pasty
face and with all her strength dealt the man a terrific blow between
the eyes.
Without a sound he sank, limp and unconscious, to the ground. A
moment later the girl stood beside him--for a moment at least free
from the menace of his lust.
Outside the tent she again heard the noise that had distracted
Rokoff's attention. What it was she did not know, but, fearing the
return of the servant and the discovery of her deed, she stepped
quickly to the camp table upon which burned the oil lamp and
extinguished the smudgy, evil-smelling flame.
In the total darkness of the interior she paused for a moment
to collect her wits and plan for the next step in her venture for
freedom.
About her was a camp of enemies. Beyond these foes a black wilderness
of savage jungle peopled by hideous beasts of prey and still more
hideous human beasts.
There was little or no chance that she could survive even a few
days of the constant dangers that would confront her there; but
the knowledge that she had already passed through so many perils
unscathed, and that somewhere out in the faraway world a little
child was doubtless at that very moment crying for her, filled her
with determination to make the effort to accomplish the seemingly
impossible and cross that awful land of horror in search of the
sea and the remote chance of succour she might find there.
Rokoff's tent stood almost exactly in the centre of the boma.
Surrounding it were the tents and shelters of his white companions
and the natives of his safari. To pass through these and find
egress through the boma seemed a task too fraught with insurmountable
obstacles to warrant even the slightest consideration, and yet
there was no other way.
To remain in the tent until she should be discovered would be to
set at naught all that she had risked to gain her freedom, and so
with stealthy step and every sense alert she approached the back
of the tent to set out upon the first stage of her adventure.
Groping along the rear of the canvas wall, she found that there
was no opening there. Quickly she returned to the side of the
unconscious Russian. In his belt her groping fingers came upon
the hilt of a long hunting-knife, and with this she cut a hole in
the back wall of the tent.
Silently she stepped without. To her immense relief she saw that
the camp was apparently asleep. In the dim and flickering light
of the dying fires she saw but a single sentry, and he was dozing
upon his haunches at the opposite side of the enclosure.
Keeping the tent between him and herself, she crossed between the
small shelters of the native porters to the boma wall beyond.
Outside, in the darkness of the tangled jungle, she could hear
the roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas, and the countless,
nameless noises of the midnight jungle.
For a moment she hesitated, trembling. The thought of the prowling
beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a
sudden brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny boma wall
with her delicate hands. Torn and bleeding though they were, she
worked on breathlessly until she had made an opening through which
she could worm her body, and at last she stood outside the enclosure.
Behind her lay a fate worse than death, at the hands of human
beings.
Before her lay an almost certain fate--but it was only death--sudden,
merciful, and honourable death.
Without a tremor and without regret she darted away from the camp,
and a moment later the mysterious jungle had closed about her.
