"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 fatigue3 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 destined4 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 vindictiveness5 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 confirmation6 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 shred7 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 vengeance8 had been thwarted9 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 clenched10 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 shrieked11. "You think that you have beaten me—eh? I'll show you, as I have shown the miserable12 ape you call 'husband,' what it means to interfere13 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 wring14 from Jane Clayton any sign of terror he failed miserably15. She was beyond that. Her brain and nerves were numb16 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 corpse17 was not that of her own wee Jack18, and that—best of all—Rokoff evidently did not know the truth.
She would have liked to have flaunted19 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 ransom20 which the traitorous21 conspirator22 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 gnawing23 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 perfectly24 sure; but at the worst it meant but a little earlier release from the hideous25 anguish26 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 exhausted27 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 misery28 and anguish upon me without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I ever done you that you should persist in persecuting29 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 apathy30 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 scooped31 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 recesses32 of her heart.
Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russian through the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding33, 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 thickets34 that fringed the path, rising to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl could hear the stealthy, muffled35 footfalls of great beasts, and ever round about them rose the deafening36 roars of hunting lions, until the earth trembled to the mighty37 sound.
The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon either hand to frighten off the beasts of prey38. 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 vividly39 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 wilderness40, 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 savage41 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 turmoil42. 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 gleaned43 that there had been further desertions while he had been absent, and that the deserters had taken the bulk of his food and ammunition44.
When he had done venting45 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 numbed46 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 riveted47 themselves upon it. Her palm itched48 to grasp the huge butt49. She feigned50 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 peril51.
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 brutes52 who stood and laughed as Rokoff struck her was still vivid.
As the rage and fear-filled countenance53 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 lust54.
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 foes55 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 perils56 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 safari57. To pass through these and find egress58 through the boma seemed a task too fraught59 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 naught60 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 apparently61 asleep. In the dim and flickering62 light of the dying fires she saw but a single sentry63, and he was dozing64 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 tangled65 jungle, she could hear the roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas66, and the countless67, nameless noises of the midnight jungle.
For a moment she hesitated, trembling. The thought of the prowling beasts out there in the darkness was appalling68. Then, with a sudden brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny69 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 honourable70 death.
Without a tremor71 and without regret she darted72 away from the camp, and a moment later the mysterious jungle had closed about her.
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1
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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vindictiveness
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| 恶毒；怀恨在心 | |
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6
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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7
shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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8
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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10
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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14
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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15
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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16
numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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17
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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18
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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19
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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20
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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21
traitorous
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| adj. 叛国的, 不忠的, 背信弃义的 | |
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conspirator
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| n.阴谋者，谋叛者 | |
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23
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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24
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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25
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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26
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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28
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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29
persecuting
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的现在分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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30
apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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31
scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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32
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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33
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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34
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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35
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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36
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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37
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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38
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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39
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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40
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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41
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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42
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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43
gleaned
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| v.一点点地收集（资料、事实）( glean的过去式和过去分词 )；（收割后）拾穗 | |
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44
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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45
venting
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| 消除； 泄去； 排去； 通风 | |
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46
numbed
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| v.使麻木，使麻痹( numb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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48
itched
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| v.发痒( itch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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50
feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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51
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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52
brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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53
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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54
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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55
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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56
perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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safari
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| n.远征旅行(探险、考察)；探险队，狩猎队 | |
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58
egress
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| n.出去；出口 | |
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59
fraught
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| adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的 | |
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60
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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61
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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62
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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63
sentry
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| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
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64
dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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65
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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66
hyenas
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| n.鬣狗( hyena的名词复数 ) | |
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67
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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68
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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69
thorny
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| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
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70
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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71
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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72
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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