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