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.
Chapter 19
The Last of the "Kincaid"
Shortly after the break of day Tarzan was on deck noting the condition
of the weather. The wind had abated. The sky was cloudless. Every
condition seemed ideal for the commencement of the return voyage to
Jungle Island, where the beasts were to be left. And then--home!
The ape-man aroused the mate and gave instructions that the Kincaid
sail at the earliest possible moment. The remaining members of the
crew, safe in Lord Greystoke's assurance that they would not be
prosecuted for their share in the villainies of the two Russians,
hastened with cheerful alacrity to their several duties.
The beasts, liberated from the confinement of the hold, wandered about
the deck, not a little to the discomfiture of the crew in whose minds
there remained a still vivid picture of the savagery of the beasts in
conflict with those who had gone to their deaths beneath the fangs and
talons which even now seemed itching for the soft flesh of further prey.
Beneath the watchful eyes of Tarzan and Mugambi, however, Sheeta and
the apes of Akut curbed their desires, so that the men worked about the
deck amongst them in far greater security than they imagined.
At last the Kincaid slipped down the Ugambi and ran out upon the
shimmering waters of the Atlantic. Tarzan and Jane Clayton watched the
verdure-clad shore-line receding in the ship's wake, and for once the
ape-man left his native soil without one single pang of regret.
No ship that sailed the seven seas could have borne him away from
Africa to resume his search for his lost boy with half the speed that
the Englishman would have desired, and the slow-moving Kincaid seemed
scarce to move
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