ial Russian. She could not well
refrain from comparing the scant protection afforded her by Clayton
with what she might have expected had Tarzan of the Apes been for a
single instant confronted by the sinister and menacing attitude of
Monsieur Thuran. Once, when Clayton had gone to the little stream for
water, and Thuran had spoken coarsely to her, she voiced her thoughts.

"It is well for you, Monsieur Thuran," she said, "that the poor
Monsieur Tarzan who was lost from the ship that brought you and Miss
Strong to Cape Town is not here now."

"You knew the pig?" asked Thuran, with a sneer.

"I knew the man," she replied. "The only real man, I think, that I
have ever known."

There was something in her tone of voice that led the Russian to
attribute to her a deeper feeling for his enemy than friendship, and he
grasped at the suggestion to be further revenged upon the man whom he
supposed dead by besmirching his memory to the girl.

"He was worse than a pig," he cried. "He was a poltroon and a coward.
To save himself from the righteous wrath of the husband of a woman he
had wronged, he perjured his soul in an attempt to place the blame
entirely upon her. Not succeeding in this, he ran away from France to
escape meeting the husband upon the field of honor. That is why he was
on board the ship that bore Miss Strong and myself to Cape Town. I
know whereof I speak, for the woman in the case is my sister.
Something more I know that I have never told another--your brave
Monsieur Tarzan leaped overboard in an agony of fear because I
recognized him, and insisted that he make reparation to me the
following morning--we could have fought with knives in my stateroom."

Jane Porter laughed. "You do not for a moment imagine that one who has
known both Monsieur Tarzan and you could ever believe such an
impossible tale?"

"Then why did he travel under an assumed name?" asked Monsieur Thuran.

"I do not believe you," she cried, but nevertheless the seed of
suspicion was sown, for she knew that Hazel Strong had known her forest
god only as John Caldwell, of London.

A scant five miles north of their rude shelter, all unknown to them,
and practically as remote as though separated by thousands of miles of
impenetrable jungle, lay the snug little cabin of Tarzan of the Apes.
While farther up the coast, a few miles beyond the cabin, in crude but
well-built shelters, lived a little party of eighteen souls--the
occupants of th