Chapter XXII. The Search Party

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　When dawn broke upon the little camp of Frenchmen in theheart of the jungle it found a sad and disheartened group.

　　As soon as it was light enough to see their surroundingsLieutenant Charpentier sent men in groups of three in severaldirections to locate the trail, and in ten minutes it was foundand the expedition was hurrying back toward the beach.

　　It was slow work, for they bore the bodies of six deadmen, two more having succumbed during the night, and severalof those who were wounded required support to moveeven very slowly.

　　Charpentier had decided to return to camp for reinforcements,and then make an attempt to track down the nativesand rescue D'Arnot.

　　It was late in the afternoon when the exhausted menreached the clearing by the beach, but for two of them thereturn brought so great a happiness that all their sufferingand heartbreaking grief was forgotten on the instant.

　　As the little party emerged from the jungle the first personthat Professor Porter and Cecil Clayton saw was Jane, standingby the cabin door.

　　With a little cry of joy and relief she ran forward to greetthem, throwing her arms about her father's neck and burstinginto tears for the first time since they had been cast uponthis hideous and adventurous shore.

　　Professor Porter strove manfully to suppress his own emotions,but the strain upon his nerves and weakened vitalitywere too much for him, and at length, burying his old face inthe girl's shoulder, he sobbed quietly like a tired child.

　　Jane led him toward the cabin, and the Frenchmen turnedtoward the beach from which several of their fellows wereadvancing to meet them.

　　Clayton, wishing to leave father and daughter alone, joined thesailors and remained talking with the officers until their boatpulled away toward the cruiser whither Lieutenant Charpentierwas bound to report the unhappy outcome of his adventure.

　　Then Clayton turned back slowly toward the cabin. His heartwas filled with happiness. The woman he loved was safe.

　　He wondered by what manner of miracle she had beenspared. To see her alive seemed almost unbelievable.

　　As he approached the cabin he saw Jane coming out.When she saw him she hurried forward to meet him.

　　"Jane!" he cried, "God has been good to us, indeed. Tellme how you escaped--what form Providence took to saveyou for--us."

　　He had never before called her by her given name. Forty-eighthours before it would have suffused Jane with a soft glow ofpleasure to have heard that name from Clayton's lips--nowit frightened her.

　　"Mr. Clayton," she said quietly, extending her hand, "firstlet me thank you for your chivalrous loyalty to my dear father.He has told me how noble and self-sacrificing you havebeen. How can we repay you!"

　　Clayton noticed that she did not return his familiar salutation,but he felt no misgivings on that score. She had beenthrough so much. This was no time to force his love uponher, he quickly realized.

　　"I am already repaid," he said. "Just to see you and ProfessorPorter both safe, well, and together again. I do notthink that I could much longer have endured the pathos ofhis quiet and uncomplaining grief.

　　"It was the saddest experience of my life, Miss Porter; andthen, added to it, there was my own grief--the greatest Ihave ever known. But his was so hopeless--his was pitiful. Ittaught me that no love, not even that of a man for his wifemay be so deep and terrible and self-sacrificing as the love ofa father for his daughter."

　　The girl bowed her head. There was a question she wantedto ask, but it seemed almost sacrilegious in the face of thelove of these two men and the terrible suffering they hadendured while she sat laughing and happy beside a godlikecreature of the forest, eating delicious fruits and lookingwith eyes of love into answering eyes.

　　But love is a strange master, and human nature is stillstranger, so she asked her question.

　　"Where is the forest man who went to rescue you? Whydid he not return?"

　　"I do not understand," said Clayton. "Whom do you mean?"

　　"He who has saved each of us--who saved me from the gorilla."

　　"Oh," cried Clayton, in surprise. "It was he who rescued you?You have not told me anything of your adventure, you know."

　　"But the wood man," she urged. "Have you not seen him?When we heard the shots in the jungle, very faint and faraway, he left me. We had just reached the clearing, and hehurried off in the direction of the fighting. I know he wentto aid you."

　　Her tone was almost pleading--her manner tense with suppressedemotion. Clayton could not but notice it, and he wondered,vaguely, why she was so deeply moved--so anxious toknow the whereabouts of this strange creature.

　　Yet a feeling of apprehension of some impending sorrowhaunted him, and in his breast, unknown to himself, wasimplanted the first germ of jealousy and suspicion of theape-man, to whom he owed his life.

　　"We did not see him," he replied quietly. "He did not joinus." And then after a moment of thoughtful pause: "Possiblyhe joined his own tribe--the men who attacked us." He didnot know why he had said it, for he did not believe it.

　　The girl looked at him wide eyed for a moment.

　　"No!" she exclaimed vehemently, much too vehemently hethought. "It could not be. They were savages."

　　Clayton looked puzzled.

　　"He is a strange, half-savage creature of the jungle, MissPorter. We know nothing of him. He neither speaks norunderstands any European tongue--and his ornaments andweapons are those of the West Coast savages."

　　Clayton was speaking rapidly.

　　"There are no other human beings than savages withinhundreds of miles, Miss Porter. He must belong to the tribeswhich attacked us, or to some other equally savage--he mayeven be a cannibal."

　　Jane blanched.

　　"I will not believe it," she half whispered. "It is not true.You shall see," she said, addressing Clayton, "that he willcome back and that he will prove that you are wrong. Youdo not know him as I do. I tell you that he is a gentleman."

　　Clayton was a generous and chivalrous man, but somethingin the girl's breathless defense of the forest man stirred himto unreasoning jealousy, so that for the instant he forgot allthat they owed to this wild demi-god, and he answered herwith a half sneer upon his lip.

　　"Possibly you are right, Miss Porter," he said, "but I donot think that any of us need worry about our carrion-eatingacquaintance. The chances are that he is some half-dementedcastaway who will forget us more quickly, but no moresurely, than we shall forget him. He is only a beast ofthe jungle, Miss Porter."

　　The girl did not answer, but she felt her heart shrivelwithin her.

　　She knew that Clayton spoke merely what he thought, andfor the first time she began to analyze the structure whichsupported her newfound love, and to subject its object to acritical examination.

　　Slowly she turned and walked back to the cabin. She triedto imagine her wood-god by her side in the saloon of anocean liner. She saw him eating with his hands, tearing hisfood like a beast of prey, and wiping his greasy fingers uponhis thighs. She shuddered.

　　She saw him as she introduced him to her friends--uncouth,illiterate--a boor; and the girl winced.

　　She had reached her room now, and as she sat upon theedge of her bed of ferns and grasses, with one hand restingupon her rising and falling bosom, she felt the hard outlinesof the man's locket.

　　She drew it out, holding it in the palm of her hand for amoment with tear-blurred eyes bent upon it. Then she raisedit to her lips, and crushing it there buried her face inthe soft ferns, sobbing.

　　"Beast?" she murmured. "Then God make me a beast; for,man or beast, I am yours."

　　She did not see Clayton again that day. Esmeralda broughther supper to her, and she sent word to her father that shewas suffering from the reaction following her adventure.

　　The next morning Clayton left early with the relief expeditionin search of Lieutenant D'Arnot. There were two hundredarmed men this time, with ten officers and two surgeons,and provisions for a week.

　　They carried bedding and hammocks, the latter for transportingtheir sick and wounded.

　　It was a determined and angry company--a punitive expeditionas well as one of relief. They reached the sight of theskirmish of the previous expedition shortly after noon, forthey were now traveling a known trail and no time was lostin exploring.

　　From there on the elephant-track led straight to Mbonga'svillage. It was but two o'clock when the head of the columnhalted upon the edge of the clearing.

　　Lieutenant Charpentier, who was in command, immediatelysent a portion of his force through the jungle to the oppositeside of the village. Another detachment was dispatchedto a point before the village gate, while he remained with thebalance upon the south side of the clearing.

　　It was arranged that the party which was to take its positionto the north, and which would be the last to gain its stationshould commence the assault, and that their opening volleyshould be the signal for a concerted rush from all sides in anattempt to carry the village by storm at the first charge.

　　For half an hour the men with Lieutenant Charpentiercrouched in the dense foliage of the jungle, waiting thesignal. To them it seemed like hours. They could see natives inthe fields, and others moving in and out of the village gate.

　　At length the signal came--a sharp rattle of musketry, andlike one man, an answering volley tore from the jungle to thewest and to the south.

　　The natives in the field dropped their implements andbroke madly for the palisade. The French bullets mowedthem down, and the French sailors bounded over theirprostrate bodies straight for the village gate.

　　So sudden and unexpected the assault had been that thewhites reached the gates before the frightened natives couldbar them, and in another minute the village street was filledwith armed men fighting hand to hand in an inextricable tangle.

　　For a few moments the blacks held their ground within theentrance to the street, but the revolvers, rifles and cutlassesof the Frenchmen crumpled the native spearmen and struckdown the black archers with their bows halfdrawn.

　　Soon the battle turned to a wild rout, and then to a grimmassacre; for the French sailors had seen bits of D'Arnot'suniform upon several of the black warriors who opposed them.

　　They spared the children and those of the women whomthey were not forced to kill in self-defense, but when atlength they stopped, parting, blood covered and sweating, itwas because there lived to oppose them no single warrior ofall the savage village of Mbonga.

　　Carefully they ransacked every hut and corner of the village,but no sign of D'Arnot could they find. They questionedthe prisoners by signs, and finally one of the sailors who hadserved in the French Congo found that he could make themunderstand the bastard tongue that passes for language betweenthe whites and the more degraded tribes of the coast,but even then they could learn nothing definite regarding thefate of D'Arnot.

　　Only excited gestures and expressions of fear could theyobtain in response to their inquiries concerning their fellow;and at last they became convinced that these were but evidencesof the guilt of these demons who had slaughtered andeaten their comrade two nights before.

　　At length all hope left them, and they prepared to campfor the night within the village. The prisoners were herdedinto three huts where they were heavily guarded. Sentrieswere posted at the barred gates, and finally the village waswrapped in the silence of slumber, except for the wailing ofthe native women for their dead.

　　The next morning they set out upon the return march.Their original intention had been to burn the village, butthis idea was abandoned and the prisoners were left behind,weeping and moaning, but with roofs to cover them and apalisade for refuge from the beasts of the jungle.

　　Slowly the expedition retraced its steps of the precedingday. Ten loaded hammocks retarded its pace. In eight ofthem lay the more seriously wounded, while two swung beneaththe weight of the dead.

　　Clayton and Lieutenant Charpentier brought up the rear ofthe column; the Englishman silent in respect for the other'sgrief, for D'Arnot and Charpentier had been inseparablefriends since boyhood.

　　Clayton could not but realize that the Frenchman felt hisgrief the more keenly because D'Arnot's sacrifice had been sofutile, since Jane had been rescued before D'Arnot had falleninto the hands of the savages, and again because the servicein which he had lost his life had been outside his duty andfor strangers and aliens; but when he spoke of it to LieutenantCharpentier, the latter shook his head.

　　"No, Monsieur," he said, "D'Arnot would have chosen todie thus. I only grieve that I could not have died for him, orat least with him. I wish that you could have known him better,Monsieur. He was indeed an officer and a gentleman--atitle conferred on many, but deserved by so few.

　　"He did not die futilely, for his death in the cause of astrange American girl will make us, his comrades, face ourends the more bravely, however they may come to us."

　　Clayton did not reply, but within him rose a new respectfor Frenchmen which remained undimmed ever after.

　　It was quite late when they reached the cabin by the beach.A single shot before they emerged from the jungle had announcedto those in camp as well as on the ship that the expeditionhad been too late--for it had been prearranged thatwhen they came within a mile or two of camp one shot wasto be fired to denote failure, or three for success, while twowould have indicated that they had found no sign of eitherD'Arnot or his black captors.

　　So it was a solemn party that awaited their coming, and fewwords were spoken as the dead and wounded men were tenderlyplaced in boats and rowed silently toward the cruiser.

　　Clayton, exhausted from his five days of laborious marchingthrough the jungle and from the effects of his two battleswith the blacks, turned toward the cabin to seek a mouthfulof food and then the comparative ease of his bed of grassesafter two nights in the jungle.

　　By the cabin door stood Jane.

　　"The poor lieutenant?" she asked. "Did you find no traceof him?"

　　"We were too late, Miss Porter," he replied sadly.

　　"Tell me. What had happened?" she asked.

　　"I cannot, Miss Porter, it is too horrible."

　　"You do not mean that they had tortured him?" she whispered.

　　"We do not know what they did to him before they killedhim," he answered, his face drawn with fatigue and the sorrowhe felt for poor D'Arnot and he emphasized the word before.

　　"Before they killed him! What do you mean? They arenot--? They are not--?"

　　She was thinking of what Clayton had said of the forestman's probable relationship to this tribe and she could notframe the awful word.

　　"Yes, Miss Porter, they were--cannibals," he said, almostbitterly, for to him too had suddenly come the thought of theforest man, and the strange, unaccountable jealousy he hadfelt two days before swept over him once more.

　　And then in sudden brutality that was as unlike Clayton ascourteous consideration is unlike an ape, he blurted out:

　　"When your forest god left you he was doubtless hurryingto the feast."

　　He was sorry ere the words were spoken though he did notknow how cruelly they had cut the girl. His regret was for hisbaseless disloyalty to one who had saved the lives of everymember of his party, and offered harm to none.

　　The girl's head went high.

　　"There could be but one suitable reply to your assertion,Mr. Clayton," she said icily, "and I regret that I am not aman, that I might make it." She turned quickly and enteredthe cabin.

　　Clayton was an Englishman, so the girl had passed quite outof sight before he deduced what reply a man would have made.

　　"Upon my word," he said ruefully, "she called me a liar.And I fancy I jolly well deserved it," he added thoughtfully."Clayton, my boy, I know you are tired out and unstrung,but that's no reason why you should make an ass of yourself.You'd better go to bed."

　　But before he did so he called gently to Jane upon the oppositeside of the sailcloth partition, for he wished to apologize,but he might as well have addressed the Sphinx. Then he wroteupon a piece of paper and shoved it beneath the partition.

　　Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was veryangry and hurt and mortified, but--she was a woman, and soeventually she picked it up and read it.

　　My Dear Miss Porter:

　　I had no reason to insinuate what I did. My only excuse isthat my nerves must be unstrung--which is no excuse at all.

　　Please try and think that I did not say it. I am very sorry. Iwould not have hurt you, above all others in the world. Saythat you forgive me.Wm. Cecil Clayton.

　　"He did think it or he never would have said it," reasonedthe girl, "but it cannot be true--oh, I know it is not true!"

　　One sentence in the letter frightened her: "I would nothave hurt you above all others in the world."

　　A week ago that sentence would have filled her with delight,now it depressed her.

　　She wished she had never met Clayton. She was sorry thatshe had ever seen the forest god. No, she was glad. And therewas that other note she had found in the grass before thecabin the day after her return from the jungle, the love notesigned by Tarzan of the Apes.

　　Who could be this new suitor? If he were another of thewild denizens of this terrible forest what might he not do toclaim her?

　　"Esmeralda! Wake up," she cried.

　　"You make me so irritable, sleeping there peacefully whenyou know perfectly well that the world is filled with sorrow."

　　"Gaberelle!" screamed Esmeralda, sitting up. "What is itnow? A hipponocerous? Where is he, Miss Jane?"

　　"Nonsense, Esmeralda, there is nothing. Go back to sleep.You are bad enough asleep, but you are infinitely worse awake."

　　"Yes honey, but what's the matter with you, precious? Youacts sort of disgranulated this evening."

　　"Oh, Esmeralda, I'm just plain ugly to-night," said the girl."Don't pay any attention to me--that's a dear."

　　"Yes, honey; now you go right to sleep. Your nerves areall on edge. What with all these ripotamuses and man eatinggeniuses that Mister Philander been telling about--Lord, itain't no wonder we all get nervous prosecution."

　　Jane crossed the little room, laughing, and kissing thefaithful woman, bid Esmeralda good night.